Excuse the effedupedness of this formatting. I have no idea what happened to it or how to fix it. I think it is readable now.
mccxxiii asks:
How do you connect your adopted child to your family lineage and make him feel like those are *his* people too? Your grandmother, your great grandmother, the house that your late Aunt Stella lived in 30 years ago, the town far away where your dad grew up but you all moved away … those are all things that your adopted child will never know personally, he’ll just hear about them in stories, in the abstract. But even those things in my family history that *I* don’t know personally still have meaning to me, because I can trace myself back through the lines of those women and men in the stories, and I know how they all connect to each other and to me. How do you give that history to your adopted child when it’s all theoretical and it isn’t really *his people* after all?
The thing about adoption is that it shifts your view of “family”. When you have children, whether it is through birth or adoption, YOU get to decide how you define family and what you teach your children about family/ancestors/relatives, etc. YOU get to decide what stories are passed on and what message you want them to send to your children.
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The thing about the stories you are talking about is they are all experiences. They don’t have anything to do with blood or genetics. They are experiences of people that are passed along because they are funny or insightful or whatever. They aren’t passed along because of blood.
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I have a very extensive family genealogy. Who knew, if you are almost completely descended from colonists, it is pretty easy to trace through the last 400 years…I even have some family records that go back to about 1,100 AD in England. But by far, the people and stories I am most interested it are the three and four generations directly before me. To me, the stories that mean the most to me are those about people I knew and had a real connection with. My grandfather is dying right now and all the stories I am hearing about him are meaningful to me because I care about him and he was important in my life. His experiences shaped my father’s life which in turn shaped mine. THAT is meaningful to me.
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When we were in Taiwan, I heard stories about Mr. A’s family that were also very interesting to me (even though I am not related to them by blood) because they told me something about Mr. A’s parents’ experiences and through them Mr. A’s experiences. It helps that I have always been interested in history and family stories are a little piece of living history, so I find that fascinating. Mr. A and I aren’t related by blood, but his history has an impact on my life. Our lives are intertwined so we are family.
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And now, with the opportunity to know L’s family, I am hungry for any scrap of story I can learn from them. We don’t know much yet, but I am filing away little tidbits to share with L just like I will share the stories I know about my family and Mr. A’s family. When we light incense for the ancestors, we designate three families: Mine, Mr. A’s and L’s.
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I know from your previous question, mccxxiii, I know you are struggling right now with what your family will look like and how it doesn’t fit the idea you previously had. If one of your fears is that an adopted child won’t feel connected to you or your family, I think you don’t realize the power you have to shape that connection. We teach our children what is important to us every day. Family will be as big or as small as you make it.
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I also want to add one more thought, if you are someone who puts a lot of weight in blood and genetics, you should understand that your child may put a lot of weight in those things too. If it turns out to be important to your child, will you be willing to support them in including their biological relatives in their family? Are you willing to put in the work for an adopted child to feel connected to your biological family too?
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I say this a an admittedly somewhat standoffish person. I have to work at making connections for our kids with our extended family because it doesn’t come naturally to me to have such a big circle of close people. But closeness with their cousins and aunts and grandparents and birth family is something I want my children to experience, so I work at it. Family is what we make it.