adoption

A couple of years ago I retired to Charlottesville

Sometimes I’ll spot an adorable baby

I was not a K-pop fan, so as a tired parent of a two-year-

The glitzy mall I picked for our meeting spot hadn’t aged welled in the 20 years since my last visit.

A G.I. baby, I was born in Korea

Through my lived experience as an adoptee

I was born in the early morning hours of March 6, at New York Hospital on Sixty-Ninth Street.

I shake the hands of the various deans. My two favorite

Adoption: The Making of Me podcast comes to life in Washington, D.C. this September

What happens when the story you’re told doesn’t match the one you feel in your bones?

It’s almost my birthday (sort of) and I’m turning 40, the same age my mother was when she had me (possibly).

Healing is a non-linear and subjective journey. What feels and looks like healing to me is going to be very different for someone else.

By Kathleen Kirstein I thought the writing prompt “There Was A Secret” sounded good when I first heard it. I could easily imagine writing about it. However, I’ve changed my mind as I sit here around 4 pm, finally drinking my morning coffee.     When I first woke up this morning, I started writing this piece in my head, as that’s my process. The more I wrote, the angrier I got. The anger may have been smoldering in the deep abyss of every brain cell since last night. I think I was triggered by something in the adoption community, reminding me I don’t fit in.     Sometimes it’s tough being the late discovery in a sea of people who’ve always known they were adopted. I can’t relate to the life experience of always knowing. I can barely relate to being adopted because my brain still wants to toss that little fact aside. No, that never happened because if it did, my inner critic would tell me, “Your first 49 years were wrong.”  The years before a free trip to Mexico and the need for a passport outed my adoption. This led me to search for the answer to why my birth certificate was filed 14 months after my birth. The answer was I was adopted at 43 days old from a maternity home in Vermont to a family in New Hampshire.    I want to throw up because I didn’t even know my kids were the first biological family to me, the first people I met with my DNA. Somehow, that makes me feel unworthy and not to be trusted with anything because I couldn’t be trusted with my own true story. I was simply not someone important enough to know the secret.    I realized in my late teens that my body type and problem-solving skills differed significantly from those of the family who raised me. I know now I was invalidated when I asked all the adults in my family the dreaded question, “Was I adopted?” I took on the “you’re crazy” response and made it my truth, as no other truth from the adults in my world was forthcoming to change the narrative. Again, I am not worthy of honest and truthful information. A secret must remain a secret at all costs.     I pay the costs daily in various ways. It might be a trauma response here and there. It might be in the form of a non-adoptive friend at Mahjong talking about how great adoption is and how it’s a great gift. I stay silent as I have learned the price I pay when I try to educate these individuals on another point of view. My words of education only lead to my getting a backlash of all the ways I am wrong. “You didn’t have to grow up in an orphanage.” They have no clue that my first 43 days of life were spent in that orphanage they speak about. If I push the issue, I will leave the game feeling inadequate and unimportant, and my feelings of worthlessness reinforced once again because they can’t hear the truth of this adoptee’s life experience.   Click on image to read more.

By Alethia Stern Decades ago, when I was a young girl of four or five, my mother won a free family portrait session from a local grocery store. One Saturday afternoon, she decided to cash in on her winnings. There was a whirlwind of activity around the house, and everyone was putting on their finest. Hair, makeup, and accessories were coordinated too. I was off to the sidelines in observation mode. Eventually, my mother made her way toward me. I sat motionless wondering how I would get the royal treatment. She looked at me, looked at my hair, looked at me again, looked at my hair (which was referred to as the Brillo pad), and shook her head. She quickly left and returned with a pair of scissors and began cutting away at my Afro. I immediately started to resist, squirming in my seat. “Sit still damn it!” she shouted. I obeyed the order, but one by one the tears began trickling down my cheeks. I hated the fact my hair was different from everyone else’s. It was coarse, unmanageable, brittle, without beauty, and vilified. Still, it was my hair. And it was short and now being made even shorter. I wanted long hair like everyone else. When I was growing up people often mistook me for a boy on account of my short hair; this completely annoyed me. I wanted to shout, “I’m a girl damn it!” Perhaps that’s why I get offended in this age of political correctness when someone asks me what pronouns I use or identify with; it triggers the memory. During the photo shoot, the photographer made two attempts to get me to smile for the camera; in retaliation for getting my haircut I refused. I was both flaming mad and simultaneously depressed. The family portrait no longer exists, it burned in a house fire. People often take for granted genetic mirroring in birth families, but that’s not always the case. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having someone at home whose physical features resemble your own, who understand your plight. It was certainly lonely for me being the one and only NPE (not parent expected). No, I didn’t need a consumer DNA test to enlighten me; I have known all my life just by looking in the mirror. I had an Afro and tan complexion, unlike anyone else in the home. I grew up in an isolated community deprived of my culture and identity. Birth families and foster and adoptive parents are obligated to acknowledge the genetic differences, including race and ethnicity, of the infants or children they bring into their care. These differences should be celebrated and not ignored. Nor should families superimpose their own preferences with respect to hair textures and styles. I remember reading about Colin Kaepernick, when his adoptive mother reportedly told him his chosen hairstyle, cornrows, made him look like a thug. This insensitive comment reminded me of my Brillo pad days. In the television series This Is Us, Randall was the minority in the household. His experiences were different than those of his adoptive parent’s biological children. Had he been adopted with another Black infant or child, his issues with anxiety and self-perception may have been lessened. Click on image to read more.

By Kris Neff You will change her name, you will give her a new birthday; erase her past. You will smile at me, full of promises you don’t intend to keep. You will tell me I’m brave; tell me I’m selfless, deny my grief, refuse my tears. You will amend her identity, and replace mine with yours. You will tell me I’m brave, tell me I’m courageous, while you hold your breath, your need to ensure there will be no reunion between us. You will tell her I couldn’t give her all that she needed. Tell us, both, now we can have the lives we deserve. You will tell me I’m brave, tell me I’m selfless. But It will be you that others will perceive to be selfless; allowing me little glimpses; allowing me just a taste, never allowing me to quench my thirst. You will see me in her, in her eyes; and her smile. You will hear my voice every time she speaks. She will never stop wondering. I will never stop searching. You will never find peace. Eventually you will tell me I’m bitter; and need to let go. With the swipe of a pen you will make her who you want her to be. Not allowing her to be who she was; who she is. Don’t forget about me, or your promises and your hope you took back. Don’t forget that her smile is my smile too. Remember it was my face that her eyes saw first. It was me she was crying for as she was handed to you. And her first breath of air was a breath of mine too. You will hope I stay brave. Pray I stay selfless. While you deny my grief and refuse my tears.

By Heather Massey On January 6, 2025, Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01) announced the re-introduction of his Adoption Information Act. According to a press release, this act “…would require family planning services to provide information on nearby adoption centers to anyone receiving their services. A family planning services’s eligibility to receive federal grants or contracts through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would be contingent upon providing this information.” An adoptee, Congressman Wittman also shared his perspective about adoption: “A lot of people say they would not be where they are today without their parents—for me, that is the absolute truth….When I was eight months old, my mom and dad adopted me. My birth mother’s decision to choose adoption gave me more opportunities than she felt she could provide, and my parents’ decision to adopt instilled in me a passion for public service and a desire to give back. That’s why I’m proud to reintroduce my Adoption Information Act so that all mothers know what options are available to them. This legislation is a simple step that can make a world of a difference.” In addition to being a constituent of Congressman Wittman, I’m also an adoptee who believes the Adoption Information Act would cause more harm than good. I was born in 1969 and adopted nine months later. I was part of the Baby Scoop Era, the period between 1945 and 1973 when infants born to single white mothers were plentiful as were couples desperate to adopt. About four million babies were placed for adoption during that period. My parents’ infertility prompted them to adopt. They told me my first mother was a nineteen-year-old college student when she became pregnant with me. She relinquished me because she couldn’t afford to raise me. My parents emphasized that my birth mother had chosen relinquishment for my best interest—an act of love. Sound familiar? That’s because my story is eerily like Congressman Wittman’s adoption narrative. My adoption was closed, which meant the state forbade contact between my birth families and me. I always wanted to meet my first mother, but reunification with her seemed forever out of reach. Until it wasn’t. In 2022, my first mother reached out to the agency that arranged my adoption. Soon after, the agency informed me that a letter from her was waiting for me. Excited beyond belief, I couldn’t read it fast enough. Then we had a glorious reunion. As we became acquainted, I learned some shocking details about my relinquishment. One part of my adoption narrative was technically true: my first mother had no money or resources to raise me by herself. However, her parents certainly had enough money for the job. Furthermore, my first mother would have kept me if not for their lack of support. Ironically, I was adopted by a couple whose socioeconomic status resembled that of my maternal grandparents. My adoptive father was a professor at a college in the same city where my biological grandfather lived (they worked three miles apart, no less). My adoptive mother juggled employment and being a stay-at-home parent, just like my biological grandmother. Click on image to read more.

A review by Michèle Dawson Haber In What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed (Skyhorse Publishing, December 2024) Gail Lukasik picks up where her 2017 best-selling memoir, White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing, left off, describing how telling her mother’s story of racial passing catapulted Lukasik into the public spotlight and transformed her into a spokesperson for others encountering sudden genetic surprises. Strangers began approaching her looking to share their stories. and it was this experience that convinced her to write What They Never Told Us. “The first step toward understanding the impact of family secrets is to give them a voice.” Lukasik does so with respect and care in this fascinating collection of interviews with adoptees, donor conceived people, and individuals who have uncovered previously hidden genetic histories. The book is divided into thirds, with each part focused on a different grouping of people affected by sudden identity shocks. The first group consists of those who, like Lukasik, discover their racial or ethnic identity is not what they thought it was. In 1995, while looking up census records of her family, she discovered the grandfather she’d never met was Black. She realized then that her mother had been passing as white, never telling her husband or her children about her racial background. Abiding by her mother’s wish not to reveal the truth to anyone, Lukasik waited until her mother died to begin exploring what this new information about her ancestry meant to her. Thirty years later she’s still exploring, asking questions, and challenging perceptions of racial identity. The second part of What They Never Told Us is devoted to stories of adoptees whose parents withheld crucial information about their identities. In some cases, their parents withheld the very fact of their adoption and in other cases the ethnic origins of their biological parents. In part three, Lukasik talks with donor conceived people, including four half-siblings who meet after discovering they were conceived with the same sperm donor. Click image to read more.

By Julie Ryan McGue My twin sister and I were adopted during the Baby Scoop Era—post–World War II through the early 1970s—when closed adoption was the only option available to birth moms. Back then, adoption agencies matched babies with adoptive parents without any input from birth parents. Birth parents were promised anonymity, and future contact with their birth child was prohibited. This arrangement granted adoptive parents’ full autonomy to raise their adopted children as they deemed fit. But what all parties––birth parents, adoptive parents, adoption agencies, state lawmakers, and even civil liberties organizations––failed to do was provide for the long-term health and well-being of the adopted child. For most of my life, I gave little thought to the fact my twin sister and I were adopted, something we seemed always to have known. Did I ponder the “big three” questions–– who are my birth parents, where are they, and why was I adopted––details about which most closed adoption adoptees admit to ruminating? You bet I did. But as much as I dwelled on the big three as a child, I did not consider how my lack of family medical history would affect me as an adult. I also didn’t understand that adoption meant I had two birth certificates: the OBR (original birth record) that was sealed with my closed adoption, and a redacted one that contained my adoptive parents’ details. It would be years before I comprehended the difference, and a lifetime until I appreciated the role my OBR played in my long-term health. In our formative years, my adoptive parents would periodically bring up our adoption, quizzing my sister and me about whether we wanted to seek information. “No, we’re fine” was our standard reply. In truth, we were quick to dismiss our folks because we feared our curiosity would be misinterpreted as disloyalty. As an adult––and a parent myself––I wish that instead of asking how we felt about searching, that our folks would have taken a proactive role, advocating and securing information that might keep us healthy as we aged. Besides those adoption chats with my parents, the only other time I was confronted with the realities of closed adoption were during routine doctor appointments. When asked to fill out my medical history, it was with deep shame that I admitted my status. “I’m adopted. I don’t know anything.” Even as I child, I was aware that if a doctor was asking about ailments, medical conditions, allergies, and sensitivities that ran in my bloodline, it wasn’t good to come up lacking. As I matured, I developed a burning anger around what closed adoption had denied me. I’d sit in a doctor’s waiting room, the stack of intake forms filling my lap, and scrawl in large letters across the entire form, “Adopted. N/A.” As a young woman going into marriage, I was athletic and healthy. I was blessed with four normal pregnancies. Then at forty-eight, suddenly I wasn’t fine. “Six areas of concern” appeared on a routine mammogram. I was sent for a biopsy. My twin sister and I agreed it was time to claim what everyone else who isn’t adopted has the right to know: family medical history. Click on image to read more.

By Moses Farrow When people ask me about adoption, I tell them the truth. The best conversations start with what they know and believe about adoption. These days, people bring up the abandonment and loss issues, the human rights violations, or the moral dilemmas of how children are being taken from their parents and given to others willing to pay for them. Many others also ask me what the solution is for children in need and for people who want to raise a family. Let’s first understand what the word “adoption” means as we believe it to be today. As an adoption trauma therapist and educator I help people arrive at this realization about adoption. My trainings and presentations address three main issues aimed at getting to the truth. Deprogramming For years, I’ve written about connecting the right dots in framing our experiences and the issues common among those impacted by the adoption industry. At this point, there’s no denying an industry exists that drives the process of adoption. Defined as “the act or fact of legally taking another’s child and bring it up as one’s own”—Oxford Languages, adoption has been readily accepted as such by people around the world for generations. I admit I didn’t question it until a few colleagues presented a different definition. Thanks to Arun Dohle, executive director of Against Child Trafficking, and Janine Myung Ja and Jenette Vance, aka The Vance Twins, who have authored and curated books, most notably Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists, and Adoption: What You Should Know, I now ask people what does “legally taking” mean? That’s when the topic of the industry comes up in the conversation. The issues of supply and demand, costs, policies that legalize the practices of taking children from their parents and families then monopolize our minds for the next hour. By the end, we’re left scratching our heads—“are we even talking about adoption anymore?” This is how we deprogram ourselves from the industry’s propaganda. Coming to the realization that we have effectively been brainwashed all the while industry leaders maintain and profit from a child supply market. The question remains, where are these children coming from? And perhaps more accurately, how are they being sourced? A key part of the deprogramming process is learning of how the industry has conflated the act of taking children (in questionably criminal ways) and calling it a child welfare solution. Social justice advocates have been saying adoption is “legalized child trafficking.” Today, there are a number of investigations, documentaries such as One Child Nation and Geographies of Kinship, along with testimonies of victims that are providing such evidence of children (and their mothers) being trafficked through adoption (TTA). How can this be considered an acceptable child welfare solution? It presents a conundrum, a moral dilemma that needs immediate rectification and redress. To start, trafficking mothers and their children needs to stop. Their rights must be protected. Child trafficking is not a child welfare solution. Click on image to read more.