Mindy Tsonas Choi

You will need: your new journal or planner magazines you don't mind cutting up scissors glue sticks 1 sheet of blank sticker paper   (trimmed to 1/2" smaller than your cover) optional: brayer, washi tape, photos + other ephemera   Set up your space, put on your favorite music, and tune into your intuition! Start by cutting out and collecting images and words that resonate with you. Inner Alchemy Collage is an embodied practice, so feel it more than think about it. Try to quiet the voice that wants to direct things and make them look or be "right". Simply go with what is calling to you. Follow your muse like a breadcrumb trail. Try not to overanalyze your choices. Once you have a nice pile of things, begin to loosely lay them out on your sticker paper. I do not glue until my entire layout feels complete, this way if I want to move elements around I can. Once you are happy with the arrangement, begin to glue everything down. Be sure you are gluing on the front side of

It’s May 14, 2020 and I’m on a transnational call with a social worker and translator of the SOS Children’s Village offices in South Korea. It’s 7pm my time and 9am the next day in Korea, which adds to the surreal quality of the moment. It is my first long distance call following my inquiry with the organization documented to be my first place of entry into the system, found in my Korean records (the acquisition of which is an incredible story in and of itself). It was July 21, 1972 and I was 5 months old. It’s a small miracle the organization still exists, and an even bigger blessing that they took such time and care in searching for information and to talk it all through with me in person. I try not to cry as the call connects. What I learn is a lot of small details about that fateful evening which amount to nothing traceable, but still feel like huge missing pieces of my life. I was left near the entrance around 7pm under a small tree, wrapped in a blanket with only a name scribble