Narratives of Adoption: My Dream #NAAM2016

By Trace Lara Hentz (author of One Small Sacrifice)

Every year we commemorate the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I too have a dream.

I dream we’ve moved past sexism, racism… classism… and white privilege.  My ongoing prayer is adoption will no longer move any child outside their own culture and ethnicity …I pray everyone knows of the Indian Adoption Projects and 60s Scoop with its intended disastrous results and how my own story is woven into this mess.

In my dream, I pray all adoptees are CALLED HOME, called to be with all our relations, many nations and first families!

I dream that we now live in a new world where adoptees and first parents have educated others far beyond the fallacies… mistruths… myths created by a billion dollar adoption industry who benefits financially even now from trans-racial, international and closed adoptions.

I have a dream the entire world has finally realized children were sold like commodities in many countries and trafficked – too often adoption files were filled with falsehoods and lies to SELL a child to their prospective adopters.  These legal files were sealed to hide an adoptee’s identity, name and ancestry on paper, to conceal the truth. For too many of us, states still won’t release our own names and files to us, even as adults.

I dream all states in America open their closed adoption files in the near future, in 2016 and beyond.

I dream the world sees how this was a money-making operation… a business of baby selling and “creating” orphans; how this is trafficking in human life when mothers and their children are FORCED into this situation with pressure from society… religion… governments with little regard to those same women and children and the health effects on their minds and bodies.

I dream that adoptive parents know and accept we cannot be the child they want us to be or dream us to be – that we are born with our own biology and parents. If you do adopt us, then never lie to us. It’s your job as our loving guardian to share knowledge and truth about our first parents and recognize the lifelong health effects and the fog of stress that we adoptees endure under secrecy and the primal wound our adoption creates.

I dream the entire world sees how children feel like imposters in their adopted family.  As an adoptee, I was posing as a DeMeyer, when I know the falsehood of that name was legally forced upon me.

I want the world to know GOD had nothing to do with creating this torturous invention and experiment but rather adoption was invented to maintain power in ruling families in Roman times and this idea traveled to other lands.

I dream that open adoptions are working better for children who cannot stay with their first parents but we are not there yet. Read this important blog: http://birthmamawasteland.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/if-you-dont-like-what-i-have-to-say-why-are-you-here/

Closed adoption left adoptees like me lodged between two worlds yet not quite fitting in any world.  This is why I have chosen the title CALLED HOME for the new anthology...  I have two close friends who were called home and are back living on tribal lands and they are a testament to the courage needed to be in reunion as adults, as adoptees who were part of these government plans to rid the world of Indigenous and First Nation people.

I dream this new world is one where children and their safety are top priority, not who adopts them.  I dream we are now working harder to unify families, preserving family units, helping parents care for their own children, not separating them unless absolutely necessary. Children should not be placed with paying strangers or paid caretakers if there is kin, other family members who are willing.

[Called Home: The RoadMap is published on Amazon in 2016.]

{I wrote this on 2014 and still have this dream...]