*Takes a deep breath* 

Dear sir,

There are many things I am deep-sighing at right now. Your comment was surprising, disappointing, and unfunny. I have written a range about the transracial adoptee experience, and am thrilled that brave new works of art like Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere and Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know are bringing adoption—specifically from the adoptee’s perspective—into a more commercial conversation.

That being said, “jokes” are still being made at the expense of transracial adoptees, and hearing you, a POC, passive-aggressively Other another POC, makes me both frustrated and sad.

Let’s start with the subject of the night in question. The comment came at a birthday party, a friend-of-a-friend’s celebration in a tiny bar in Brooklyn. There was a small alcove in the back of the bar, where people gathered with drinks and food, mingling. The space was fabulous, perfect for a party.

A little bell chimed up front, and someone stepped to the microphone.

Thank you all so much for being here tonight, the host announced. To begin, who wants to hear a story about my love life?

He’d had a few drinks; his smile was beautiful, tipsy. The crowd cheered in encouragement.

The host went on to complain about how difficult it was to date in New York. Everyone nodded their heads in agreement—no arguments there.

It’s so hard to find a good Asian man, the host bemoaned. He himself was Chinese. I match with people and we go on dates and something’s always wrong. They work in finance, or something.

More laughter bounced around the room.

Then, on my last date, I thought I had found him: the perfect guy. Cute, Korean, great cook, great ass. I was so excited!

The host smiled, holding a dramatic pause.

And then, he said in a hushed voice, I found out he was adopted. Damn it, universe. So now I’m back at the beginning.

When I heard this in person, at first it didn’t register. It wasn’t until later that I thought, shit, was that really what he said? I said nothing that night, since I didn’t even know this man. It was a celebration, after all; I didn’t want to be that person to start something.

What I wish I’d said: How do you think that man would feel, hearing his existence become the butt of a joke, and worse, being nowhere in sight to defend himself? Though perhaps it was good he wasn’t there—it was just me, another Asian adoptee, who took the offense and ran with it.

Adoptees have been the butt of many an insensitive joke or comment, but when something like this comes from a community you respect and want to be a part of, it hurts more. Other people might make “jokes” and I’ll give them harsh side eye but let it slide because they’re ignorant or just don’t get it, and it’s not my job to educate the world on why XYZ (racism/misogyny/homophobia, take your pick) is bad.

But when it’s your own people, or from people you considered to be your own, and they make a joke at your expense, it’s different. It makes you wonder if you will ever be accepted anywhere.

I can only speak from my own experiences, of course. As a Chinese adoptee I have heard the run of the gamut, everything from “You’re not Asian,” “you’re a banana,” “but you’re so [fill in bullshit adjective] for an Asian,” “”you’re basically white,” to my personal favorite, “I forget you’re even Asian sometimes.”

It’s easy to brush things off when they only happen once in a while from unassuming strangers. But when these comments start to come from those close to you, from friends and even family, it gets infinitely harder to find the will to speak up and say something. 

In my experience, some Asian adoptees are even more curious and driven to learn about aspects of their birth culture, because of the fact that we’ve lacked this information our whole lives. We feel, as the sociologist Sunaina Marr Maira calls it, “a nostalgia for an imagined homeland to which [we’ve] never been.” Transracial adoptees have lived with dual or even multiple identities that few outside the process can truly relate to or understand. We are this and that, we are the lucky ones, we were saved, we were abandoned, nobody wanted us, somebody got us. Does anyone know who we are? Do we ourselves?

Of course, the pendulum swings both ways. I know of an adoptee who took the other extreme, who wanted nothing to do with her birth culture because it was too painful to look back at what could have been. It is moving forward that matters to her, and to focus unnecessarily on the past, on things she cannot change, is moot.

Regardless of how we move through the world, one thing is for certain: as abnormalities in the traditional definition of family, we have been hyper self-conscious of who we are and what we look like our whole life. We have been judged time and again by circumstances beyond our control, and we are sick of constantly having to explain and justify ourselves. 

So please. There is enough shit happening in the world right now. Please don’t contribute by making others feel bad for being different from you, or from coming from a different family situation than you. People of color understand what it means to live in a white America. It is not an us-versus-them thing, it is a compassion thing. It is recognizing that we are all made of multiplicities, and we have the right to share our identities, but should never feel the need to prove them. This train of thought is reductive at best, speaking to the same fabled “authenticity” that shuns Black folk who are not “Black enough” or Native folk that are not “Indian enough.” The Authenticity Olympics will never have a winner, because the game is rigged from the start. The judges are almost always outside of the group they wish to judge, and when they are inside that group, well, that is what I’m trying to shine a light on.

Authenticity means living your truth, and adoptees are included in this. We may choose to express this in outlandish ways or choose to remain private, and either choice should not fear ostracism in the process.  

This narrative along with the understanding of the shame experienced by single, unwed mothers in Korea meant that I was expected to accept this as a universal truth. It was expected that this narrative was somehow reflective of my mother and it was not to be questioned. With some of the reunion stories that have emerged, there was nothing out there to make me think otherwise. Many adoptees have found their birth families/birth mothers and they seemed happy to reconnect, so why would I be any different?

It wasn’t until I found my birth mother that I realized my reunion would not be a “happy” one. In fact, there would be no reunion at all. It was then, for the first time, that I realized my mother was not the mythical mother that I conjured in my mind.

Painting an Unrealistic Picture
I started my first birth mother search in 2007, with the intermediary being my US adoption agency. The use of email was not as prominent as it is now. However, my reliance on the truth coming from my Korean agency is much the same today as it was then. At that time, they emailed me more information about my birth parents. I have not seen any hard copies, which would not necessarily reflect the truth. Therefore, what was relayed to me remains questionable.

According to my Korean agency, my birth parents met at a church youth group. My birth father was the youngest of three, with only his mother still living. My mother was an orphan. Apparently, my maternal grandparents died when she was 7 years old and her brother was a 1-year-old. She grew up in an orphanage and worked at the church. It stated that my birth father enlisted for his military service and my birth mother was unable to find him. At the insistence of the church, she relinquished me 22 days after I was born.

As if the narrative of love wasn’t already enough, the story of my mother being an orphan painted her as a sympathetic figure. How dare I question anything about her, knowing her parents died, and she was raised in an orphanage? Couldn’t I see she relinquished me out of love? These types of questions played through my mind over and over. I convinced myself she was like the picture that was painted for me. That enabled me to put her on a pedestal, revere her in a way that seemed untouchable.

Denying Who She Was, Denying My Existence
Towards the end of 2008, I received a phone call telling me that my Korean agency called a number listed for my birth mother. When they called, she denied who she was. She said it was the wrong number and that the person they contacted was not her. The social worker did not believe her. When they tried the number again, the person that answered said the number had been transferred.

At that point, I asked the intermediary what the chances were of it being the wrong person. I was told that there could be a chance that it was the wrong person. However, given that they had used the citizen ID listed on my paperwork, it was highly unlikely it was a case of mistaken identity. Her citizen ID and full names continue to be withheld from me. They are inaccessible without her consent.

My search was closed in 2009 since they were unable to find another phone number and due to the first phone call ending with a denial. I sat with denial for a long time. I held an enormous amount of shame because of the rejection. With reunion stories popping up at that time, the rejection hit me like a bullet to my soul. The bullet fragments shattered deeply within. It killed a part of me knowing that when trying to find my birth mother, the result was her denying who she was. Feeling inadequate was not a foreign concept for me as an adoptee, and it was exacerbated by this denial.

Letters Sent, No Response Required
I initiated a second search last year after realizing I could potentially receive more information than what was previously known before. In doing so, I now know my mother’s last name and I know where I was born. Multiple letters have been sent to my mother, with each letter having a confirmation signature. Curiously, my mother signed for some, while a co-worker signed for others. As of this writing, I have yet to receive a written or verbal response. If you are one to believe silence is a response, then in theory, I have received a response.

I was able to confirm the letters were signed by a co-worker because the letters weren’t going to a residential address, they were going to a restaurant. My mother was the owner of the restaurant, with her name listed on the wall as such. My purported half-sister confirmed the restaurant was a family business.

The restaurant and the daughter who worked there are my mother’s life as it stands presently. Her focus is on her life as she presents it now. Truthfully, it is a life that does not include me. It is a life that does not now, or realistically ever, include reconnecting with the child she relinquished.

Who My Mother Has Shown Herself to Be
It was with this information that I began to realize what her non-responses have meant. They are indeed an answer, whether I like it or not. The lack of acknowledgment given to me with this type of response is who she has shown herself to be. She is not the sympathetic figure I portrayed her as being in my mind.

As difficult as it has been for me to accept this, I have found it somewhat freeing as well. I would rather see her as she is, regardless of the pain. This version, the one I see more clearly, is what I know of her. She isn’t the mythical mother I have always thought of her as being. The truth is, she never has been and she never will be.

Acknowledging the Judgment, the Risk, and the Pain
To be clear, I have wrestled with my feelings about my mother for longer than I care to admit. While writing this, there have been pangs of guilt. I have become so accustomed to invalidating my feelings to placate others that I must remind myself that these feelings are legitimate and that they matter.

There is an inherent fear that by acknowledging these feelings, I somehow open myself up to more judgment. There is an ever-present fear of self-judgment and judgment from others. When the truth is, I will be judged regardless. My life as an adoptee has been mired with judgment. The feelings about my mother are no exception.

I’ve had people tell me not to give up hope and that she might change her mind. It has been 12 years since I first contacted her. She’s known I have existed my entire life. Telling me that she might change her mind isn’t helpful, nor is it reflective of how she’s responded to me. Her actions have spoken for her, they have told me all that she wants me to know.

I took a risk reaching out to her, knowing there was a chance she would deny who she was, again. As with many things that involve risk, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. As harrowing as it has been, I have learned to acknowledge hard truths. I have begun reconciling who my mother has shown herself as being versus the mother that I once dreamed of meeting. While this has been a deeply painful experience, I can now mourn the loss of a relationship that was never meant to be.

It happened in the daytime.
Exported like a shiny new cell phone
I arrive a daughter in a new country
The model adoptee-grateful and lucky
The other shadowed among your whiteness.
A woman cradles me in her arms and whispers, welcome home.

It happened slowly over time
The grief unearthing from somewhere deep like worms crawling out from the dirt.
I wonder what my birth mother said to me as she held me for the last time.
Did she say I love you, I'm sorry…
Maybe she doesn't remember
But the body never forgets.

I am here.
Born into this world
Under the August moonlight
Reclaiming my voice
Broken and whole
Loved
Abandoned
And found.

You still don’t

You were never a mom to me
In the way that we think of moms
But you were my home

You fed me
You sheltered me
You clothed me with your body

I was vulnerably yours
But your heart never belonged to me

I want to come home
I want to sit in my favorite chair
Your lap
I want to wrap a blanket around my shoulders
Your arms
I want to feel the warmth radiating from the fireplace
Your love
I want to feel the comfort of reading a book and having it be
Your story
Though so many of the pages will not be
Our story
The words of the first page will pull me back home
Where I will feel safe again

My fingers may never be the ballerinas dancing the lines of your hand
Skimming the surface
Gliding along the grooves
Moving as if they’ve known the way for an eternity

We will watch my dancers whirling, twirling, unfurling
Until they spin together with yours
Lacing and embracing
The finale to the perfect performance

Then I’ll discover that the freckle on my finger is in the same place as yours
That our eyes are the same mocha hue
That you replicate my timbre as you laugh
That it bursts from lips that are an identical valentine
And when they say, “I love you,”
My soul comes home to you

I want to gaze upon your thick hair
Cascades of yarn unraveling
I’ll comb shallow furrows with my fingers
Spoon trails through chocolate frosting
So decadent to eat chocolate with a spoon
So lovingly indulgent to touch your luscious hair
And to feel it whispering through my fingers
Pirouetting across my cheeks

We missed those sacred baby moments
So close I can smell you
So close I can feel your breath on my face
So close that your warmth pulses through my body
My heart matching your rhythm
Melting back together
Folding into your curves
Flour into batter
Disappearing into you
Because I was once a part of your body

You are still haunting my body
Your feeling is visceral
You’re the blood that courses through my veins
You’re the match that singes my skin
You’re the knife that cuts me to the core
You’re the apocalyptic scream that emanates from the deepest part of my soul

Crumbling my whole being
You can brush all the crumbs of a cookie together
But it will never be whole again
Broken in half
It can still be enjoyed
But scattered crumbs are not desirable
And yet I ask you to devour me
As you would the most delicious dish
That fills your soul
And reminds you of home
The food your mom cooked

I have traveled so far
I have been away so long
I have waited to be swaddled in your love

I want to come home
I miss my home
You are my home
And I have lost my way back to you

When one of them dies
We scour the obituary for any mention
Of our existence
But really, what would it say?
Beloved child lost to adoption
That one we left and forgot
Daughter/granddaughter of people whose names we did not know
The one we love in private but whom we still cannot mention in public

Although one would think
After emails and envelopes
After visits and phone calls
After seeing us face to face
After tentative, years-withheld embraces

That we would be worthy of
Less than an inch of newsprint
That they could see fit to speak our names

But after decades of invisibility
Of being erased from birth certificates
Of having our original names float into ether
Of having vital documents locked away
Of being told no no no no
You have no right

Is it a surprise, then?
That when we search the white space
Between the legitimate names
All we see is blankness
Pure as winter sky
Not even clouds with which to form
Vague shapes of the alphabet

In The Trauma of Birth, the psychoanalyst Otto Rank described how the shock of being separated from the womb can have life-long repercussions. If the natural act of birth can be described as a trauma, then the subsequent act of being separated from one’s biological parents to become a member of a family of genetic strangers is trauma upon trauma. No matter how young the child, and how loving the new family, that early, fateful act of adoption reverberates throughout the adopted person’s life.

Denial

I was a happy child in pretty unusual circumstances. Adopted into a Caucasian family from Korea, we moved to Gaborone, Botswana when I was four, where I had a golden childhood. The only other eastern Asians I can recall were the family who ran the Chinese restaurant. Occasionally, my race became the subject of gaping wonder by the locals. I was troubled and upset when strangers pulled at their eyes at me, or kids practiced their karate moves, howling like Bruce Lee who, as the first truly international film star, was a big draw at the cinema. But it didn’t happen often. I lived in a world that was mostly black and white, and there were no distinctions made between them, even while apartheid ravaged Botswana’s southern neighbor. Aside from the rude interludes of Asian-baiting, race never intruded into my consciousness.

Then my family returned to the States. I was ten, and beginning to be more conscious of the coded and complex rituals of human interactions, of the social hierarchy and where I fit in. I became more sensitive to slights that came from strangers on the street, as had happened in Gaborone. But in America, these slights also came from my classmates, teachers, family friends, even distant relatives. Little slights, to be sure, but alienating and damaging. The message was I didn’t belong. The message was that adoption was unnatural. With the dawning realization that being adopted is both a burden and a blessing, my Denial stage was over.

Anger

Adolescence is a time of great physical and mental turmoil, but as an adoptee, that typical teen alienation extended even into the home and family, where no one looked as I did or seemed to understand what I was feeling. Not only was I alienated from society, but I could find no anchor in family identity, and most damaging, I was alienated from myself, hating the outer manifestation of me because it made me different. Identity issues erupted, and suddenly I was unsure that I was the person I thought was. What followed was a drip, drip, dripping away of self-confidence.

As the self-loathing built, so did the anger, which manifested itself in all manner of disruptive and defiant behavior. Truancy. Drugs. Drink. Petty crime. I solved the riddle of my identity with a middle finger. I was the bad seed, the defective product, the un-model minority. I wore my anger on my sleeve, and for a few years, that was all I had.

Bargaining

Emerging into young adulthood, I struggled to find my place in the world. Since everyone else seemed to see me as Asian, I decided to find my identity there. My senior year, I dropped Spanish for Mandarin. I gave up trying to make my eyes look bigger with eyeliner and instead emphasized their slant. I dyed my hair blue black and powdered my face white. Literature had always been my solace, refuge and filter on the world, so I turned to whoever Asian writers I could find, Maxine Hong Kingston, Yasunari Kawabata, Lu Xun, Amy Tan and Yukio Mishima, but in the eighties there wasn’t that much out there in the local bookstores and libraries. I never saw a book by a Korean author.

And I didn’t really have any guide. Even in America, I didn’t see many other people who looked like me. There were only a few Asians in my high school. American law had finally changed in 1965 to allow entrance to immigrants of color, but the wave of Asians had yet to reach my Maryland suburb. Real live people who resembled me were scarce. I had to make it up as I went along.

What was easily available, I appropriated as my own. Cloth slippers from China. An olive drab Mao cap. Chinese good luck coin earrings. I wasn’t going to try and hide my ethnicity so that my peers and associates would accept me as one of them, I was going to flaunt it, rub it in their faces, declare that I had my own identity, I didn’t need to borrow from theirs.

I wanted to make adoption the least important detail of my life. On the cusp of adulthood, I endeavored to become my own person. I began to look beyond my origins to the future, to my dreams, ambitions, and vision of the future.

Depression

Exhausted by my frenetic search for myself, I decided to end my perseveration about my adoption issues and just live life. It wasn’t depression per se, but more of a numbing of that part of me that quested to know who I was. Instead, I gave myself up to everyday life, taking those first baby-steps into adulthood. I earned a degree in English literature, engaged in romantic relationships, explored the world, entered the work force. I was getting through life day by day, following the trajectory of my life instead of forging it.

But this neglect of my own identity took a toll. I lost focus and drifted. I wanted to be a writer but I didn’t have the sense of self that allowed for a strong, confident authorial voice. My relationships suffered from my own sense of inadequacy, low self-confidence and internal conflict. I drifted…

The responsibilities of adulthood took over. The present took precedence. I was the working mother of two children, with a house, a dog, hobbies and friends. Life was busy, and I thought it was enough to enjoy the passing hallmarks of my life. I didn’t have the time or energy to devote to my ongoing struggle to come to terms with what it meant to be adopted.

Acceptance

And yet, I couldn’t put off the reckoning forever. If I wanted to pursue my dream of becoming a writer, I would first have to make peace with myself. I would have to confront that niggling feeling of unease, the dull throb of anger, the low self-esteem, and resolve my identity issues. If I wanted to be a better mother to my children, partner to my husband, daughter to my parents, and friend to others and myself, I needed to pay attention to that ache in my heart and tear in my soul that came with my abandonment at birth, my eternal outsider status, my constant feeling of vulnerability and of having to prove myself. I had to embrace both my ethnic heritage and my family upbringing, unite the two halves of me into a whole, and not a hole.

It was made easier by the fact that as I aged, my adoption was less important to others. They didn’t see me with my parents and siblings, and so didn’t know I was adopted. It was no longer the most interesting fact about me.

I learned that the best chance for happiness lies in turning the pain of adoption into something positive. For me, that happened by finally writing about it. Exploring my pain through words. Confessing things to myself on paper that I had never acknowledged before.

Acceptance does not mean that I am forever reconciled with the trauma of adoption, but that I understand there has been trauma, and the repercussions will always be present in my life. It is a part of who I am, to be embraced as tightly as my love of words, my strong belief in social justice, my dedication to my own little nuclear family.

With reconciliation came inspiration. I wrote a novel. My relationship with my husband improved. I felt more comfortable in my own skin. I knew I belonged in any room I walked into. I became a better mother. I found my own, strong voice. I wrote another novel, this time about adoption. I no longer craved acceptance, and instead of hoping people liked me, I worried about whether I liked them. My kids are fledgling adults. My adoption novel has been published. I am proud of who I have become.

When I return home for the annual pilgrimage to San Luis I am at once assaulted and assuaged by my hometown. My love/hate relationship with California extends deeper into my soul here, where every bit of teenage angst was borne and every fragrant memory of my mom’s kitchen and garden both comfort and sadden me. The sweet aroma of citrus blossoms, Santa Rosa plums, and olallieberries, which she magically crafted into jams and cobblers, overwhelm my senses, and I return to a childlike state.

There are ghosts around every turn in this town. Wispy pieces of my mother lurk on every single street. From the goddamn terrible purple blossoms of the jacaranda trees that bloom without shame every July in honor of the anniversary of her death, to the scent of the bone dry hills covered in yellow grass and remnants of yucca, I cannot escape my memories of her here. It is a sensory attack to my whole body, not the least of which is the tactile assault on my fragile and broken heart.

We stay with my dad and his wife in the house where I grew up. He maintains the old backyard lovingly, tending the citrus, avocado, and other fruit trees with carefully rationed water. There is not much I miss about living in California, but the memories of running out back in the morning to pick ripe fruit off of trees, my feet wet from the dew in the grass do make me long for this warmer climate.

I take an evening walk with my unwilling daughter through the old neighborhood and the entire outing is filled with stories. I am only trying to make our walk more interesting for her, but I realize I do not need to embellish anything. There was so much drama on these streets. We pass the house where my best friend Mary lived as well as the house across from Mary’s where the bully Sonja lived. Then we stand at the bottom of the steep street that leads to the house where a boy I knew stabbed both his parents to death one dark night and made me afraid to go outside for a long time. And up another lonely hill covered in dead yellow grasses stand the remnants of an old abandoned brick building, the former Hells Acres, which was, according to 80s urban legend, a former insane asylum. Teens who dared used to party there in the creepy and supposedly haunted structure.

We stroll down the gently sloped streets, gazing into dry yards and tidy houses. I identify plants for her that she does not recognize, having grown up in the much wetter and cooler Pacific Northwest. I unintentionally make her cry with the story about the jacarandas blooming during her grandma’s last weeks fighting cancer. My daughter innocently thought they were just pretty trees, but after nearly 30 years I am so disassociated that I tell the story with ruinous glee. After my mom died I had wanted to plant one in our yard in her memory, but my husband thought jacarandas were too messy. I point out to my daughter the ocean of purple debris on the sidewalks, laughing that he was right. Only then do I notice her tears.

We walk up and down the halls of my elementary school. It’s not pronounced the way it looks and so I give her the lecture I heard 7 straight years in a row about why. It still bothers me to hear Sinsheimer mispronounced. As we come full circle through the neighborhood, we pass the place I met her dad when he was trimming trees and I was doing odd jobs and waitressing. Here is the store where I stole candy once, and down another street lived a very cool girl named Lisa whose young and single mom kept her the very same year mine gave me away.

But this story is not about that mom, it’s about the other one, from whom I inherited no physical traits, but whose legacy of kindness, patience, and compassion helped me grow strong and healthy, curious and silly. She shared with me her middle name, which I, in turn, bequeathed my own girl. She is the mom who took me and loved me and held me when I cried, the one who made me popcorn and hot chocolate after school on rainy days, and sewed me whole wardrobes of skirts and dresses because I refused to wear pants.

Until my brother and I started school she stayed home to care for us, cooking from scratch, grinding wheat for bread, canning fruits and veggies from our garden, and tending rabbits and chickens in the back year. She and my dad tried to convince us at the dinner table that rabbit meat was chicken, but it didn’t work. She made me walk or ride my bike to school at a time when everyone else got rides. I am forever thankful for the emphasis my parents put on physical activity and health. My childhood was spent swimming, hiking, camping, biking, and playing tennis and working in the yard. I have the sun damage to prove it.

They never met, my mom and my daughter. I am the bridge that connects them, these two most precious women in my life. Me and this awful, wonderful place are the only things that tie all 3 of us Dianes together. And so my memories must become her memories, because these things and my mom, must not be forgotten. How else to accomplish this than to tell and feel the stories in the very place they occurred, in this parched and fragrant town? San Luis Obispo is home to the splintered pieces of my heart; how could it ever not be mine? We must come home to remember, and because jacarandas do not grow in Washington.

Or worse… “My adoptee hasn’t spoken to me about this so it doesn’t happen to anyone.”

My first question to parents would be… did you tell your parents everything? I didn’t. For various reasons. But I’m naturally a private person who doesn’t like having difficult face-to-face conversations. It took me 22 years to open up about racism, microaggressions, and general adoption challenges… and it started as writing/blog posts.

My next question would be… do you expect your young adoptee to come to you with a fully developed concern about racism and microaggressions if they are confused about what they are experiencing? If they are confused about who they are, how can they be sure what they are experiencing is an attack against their identity. If race and racism are not something discussed in the household, how are they supposed to formulate the questions and conversations? That should be the job of the educated parent.

Especially in elementary school, when kids were experimenting with what they could say and what would gain them popularity, I had no clue that the jokes said to me were racist… that pulling your eyes into slits and singing the ‘Chinese, Japanese, Dirty Knees’ song was extremely offensive. What I saw was everyone laughing and the people doing it saying, “Aw Lilly, we are just joking, we love you, you’re our best friend!”.

This is extremely confusing to a young kid. And as I got older and realized what was happening, I kept my mouth shut because society was just going to tell me the same thing… “Be proud of who you are. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Parents, I get it. We don’t know what we don’t know. But as a parent, it’s your job to be educated and aware of everything that comes with adoption and transracial adoption. When you are shown ‘negative’ experiences that you’ve never heard of before, do not just write them off because your adoptee hasn’t come to you about it. Do not start listing Examples X, Y, and Z of why the perspective is incorrect.

Take the opportunity to learn that this new thing could be something your adoptee experiences or will experience. Then, use that knowledge to foster a safe environment to have discussions and promote questions. Best case scenario, your adoptee honestly tells you they don’t experience racism. Worst case scenario, they do… but now you are aware and you can work to protect them and teach them to protect themselves.

P.S. Be careful with the leading questions: “You don’t experience racism right?” Whenever I am asked something like this, I immediately want to say the ‘correct’ answer and agree.

Originally posted on Facebook

Under the administration of Reagan, there had been a black sergeant-major in the air force with a wife who would ultimately give birth to a family of seven. The major and his wife had his family taken away because they were deemed “schizophrenic” and were told that they weren’t able to properly take care of their offspring. Their first child died from an “accidental aspirin overdose” and the other six offspring were taken away. The sixth of their offspring got taken away directly from birth and was made a ward of the court. He was moved from foster home to foster home after a computer chip was injected into his skull. This computer chip gave readings of his thoughts and vital functions to a satellite so he can be a monitored experiment. After being taken to multiple foster homes where the child was poorly cared for, scientists realized that their experiment needed to be healthy and fully adopted so they can have a more effective study. The little boy was adopted by an white Irish-Catholic family, who were given funds to secure the child’s upbringing.

The little boy began to bond with his adoptive family and grew healthy after much medication and care. The foster homes left the child malnourished and with seizures of “unknown origin”. The adoptive family discovered that the child had a certain gift for music which peeked their curiosity into the child’s roots. The adoptive family had a few “incidents” to encourage them to just accept the files given to them and not seek any further information into the boy’s biological family. The adoptive mother and father had three natural children, fostered other black children and adopted two white wards of the court. The last addition to the family, was the small black child who was bonding well with that family. The adoptives used their newly gained funds to buy a swimming pool and to go on vacations with that child. They were instructed never to talk about the child’s past but to focus on private schooling, piano lessons and other aspects of upbringing.

Before the child was fully adopted, there were a few incidents of chip malfunction that left the child screaming at night. Because of multiple incidents which led to set backs in the whole study, the child was forcibly removed from the foster home and taken for mental fracturing. These organizations had a multitude of tools for fracturing the mind such as, multiple trauma inducement, MK-Ultra and computer chipping. As the money stopped, the adoptive family in frustration, sued the state so that the child could be brought back into the home and fully adopted. They won the court case and set precedent to a national law that said that no child can be removed from a home “based on race”. They were invited to be on the Oprah Winfrey show and were written about in papers. The combination of the child’s beginning to memorize and play thousands of songs with ease and getting extra attention from adoptive parents, began to foster envy among the other family members. They made a pact to maintain a certain emotional distance from the child, which would be later adopted by the parents.

As the boy grew, he lost his physical ailments and began to surpass his piano teachers. Instead of studying Beethoven, the boy desired to compose like him. The child began to realize that he should hold back on his true abilities for fear of further being ostracized and creating more hatred about him. He held back his true intelligence because he began to learn about how people viewed skin color and the role he was supposed to play in society. In his teens he began to think about his past, culture and family history. The family assured him that they knew nothing about his past except for what they had already told him. The teen, began to seclude himself and use music as an emotional release from un-relating. As the years went by, he had a few acquaintances but never had a true romantic relationship or even any sexual encounters. He had another chip incident where he hit his head and the stability of the computer chip was compromised. After being taken to an MRI by his adoptive mother which led to hidden results, he was fine to continue growing and go off to college.

In college, he pledged an all white fraternity at the request of his grade-school friend. He had only two sexual relationship-less encounters with women during his whole college experience. This would lead to four sexual encounters in total before the age of 36. He didn’t know why people liked sex so much because he never felt anything during those encounters. He also didn’t feel kisses, hugs and basically was numb to human touch.

Between his twenties and thirties he became more self aware and began searching to meet any biological siblings. He met three of his biological siblings who also knew nothing about their bloodline or their biological parents. He began learning new languages, new songs, and studying abroad. He became more and more depressed from not knowing things and his lack of human romantic companionship. His biological siblings and adoptive siblings were married and/or had kids and he started experiencing mental episodes. He realized that at times, he felt certain unknown buzzes and shocks that he could not explain. He had ideas though. He thought of new forms of energy, new sciences and basically didn’t know how to handle the thoughts he started to receive. He had this obsession with flying and spent nights trying to astral project out of his body so he could find answers about himself. He felt like there had been a device controlling him but knew nobody would believe him. The nature of the device put into his head as a child, had a shelf life. After so many years the device could only start to malfunction which delivers actual schizophrenic effects and mental episodes. So ultimately, schizophrenia shields the scientists and the organizations from any future whistle-blowing attempts… until he figured out that if he can deliver his story as science-fiction.

Of course, any day can be Gotcha Day in AdoptionLand. It’s not limited to the adoption industry-created holiday NAD, the highlight of National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM). The mass destruction of identity though always makes for cute local news stories. so a coordinated effort is a good idea. It encourages business.

I first heard about Gotcha about 20 years ago. I was immediately squicked. Gotcha sounds like trapping a rat under the stove or grabbing up the last flat-screen TV on Black Friday at Wal-Mart. It’s a predatory term. A scary term. A cheap term. A violent term especially today with kids in cages at the Mexican border being siphoned into the Christian adoption system. Gotcha relates adoption to aggressive consumerism; and that consumerism to a public act of virtue. Adoptee rights activist and theorist Daniel Drennan ElAwar writes that Gotcha moves the private into public space:

It fundamentally reduces something very complex and multilayered into a cartoon parody; it forces something private (especially to a young child–I remember not wanting anyone to know about my adoption when I was younger) into a public sphere that is not always welcoming of such a fact (the first question I was asked in school was: “Why are you brown?”).

Despite the majority of adopted adults finding Gotcha offensive or worse, Gotcha has gone mainstream. Parties and other public events are built around it, marking the new adoptee as a “special” person for whom special expectations are forecast. It’s sort of a baptism into the American cult of adoption complete with Gotcha cakes, paper plates, greeting cards, banners, t-shirts, and commemorative jewelry. Pinterest pages are dedicated to fun-for-adopter stuff.

My adoptive parents celebrated Betsy Day, always phrased as “the day you came to live with us.” (Old-timers will remember that I used to be Betsy–an OK name, but one that never fit me.) Marley is a shortened version of my birth name Marlene Sue–a name I’m not real fond of either.

Betsy Day was celebrated on December 21, a preview of Christmas to come. There were usually two gifts waiting for me on the dining room table when I came down to breakfast. When I was in the third grade I got a pink cashmere sweater. Cashmere was big that year.

The “celebration” if you could call it that, was low key and private. No banners. No cake. No neighbors. No bragging or saviorism. It was–and I expect to get some flack for this from several sources–Betsy-centered. Back then personal business was considered just that: personal. Reticence was the custom. The commercialization of the intimate was frowned upon.

I have mixed feelings about Betsy Day. When I was young adoption made me feel like a freak. I bounced from liking Betsy Day to moderately dreading it, and back again. All adoptees are freaks, of course, and I didn’t want to be one. As far as I know, I never met another adopted person until I was out of college and working. I was surprised to find him. Now there were two of us in town. Unlike a lot of adoptees I didn’t feel a loss outside of a loss of information, which I was obsessed with) nor feel traumatized like some adoptees describe their experience. I imagined my mother wearing a brown suit and working in an office, a sort of Katherine Hepburn type. I learned later, she didn’t and wasn’t.

As I got older, Betsy Day mellowed out. I came to appreciate it as a symbol of what I meant to my parents. I was an adored and much- loved child and was rather spoiled. While Betsy Day could be interpreted by some, as something that was done by my adoptive parents for themselves it was very much for and about me I doubt that today’s Gotcha Day has anything much to do with the object of the brouhaha. It’s a freak show and a media op for over-sharing adoptive parents and a fund-raiser for the adoption industry.

My mom never forgot Betsy Day, and every year I continued to get a present. Usually, it was a check, but when I visited at Christmas there would always be a special Betsy Day present waiting for me–a sleeping shirt, some jewelry, or a book on local history. I miss that.

Sentimentalism aside, Betsy Day did not present the avarice, the braggadocio, the narcissism that I see in the contemporary Gotcha and paper pregnant crowd. My first mother, Dottie, as I would learn years later, never had any more biological children, but adopted a boy and a girl 10 and 12 years after I was born. They were LDAs, not learning they were adopted until they were nearly teenagers. I cannot imagine Mama Dot throwing a Gotcha party. My two moms would have put their heads in an oven before they made a spectacle of their children or themselves, much less social status points.

And that’s the difference. Both mothers understood the personal. Today we live in a confessional culture. In the attempt to over-“normalize” adoption and the state-constructed family, adoption is fetishized and romanticized. Adoptees are objectified in mediazed public fantasy.

Being adopted is not fun, and having your business on Front Street when you are too young and too powerless to stop it is not fun. As children, we cannot control our narratives or privacy. We should not be paraded to prop up egos or to push social and religious agendas. As adults, we should control our narratives and own our agency. We should not be expected to be fundraisers and poster children for the adoption industry or narcissists.

Speak truth to adoption.