eyetwitch

[eyetwitch]

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to write a letter of introduction to your OWN MOTHER? I have done that.

There's a bunch of tips in this video if you're an adoptee who is thinking about making your first try at contacting your parents, or if you're a blood relative who thinks they may have found a lost adoptee on the DNA family tree sites. There's right ways to go about it and wrong ways to go about it and I don't have the answers for what works but I can tell you what I did and what worked and what didn't.

There are so many things about adoption that only real, living adoptees know about and that isn't right. You should ALL know what life is like for us. You write us into your stories, you make pretend characters you tag as adoptable, you sell dogs and say you're adopting them, you sell US, you yell at us when we don't talk about how wonderful it is. Learn some shit, non-adoptees. LEARN SOMETHING.

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Children in crisis do not exist to be a resource for you to build a family if you can’t or don’t want to have biological children but you still want to be a parent.

Children in crisis do not exist to heal your infertility trauma.

Children in crisis do not exist to heal you in any way.

Children in crisis do not exist to be a solution to your infertility.

Children in crisis do not exist to be your backup plan if you can’t have biological children.

Wanting a child does not entitle you to having one.

WANTING A CHILD DOES NOT ENTITLE YOU TO HAVING ONE.

If you are not adopting solely to help a child in crisis, if you are doing it because you want a child, you are not helping a child, you are just helping yourself.

And IF you want to help a child in crisis, it is better for them if you do not sever their legal relationship to their biological family by adopting them. You can hold guardianship and provide a loving, safe, secure home for them without adopting, and this is by far better for the wellbeing of the child.

Choosing adoption over guardianship because you don’t want to “deal with” the biological family is selfish and wrong, and it causes objective permanent harm to the child you claim to want to “help.”

The “blank slate” theory is a myth.

Adoption is trauma. Yes, even for newborns.

Separation from the birthing parent and the biological family is trauma. Yes, even for newborns.

Severing all ties to biological family is trauma. Yes, even for newborns.

Removing a child from their culture and heritage causes harm, and in the case of white people taking children of color from their communities, it's perpetuating the progress of colonialism and genocide.

Taking responsibility for a child in crisis means prioritizing their trauma care and their wellbeing above all else.

It is demonstrably true that guardianship and kinship care are less traumatic to a child than severing all ties to biological family through legal adoption.

If you've never heard of guardianship or kinship care, you are not knowledgeable enough to even consider being able to care for a child in crisis.

The adoption industry is a for-profit, multi-billion-dollar industry with a horrific history of human trafficking, eugenicist ideology, and straight-up baby stealing. These issues have not been sufficiently addressed in legislation and regulations, and the industry continues to exploit, violate, and traumatize untold numbers of children every day.

The adoption industry prioritizes the wants of the adopting parents over the wellbeing of the child.

Adoption is not the beautiful, romanticized method of family-building that the dominant culture makes it out to be.

Children are not property to be passed around for the pleasure of adults. Children are human beings with human rights. Children have a right to know who they are and where they biologically come from. Children have a right to maintain connections with their biological family, their culture, and their heritage. Adoption always interrupts the natural relationships inherent to these rights.

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Reblog if you’re 30 or older

This is an experiment to see if there really are as few of us as people think.You can also use this to freak out your followers who think you’re 25 or something. Yay!

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"I'm glad adoptees who are adults are starting to speak out now."

Mate, we've been speaking out for literal decades. You just ain't been listening, because we're not saying things you want to hear.

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"You Don’t Look Adopted” by Anne Heffron

If you listen to Adoptees On, the podcast (if you’re an adoptee or a foster you SHOULD, it’s great, it’s by us and for us) you will sometimes have heard guests mention how much they loved this book.  I read it based on that and it’s a great memoir, just painfully honest about what it’s like to go through life like this.  

“Most of my life I have felt both real and not real.” ― Anne Heffron, You Don’t Look Adopted

Anne has an interesting website and blog as well, and I’m featured on it as a guest artist this week.  Go look!

https://www.anneheffron.com/blog/2023/5/27/guest-blog-post-art-and-adoption-by-terri-nelson

[eyetwitch]

Adoption Tags

I'm an actual, real, human, adoptee/ex-foster child. I believe I'm allowed to use all the tags that non-adoptees have used to advertise "adoption" of their characters, of their dogs, of all the things that are not human children who have been removed from their parents.

Adoptees are 2% of the population, a highly diverse group who have all suffered trauma, and the very language used to discuss us has been appropriated by non-adoptees to sell their products.

Please take a moment of your time to actually listen to an adoptee voice.

[eyetwitch]

NEW VIDEO!!! This one is about my process of painting and why I'm making certain choices while I create things. Want to learn a few things about watercolor? https://tinyurl.com/finalspaintings

Full series is available here:

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Bone shaker!

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Erasure

New video, new painting about what it's like to be a closed-record adoptee in the US. This time it's about how I had multiple names and no name at all.

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internet cable line accidentally drilled through unknown buried woman

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Because of an error or a lie, my biological mother assigned me the incorrect ethnicity when she gave me away. It changed the entire course of my life.

Latest painting in my series on what it feels like to be a closed-record adoptee. Watercolor and gouache on hot press paper. Music: Scandinavian Error by Polar Nights, Epidemic Sound

[eyetwitch]

(logging into the beating a slightly funny joke into the fucking ground website) they better not be beating a slightly funny joke into the fucking ground in here

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Pickle’s Phone Number

My adoptive mother, as I have detailed in other little essays, is slowly flaking apart with senile dementia. Every day I talk to her and another few pieces of her memory and cognitive abilities gently disappear, honing her down to a person who remembers everything up to age 10 vividly and very little after that. What she’s losing in long-term memories is being replaced with weird little confabulations that stick, once they appear.

For instance, she just had gallbladder surgery. We went through months of her walking around with a drain sticking out of her side and a bag collecting bile that had to be pinned to her shirt. We met with surgeons, I researched alternative therapies for treatment, it was a whole production. We set the surgery date in advance a couple months ago, and I took her in last week to get it. She packed four bags for her overnight stay (I winnowed it down to a change of clothes). And yet if you ask her today about the surgery, she will say “They took my gallbladder out and didn’t even tell me they were going to do it!” I said, “Why do you think you were in the hospital, Mom?” “For my gallbladder.” “And do you remember meeting with the surgeon the morning they took it out?” “Yes but she didn’t even SAY she was going to do that! They could at least TELL you before they do something like that.” (The surgeon did tell her, multiple times. I was there.)

Anyway last night her old friend Carol called me to say that my mom seemed to have written her phone number down wrong and was calling all their other mutual friends to get it, over and over. I have programmed Carol’s number into my mom’s iPad and her phone, but she pulls out a tattered address book and uses Carol’s number from 20 years ago. I dutifully wrote down the correct number and called my mom to have her cross out every wrong number in the address book and put the new one in instead.

“I HAVE that number,” my mom said. I asked her to read it to me, and she did have it. “Well, please call that number instead, then,” I said. “I do but that’s the dog’s phone,” my mom said.

“..What” I said.

“It’s PICKLE’s phone number. It’s Carol’s DOG’s phone number,” she said. “He’s a POMERANIAN. Named PICKLES,” she added, helpfully filling in all the gaps in my knowledge.

I paused, considering what to say next. “….Mom, why do you think the dog has a phone,” I said. “Well I sure don’t know, it’s CAROL’S dog, ask her,” she said.

“No, I mean, do you really think that the dog has a cell phone,” I said. “Yes, that’s PICKLE’S phone number and Carol never calls me back from it,” she said.

“No but. But. Mom, why would a dog need a phone,” I said.

“Well, she takes him EVERYWHERE so he has a phone,” she said, with exasperation.

“I…do you…has Pickles ever called you,” I said. “No he’s a DOG.” “But he has a phone, you said.” “Yes, IT’S. PICKLE’S. PHONE,” she said, fed up.

“Well. Please call Pickles and ask to speak to Carol,” I said, feeling faint. “FINE. I don’t know why I always have to call the DOG but I’ll do it,” she said. ‘Ok. Say… I don’t know. Say hi to Pickles, I guess,” I said, and hung up.