American, Latina, and Adopted

What’s up? This is a blog aimed at discussing adoption from the adoptees point of view, so come on over and have a chat :)

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

angels, deciding what shape to take when interacting with The Humans: well….eye contact is important to humans, right? they find it reassuring when they can see the eyes of the person they’re talking to. so if we have LOTS of eyes, in very visible places, that’ll be even MORE reassuring

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

can’t stop thinking how much sense it would make if every design choice angels made was just a misguided attempt to Relate To The Humans. imagine how those conversations went

wings: “humans don’t like things they can’t understand, so if we’re going to levitate we should have wings. in fact we should probably have lots of wings, since we’re so big and impressive. humans like wings”

loud, booming voices: “fuck off Azrael the humans needs to be able to hear us.”

glowing: “no no no, it’s about visibility, right? the main human sensory organ works by detecting light, so if we emit light…” 

wheels: “why the hell are you shaped like that?” “piss off, the humans are really proud of this invention”

multiple faces/eyes: “it makes me relatable” “i swear to God it doesn’t–” “i need to see in every direction” “ Azrael you are a supernatural messenger of god you do not need–” “THE HUMANS NEED TO KNOW I’M WATCHING”

multiple limbs: “humans have lots of limbs! they like limbs” “look i let you keep the wings but–” “how do you expect me to walk?” “70,000 feet is not a reasonable number of feet, Azrael!” “fuck off i’m ENORMOUS” 

general gross misapprehensions of biology: “holy shit are your wings made out of eyes?” “look before you say anything i’m like 100% sure i’ve seen animals who have both wings and eyes. and you can fit so many more in this way!” “….you godforsaken googly-eyed genius”

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

#and this is why angels got so boring in the new testament after the Updated Guidelines were rolled out. “Four limbs???? i’m only allowed a maximum of FOUR LIMBS????? this is BULLSHIT”

#alternatively all the reported sightings of creepy ass angels was literally just the SAME angel  #just the same freak who kept changing its meatsuit for funsies before god caught on

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

ok i have REFINED my theory!

Old Testament Angels look like that because life in the ocean outnumbered life on land, so naturally when they visited earth they modeled their appearance on the most common lifeforms. Hench you get things like

radial symmetry (i.e. angels shaped like spheres) which is objectively cooler than bilateral symmetry (starfish understand this)

Very Numerous Limbs (2 is not the average number of arms in the ocean)

random glowing (bioluminescence)

just generally being objects of Absolute Terror to land dwellers

a thousand eyeballs being the Norm (have you seen scallops)

in the majority of inhabited Earth areas (i.e. anything deeper than the continental shelf) old school angels would actually pass as Normal And Relatably-Shaped Lifeforms

[elljayvee]

this checks out

[beatrice-otter]

I think you all need to know the actual reason that seraphim have six wings–with two they covered their faces and with two they covered their feet and with two they flew–because it’s awesome.

So, first thing, in most of the Hebrew Bible nobody can look directly at God’s face and live. God is simply too amazing/great/alien. You see God’s face, you die, not because God wants to kill you (God doesn’t!) but just … because it’s the inevitable result of contact with God’s holiness. (This is responsible for such incidents as the time God mooned Moses. Moses wanted reassurance, and asked to see God. God said, “well, you can’t see my face, but how about this. You hide in that crevice in the rock over there, and I’ll cover you up so you’re safe, and then I’ll pass by, and when I’m safely past you can look at my back, k?” And that’s how it happened.)

Anyway, even angels can’t bear to look at God, which is why the seraphim cover their faces in God’s presence. All the weird stuff you all have just been attributing to angels? Can be applied to God with at least as much plausibility.

And then we come to the seraphim covering their feet. Or, perhaps I should say “feet.” Because the Hebrew language, like many languages, has some euphemisms for genitalia. One of them is to call them “feet” or “hands.” This is how, for example, Ruth gets Boaz to marry her. She goes in and lays down at his “feet.” Wink wink, nudge nudge.

So when Isaiah tells us the seraphim are flying around covering their “feet” with a pair of wings, what they’re actually doing is this:

[flyingpurplepizzaeater]

You don’t have to be grateful that it isn’t worse.

[voidbat]

read that. read it again, and again, and again. somebody, somewhere, always has it worse than you. there is one person on this planet that has it the worst of all, and that person is NOT the only person allowed to be unhappy with their lot. if things are bad for you, they are bad for you. period.

[biwomensupport]

This goes for trauma as well. A lot of times survivors get trapped in a cycle of  minimizing/diminishing their trauma because “other people have it worse” - but there is no hierarchy of trauma. There is no ranking system for which traumas are “better” or “worse.” Your trauma is valid. Period.

[gothiccharmschool]

IMPORTANT TRUTHS.

[lilbittydragon-deactivated20241]

As a therapist, lemme just say: almost every trauma survivor I’ve ever had has at some point said “But I didn’t have it as bad as some people” and then talked about how other types of trauma are worse. Even my most-traumatized, most-abused, most psychologically-injured clients say this. 

The ones who were cheated on, abandoned, and neglected say this. The ones who were in dangerous accidents/disasters say this. The ones who were horrifyingly sexually abused say this. The ones who were brutally beaten say this. The ones who were psychologically tortured for decades say this. What does that tell you? That one of the typical side-effects of trauma is to make you believe that you are unworthy of care. 

Don’t buy into it, because it’s nonsense. It doesn’t matter if someone else had it “worse.” Every person who experiences a trauma deserves to get the attention and care they need to heal from it. 

[meeresfem]

“one of the typical side-effects of trauma is to make you believe that you are unworthy of care.”

SO true.

[should-be-sleeping]

there is no hierarchy of trauma

[dianaespina]

Question: What Is Transracialism?

So I’m very new to the tumblr community and I was wondering if anyone could explain what this term means as it seems to be used fairly frequently? The definitions I found didn’t really seem to match up well with the context of some of the posts.

[dianaespina]

My Adoption Story

I was born in August of 1999, in Mixco, Guatemala.  In the time between my birth and my final destination of US, I had a total of four different maternal figures.  To the best of my knowledge, my birth mother took care of me for a short time, and then another woman when my birth mother was unable to look after me during the day (work?).  Then, for whatever reason, I was put up for adoption and was delivered into the care of my foster mother, who did a tremendous job looking after me.  Final, I ended up in the loving arms of my mom, who then, after the adoption was finalized, took me home to America.  I have spent the rest of my life up until this point in the American Midwest. 

I will first say that I am tremendously lucky.  I have a loving home, and my adoption was never something that was held over my head, my parents were never of the mindset that they had rescued me from my original country or belittled me because my birth mother had given me up.  In fact, my mom is herself adopted, so she is herself acutely aware of both the struggles that come with adoption, and that missing or wondering about ones birth family in no way detracts from their love for their adopted family.  Mom had even reunited with her birth mother and I am very close to that side of the family, having grown up knowing them and celebrating birthdays and holidays with them. Adoption was always a subject that was open for discussion in my house, and my brother (also adopted) and I were encouraged to ask questions and share concerns about where we came from.  It has always just been a part of who I am.

That said, even has happy as my story is, there are still struggles that I have to deal with, scars that are still healing.  Due, I believe, to the rapid changes in a maternal figure at such a young age, I have deep seated trust issues and, outside of my family, I have yet to form a deep, lasting bond with another person.  I enjoy the company of others, and I do have friends, but those relationships are based primarily on proximity, such as attending the same school or youth group.  When I leave that environment, those relationships slip away.  I have yet to figure out how to fix that broken piece inside me that allows me to watch years of friendship fall apart.  

Ever since my senior year of high school, I have been dealing with some identity issues as I discern where I belong in terms of culture and ethnicity.  I was born and lived out my infancy in Guatemala, and am therefore most definitely Guatemalan.  At the same time, I can’t speak the language beyond a little over half a semester of college Spanish at this point, I don’t share the same cultural experience as my peers who were raised in a more Hispanic environment growing up as my family is very much white.  I want to belong to a my ethnic group, but I share basically nothing in common with them as far as social background and to top it all off, I even look pretty white.  Over the past year, it has caused feelings of loss and confusion as I try and figure out where I belong, where it is I have a place.  When an internet search failed to turn up any satisfying articles on the subject, I turned to the tumblr community.  As you may have guessed, I was not disappointed, and thus this blog which pretty much brings us full circle :)

My adoption story is not a tragic one as some of the ones I have come across, but is mainly one of trying to find a place, define my identity, and overcome the damage caused by trauma at such a young age.

[nuktia]

somewhere in-between

[dianaespina]

Why this blog is here

So, I created this blog because as someone adopted at a young age and am just now in college and trying to form some type of connection with my birth land (yay! Identity issues!). I struggled to find articles or things online talking about my problem: where is my place when I grew up in the American Midwest in a fairly white home, but still identify as Guatemalan, while at the same time I don’t speak the language, never shared that kind of cultural experience growing up, nor do I have a main stream, stereotypical Latina appearance. I feel too white to be Latina, but at the same time I feel that my heritage is an important part of who I am and I want that connection to my past. Thus, this blog. I figured that there must be other adoptees out trying to reconnect with the land of their birth, so, here goes nothing :)