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★ Call me Red ★ living the adoptee experience ★ ramblings about adoption, sometimes venty, sometimes not ★ sideblog ★ all experiences are my own unless otherwise specified ★ Asian, Adult, She/Her ★ 🇻🇳🇮🇪 ★

[red-envelopes]

it kind of just hurts a lot to see how people sit and debate non blood family ties and debate it all as if its just labels and how it doesnt truly matter in the end. it matters even still

[red-envelopes]

I'll never be over there. And they'll never be over here. And there is no way at all for anyone on either side to coexist in a way I want it to. And I have to live with that. I'm working on accepting it. I'm one of the luckier ones. I am glad for what I have now. But I wish I had more. This is all I get. Biblical levels of greed and want when others have nothing.

[oliveptee]

people see adoption more as a trope than an actual thing that happens to real people and it's really fucking annoying

[macsen-y-ceffyl]

One of the emotional labours of being adopted is that you can never stop coming out as adopted and mentioning it to people who don't know you are. You can't remain a "closet" adoptee because circumstances demand you discuss your parents sometimes and it's often unavoidable.

It's one of the most little-known oppressions out there imo. You're never allowed to be normal. You always have to enter conversations about family scared you're going to bring the mood down or weird people out by saying you're adopted.

I can't tell you how I feel the atmosphere shift when I mention my adoptee status. It's like a thick wet blanket hangs in the air between myself and others in the conversation.

Some are benignly curious, sure. Others follow it up with discriminatory language, like "real mum and dad" or demanding to know your literal life story. Most of the time, I preemptively put all my cards on the table, so no-one asks the inevitable.

It plays out just like my oppression for being queer. Or disabled/neurodivergent. Yet it receives little to no attention in the public sphere. There isn't even a name for it.

[macsen-y-ceffyl]

Friendly reminder that adoptees are one of the least-recognised marginalised people in the world. Even though adoption is commonplace. There is unfathomable trauma to being adopted that shakes your world from day one. As an adoptee, please take the time to listen to us when we say that certain things are harmful.

"You're adopted" jokes are harmful. Insisting adoption is always a good thing/nice and rosy is harmful. Using words like "fake" and "real" family is harmful. We are people with complex lives and most, if not all of us, develop some kind of trauma due to being adopted (whether it worked out for us or not).

Don't forget to include adoptee voices and the various intersections we inhabit.

[red-envelopes]

a lot of things a lot of the time really are quite a lot and a lot to deal with. there's only so much weight one can carry. but not many places to set it down. until then one has to keep getting stronger so they can carry the weight. but that's a lot too.

[red-envelopes]

happy mothers day to all adoptees out there. i hope you all have a peaceful day

[rarestsparkle]

i recommend telling yourself “this isn’t an experience i want to keep having” and stop entertaining things that are really detrimental to your health and don’t benefit you in anyway.

[red-envelopes]

i miss my mother :/

[red-envelopes]

Whenever a well known person does something alternative to the norm with regards to childbearing and parenting it always dredges up some conversation regarding adoption fostering and what constitutes "real" parenting and it is INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!

It also brings up the sort of rhethoric of "there are hundreds of children waiting to be adopted"

Okay, so think about why that is and what are you going to do about it?? or are these imaginary orphans just a "gotcha"

Sometimes I'm so deeply entrenched into my activism and advocacy and my path as an educator both irl and online and I forget that I live in the real world and people don't actually care about the "product" of adoption and surrogacy and fostering i.e the children or adoptees or foster youth or anyone at all. It's seen by how people talk about things so deeply uncritically, how things are "just able to be done" you can "just" adopt, you can "just" ask a surrogate, there are thousands of orphans waiting to be adopted. Your mother loved you so much she gave you up for adoption.

And when you bring up children or adoptees or adopted adults or the "results" of surrogacy or donor conceived people or foster youth or care experienced people it's seen as baffling as to why you'd ever have brought this up in the first place? As if they're completely removed from the conversation, as if they're the one's not part of the conversation when they're the entire result of everything and the most affected.

"They're with a better family now" HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT.

This is tiring. This is frustrating. And you can yell raise hell and shout and wave all you like but somehow for some reason because people aren't involved in adoption people DON'T see and DON'T hear. And I'm really truly at a loss.

And then on the other side it's like "they're not real parents" "this isn't your real child" "adoption isnt real" "only biological family can be a true family' it just proves that no one is listening! No one is listening!!! NO ONE IS LISTENING TO ACTUAL ADOPTEES!!!! The People MOST AFFECTED by these conversations are not included at all. It goes too far way over one way or the other.

Things are much greyer than one makes it out to be. And even though there are people shining light through the fog there are people who aren't looking and aren't seeing. And it's not just a few. It's so many. And that isn't just.

[sweetpea67]

The foster care and adoption centers are really fucked up and a huge chunk of the kids in it should not have been removed from their parents in the first place, and this is absolutely a serious issue with roots in racism and classism and white supremacy.

But I also want to push back against this newer assumption that adoption is somehow always evil and violent and tragic and that we should get rid of it entirely.

My younger brother is adopted. His bio mom is my cousin, and she wasn’t ready at the time to raise a child. The adoption was completely voluntary and totally open. We are close to both bio parents and they like to check in every now and then to make sure my brother is doing all right. There was no shady child trafficking, no lies, no predatory practices. The only cultural difference is that he has Polish American ancestry on his bio dad’s side, and we have gotten geneological information in case he ever wants it (which he doesn’t yet).

Literally the only “trauma” (for lack of a better word) my brother has ever experienced from his adoption are the rude remarks of random kids who feel the need to opine on how weird adoption is and how the two of us aren’t “really family”. None of this can be blamed on the adoption itself; it’s prejudice, first and foremost. And by automatically assuming that every adoption scenario is violent or traumatic or abusive (not that we should automatically assume it’s the other way around either!), we actually tacitly accept this level of harassment and play into the amatonormative, heteronormative, etc. idea that “blood = family” which also demonizes stepfamilies and families of choice.

Also, I’m wary of any argument that adopting a kid is morally wrong because I’m pretty sure the only thing everyone refusing to adopt would accomplish is more kids aging out of the foster care system and ending up on the streets.

Adopted parents shouldn’t be put on pedestals, they shouldn’t be treated as uniquely good, and abuse shouldn’t be excused. Adoption agencies and foster care systems should be held accountable for misdeeds, and the violence they inflict on POC and other marginalized groups. But even once we get rid of the kyriarchy, we’re still going to have kids whose immediate (or even extended) family members are dead or unavailable. We’re still going to have people who don’t feel ready to have a child but who ended up giving birth to one anyway. We’re still going to have stepfathers and stepmothers who want to legitimize their relation to their spouse’s bio child. Family reconciliation is a good goal, but it’s never going to work 100% of the time and we need to stop insisting that it will.

[red-envelopes]

somebody did this to me. Somebody consciously chose this for me. Somebody arranged this. Somebody signed off on this. Somebody chose to do this to me. I didn't choose this. I was a baby. so why do I have to be the one to pick it all up and fix it myself. why did my baby self hang onto all of this until it formed part of her schema and then never ever ever let it go

[red-envelopes]

wishing to god someone cared about the condition of adoptees vs wanting people to know that existing like this isnt a death sentence and it should all be condemned vs wishing someone knew how much it feels vs not wanting anyone to know and wanting to keep it toyourself because there's too many files and too many boxes and too many papers associated with your own existence

[kineticthoughts]

Something that Ive been struggling with for awhile now, is how hard it is to articulate the loss of being an adoptee.

It's a particular kind of grief for something you never had.

And how do you even begin to talk about this heavy, empty hole in your chest. This longing for something that nearly everyone around you already has.

And the worst part, is that you feel guilty for feeling this way because you know your parents love you. They've been good to you the best way they knew how.

But the second you try to talk about this lack of connection. This emptiness. They refuse to listen. Because its too hard to see your adoption as anything other than perfect and meant to be. Because deep down it hurts too much to think about why they had to adopt. Because they couldn't have their own child. So they dismiss you.

And you contain your grief. Because its too heavy for them to bear.

[oliveptee]

if you talk about how others (yourself or people you know) want to adopt / encouraging others to, theres always someone that says "I believe in eugenics and adoptees are less than"

[red-envelopes]

I can't help it. I'm jealous. I'm furious. I'm jealous of those who can have it all. I want to celebrate the holidays with all my family, over here and over there. I want to share things. I want a mix of customs. I want to share this and that. I want to bring everyone together. I want everyone to be together. But we can't be together. I want someone to dress me in their traditional clothes and break bread at the table and cook rice and pork and eat turkey and potatoes with everyone. I want to do christmas crackers and hats and light the pudding with them over there and drink too much whiskey and cognac and listen to my parents, all four of them, laughing and talking to each other again, and all my siblings, and to introduce my family to each other, and share my traditions with those over there with those over here. I want more and more and more but I can't have more. I have more than what others have. I should be happy with what I have, but I'm not. Shame.

[greelin]

[EXTREMELY HAUNTED & HOLLOW-EYED LOOK] yeah man i’m doing. Really good