BLOG WEEK:
What bothers you about the Adoption Establishment?
What bothers you about the Adoption Establishment?
Excerpt from ONE SMALL SACRIFICE: A Memoir (2nd Edition)
Never before had I
experienced such difficulty with one story.
I repeat: never. I took to
writing like a duck takes to water. Most
days, writing and doing research is like breathing. This time was different. I struggled.
I knew I’d hit something so I had to slow down, to process, to dig.
This history, my history, similar stories, had to be somewhere.
How many countries do not
allow adoption? Several. Iraq is one.
No children from Western Europe, Australia, or Canada are eligible for
adoption by Americans right now.
Nonetheless, America’s
adoption reach has been global, widely publicized, some insist saintly,
God-like of those who adopt orphans, even if money is exchanged for babies.
International adoption
really began after the Korean War, when American GI’s left numerous orphans
with their poverty-stricken mothers; then Korean and American-Asian orphans
were brought here to be adopted in the United States. After that, Americans adopted thousands of
children from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. There is no bigger adopter. In 2002 alone, U.S. families adopted over
20,000 children from various Third World nations.
The overall topic of
adoption begged one question for me. “Wait, how do adoptees feel?” No one had asked me when I was young or
old. I wanted this answered so I dug in.
An adoptee movement makes
headlines these days. Adoptive parents
are usually shocked to hear their adopted child say they need to know who they
are and what happened.
My Alaskan Native-Celtic
friend Anecia says, “The power of identity is stronger than fear.” That’s a
powerful statement about adoption, yes.
Anecia went full circle as an adoptee and met her birth mom and
dad. Her adoptive dad helped her.
The reality is adoptees
do have a strong biological curiosity. It’s awful scary not to know who you
are. My first goal was discovery —how I lived a mystery and solved it,
and I survived spiritually intact and remarkably well. Other Split Feathers need to know how this is
possible, even after our pain.
This memoir is not about
my recovery from depression or addiction or self-mutilation or suicide
attempts, not at all. Apparently
adoptees do suffer from these more than the rest of humanity.
Facing my own situation
head-on, what choice did I have? I was an abandoned baby—it was my initiation into being human.
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