Dear Adoptive Parents: The Burden of Adoptee Loyalty

[me b zola]

50. "Loathsome"

Disclaimer: I do not speak for every Adoptee

I identify many different ways. For example, I identify as a woman, who happens to work in a STEM field. There are times I have conversations with people that are uniquely shaped with what I have experienced as a woman working in a male dominated field. I can give statistics, I can explain how it feels to know I make less than my coworkers, I can explain how I've been in situations where my gender has influenced my coworkers to ignore my thoughts and ideas, and I can state my experiences as the only woman on a six man team. I never have to say "and of course not all women working in a STEM field feel this way". It's accepted that I'm speaking based on my experiences. I've never had to qualify or defend my feelings. My male coworkers except it. They've seen it. And they value my opinion on the matter. I've even had some adjust their behavior because of these conversations.

Yet somehow, I often have to defend my feelings or experiences when I'm talk about adoption. There's always the disclaimer "Not all adoptees feel this way", or "I'm only speaking for myself here". Why is that? Why is it that when another adoptee says something we don't agree with, the first thing we see is another adoptee jumping in and saying "Well, I don't feel this way" or "You don't speak for me". Why do we do this to one another? I see this all the time. Adoptee A pours their heart out on the Internet (or sometimes in real life). This takes immense personal courage. Then Adoptee B chimes in "Well I don't feel that way!" and leaves it at that. The conversation is over. There is no dialog, no explanation. Just a wish to express that they feel differently without any context or without wanting to further the discussion. They don't seek to understand or communicate, they seek to drop something that to me appears to be silencing. I read that as "You don't speak for me, so stop speaking!"



As an adoptee, I don't speak for you. I speak for ME. I speak to my experience and what I feel and how I think about adoption. But somehow, that gets overlooked. First, I thought it was because there are so few adoptees that people may only speak to one adoptee in their entire life. But really, that's not the case. Taking out the people I've met through the online adoption community, there are four adoptees in my adoptive family (counting myself). My elementary school class had four or five adoptees. My parents' friends were adoptive parents in some cases. I grew up around adoptees to a certain extent and I don't view us as being some mythical creature that everyone only meets one of during their lives. Sorry, but I don't buy that.

Maybe it's because we often don't speak openly about adoption. Adoption is DEEPLY personal for so many of us. For me, it encompasses who I am as a person. It defines so much of who I am and how I grew up. Talking about something so personal and at times raw is difficult. Maybe that's why a lot of adoptees shy away from the topic of adoption. To some, it's not something they care to discuss for a variety of reasons. For others, it's something they've tried to speak about before, but are encouraged to stop for a variety of reasons. Maybe some of it comes from the fact that we're constantly being told that our view isn't the only view about adoption. It gets tiring. Really really tiring. Because of course my view on a complex subject isn't the only view! I think that's obvious. And yet people keep pointing it out, as a way of silencing. It's not just the adoptive parents, the natural parents, and the bystanders, it's other adoptees who are doing it!

~more @ link~ http://www.thelostdaughters.com/

And of course the most obvious smack down of your hateful reply is that it was not MY OP, but I posted Another adoptees article.
But of course, human decency varies #Loathsome