my adoption story essay

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My Adoption Story: What's Life Like as an Adopted Child

Table of contents, my definition of adoption and personal story, several advantages of being adopted, some disadvantages that cannot be hidden.

• Increased Opportunities
• Large Family
• Healthier Lifestyle
• Having Time With Parents
• Identity Confusion
• Transitioning to Parenthood
• Tension Between Biological Parents and Adoptive
• Children Become Curious of Who They Really Are

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Your Child’s Adoption Story: Document Their Journey

Your child’s adoption story is important

As an adult adoptee, I find myself wanting to hear my adoption story just one more time—although it is more like a million more times. Hearing it was simply never enough. I wanted to have something I could visually remember, or an experience that I could always look back on. I wanted to flip page after page and see how two people, once strangers, took a leap of faith to adopt me and became my heroes. They are my parents. I want to remember the day my parents adopted me—every birthday, every first day of school, and every hug they have ever given me.

Adoption stories are important to adoptees. They are important in helping to foster a connection or relationship between adoptive parents and their adopted child. It is important for a child to know where they come from.

Try these creative activities to build your relationship with your adopted child and help your child understand their adoption story.

Create a storybook for your adopted child

Children’s books serve as a great resource for children to learn to read, laugh, and smile. Creating a children’s book with your child that tells your child’s adoption story will help your child to understand what it means to be adopted, and it will help them to feel more confident and comfortable about being adopted. Begin with simple sentences and easy vocabulary for your child to understand. No worries, you don’t have to be an artist or a published author to create an awesome book that you and your child will cherish forever.

Writing ideas: your child’s birth mom and siblings, where your child is from, why your child was placed for adoption, the hospital stay and birth, how you prepared for your child’s arrival, etc.

What you will need: construction paper, notebook paper, markers, crayons, glue, glitter, colored pencils, hole puncher, yarn, and a stapler (mom and dad should assist).

Allow your child to do the coloring and drawing while you do the writing.

Chronicle your child’s adoption journey with a scrapbook

Scrapbooks are one of the cutest and coolest books an adoptive parent and child can put together. Who doesn’t love looking at pictures, beautiful colors, touching textured items such as a piece of fabric from your child’s first blanket, first teddy bear, or first hair bow?

Your scrapbook chronicles your adopted child’s journey from the time your child was in their birth mommy’s womb to adulthood, covering little moments to major life events. It serves as a great communication tool between you and your child. What makes the scrapbook different from the storybook is that it is more of a photo book that gives you, the adoptive parent, the opportunity to be creative as you tell your child’s story every time they ask to hear it.

What to put in your scrapbook: photos, locks of hair, cards from friends and family, drawings, buttons and fabric from your child’s outfits, stickers, sweet messages from your child, etc.

Remember, it’s your scrapbook. Get as creative as your heart wants to. And remember that scrapbooks are ongoing. I encourage you to scrapbook your child’s and family’s life all the way through his or her adulthood. Imagine how special it will be when your child is an adult and can look back and realize how blessed they were by their adoption.

Keepsakes are treasured momentos for adopted children

I have always believed it is important for adopted children to have a memory of their birth family, such as a baby blanket or a teddy bear; and I have always thought it is important for a child to have a memory of how two families became one through adoption. These keepsakes are important. If there is ever time a child misses their birth mom or birth family, they will always have a part of them.

What you should create and keep: foot prints and hand prints of birth mommy, adoptive mommy, and baby. Create a plaster hand print of your child’s birth mom to help your child feel like they have an identity connection to their birth mom. Use a baby blanket, notes and cards, teddy bear, and jewelry from your child’s birth mom that can be used to create a shadow box to remember her by. Collect souvenirs from cities, states, or countries you may have traveled to adopt your child.

Imagine how special the moments will be when your little one snuggles up in your arms as you share your child’s adoption story. As overwhelming as it can feel at times, the smile and sparkle in your child’s eyes will bring you the peace that made the process all worth it. No one said adoption would be easy, but to be able to look back on the journey through scrapbooks, storybooks, and keepsakes, you will realize how blessed you truly are.

How will you share your child’s adoption story?

Written by Jason Granillo

Jason Granillo

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I was adopted. And my story is nothing like the ones you’ve seen on TV

Randee Dawn is a contributing writer for TODAY and has a new novel out Aug. 23, " Tune in Tomorrow ," about a fantastical reality show run by mythical creatures, for mythical creatures ... but starring humans. She was inspired by her years working in entertainment journalism and peeking behind the scenes of TV shows and movies, some of which has ended up in her debut novel. She penned this essay for TODAY based on her longtime love of all things TV and film — except for one very specific, personal thing.

When I was a little girl and still learning to talk, my mother played a game with me: “Who are you?” she’d ask, and I’d rattle off any number of answers I had learned. I was a girl. I was blond. I was Jewish. I liked to read. And I was adopted.

In my mom’s way of thinking, I might not know what some of those words meant — but by the time I was old enough to ask, they wouldn’t be strange or alien concepts. I’ve always been grateful for that: Adoption was as much a part of me as the color of my hair, or the family faith, or anything else about me.

But if I’d only ever learned about adoption from television and the movies — well, I’d have a hard time believing anyone has a positive adoptive experience. For every nuanced, well-told portrayal today (like Randall on “This Is Us” or Lily in “Modern Family” ), there are older TV movies like “Natural Enemy” or “Adopting Terror” in which any number of horrors come to pass: Adoptee is evil. Adoptee is estranged and resentful. Adoptee was stolen by criminals who now raise her. Adoptive parents are cruel and dismissive. Adoptee totally abandons the parents who raised her in the pursuit of “blood” relations whom she’s never even met.

On all ends of the spectrum, adoption is frequently presented as a gray, murky area full of offensive semantic choices and the suggestion that all adoptees are broken — and might turn on you in a heartbeat. The nuances are much more complicated and deserve better treatment in fictional settings.

I started noticing this more once I began writing about soap operas for an industry magazine, and I saw these tropes play out frequently amid the melodrama. While there are awesome, forward-thinking stories told on soaps — I used some of those tropes in my new novel, “Tune in Tomorrow” — soapy shows are often preoccupied with offspring. Who are the parents? More importantly, who’s the “real” daddy/mama? Which parent didn’t know they even had a secret child? An adoptee’s birth parents come knocking to claim “their own blood!” And a mysterious stranger arrives in town to make trouble, then ends up being related to a key figure on the show — whom they might never have met. What horrible things will they now do to cement their status among a “real” birth family?

TV shows' preoccupation with the evils of adoption is endless, and endlessly exhausting. How often do stories talk about “blood” relatives being the most important in a person’s life? About a sibling who might be a complete psychopath — but you can’t abandon them or turn them in because they’re a “blood” relative? How about older characters who cut out anyone who’s not a “blood” relation?

Of course, this thinking exists in the real world — there’s at least one close relative in my family who was disinterested in me because I wasn’t of his “blood” — but TV shapes our impressions and underscores “blood” or "DNA" as the only way a person can be legitimate in a family. Fortunately, everyone else in my family didn’t give two hoots that I wasn’t “born” into it.

Still, hearing it brought up so often in TV shows is problematic: By using “real” and “natural” to designate biological children, does this mean that I was “pretend” or “unnatural”? Words mean things, and words connote attitude and tone. Children who are adopted or fostered are family; labeling them as “other” is harmful and abusive — something TV show writers should be more aware of.

The truth is that a 1994 study, “Growing up adopted: A portrait of adolescents and their families,” revealed that “most adopted children and teenagers succeed … adopted adolescents tend to do as well as adolescents in general.”

Fortunately, both TV and movies are starting to wake up to the nuances of adoptees and both biological and adoptive families. Every story is different, and every story has its own way of playing out. As blended families become more commonplace, series appear to be phasing out the use of “adopted” as a slur, or as the most important aspect of a character’s personality. Think of “Anne With an ‘E’,” “Parenthood,” “Glee” and “The Fosters” as just a few examples of series trying to push back on the expectation of adoption as tragedy, rather than a chance to reimagine what family looks like.

In “Tune in Tomorrow’s” fantastical docusoap, one actor’s character learns that he’s not actually related to the terrible woman he’s always thought of as his mother. But the fictional show undergoes an upheaval that never lets that revelation fully play out. That was intentional: By using that twist in the story, I could turn up the volume to 11 on what an out-of-the-blue “discovery” might be like — and then insist that it doesn’t have to change everything.

Adoption has once again become a major talking point since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade . The discussion now seems to be that adoption is always an option. It is — for some. And it isn’t — for others. Many people will not choose adoption, for their own reasons that are wide and varied — but may have been influenced by what they see on TV or in the movies. They, and we, deserve to have it presented as a potential happy ending.

Adoption is not a political rallying point, and it shouldn’t be a throwaway plot point to ratchet up drama on a TV show.

Adoption was a choice my biological parents made, for personal reasons. It was a choice my adoptive parents — who are my mom and dad — made, also for personal reasons. It’s not a political rallying point, and it shouldn’t be a throwaway plot point to ratchet up drama on a TV show. Adoption is just one more flavor in the rainbow of ways to raise children. It does change everything — but everything does not have to change because adoption has come into the picture.

It’s just another way for me, and the millions of others like me, to understand: “Who are you?”

“ Tune in Tomorrow ” publishes Aug. 23 and can be found in bookstores and online.

Randee Dawn (she/her) is an entertainment journalist and author based in Brooklyn. In addition to writing for TODAY.com, Variety and The Los Angeles Times, her debut novel, Tune in Tomorrow , about a reality TV show run by mythic creatures, published in 2022. She's also the co-author of The Law & Order: SVU Unofficial Companion . When not interviewing the stars or dabbling in speculative fiction, she dreams of the next place she can travel to, or cuddles her Westie. More at RandeeDawn.com .

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Adoption: An Essay

What is it like to suddenly be contacted by the birth parents you've never met.

Posted October 27, 2011 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Adopting an Identity

It's a day just like any other in my freshman year, and my mom tells me my dad cried over the contents of the envelope she just handed to me. I have a hard time believing her, because I've never seen my dad cry and because dads, by the laws of nature, aren't supposed to cry. But the envelope concerns me, and it concerned my dad enough to cry about it.

Pretty soon, I'm crying, and my mom's crying. Our faces are like shiny red beets while tears fall into our open mouths as we try and fail to talk to each other through the tears. We only manage blubbering, guttural noises.

Inside the envelope are letters and pictures. My mom says they're from my biological parents, and that idea doesn't process, because the handwritten letter from my bio-father looks so much like my mom's handwriting that I think she's playing some sort of trick on me. She's not.

I flip through pictures of Chimene and Richard, these accidental lovers, and of the two half-siblings I never knew about. It's surreal; I feel only half awake as I flip among the pictures and wonder who these people are and wonder who I am because of these letters.

I felt out of place in my family. I would see families stockpiled with love. But love felt awkward since I didn't know how to give it, because I didn't, and in some ways still don't, appreciate everything my family does for me.

And I didn't see myself in my parents. They didn't read; they didn't like the kind of movies I like; they didn't share my atheism, my cynicism , or any personality quirks. I didn't understand the concept of all this familial love, because I wasn't sure how to love my parents when I felt disconnected from them.

My mom lingers. I think she feels as though she's obligated to help me along this emotional journey because she's my mom, and that's her job. All I can think about is how similar this is to the moment in the second grade when I was told I was adopted. I laid on the king-sized bed in my parents' room, talking about my day, wide-eyed at the fact that a girl in my grade was adopted. And then my mom told me that the girl and I had similar life stories.

My mom claimed she told me when I was young, but I didn't remember. At 8, I was told I was unique in a way I didn't want to be. We sat in silence for a while, and I wanted nothing more than to go away and cry. So I excused myself and got a Pepsi from the fridge. My mom accompanied me, and I can't remember feeling more sad, embarrassed, and angry in my entire childhood at the fact that she wouldn't leave me alone.

My biological mother uses an abundance of "teehees" in her structurally strange, typed letter because apparently she's funny, and laughter can't be captured on paper. I can't connect with her "teehees." I can't see any humor in the impersonal black ink. I can't connect with a person whose letter is like a resume, a list of altruistic hobbies and likable characteristics. Yet, I look at this paper and see myself in her love of books, her terrible humor. And I feel almost a sense of... relief.

I can't relate to my parents. And now I'm reading about this woman, seemingly so foreign, this woman who's training for the Iraq war and likes to plant, whose first love is God followed by her husband John, this woman who's half like me. Only half, but that's half more than I can say for my parents.

I sift through her computer-paper memories printed in the dull-colored ink. Then I move on to Richard. I already like him. He gave me actual pictures, glossy, without fingerprint smudges, true and genuine, just like his handwritten letter that tells me he took time and effort in this compilation.

I almost feel like an intruder looking at his best friends, his brother, his beard that makes him look like The Dude from The Big Lebowski . Richard begins by feeling obligated to tell me that I wasn't a mistake, that there was a good reason why I was brought up by a different family, blah blah. I don't need comfort from a man I don't know.

But I do know him. It's terrifying to the point where my hands begin to shake.

I know him because I'm the carbon copy of him, from his cheekbones to his aspirations. Our canines are identical, our eyes mirrors, our dimples cousins, our smiles duplicates. As I read the letter, I grow more and more dumbfounded. I want to major in film, and I think NYU is just about the most amazing school there is. So when I read that he majored in film production at NYU, I'm literally scared.

The similarities don't stop there. We're both adopted, we both love movies to no end, we like math, we prefer Judaism to other religions, we're both this, and we're both that. This letter is staring me in the face, telling me that I'm not random, that it's OK to not be like my family because I'm not exactly a part of them.

It's natural to want to believe that humans are independent. We all like to think we have freedom, that we're not controlled by anyone or anything. But science suggests that we are biased creatures with predispositions originating from either our genes or our environments. The nature versus nurture debate has been going since the dawn of psychology. Some say that we are a product of our environments; how we grow up and the conditions we grow up in help determine who we are today. For instance, someone can be a bitter adult due to a poor upbringing or a selfish adult because of a spoiled childhood.

The opposing view of this is that we have genetic predispositions that shape who we are. It's in our genes to like or dislike something; we're already programmed to be a certain way. Scientists have looked into this study by observing twins who have grown up in different environments. Theoretically, if nature wins out, they should be very similar people; however, if nurture is the dominant factor, they would be completely different people.

Homelife, culture, and peers definitely play a role in the makeup of a person. But then there are people like Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe, identical twins reared apart. One was raised as a Catholic and a Nazi while the other was raised in the Caribbean as a Jew. They both liked sweet liqueur and spicy food, tended to fall asleep while watching television, flushed the toilet before using it, kept rubber bands on their wrists, and had quick tempers. When they met, they were both wearing blue, double-breasted shirts, mustaches, and wire-rimmed glasses.

And this might seem like a freakish coincidence, but it's not an anomaly. Among other examples, there are also the two Jims; twins reared apart named Jim who had sons named James, first wives named Linda and second wives named Betty, dogs named Toy, vasectomies, a woodworking hobby, fondness for Miller Lite, chain- smoking habit, and more similarities they shared.

It seems that nature wins this debate. But I didn't need studies to tell me that. I learned it in a letter.

I don't resent my parents because I'm not able to relate to them. What used to bother me was my brother. It's clear to see that Gerald Singleton King, Jr. is my father's son. They have matching hot-heads and hairlines and a knack for business. My brother borrowed my dad's eyes and my grandpa's height to become who he is. And when you turn to my mom, you can see how G.J. has her social skill and empathetic demeanor.

Then there is me. The shortest person in my entire extended family, the only blue-eyed girl, the sort of person to read Infinite Jest for fun while everyone else has a magazine in their hands. My entire family always told me I was an artist, but I'm pretty sure that's because they didn't know what else to call me.

I always wanted to do something different, and I'm not sure if that's because I was already labeled as different or because I genuinely wanted to. But then my brother went to Brown University and then to Stanford. I had no room to do something awesome because my brother was better; my brother was biological.

It took me a while to stop comparing myself to G.J. I stepped back and remembered: Yeah, I'm different. We don't share the same biological source, so how can my brain cells compare to his?

And I have to remember. It doesn't happen often, but I have to remember that my parents aren't useless. I know I take them for granted; every suburban teenager does.

If they didn't raise me Christian, I wouldn't have found my voice through atheism. If they didn't provide for me well, I wouldn't feel the need to provide well for others. If they didn't teach me the laws of the world, I wouldn't know how to rebel against them. While I found solace in the letters, I had to remember—have to remember—that my ability to relate to strangers doesn't compromise the fact that my parents are, and always will be, superior because they raised me.

Richard is rather poignant. All bio-fathers should be as cool as Richard. No one has ever told me that I'm special the way Richard is telling me I'm special. He writes, "Your existence in this world means a lot to me. It's difficult to put into exactly the right words, but it's kind of like... When you were born, it validated my existence. No matter what I did or did not accomplish from that point forward, there would always be you."

I think I needed Richard's letter more than Chimene's letter. Maybe that's because I was able to relate to him so well, and I needed a father figure to relate to. My dad always had my brother; they bonded over sports and muscle. And I had my mom, which was fine.

But I think I rejected my dad a lot, not only because he was sports-crazed, and I wasn't, but also because I only ever remember the bad things about him. Like the time he threw mashed potatoes in my hair at Thanksgiving. Or whenever he would yell something rude at me, then adopt a gentlemanly Southern accent for his customers on the phone. Or when I called 911 when he collapsed unconscious on the stairs and never received a thank you.

I'm not saying I needed a father figure or that Richard would fulfill that gap I (perhaps) have in my psyche left over from an unrequited relationship that was never really formed. The bottom line is, it's nice to hear that I'm special.

My mom told me she's scared that when I'm upset, I lock myself in my room and look at the battered envelope and dream of a life with a family that would accept me. I don't. I hadn't even touched the envelope for a second time until last week, trying to write this paper and remember why my bio-parents are still important to me.

I wanted to meet them when I was younger. I wanted to live a different life when Hinsdale was too small or too dull for me. I dreamed of the day I would turn 18 and find them wherever they were lurking. It frightened me to think that there were people walking and talking and living out there who came together under erroneous circumstances of which I was a product.

I struggled with the idea that I had two sets of parents, four sets of grandparents, double order of everything, and I'd never get the chance to know half of them. It didn't seem fair that there were two people whose blood I shared living normal lives without me. I never grasped the phrase "blood is thicker than water," because I didn't know whose blood ran in my veins.

I understand my mom's fear that I might get along with my bio-parents if I met them and abandon her to have a hunky-dory relationship. But I think my mom's fear is irrational. She's my mom. It's not as though I'd go running off with some woman I didn't know only because she gave birth to me.

My biological mother wasn't the person I talked to every day after school about my day. She wasn't the person that drove me to all the soccer games I never even played in. She wasn't the person who bought my Christmas presents, who wasn't afraid to touch me when I got the flu because I was stubborn and didn't want a flu shot, who searched online for weeks to find a replacement for my striped Ralph Lauren comforter that I ripped unintentionally while taking a nap. Chimene had nothing to do with my life, nor did she have the right to, because she had never been a part of my life.

I don't know whether or not I want to meet them now. I'm not sure I could stand the humility. "Oh, hi, my name is Maz, and I think I'm your daughter." Yeah, I'm sure Hollywood has already covered that conversation.

And I feel as though I'd be an inconvenience. Out of nowhere, a daughter of sorts comes into their lives. I know they basically plopped right down into my life with that envelope, but I needed to know who they were; I needed just a little bit of information about them in order to accept myself and the differences between my family and me.

If we reversed the scenario, if I contact them, I would feel obligated to keep talking to them, or else it would be too awkward to have a potentially life-changing encounter, only for communication to fizzle out after one or two meetings. And I'm sure that's a hassle, for both them and me, as well as my parents. I don't think my mom could handle it; all her fears would come creeping back, and horrid little ideas would form in her mind in my absence.

But, most importantly, I don't see the point in getting to know my bio-parents anymore. When I was little, I nearly begged for a different life. And now I'm off to college in a semester—I'm forced to have a different life. I don't feel that longing anymore, the sort of longing that requires endless amounts of hoping and pining for something not quite in your reach.

Because the thing is, I'm sure my bio-parents are wonderful people. They sound like wonderful people. But I don't need or want their approval. I don't need or want a relationship with them. I know they exist. And that's enough for now.

Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H. , a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is a professor of psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center and author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk .

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How to Tell Your Adoptee Story

My definition of adoptee story:.

…the result of an adoptee exploring the story they have been told by adoptive parents, agencies and adoption documents, and instead of repeating this information as their story, start questioning the validity of said information and start adjusting the angle and terminology of the story, to develop a way to tell the story that truly and honestly reflects their own experience, based on the facts that can be proven. In this process, the adoptee becomes the true narrator of their own experience and take full ownership of their own story.

Before getting into the article, I want to preface with the message that even though this title looks like I am going to tell you what to do and how, I am in no way telling you what to do or how. I hope that makes sense somehow.

One of the pillars of my work here with This Adoptee Life is letting fellow Adoptees know that however you chose to tell your story, based on where you are in your journey, is valid. And, I invite you to dig deeper, question more and explore beyond what you have been told. You can tell your Adoptee story* and you have every right to.

I write this to serve as a guide for anyone struggling with how to verbalize your experience and story and building up the courage to speak it out loud. These are the steps that my process took me through, and I want to share them with YOU.

Read them in this article, and then head over to the my latest podcast episode to hear me share the difference in how I tell my story today.

• Read your adoption papers

Chances are you have heard your story, or part of your story, from you adoptive parents. Chances are also that when they told you this story, they added in their own layers from their experience through the adoption process. Maybe they used words meant to reassure you that you were loved, chosen, and wanted.

I was told part of my adoption story, based on what was provided to my adoptive parents and would grow up my whole life repeating the same.

Until one day I realized that adoption papers may or may not be true. And until one day I realized that this story had nothing in it that I had contributed, yet it was somehow my life and my story.

That felt conflicting to me. The solution came when I started picking apart what this story actually was and what parts of it, I could actually stand behind.

• Explore your story beyond your adoption papers

Picking apart my story meant being honest with what I knew to be true from what my adoption papers said. That was a very small amount.

It said that I had been handed over to the police by an unknown woman and that the police had handed me over to the authorities. That was pretty much it.

I stopped telling this as my story once I realized that not only could I not verify who this woman was, but I had no idea how I got into her hands, where she found me, if she found me, if I was ever in the hands of the police, how I got into the hands of the authority.

And behind these questions I found the more important questions like was I found in the street, what happened to my mother, was I abandoned, was I relinquished, was I supposed to have ever gotten into the hands of authority?

On what grounds did my adoption become possible?

I don’t have any of these answers and I doubt I ever will. So, I started telling my story from a different angle. Based on what would have been my perception.

Loss of family.

Loss of country, origin, culture etc.

Being removed from everything familiar and taken to a new life.

• Tell your story without the word adoption

And this overlaps with the third step in the process; telling my story without the word adoption in it. I realized that so much is embedded into the word adoption. For most people, this word is positive. It gives connotations of a child being given love and safety and of a child being welcomed into a family. I think it’s safe to say that most people think of adoption is a solution that awards all parties involved something they need.

Going up against the deeply rooted and established narrative of adoption seemed to be an impossible task.

So, I stopped trying.

Instead of telling people they were wrong in their beliefs about adoption, I told my story with a different focus, my loss.

Doing this, I started getting different reactions. I was not highlighting adoption. Instead, I highlighted what I had lost and the trauma this had caused.

I let people piece together the fact that my adoption was preceded by trauma, caused me an enormous amount of loss, and essentially left me standing alone between two worlds.

• Allow your story to change as your perspective does

As my perspective on adoption has changed so has the way I tell my story. Because I am telling it from MY PERSPECTIVE. The facts are the same, but the focus has changed and the words I use have been updated.

I’ve given this example before and will repeat it here. In the bio on my Instagram page, it used to say “Born in Colombia. Adopted to Sweden. Live in the US.” I changed that to “Born in Colombia. Raised in Sweden. Live in the US.” Today it says “Born in Colombia. Taken to Sweden. Have chosen the US.”

The subtle change of wording between the first and the current description offers a world of difference in perspective and connotation. The latter is how I see my story unfolding. The word taken to instead of adopted to removes the image of all that I was supposedly given and focus on the fact that my life was altered at the hands of others.

To get the full picture of how I have changed and updated the way I tell my story since I started This Adoptee Life, please, listen to the latest podcast episode on one of the podcast platforms or on YouTube.

• Gather your support

This is one of the most important factors when it comes to telling your story. I used to be afraid that no one would read my words, that no one would find my story relevant and that my efforts would be ignored. I was of course also scared that I would be rejected, isolated, and shamed because of speaking my truth.

Neither happened.

But one of the things that I did do early on, was only sharing with people I knew would be able to receive what I shared. This was mainly fellow adoptees.

I launched this blog; I created the social media pages and I remained anonymous behind This Adoptee Life.

With time, I realized I had people showing up in support. I was able to make connections that would be my cushion should criticism come my way. I found my people withing the widespread online world of adoptees. And this has been one of factors that has contributed the most to my ability to push out of my comfort/safety zone when sharing my story.

We all need to feel seen, heard and accepted.

When we have that, everything else becomes easier.

I am here for you in that. This Adoptee Life exists with that purpose at the core. For adoptees to feel seen, heard, accepted, and supported in speaking your truth.

My invitation to YOU, my fellow Adoptee

I invite you to connect with me and to sharing your story on This Adoptee Life Blog. November is National Adoption Awareness Month, and each year, I invite fellow adoptees to write their Adoptee Story and I am happy to feature it on the website.

I believe one of the ways we can take back our power over the narrative of adoption, is by telling our own story, from our own perspective.

And I believe there is power in numbers, so each voice, each story, each experience, and contribution are valid and important.

You are not alone. Your story is important. You voice matters. You deserve to own your story. You have every right to tell it.

Please, see the link to submit your Adoptee Story for NAAM 2021 . And if you have any questions or want support in the process, please, reach out to me.

I thank you all for being here, spending time with me here on This Adoptee Life. 

T o all my fellow adoptees,

PS. Let’s be in this together.

I send you love, compassion and appreciation, ALWAYS!

Amanda Medina

2 thoughts on “how to tell your adoptee story”.

I have recently found my biological parents and I would love to share my story. I just don’t know how. Is this something you can help me with?

Thank you, Tiffany, for wanting to share your story. I would be happy to connect with you and help you do that. You can send me a message via “Contact Me” and we’ll take it from there. Courage, Love & Blessings, Always!

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No Thank You

As a teen, I chose adoption. Why are stories like mine missing from the abortion debate?

I would rather jump through a glass window than talk to literally anyone about reproductive politics.

Church friend from childhood? Glass window.

Tipsy coworker at happy hour? Glass window.

Given the choice between a very normal and appropriate conversation about reproductive politics and a glass window, I will be in the bushes out front, picking glass out of my torso.

That is because when I was 17 I got pregnant by accident and placed my baby for adoption. As such, I have two options during these conversations: Stay quiet about my intimate familiarity with unplanned pregnancy and the difficult choices that come with it, or speak up and make everyone uncomfortable.

By inviting birth mothers into our conversations, we risk complicating the stories we tell ourselves about adoption and the people who participate in it.

If my conversation partner is pro-life, I get to watch their eyeballs spin as they think back over our discussion and try to remember if they said anything suggesting that people like me are irresponsible or immoral. If they are pro-choice, I get to watch steam pour out of their ears as they wonder if it was rude to imply that my 9-year-old son was once a zygote.

The sudden appearance of a birth mother in conversations about reproductive politics makes people uncomfortable—and who can blame them? Usually, if birth mothers get mentioned at all, they are people we talk about, not with. By inviting birth mothers into our conversations, we risk complicating the stories we tell ourselves about adoption and the people who participate in it.

Left Behind

For nine years, I kept my adoption hidden from almost everyone in my life, and it was incredibly lonely. “Coming out” as a birth mother has been a healing journey for me, but it has not made the loneliness go away. In fact, it has made me painfully aware of the near-total absence of birth mothers in media, politics, religion, family, academics and medicine.

That absence can be traced back to some deep-rooted societal discomfort with the institution of adoption. For a long time, stigmas about infertility, illegitimacy, genetics and sexuality drove all three members of the adoption triad—birth parents, children and adoptive parents—to keep adoptions a secret.

Then, attitudes shifted. Today, U.S. culture largely celebrates adoption as a way to form new family ties. Religious communities, particularly Catholic and Protestant Christian, played an important role in normalizing and encouraging adoptive families. Meanwhile, adoption was ensconced in contemporary pro-life rhetoric. If women get abortions because they do not want to be parents, the thinking goes, adoption is a life-affirming alternative.

“Coming out” as a birth mother has made me painfully aware of the near-total absence of birth mothers in media, politics, religion, family, academics and medicine.

But there is a problem. The cultural acceptance we rightly extended to adoptive parents and children was never extended to birth parents. Birth mothers still feel pressure to keep their experiences secret, and that pressure speaks volumes about where our goodwill starts and ends.

While adoptive parents may enjoy telling new friends or coworkers their family’s origin story, I cannot talk about my adoption without sucking the air out of a room. While most everyone can rattle off a handful of adoptive parents or children they know personally, few people can name a birth mother. In fact, I have never met another in person, and I have been one for almost a decade.

Erasing Loss and Silencing Grief

Adoption’s move from hushed-up transaction to mainstream ministry relied on its portrayal as a positive, happy thing. And it is a positive, happy thing. Adoption creates entirely new families bound by a powerful love. But adoption is also a sad thing; a parent and child, whatever the circumstances, are separated.

Some birth mothers willingly relinquish children because they are not ready or do not want to be parents. Others are coerced into relinquishing children because of social pressure from families or communities. Still others are unable to parent their children because they lack resources, lack support or are dealing with addiction or other hardships.

Reckoning with birth mothers in all their complexity is tough. So, we usually do not bother to do it.

Instead, we take the beautiful dynamics of adoption, with its sadness, joy, gain and loss, and package them into simple, one-note stories: A heroic teenager spurns abortion and gives her baby a chance at life. A pitiful, fallen woman abandons her child. A weak-willed teen in an oppressive religious community has her choice made for her. In all of these cases, to introduce a flesh-and-blood birth mother—her grief, her love, her courage—would ruin the story.

While adoptive parents may enjoy telling new friends or coworkers their family’s origin story, I cannot talk about my adoption without sucking the air out of a room.

Other times, we omit birth mothers entirely. We applaud adoptive families for giving children a loving home, forgetting that those children may have had loving homes in their birth mother’s body for nine months beforehand. We ask sincerely why abortion still happens when there are so many couples waiting to adopt, as if placing a child for adoption is a matter of supply and demand.

Even homilies and sermons on adoption frequently leave out birth mothers. The biblical mandate to “love the fatherless and the widow” may feel relevant, but it fails to draw any distinction between orphaned children and adoptees with loving birth parents. Adoption often serves as a metaphor for God’s parental love, as well. But that metaphor gets messy when you introduce a birth mother. If God is the adoptive parent, and humans the adopted children, then who represents the birth mother—death, sin, hell? All flattering options.

Adding a three-dimensional birth mother into our common adoption narratives makes those stories clunkier and more complex. Why did this birth mother relinquish her child, if not from heroism or heartlessness? How did she feel afterward?

Compared to those impossible questions, stereotypes and omissions feel much better. And, for years, I leaned on those shortcuts, too.

Adoption often serves as a metaphor for God’s parental love, as well. But that metaphor gets messy when you introduce a birth mother.

When I was a senior in high school dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and the reactions that came with it, the opportunity to present myself as an unlikely hero who marched out of the abortion clinic to give a wonderful couple a chance at parenthood is what got me through a lot of interactions with teachers and church members. When I was a young adult in Chicago nervously telling new, progressive friends about my adoption, I would be sure to put extra emphasis on my evangelical upbringing and devout religious family.

Hero or victim, brave or damaged, selfless or angry. I was a birth mother chameleon, shifting to fit whatever simplified storyline would make me sympathetic to my listeners.

And I really wanted those easy stories to be true. But how could I be a victim when I would never change my choice? How could I be selfless when sometimes I wish the whole thing never happened? How could I be brave when sometimes, I miss my baby so much, I cry really hard in the shower?

I felt I couldn’t mold my experience into something digestible for my parents, my friends, my partner, my coworkers and my son’s awesome mother, so I spent years stripping it of its complexity or hiding it entirely.

That approach has not done me any favors. It has not done any favors for birth mothers, adoptive parents or children, either. It has not done any favors for my spiritual communities. It has not done any favors for the people who want their reproductive politics to account for the real experiences of real women.

So, maybe next time someone wants to share their take, I’ll leave the window intact and share why I decided to place my son for adoption: Because I didn’t want to be a parent. Because I was too young to get an abortion in Ohio without parental consent. Because I wanted my community to accept me. Because I wanted to be a normal teenager again. Because I had dreams that didn’t involve being a mother. Because it was the best option available to me. Because I wanted my son to live, and I had the necessary support to make that happen.

As a birth mother, my perspective is nuanced. And that, I’ve learned, is not something to apologize for.

Making Space for Birth Mothers

If religious communities are going to celebrate adoption, especially as a pro-life talking point, they must seek out and amplify the perspectives of birth mothers.

Those perspectives will be diverse, and they will not always be what people want to hear. But that makes them all the more necessary if communities want to develop a truer, more loving understanding of adoption.

Making room for birth mothers in religious communities may look like expanding and refining grief support programs and resources. Academic research suggests birth mothers experience lifelong, unresolved grief: After their adoptions are finalized, they are expected to move on silently, rather than grieving outwardly with a supportive network.

Consider this: As a teenager, I was on stage at church giving a “testimony” about my pregnancy-and-adoption experience—while I was still pregnant. The intentions were good, but the outcome was bad. In the eyes of my congregation, my story had been wrapped up with a bow before it had begun. Instead, we should:

Treat birth mothers with the care afforded a mother who loses a child . Do not brush the experience away because it makes you sad or uncomfortable. Do not wrestle it into an inspirational tale. Let birth mothers speak openly about their sadness, anger or confusion, if they want to. Sit with them. Cry with them. Make space for their loss and ongoing grief, even as you celebrate an adoptive family’s joy. Grief does not cancel out joy, or vice versa.

[Don’t miss more stories like this one. Sign up for our newsletter.]

Incorporate actual birth mothers into your political conversations about abortion. If you are willing to toss out adoption as an alternative for pregnant women, be equally ready to amplify resources created by birth mothers. Read and recommend books by birth mothers who, like myself, had positive experiences with adoption, as well as books by birth mothers who had terrible experiences. Both will make you more informed and empathetic. Toss in plenty of books by adoptive parents and children, while you are at it.

Think twice before simplifying adoption to a transaction. I hear it all the time: “There are thousands of couples waiting to adopt.” Adoption is an incredibly difficult decision. If you wouldn’t want to take on nine months of medical risk and social punishment to give your much-loved baby to someone else, don’t blithely suggest that others do so.

Examine your reliance on stereotypes to understand birth mothers . Is the birth mother in your imagination a shadowy specter leaving her baby on the steps of a firehouse? A selfless hero, happily relinquishing her baby so someone else can start a family? Or is she a three-dimensional person with a future and a backstory, with a variety of feelings and motivations?

Honor the adoption triad. When adoptions involve three parties, don’t erase birth mothers. We can rejoice with adoptive families without implying that they saved adopted children from their birth families or that those children were unloved or unwanted.

Last, when theological language of adoption omits birth mothers, find a way to reinsert them. Our focus on God as an adoptive parent is valuable, but what about God as birth mother, giving her child to us all?

Even more, what about God as a triad: three entities, all blessed and indispensable. Or is that too much to imagine?

More Stories from America

– I have two kids with Down syndrome. Here’s what I wish those considering abortion knew about life with them. – This Catholic doula wants to broaden our understanding of ‘reproductive justice’ –  White parents adopting Black kids raises hard questions . We can all learn from them.

Tatum Hunter is a journalist, performer and birth mother based in Chicago. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Built In, Salty, American City Business Journals, Reductress and more. You can find her newsletter, Mom’d, at momd.substack.com.

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What I Didn't Expect About the Adoption Process

Becoming a parent is a big decision, and making the decision to not parent is even larger. Rarely are adoptive parents aware that their efforts to become parents end up colluding with systems whose processes may perpetuate harm on the birth parents and the children they love. And there are few people, if any, to hold and care for those who realize they are unable to parent. I would come to learn all this through the adoption process .

I am a parent to two children: a 16-year-old son who was adopted at 5 months, and a 9-year-old, conceived via the support of donor sperm . When I began the adoption process with my oldest, I understood that people often place their children for a variety of reasons. But I was angry and saddened at how common it is for birth parents to be coerced to do so by family, social workers, attorneys, and friends. Some were never given a choice at all, some were never presented with the necessary resources to believe they could parent.

As the adoptive parent, I was challenged to reflect on my role in the system and within the adoption triad . I had to consider how to reconcile with the reality that I am a person in the scenario benefiting from the process.

My son may have material benefits, but they will never make up for the awareness of decisions made about his life before he ever had words of his own. Material goods do not make up for not having a picture of the woman who birthed you or the siblings you may never meet, nor do they make up for the gap in medical information that can be helpful if one is living with a variety of mysterious illnesses.

I had to learn to sit with the experience of having joy through another's sorrow.

As an adoptive parent, I had to learn to sit with the experience of having joy through another's sorrow. I had to learn to parent a grief that was unknown to me. I had to sit with the reality that, despite the problematic systemic conditions that led to the placement of my child for adoption, he needed someone to parent him when the system, along with his parents, determined that biological family could not.

As a social worker, I strived to support a placement that would have been open . I wanted the parents to be able to make an informed decision before landing on the decision to place their child. But that is not the story I hold, and it is not the story my child understands. Instead we discuss a story that is unique to us. (The remainder of the story is for my child to tell.)

I was surprised when we received the paperwork from the adoption agency that, as an adoptive parent, you can denote the conditions or circumstances that you can or cannot manage in terms of health conditions, family histories, and any prenatal substance exposures. I was surprised at the way choice was presented here when so much about the process can't be easily predicted or controlled. Despite the illusion of choice that emerges, adoption, like other forms of family making, requires a capacity to embrace the unknown and accept the likelihood of some disappointments in the process.

What also surprised me was the discomfort of the urgency I experienced when waiting for a child placement. I hadn't gone into the process feeling particularly anxious or urgent, but once the papers were signed, and the photo book constructed, I was surprised at the emotionality tied up in the process of waiting for a call. You enter a period of constantly dreaming of what may be, or trying to avoid dreams altogether, and get to the business of living your best life until you have a child who is anchored to you.

You are awaiting a call that someone is unable to do what you can because, in many cases, you have access to certain resources they do not. You have to contend with the profound privilege that resides in being in a position to be able to adopt . I understand that there is a reason why adoption exists, and as an adoptive parent, I have to sit with the fact that many of the reasons are due to systemic barriers around parenting.

As someone who is Black, lesbian, and raised with class fluctuations, for the first time in my life, I was in the position of privilege. I had to make decisions about which type of child placement was most appropriate for me and my spouse at the time.

As we were contacted here and there about potential placements, I was most surprised to learn that certain children have different fees attached to the processing of their paperwork and documentation because they are more "popular children," i.e. mixed race or white. (I recommend Elizabeth Raleigh's " Selling Transracial Adoption " for further reading.) This reality was wholly unexpected. I expected that white children or biracial children were placed into adoptive homes more easily because, as a dark skinned person, I know how colorism works. I was also aware there was a disproportionate number of babies who were Black. But the various hierarchies of race some adoption agencies used was deeply disturbing and I pondered how this was at all OK.

When I initiated the process for adoption, I was enthusiastic. Since I was young, I had planned on adopting. After placement occurred, however, and as my child continues to mature, my enthusiasm is blunted by a very clear understanding that adoption for many is not always a process of consent — whether the lack of consent is due to coercion or due to systemic conditions that make parenting impossible.

I have had to sit with the reality that the happiness and joy I experience with my son is because someone else did not feel like they had a choice. But as I hold space for these complexities of circumstances, I'm able to support a space for my child to live into his own story of who he is and where he's come from.

Lisa L. Moore , LICSW, PhD, has been a social work educator and practitioner for over 25 years. Her clinical practice has been focused on working with individuals, couples, and families who are often queer and BIPOC.

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My Adoption Story Belongs to Me: a Guided Journal Where I can Explore My Adoption Story Paperback – November 24, 2020

• Print length 158 pages
• Language English
• Publication date November 24, 2020
• Dimensions 8 x 0.36 x 10 inches
• ISBN-13 979-8570495463
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08QLGGXJQ
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (November 24, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 158 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8570495463
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 0.36 x 10 inches
• #560 in Adoption (Books)

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What Is Project 2025, and Why Is Trump Disavowing It?

The Biden campaign has attacked Donald J. Trump’s ties to the conservative policy plan that would amass power in the executive branch, though it is not his official platform.

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By Simon J. Levien

Donald J. Trump has gone to great lengths to distance himself from Project 2025, a set of conservative policy proposals for a future Republican administration that has outraged Democrats. He has claimed he knows nothing about it or the people involved in creating it.

Mr. Trump himself was not behind the project. But some of his allies were.

The document, its origins and the interplay between it and the Trump campaign have made for one of the most hotly debated questions of the 2024 race.

Here is what to know about Project 2025, and who is behind it.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and like-minded conservative groups before Mr. Trump officially entered the 2024 race. The Heritage Foundation is a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

The project was intended as a buffet of options for the Trump administration or any other Republican presidency. It’s the latest installment in the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership series, which has compiled conservative policy proposals every few years since 1981. But no previous study has been as sweeping in its recommendations — or as widely discussed.

Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, which began putting together the latest document in 2022, said he thought the American government would embrace a more conservative era, one that he hoped Republicans would usher in.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” Mr. Roberts said on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing cable channel, in early July, adding pointedly that the revolt “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

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