By Trace Hentz, reunited adoptee, blog editor
It's November. It's Adoption Awareness Month and Native American Heritage and History Month.
Man, that's too bad. Each deserves more than a month of attention. They deserve ALL our attention.
First up, READ: Lost Daughters: The Journey of Searching. I met Jenn earlier this year at a conference in Boston. She's a gentle soul with a strong courageous spirit. Read about her journey. I do read Lost Daughters blog, often...
NOW - it's time to THINK HARD about adoption in general.
There is something awkward about being adopted that will challenge you - one, you want to know who you are; two, you are a mystery. The hard journey to find out who you are is (from my own experience): intense, epic, scary, challenging, unwritten, a path with an unknown destination, a way to test your patience and courage, and it will be the hardest thing you will ever do or experience.
It's a path full of hurdles and emotional landmines.
TRUST ME on this! You find out that the experience is lined with people who will hate you and love you when you go searching to find your identity, your first parents, your first families. There are brick walls called sealed records you'll have to break open or jump over. Emotions and secrets will blow up - yours and theirs.
Love and Hate? Yes, both. Some people don't want to be found. Some people won't like you. Adoptees do face this and some face the fact their parents are already gone when you're finally able to find them.
The general public has no idea what it feels like to be adopted and live your life as a mystery with a fake identity. Every time I look at my fake birth certificate, I laugh. It's a joke. The people who are adopted me are NOT my biological parents. But this paper says they are. It's official. It's got a seal on it. It's like a "bill of sale" and a purchase agreement. I have to be this new person because these people "procured" me through adoption. I take their name and be their kid.
But I am not their kid. They don't own me.
If the general public had any idea of the fandango and farce we adoptees live with and under, then the adoption laws could change faster. The laws are changing but very slowly. There are several years of adoption propaganda written by a billion dollar adoption industry to make money. It's a BUSINESS! You will rub up against it when you see the words "Forever Family" --- and the public chooses sweetened propaganda: It makes it sound so good. It makes all adoption good.
The Indian Adoption Projects were cultural genocide so they won't mention it, or us, or they'll deny it ever happened in the USA. THE STOLEN GENERATION is called that for a reason and the governments in North America are still denying the public the truth. If there are 6 million adoptees living today, MANY of them are First Nations and Native American adoptees.
If you are not adopted, take a moment to consider how adoptees are given a big lie to live with --then we're expected to be grateful to the people who want us to be something we're not? You'd have to be crazy to think anyone can live like that!
No wonder being adopted is so emotionally destructive.
To survive, I took on adoption like a college class. I got real good at chasing ghosts. I got good, like private detective good! Read One Small Sacrifice, my memoir. Because I started doing research on adoption back in 2004, I decided to find out even more on orphanages, trafficking and illegal adoptions. It's a bloody battlefield of coercion and greed and scandal.
Now I am posting here as well: www.armyofone.me. I'm also posting some of the best blogging on this adoption topic all month, so please take a read...
Like this:
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We Clock You from a Mile Awayby Snarkurchin |
Dear wealthy, white, entitled moms of adoption: Adult adoptees see you, and some of us don't find your words "inspirational."
The thing is, I knew you right away. I
recognize the fierce determination. The grit. The fight. Because
everything about what you have was a decision, and nothing about what
you have was easy. You are the kind of woman who Makes.Things.Happen.
After all, you made this happen, this family you have.
++++++++++++++++++ ====================So strap on your reading glasses - this is the month for ADOPTEES to #flipthescript on adoption propaganda.
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