November is National Adoption Month (NAM). During this month we are supposed to “celebrate” adoption. The problem with this is that the voices of adoptees are usually absent from the conversation. Adoptees have historically been left out of the adoption discussion. In 2014 the hashtag #flipthescipt was created by a fellow adoptee as a way for adoptee voices to be heard. For National Adoption Month 2015 the Lost Daughters have come up with a list of daily prompts for adoptees to blog about to flip the script. The hashtags #flipthescript and #NAM2015 are used for responses to be seen.
As a child I never really talked about being adopted aside from the fact of stating that I was if and when the topic came up. It wasn’t information I volunteered. As I got older and found myself in new situations meeting people for the first time, I began to dread that moment when I was asked simple basic questions about myself. Questions like:
Where were you born? Well, do I say Indiana my adopted state and thus avoid the topic of adoption, or do I say Ohio and open a can of worms?
Post reunion when people ask about my family, do I mention both my birth and adopted families or just my adopted family?
When people ask if I have siblings do I say no (because I didn’t growing up adopted), or do I say I have two half brothers (which I barely know and didn’t grow up with)?
Such simple questions should not be so tricky.
Throughout the years of my search process I never talked about the fact that I was searching. In fact my teenage daughter was the only person that knew I was searching. When I found my birth family and there was a possibility of real live human beings coming into my life, that was the point I started telling everyone in my life….adopted family, friends, co-workers, people from my past who knew so much about me and would be interested.
I finally felt free to talk about my adoption.
I was excited.
After 38 years I finally knew who I was, my history, and origins. I finally had some medical information.
I was not prepared for the response to my search. That deer in the headlight look on peoples faces when I told them. All the why questions. Things like well how does your mother feel about all this?
Nobody ever asked how I felt about all this, and how the unfolding reunion was affecting MY life. Nobody understood how my life was turned upside down by all of these new people suddenly coming into my life. Nobody knew the tailspin and identity crisis I was suddenly facing. I went through the years of unfolding reunion totally and completely alone with no support or understanding. I must add that this was back before the awesome and amazing community of adoptees available online. Today there is a huge amount of support available in the adoption community. This was not the case fifteen years ago.
Throughout the reunion years I always felt like it was a story that needed to be told. If not for the whole world to read at least to record for my daughter and future generations of my family. Adoptees know so little about themselves. This not only affects us but our descendants as well who live with gaps in their ancestry, history, and genetics. Genealogy research is a huge hobby where enthusiasts invest a lot of time and effort. The average person is excited and curious about researching their family history as far back as possible yet, for some reason, it is not understood when adoptees simply want this same information.
It wasn’t until many years post reunion that I began to write the story on a blog. I began by sharing the posts on my personal Facebook page. There was a lot of curiosity and interest, mostly from people who had known me a long time. However, nothing prepared me for the total lack of understanding, or should I say misunderstanding, from sharing such an important aspect of myself.
My experience sharing my adoption story has not been a good one. It has caused me to be totally misunderstood. I have been told that I am stuck in the past, that I need to just get over it, that people are tired of hearing about my adoption story, I’m sorry you had such a bad adoption experience, your adoption really bothers you, and that I have issues.
Being adopted, the years I spent searching for my birth family, discovering the deaths of both my mother and father, the reunion years unfolding with my maternal family, the post reunion years and fallout, my birth state Ohio becoming an open state in 2015, finally receiving my OBC (a piece of my identity that had been behind lock and key for 49 years), the identity crisis all of these events caused, and the search for healing and closure are some of the most important events of my life. This is the core of who I am and what makes me me. It’s important to me. It’s my identity. It’s been my journey. I’ve learned a lot of life lessons throughout the difficult process. The fact that something so important in my life is met with such a lack of understanding has taught me a lot about the people in my life; however, in their defense it really is not their fault because these are the attitudes of society in general towards adoptees who speak out about their adoption.
It’s not hard to understand why so many adoptees remain silent. People think just because an adoptee never talks about being adopted and never expresses any desire to search that means it doesn’t bother them and they don’t want to search. Adoptees are chameleons blending and fitting into whatever situation they are thrown into. We know how to adapt. We know how to not rock the boat or upset anyone. We know how to be good, silent, and compliant in order not to make others feel bad.
Today, when I am faced with the situation of being the only adoptee in the room, whether or not I speak depends on how I feel at the moment and whether or not I have the energy to take on the topic. Because it’s exhausting. It requires a lot of explaining. Inevitably it involves a lot of questions about my story. It’s time consuming. And in the end the encounter usually just results in misunderstanding. You are from here on out labeled with that group of people as the adoptee with issues. The one who didn’t conform. The one who dared to speak out and buck the system. The one who dared to rain on the adoption parade and dismantle all the rainbows and unicorns. Speaking out changes relationships and how people see you.
Those of us who are brave enough to tell our stories and speak out do so because we know this is about more than just us and our stories. We do it because it matters. Because the system needs to be reformed. Because it’s time to put an end to the secrecy and lies in adoption. It’s time to reform the system, and the only way that is going to happen is through society hearing the voices of adult adoptees who have lived it. Because we owe it to future generations of adoptees to spare them some of the pain we have endured.
For me, personally, my experience has taught me that some of the most open people are the most free people. That being open, vulnerable, and truthful about my life and experience brings healing not only to me but to others. My fellow adoptees keep me speaking out. The ones who stumble across my blog and send messages thanking me for how much my story has helped them. I continue to speak because I have seen first hand the healing power of telling our stories and how they are like lifelines that we throw to each other. Story has the power to heal both the reader and the writer at the same time.
Even though the vast majority of the people in my life don’t and won’t ever understand, my story matters. It matters to me because I lived it, and it matters to anyone that it helps. My life has been so defined by secrets and lies that I refuse to live with secrets and lies anymore.
I have discovered the healing power and freedom of openness….and so I speak.
