Alisha is a Korean adoptee, mother, therapist, and educator. She was born in South Korea, grew up in Michigan, and now lives in NYC, where she has a private practice and small-batch pasta business with her husband. Alisha was the Korean American Story 1st Place Winner earlier this year for her piece “Loss, Love, and Liberation.”

Alisha talks to us about growing up as a transracial adoptee in a small, rural town and the internalized whiteness that she started recognizing and healing from once she went to college. She references a PBS documentary called South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning, which examines fraud and abuse allegations in South Korea’s foreign adoption industry.

We also discuss our respective postpartum periods and mental health challenges, the healing and grieving that motherhood brings, and how we cannot help but see our own children in the children of Gaza. As powerless as many of us feel in stopping wars and genocides, I believe that it matters how we raise our children and how we show up in solidarity in day to day life. Alisha and her family are a particularly poignant example of all of us being connected as they are raising a Korean Jewish daughter, who I can’t help but see my own daughter in. Because we are all ultimately one human family.

Alisha’s IG

Leah’s IG