Mom’s House
This wasn’t a one time “hey, I built you guys a house, we’re square” situation - this is my life. And there’s no guidebook for a family like this, but I need to take a shot at creating an authentic relationship with my birth family. I know the risks, I know the benefits - all I had to do was make a choice.
I decided I needed to trust them, truly. I could live with that.
I had been speaking with my oldest younger brother, Thanh Tri, for years now. I reached out to him to source the builders and he got a reasonable price (no “outside money” premium). We made a construction financing plan structured with deposits, and he put in all of his own money that he had. We met in Phan Thiết and walked the rest of the family through the plan…
Building a home is quite complex.
After my thru-skate of Aotearoa in 2022, I wanted to get started right away. It had always been my dream to build a house for my birth mother in Phan Thiết. I knew the location, I’d raised the money, and I was headed back to Viet Nam later in the year.
Immediately there were complications. We tried to source local builders through Catalyst Foundation’s connections to the community, but when they heard where the outside money was coming from we were overpriced – around $3500 more than the initial budget of $2500. There was more. There is no private land ownership in Viet Nam - the State gives you the right to use the land. The attention that a house built by outside money on my birth family’s property brings could cause the land to be seized and my family displaced.
Growing up, like many adoptees, I felt an immense detachment from my roots. I traveled to Viet Nam in search of connection, but I have slowly come to realize that I can never be “Vietnamese enough” for acceptance. I still don’t speak Vietnamese. Have I tricked myself into thinking that simply building a house can fill that void? Legitimize my roots?
Saviorism, altruism; maybe it’s a scam, or naïve, or therapeutic – all these thoughts wore me down until I couldn’t focus on why I wanted to build the house anyways. So I asked myself: what can you live with?
Building the House wasn’t that complex.
It was fairly straightforward.
We started construction a month ago at the end of February and, as I sit here a day before I head to Cuba, it’s almost finished. Celebratory feelings have always felt premature on the road of adoptive discovery. I am still working on building my home, but I’ll definitely take this win.
Thank you to everyone who has made this possible - you have changed my life.
Photos & videos taken by my brother, Thanh Tri.
The Build
A note to my fellow adoptees.
Prioritize yourself. This isn’t about your adoptive parents, this isn’t your birth family, this is about you. I considered the concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ a lot in this process. Due to the nature of fundraising, this very personal piece of my life will be shown to the world: how will it look? Is this the ‘right’ thing to do? What message am I sending to the adoptee community?
There’s no message – right and wrong is so obscure in uncharted territory. There’s only what you are okay with. If you have the opportunity to connect with your roots, you don’t even have to take it. Lots of circumstances out of your control got you to this point. It’s your life - decide what you want from it.