Dear Adoptive Parents,
We need to talk. You keep doing something that is really pissing me off and I think it is time we clear the air a little bit.
Why, oh WHY do you trample all over the adult adoptees who share their stories? Why do you invade their blogs en mass and try to argue that YOU aren’t like that, that YOU are going to do better, that YOUR situation is different/preferable/whatever and YOUR kids won’t be angry adoptees when they grow up?
Shut the fuck up already!
I have a news flash, those blogs and forums are not about you and they aren’t for you. When you are reading someone’s blog you are a GUEST, they are showing you a tiny bit of their reality. It is just common curtesy to be a respectful LISTENER when someone is telling you about their experiences. They don’t need you to argue with them that they are wrong. What the hell do YOU know about their lives? If you don’t want to hear their truths the DON’T READ WHAT THEY WRITE!
The way you people act (flaming, arguing, harassing) is just RUDE. It is the kind of behavior that makes me cringe when you go stomping through Asian community events acting like you own the place. You are a GUEST for crying out loud. Show some decorum! Everything is NOT ABOUT YOU.
I read a lot of adult adoptee writings. Do they make me sad? Sure they do, because none of us wants to think that our children will suffer a pain that we can’t fix. But the truth is, our kids are going to suffer losses. Adoption is loss.
Will our kids be angry? Some of them probably will be. Some of them will be angry and they will never tell us about it or maybe they will tell us and it will hurt our delicate parental feelings. That is just TOO BAD. You are going to have to learn to suck it up and hear their hurt and pain. That is what being a parent is all about.
Will some of our kids be just fine with their status as adoptees? Sure they will. But there is no way for you to know which kid you have, my friends. Sure, you can cross your fingers and hope you get one who isn’t outraged by the injustices of their adoption, but there are no guarantees your kid won’t be online in 25 years writing about how you fucked up as an adoptive parent and how they were robbed of the country and first family that should have been their birthright.
If your kid is the one online, do you want random adoptive parents to come and tell your kids that they don’t have a right to their own feelings? I sure don’t. Is that how you treat your kids when they share their experiences with you? To you try to shut them down and convince them they are wrong? Do you call in all your friends to help convince them? If it is, I expect I will be reading your kid’s "angry adoptee" blog in the future.
I read what adult adoptees write because I want to go into our adoption with my eyes open wide. I know that our adoption is not a fairy tale story about ladybugs, red threads and a baby that grew "not under my heart, but in it" (gag!). My child has a first family and ancestors reaching back hundreds of generations. She/he has a home and a culture that will be lost because of a choice A and I are making to adopt. That is OUR choice, not our child’s.
It isn’t like there is a giant balance inside adopted kids with pain and loss on one side and love and acceptance on the other. You can’t just pile on enough love to tip the balance away from the pain. That pain might be like a splinter that resurfaces through out their lives, sometimes hurting more sometimes hurting less. Just because you don’t want it to be there doesn’t mean it will go away.
Adult adoptees have a right to their feelings. They have a right to share them without being afraid that the pro-adoption adoptive parent army is going to come sweeping in to shut them down. Their words are not going to contaminate the sterile pro-adoption bubble you built around your kids. If your kids are hurting, knowing they are not alone can only help them heal.
So stop it. Stop being so rude. Stop acting like adoption is all about YOU and your needs. Stop trampling on adoptees (and birth moms for that matter). If you need to work out the feelings that come up when you read what adult adoptees are saying, do it with your own therapist, on your own blog, or in your own freaking forums.
Practice being a good listener. Your kids will thank you for it.
I will freely admit I have thought those nasty things about those folks but never would comment on their blogs, it isn’t my place. I will comment on adoption blogs who post those thing, that I find to be ok.
I think for me, I just constantly feel defensive and scrutinized at times and the angry adoptee blogs feed into the insecurity. I appreciate you giving the other side. I hate when people step on how I feel about infertility, that is my experience and I should not step on the angry adoptee’s feelings as that is their experience.
We all just want to raise happy kids and the thought they won’t be scares us. As it should scare any parent not just ones adopting. This angry adoptee could be an angry person no matter what their lives were like. They are allowed to be whomever they want.
I just really really really want a happy daughter, everyone does.
Thanks-Jenny
Here here, Amber. This has been getting on my nerves too. The term “the angry adult adoptee” is so invalidating. Great post.
Yeah! And don’t post the URLs on the pyscho-adoption boards for the love of God!
Excellent rant. Well said.
I wish you could hear me cheering you. I lurk on a lot of adult adoptee blogs both for myself and my adult adoptee husband. I was cringing at some of the responses. Excellent post.
Brava!
Bravo! I couldn’t agree with you more.
Ya, good points all around.
I say I have to agree. It’s ridiculous to think your adopted child is not going to experience some pain/anger/a sense of loss, depending on their situation and personality. We know our daughter will in one form or another, and it’s not something we can fix, it’s something she will ultimately have to come to terms with, although we will always be there for her emotionally if and when she needs us. You will have to forgive my redthread web site though…I know it’s corny but I do like the saying.
Preach it, sister! I just hate it when people put down things that adult adoptees have said by calling them “angry adoptees”, claiming their parents were bad parents, claiming they’re “just college kids”, implying that they are maladjusted, saying that they’re “dwelling” on negativity, stuff like that. It is so dismissive.
It is what it is, folks. Lots of perfectly happy, healthy, normal adults who happen to have been adopted internationally have some issues with the ideas and ethics of international adoption.
I wholeheartedly agree. We need to educate ourselves by reading everything out there because we have lived very sheltered lives when it comes to raising a child of another race.
Like you said, if you have something to say, do it on your own blog. I have seen many people do that, and that it plenty effective.
As always, thank you for this. It’s filled with the things that to this day, I can’t really say to my parents.
I still haven’t explained to them that the reason we chose not to adopt is because I didn’t want my child to start off life the way I did — being taken from the only voice, the only comfort I’d ever known, my birthmother’s.
Of course in the end it worked out fine for everyone. I’ll never claim any different or be any less grateful for the family I found my way to once I was adopted.
But even acknowledging all of that goodness in my life doesn’t erase the fact that my life started off with a very large hole in my heart.
Thank you for recognizing that hole and respecting your future child’s right to mourn it.
Powerful Post!! I can’t remember how I got here but I am glad I did. I was given up for adoption in 1979. I found my birth family in 1998. I speak regularly with both families. What I most admired about this post was how you spoke your mind. There are a ton of things I would like to blog about but I don’t want to hurt or offend my adopted parents. And what I most dislike about people knowing I am adopted is how they assume I have “abandonment issues”. I have a lot of issues but I am not sure that is one of them. I am really close with my birth family (for the most part lol) and I am glad I am one of the ones who has successfully reunited with them. Going to go check the rest of your blog now. Again, awesome post!!
Amen Amber!
You go girl. Well said.
Okay, I was like, “what the f___? Must have missed something somewhere.” Then I thought, “wait, this must be about Ji-in’s recent post. I don’t read her “trouble-makers” very often but went back to check it out. Seemed nice and civil at first, but got to the end and was like, ‘WHAT THE F___!!!”
Wanted to say something there, but felt maybe us a-parents had said enough. So I’m saying it over here on an a-parent blog. I’m embarrassed by association. People, BEHAVE!
Outstanding. Fantastic post. I agree completely.
(Is your name really Amber? That was the name I gave to my daughter at birth before she was adopted.)
Great writing.
Well said!!
The only thing that seems more unwelcome than a birthparent’s anger is the adoptee’s anger.
I really appreciate your post.
Well said, it’s when parents deny their children’s feeling that they really get hurt.
I don’t know why people let their heads get so far up their asses that they can’t see the world doesn’t exist for them and them alone.
There is a lot of pain and loss in life, and I can’t believe how difficult it is for some people to accept that, even when they’ve suffered it themselves.
YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA and jeeze can we just include EVERYONE and make it something about how we just treat people regardless of their status as adoptees go??? that would be……. ok that isn’t gonna happen… but I dream alittle bit.
Tell it, sister!
I can’t believe how angry I feel when I read adult adoptee’s blogs where a-parents just dismiss them and invalidate their feelings and thoughts. How incredibly rude! I just feel really sorry for these people’s children. I hope they are on a steep learning curve and get a lot higher on it before their children start really mourning–but I fear this will not be the case for many. I don’t understand why any a-parent would read an adult adoptee’s blog unless they wanted to learn something. Do they traipse into strangers’ parties in the real world and tell them off? These are people like their children, with issues their children may well have. Why would you visit just to flame?
And then I can’t resist commenting on the “poem” you quote part of: ”
Never forget,
for a single minute,
you grew not below my heart
but in it.
Yikes! Not for even one, single minute?! And don’t you think they grew in the birthmother’s heart as well? Sigh…
amen, sister!
It is the denial of so many a-parents which I find most infuriating. As well as the assumption that someone’s blog and their posts reflect all of that person’s being. As if someone should edit their own words so that they don’t offend the a-parents. Touche!
i couldn’t agree more! i loved ji-in’s blog because it was so eloquent. now all these stinking a-parents have gone and ruined it. she moved. i emailed her, but i haven’t heard back and now my middle school insecurities are creeping up and everyone else will be invited to the party, except me.
christine
You took my breath away there. That is a message for all blog readers everywhere, all people allowed inside someone else’s private world.
Even more profoundly it is a message about each of us who love someone. Loving someone does not guarantee anything in return — not love, loyalty, gratitude, whatever. You choose to love and usually you get love in return but it isn’t a fee payable on delivery. To just appreciate the person who lets your love in or who lets you into a corner of their world makes you feel less alone. Treasure that. Don’t try to use it like a stock investment that should pay returns. Don’t use their space to put up your grafitti and call it commenting.
Above all, if you have a powerful opinion stand up and speak out in your own forum. Make yourself that vulnerable. If you hold the truth in your hand then put yourself on the line for it. If you can talk the talk than walk the walk.
>>>
Amber,
I agree with you about the rude adoptive parents but the above statement
doesn’t sit well with me. I think many adult adoptees share their stories
so that we as adoptive parents to young children can learn. I believe many
are hoping to help our children. If we could all go back to Ji-in’s deleted blog,
we would see that she had some very defined ideas about how to improve
adoption.
It really doesn’t matter *which* kid you get, it matters most what you *do*
by educating yourself on key issues such as: grief, loss, abandonment,
racism, adoptism, adoption ethics, just to name a few core issues that
come to my mind.
Amber, you have talent
and strong writing skills.
I am jealous!
Very disappointed to see she shut down the blog. Hers was a voice that needed to be heard. Unfortunately the ones that really need to hear her are the ones that weren’t listening anyway. Isn’t that always the case?
Still, I am grateful for what I was able to learn from her. She opened my eyes to issues which I was only dimly aware of. I hope I will be able to read her writing in the future
Scott– she didn’t shut down her blog, but moved. I suspect she will be very particular about who she invites over (and rightly so).
Ack! Ji-in moved her blog?! Aw, shit.
Amber — great post. I’ve made some comments on my blog lately about my own adoptive status, and I can’t help but wonder if the only reason that so many people have read it is that I seem pretty happy about the whole thing. I agree with what some people have written here — that many of us choose to write about ourselves in a public forum in the hope that some adoptive parents understand that it is painful for even those of us who don’t have too much to complain about. Bear in mind that no matter WHAT you (the collective you) as parents do, there is no guarantee as to how you child will end up feeling about her adoption. Some of the most conflicted, bitter adoptees I know have try not to let an inkling of their feelings show toward their parents. Whatever emotion they feel towards the people who raised them doesn’t hold a candle to the suffering that they feel inside.
Thank you Amber. Well said.
Great post. Can you make one for the natural mothers in reunion too? We have had our share of doozies that’s for sure.
I’ve been labeled this way since I found my voice and began talking about adoption. I thank you for what you said here.
AmericanFamily is shaking her mother finger at us
And all I can say is, “Yes, ma’am.”
Yeah for you. Thank you.
I’m just seeing this now for the first time. Can I just say, thank you, and I love you.
Thank you so much for this post. I am an adoptee. Sometimes I’m angry. Sometimes I feel grateful. Sometimes I just wish I could be non-adopted and raised with my a-family and sometimes I wish I wasn’t adopted and raised with my natural family. The emotions are complex and overwhelming and it makes me sad and frustrated when people see one tiny sliver of the picture and generalize that all adoptees are angry, or even that the ‘angry adoptees’ are angry all the time, or about everything. I feel like too many adoptive parents or potential adoptive parents want to hear what they want to hear, that all adoptees have had a wonderful experience, but that’s not reality. The wide range of emotions regarding the topic should be explored, and living in the uncertainty of it all is important. I think ‘angry adoptees’ would be less angry if people would just listen rather than trying to tell them what they should feel. Your blog highlighted this point nicely. Thank you.
Wow!!! Very well written.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for this post.
As an adoptee I can say I am resentful that my records are sealed. No one bothered to ask me what I would have prefered. I can tell you having me my birth mother and her sisters I can honestly say I was better off adopted. One of my birth aunts stabbed her own mother with a fork, put cigarrete butts out on her children. I thought this was made up until I spoke to the people involved. The only good thing to come out of meeting them is my wonderful sister, her husband, and her children. I was also accused by another birth aunt of starting a fist fight with someone I never met or heard of at a birth family reunion that I never knew about.
Yes. I would go through all the crap with them just to find out who I was! Yes. Our adoptive parents our parents but they are not our gene pool. We all have things come from our genetic heredity that identifies a part of who we are as people.
I for one have been discriminated right to my face for being adopted. One person I worked with told me that her sister/sister-in-law was having trouble conceiving. I said if fertility doesn’t work there is always adoption. This person didn’t know I was adopted and she said, “YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THAT CHILD HAS BEEN.” My response was, “I am not a dog that was taken from a shelter”.
My own sister-in-law on my wedding was over heard by my cousin (my cousin from my adoptive side), “I hate adopted people.” Then she went to trash my parents for adopting me and my adoptive family members for accepting me. My sister-in-law made every attempt to destroy my wedding. She assaulted my 8 year old nephew (birth nephew) who did nothing but was standing in a picture with her two girls. Both the members of my birth family (the good ones) and my adoptive family made sure I didn’t know until I was pregnant and was thinking about making my sister-in-law a potential God Mother. You can guess she’s off the list and will never see my kids!
When people wonder why adoptees are resentful, it is because of the bigotry that we face still today because people think there is something wrong with us because our original family couldn’t keep us.
I AM PROUD TO BE AN ILLIGITIMATE BASTARD WHETHER YOU LIKE ME OR NOT BECAUSE IN THE END I MADE TWO PEOPLE HAPPY AND THOSE PEOPLE ARE PROUD OF ME FOR WHAT I ACCOMPLISHED IN MY LIFE.
I’m an adoptive mom. My teens are hurting inside and they don’t talk about it but I wish they would. I would love to hear about their feelings. The silence and depression is killing me, too.