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[babe-con-el-poder]

Transracial Adoptees

Adoptees, especially if they’re transracial, get so much grief.

We’re stripped of agency in the narrative, if we’re included at all. All the nuance is taken out of our stories, if they’re told at all. The ending is always happy- except when you’re the adoptee.

We’re not [insert ethnicity] enough, but if we assimilate to mainstream culture, then we’re giving up. We’re rejected by ppl of our own culture & ridiculed by white culture.

We’re told our adopted parents, who raised us, don’t count, but if we feel conflict about them, we’re ungrateful. It’s so much better in [insert country] than [insert birthplace].

We’re helpless orphans in a backwards country for some (usually Western) to swoop in and rescue. We’re accessories to the plot lines- a commodity without conflict or feeling.

We have to work twice as hard to be accepted by our birth and adopted cultures- which creates huge identity crises, feelings of shame, and severe confusion over where we belong.

We still get affected by what happens in our birthplaces- that stuff affects our possible homes, families, etc. But we’re not included in the conversation (at least as far as I’m aware. if there are examples pls let me know).

Our transracial identity is being twisted and stolen by Rachel Dolezal. We’re robbed of our cultures, choice, and identities.

I could go on and on, but that’s all I can think of now. I’m not saying non-adoptees have it easy, bc they don’t. Everyone suffers from white supremacy, but transracial adoptees have their own unique set of issues that I can’t find anywhere else.

submitted by band10hut

[babe-con-el-poder]

(Source in the notes)

[babe-con-el-poder]

Being an adoptee I've become an expert. *dark humor laughter*

[babe-con-el-poder]

As a transracial, transnational adoptee my life is lived as a kind of experiment set forth by the colonized world. I am every orphan who is a result of war, of political boundaries drawn up by authorities. I'm an orphan who humanitarian organizations have failed because they can't stop the bleeding. I'm the orphan of unfettered worldwide greed and obsessive lust for power. I am a result of controlling human reproduction.

I'm supposed to just pick up the shattered pieces of my mother's life and tell you all that I am okay. That your pile of shit over centuries of war games is not a big deal. I am supposed to make you all feel content that wars and political divides are just a way of life because the orphans will adjust and assimilate. I'm supposed to be your miracle child.

The idea is so outrageous and my anger at all of you is so deep and distorted that I don't even know where to begin.

All I know is that I am a miracle. A miracle of sanity. A survivor. I'm surviving this sick world every day and haven't let the darkest days change my light. I have a big fk you to offer this world but I choose to not contribute to your mutually assured destruction.

Just know that I won't allow my story to be romanticized. I'm always an orphan of the world. And I will always remind you all of your own failings and willful ignorance.

[babe-con-el-poder]

Thank you...this helps in so many ways. My numbness has grown so much throughout my life but little by little I'm letting more in...cautiously....and acknowledgement for the epic strength it takes to exist each day is absolutely appreciated in the deepest way. ♡

shout to transracial adoptees, your the backbone of the adoptee community and without you we would have nothing

you are loved and cared more than you know 💖

[babe-con-el-poder]

Agreed.

"I know someone who's adopted and their adoption wasn't truamtic!"

"I know someone who loves their adoption! "

"I know someone who is adopted and thinks adoption is a beautiful thing! "

yeah you know someone. Stop telling adoptees how to feel my god you guys are the biggest hypocrites and will tail spin for hours just to prove your right instead of actively listening to adoptees.

no adoption should be called "beautiful" unless the adoptee says that /their/ and only /their/ adoption can be referred to as such by others.

you are not adopted so shut the fuck up.

[babe-con-el-poder]

Hi!!

I've started a Substack page that I plan on using for a platform to share about my perspectives as a transracial adoptee and systemic racism. Hoping to reach other adoptees and anyone considering adoption.

If you want to join or follow please do!!

[babe-con-el-poder]

I'm adding excerpts from a story in today's NY Times because they trigger a flush of memories that I think speak to the core of transracial adoption and the perspective it creates. A perspective that I think only kidnapped hostages might relate to.

I remember 1998ish after my high school days when I met up with some friends of friends at a random garage party. I was the only one who wasn't white because I was only ever surrounded by white people my entire childhood. I'm not white though. I was always in danger of racism but in a particularly horrific way where it is not blatant. More of a gimmick or fetish. On this one evening I was surrounded by mostly young white men who liked rock music and beer. One of them was someone I recognized as actually a sweet boy from a few years back. As he talked to me and we laughed about school days he proudly showed off his new tattoos. Tattoos of large Nazi Swastikas. I was horrified. But I knew the unspoken game I was supposed to play...having been adopted into a white world...I wasn't a "real" threat as a brown person. I wasn't like "those trashy N-words". So I was safe. I could laugh at his stupidity if I wanted to and he would laugh in agreement that his tattoos were just meant to be a joke. A ploy for attention more than...being a Nazi sympathizer.

He flirted with me and asked me to sit on his lap while we chatted and drank. And as I did, my heart broke for him. And my mind downplayed my own fear of his probable violence. I was being brainwashed into white supremacy, so that I would remain safe. I put his comfort first and foremost above my own discomfort so much so that I actually felt empathy for him. But now I realize that I was heartbroken because this moment just proved all my fears were valid. That the mistrust of the all white environment I grew up in was legitimate. Again I was feeling the free fall of abandonment.

And I've seen this repeated by white supremacy over and over....the use of coercion and twisted humor to cover up the insanity of bigotry.

This NY TIMES story occurred decades after that crazy night in the garage. Kids are still dealing with the same problem. No matter how liberal or educated or wealthy a town and community wants to be in this country....there is a sickness that runs though our United States culture.

As long as it keeps being ignored and laughed off it will continue to thrive.

[babe-con-el-poder]

I wonder sometimes what will happen to all the anger and fear I've been carrying with me since birth...the fear that is caused by abandonment. The anger that stays because nobody ever actually understands what I've experienced internally. I've seen the way colonization and white savior complexes work from the inside....it has taken me decades to understand and deprogram myself from the idea that I should bow down to anyone in my adoptive family in eternal gratitude. I'm no longer going along with their idea of a grateful adoptee. I don't even know if I'll ever speak to any of them again after my adoptive parents die. I don't want to validate their bigotry and stupidity by being the token brown person in their lives. But despite drawing my boundaries so clearly I still carry all this fear....like free-falling forever through space and time with no end in sight. I still carry the anger of the position I've been forced into since birth. I've always lived a double life. One dark. One hidden. And the other as the person I was adopted to become. It's madness.

[babe-con-el-poder]

Yeah. Adoption is a life lived inside trauma.....

[babe-con-el-poder]

We are united in our grief. May we all have the strength to work to heal what's left of us.

Dear Adoption, I need you to hear me - without interrupting or forming a response before I finish. I am adopted, not you. I have experienced it, not you. My entire existence has been shaped by the construct of adoption, leaving me incapable of imagining my life otherwise. You cannot imagine, so for once, just shut up and listen.

Dear Adoption, do not tell me how I feel. When I say anything concerning my families or my feelings toward them - or adoption in general - do not contradict me as if you know better. As if you have any idea the complex emotions and psychological mindfuck adoption creates. As if you have any basis of knowledge on the subject. You don’t.

Dear Adoption, you have no idea the harm you did, in the name of A Better Life. You cannot know, so do not impose on me your opinions and expect me to take them as my own, like I had to when I was given a false birth certificate and forced to declare it as fact. Do not pretend you have a clue what it feels like to swear you are one thing when you are genetically another.

You do not know my pain, Adoption, because you cannot admit you are the cause of it. You want to think you saved me - that I would have been an abortion statistic without you, that my mother and I would have lived on the streets unless you came along. You are full of yourself, Adoption. So self-absorbed that when I - the product that makes you exist - attempt to share my reality, my truth, you immediately shut me down. You cannot handle that the perpetual child I am in your eyes does anything except sing your praises.

You shame me. You silence me. You attempt to control the narrative. You lie. You pout. You tell me it hurts you that I could state anything other than how happy I am. You lecture me that my “real” parents are the ones who raised me, that biology is meaningless, that I was better off being adopted no matter the actual circumstances. You say I should feel blessed and chosen. But you don’t stop there, Dear Adoption. You tell me how I actually feel. 

When I say I feel I don’t belong anywhere, you say I feel lucky to be adopted.

When I say I consider myself a commodity, you say I actually feel like a gift.

When I say I long to connect with my birth family, you say “those people” mean nothing to me.

When I say I miss my original mother, you say I have abandonment issues.

When I say I mourn my bio-father, you say I cannot grieve someone I never met.

When I say I carry great pain, you say you wish you were adopted.

Dear Adoption, do not presume to understand the magnitude of what you’ve done or, worse, to explain it to me. The psychological warfare you wage only focuses my anger where it belongs: at you. You cannot control me with your talk of “God’s plan” and you cannot make me parrot your platitudes. Thousands of us have found our voice and we will not be silenced. Because, Dear Adoption, someday you will be on the wrong side of history - like slavery - and no amount of gaslighting you do now will change that.

[babe-con-el-poder]

[babe-con-el-poder]

I think adoptees....especially transracial adoptees use "mind-reading" as a way to protect ourselves from hidden dangers. I learned to be on high alert from day one of my adoption as a newborn. This manifests into "people pleasing" when I managed other people's feelings above and beyond my own to keep them from seeing me as different or as a threat....people who were and are supposed family. I have never been able to be my true self around family because I still have the innate sense to be who they want me to be constantly. Just carrying the weight of being adopted and different from my family has become my task in our family dynamic....separate but equal...a silent agreement. I know their every thought but they never have and never will make efforts to understand mine.

Are Adoptees More Telepathic?

“Nothing stresses an infant more than maternal separation. Perhaps, when two souls are intertwined, the mother’s loss activates intuitive alarms in the child’s brain that increase the tactile senses, heighten the senses of optics and smell, and trigger a telepathic homing beacon in the infant’s brain as primal acts of self-preservation.” Judith Land “Telepathy is a feeling, perception, passion,…

[babe-con-el-poder]

I like when people pity you after finding out you're adopted like no bitch give me financial compensation

[babe-con-el-poder]

Love this!!

[babe-con-el-poder]

Sigh.

#mood

[babe-con-el-poder]

Hey hey any other adoptees struggling with anxious attachment tendencies!? 🖐🏽 feeling seen and a little attacked by the interwebz right now.....