The Desire and Fire Within All of Us to Find Ourselves
Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to announce the next guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal, Sara J. Streeter. Sara will oversee the creation of our Vol. X, No. 1 issue (spring 2025).
This next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal explores the process people go through when finding and transforming into their authentic selves. This issue will be a survey of the unique journeys people take when experiencing and undergoing self-transformation, journeys that all start with a little fire, a desire, deep inside.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS:
Theme announcement: January 20
Submissions open: February 1
Submissions close: February 28
Issue release: May 20
Sara J. Streeter (she/her), or 한혜숙 Hea Sook Han, is a writer and a Korean-American adoptee. Since starting her writing journey in 2021, Sara found her writing community through Adoptee Voices and developed a meaningful connection to readers, both within the adoption constellation and beyond. She mainly writes creative nonfiction prose and has been published in literary journals, such as Longleaf Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Peatsmoke Journal, The Rappahannock Review, GASHER Journal, Cutleaf Journal, and others. Sara has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fiction. She joined the Yellow Arrow community when her piece “Bitter / Sweet” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal kitalo Vol. IX, No. 2. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her family and is an interior designer for a small hospitality firm. You can find her at sarajstreeter.com.
You can also find the video above on the Yellow Arrow YouTube channel. Please follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for the theme announcement. Below, you can read more about Sara’s self-reflection into who she is, where she came from, and who she wants to be. Her words below explore her self-journey, and we can’t wait to hear yours. We look forward to working with Sara over the next few months.
By Sara J. Streeter
Just a few years ago, you wouldn’t find me here, writing about my South Korean birth family or the unyielding adoption industry. I was out wandering in the fog—a soft, cozy place of adoption unawareness I inhabited nearly my entire life. I hadn’t yet “come out of the fog,” or in other words, I had not gotten to a place where I accepted the realities of my relinquishment and familial displacement. The fog protected me from emotions I couldn’t quite process and from complex concepts I had yet to understand. It probably saved my life though, in turn, it kept me from understanding who I was, a cruel bargain.
So, what happened when, as an adult, I emerged from that comfortable bubble—when I came to consciousness about my adoption? I reluctantly began to understand my story was made of the “both–and”: By both love and structural systems of oppression. By both self-sacrifice and the lucrative business of adoption. The both–and was, and still is, difficult to hold with both hands. I had to come to terms with the idea that adoption starts with loss, and I had lost so, so much. Who I was as a person began to fundamentally change, but I still had to wake up, drive to work, attend the meeting, make dinner, maintain conversation, laugh when I was supposed to, pay taxes, dress myself, survive. I had to settle for being unsatisfied in knowing both too much and yet not enough.
I gave myself space and tended to my pain, prioritizing self-compassion when grief gnawed at me. Like a tree burning from the inside out, a flame inside me flickered, begging for release, though once I let it out, I couldn’t go back to the person I had been. I was scared that if I let it, the blaze would consume me. On the heels of 2020, as a working parent nearing middle age, I began to write. Writing my story gave me permission to examine the parts and pieces that were at times too ugly, too dark, too broken to touch. When people read what I wrote, it felt like the fire leapt from my throat and danced its way out into the world. Support came in the form of connection with readers and writers within the adoption community and beyond. I could breathe again. To become, I learned, I had to unbecome who I had been, and writing became a sanctuary for my transformation.
We are all shaped by the things in our lives. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open to possibilities of a new self is brave and hard. In this issue to Yellow Arrow Journal, I invite us to consider the ways we embrace changing into our authentic selves, what we gain and lose, and how we build connection through sharing the journey. If we can imagine a world in which we are liberated from obsolete systems and tired stories and, instead, trust the process of change, we can get further together than alone.
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