Stephanie Drenka

Letters From My Younger Self

Adoption•Life
“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.” — Andre Gide In preparation for National Novel Writing Month, I’ve started excavating my life – searching for artifacts, memories, and meaning that will help me write my memoir. The thing about...

Celebrate Immigrants

Adoption•Life•Social Justice
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Chuseok in Korea. The annual harvest festival is like Thanksgiving for Koreans. My birth family purchased this hanbok for me the last time I visited Korea. We spent the afternoon in my hometown of Andong picking out the colors...

The Importance of Making Plans

Life
“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem Sometimes, I go dark. And I don’t just mean like my goth phase in high school- where I painted my nails...

How To Love Your Brokenness

Adoption•Life
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” – Audre Lorde I just returned home from a weekend writing retreat with my Dallas Public Voices fellows. We had been planning it for months, inspired by...

A Reflection on Water

Life
What is it about water that always stirs me so? How strangely opposite it is from air, I think to myself. You can’t live without either, but as you breathe in each – one sustains and the other drowns. How can either be more...

Family Politics in the Trump Era

Adoption•Life•Social Justice
I shared the photo above today as a reminder to myself and clarification for others about why I do what I do. When a family member left a comment on my Facebook post last night expressing her support for Trump, I had several options....