NOTE: This was originally a post at my blog; over the years I’ve gotten progressively more heartsick at the unending constant of adoptees in their nation-states of adoption trying to make sense of their trauma via the tools of the dominant culture in their country—the cultures that adopted us. We’ve been advocating our case for […]
I went for a checkup for the first time in a very long time, now that I have this thing called “health insurance” because I’m living and working in Canada. Honestly I was extremely worried; I hadn’t had a proper checkup in ages. There came the moment we all know and dread when my doctor […]
Over on Twitter, Lilly Schmaltz 飞岗 (@lillyschmaltz) just tweeted out: Small accomplishment. Just had my first Mandarin text message conversation with a native speaker—only needed my dictionary a few times! Feelin’ good 😆 And it made me smile, myself having learned the language “I would have spoken if….”—I know how difficult a road it is, […]
I live in Canada now, and the recent news has been talking about the country’s senate’s hearings and report on the Baby Scoop targeted destruction of Indigenous communities here via adoption: [link] and [link]. Much talk about “healing”, and “moving forward”, etc. Australia did something similar 10 years ago [link]. I’ll hold off on adding […]
What do you make of current efforts to slam the current “administration” in the US for having separated immigrant children from their parents? The disgust and horror in the media is, to me, rather hypocritical. I say that as someone who grew up looking at missing children’s faces on the back of milk cartons, who […]
Prior to 2013, I was considered, by some, to be an adoption activist as I wrote and presented about historic trauma, and the role of legislation in determining legitimacy as a family, a person, a representative of an ethnic group. Adoptions were bad, staying within family/community was good. But then a funny thing happened on […]
I don’t remember the first time someone told me I was White. But I definitely remember the last. It was the summer of my junior year in college and I was a new student orientation leader. My university was diverse but mostly segregated, and this staff was about half White and half Black – plus […]
We’ve spoken about ghosts here and there. Lately, with reunion looming, I feel like I am haunting my own life, finding might-have-been footsteps; meeting could-have-been friends and, inch’allah, even family. But the metaphor is bothering me. A ghost is the immaterial which haunts the physical plane of the past, of what was. What is it […]
The metaphor of “coming out” has been used elsewhere as a way to describe the experience of disclosing one’s status as adopted. What do you think about how this metaphor illuminates and distorts being open about one’s adoption experience?
A question from a fellow adoptee: My question for other adoptees is, what have your experiences been as far as “coming out” as adopted is concerned? For instance, I am an adoptee completely estranged from my parents for six years, but a lot of my friends and coworkers did not know anything about my family […]
Over the years I’ve received much in the way of hateful missives, personal attacks, threats, libelous statements, etc. Some I reply to, some I ignore, some I seek legal counsel concerning. After a recent uptick in such communication, I realized something about the nature and sublimated message of them, which perhaps serves as a “message” […]
As I plod slowly along on the slow trail of information-gathering to hunt down trails of my possible genetic origins through different genetic testing tools, I sometimes note an obnoxious petitioner’s syndrome that being adopted [1] can engender. Petitioner’s syndrome points psychologically to having to address a greater power for essential information and structurally to […]
I was proactive at a very young age. Ok, full disclosure: I am wordy-nerdy. I have been thinking about how we define ourselves as either adopted or as adoptees. Both of these words feel very much about action that happened TO us. One EFL site referred to adjectives ending in ‘ed’ as words that “show […]
Comments on this, the movie, the musical, the comic strip, the mediation of orphans, popular culture and adoption? [link]
Can you share any “glass-ceiling” moments you might have had in your life when you realized the limits of “meritocracy”, “working hard to succeed”, and other assimilationisms?
Transracialeyes 