Are you threatened by me?

I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’ve considered giving up many times. It doesn’t matter how much I tone police myself. It doesn’t matter how many rainbows and unicorns I sprinkle on top of my blogs and videos. I always get the backlash about how I’m ungrateful, how I’m bitter, how I’m an “ugly chink”, and how I should shut up.

No one wants to hear it. No one wants to face the complexities and realities of adoption. They want to see me posting paragraphs about how I would’ve been dead had I not been saved by adoption. Maybe throw in a picture of my dog because he’s “adopted” too!

National Adoption Awareness Month is the 30 days of the year where I can really take the filter off. The problem is… I shouldn’t even have a filter. I shouldn’t have to tone police myself to get people to listen.

Society loves to tell me that adoption is all about saving the children. National Adoption Awareness Month began as a way to raise awareness of the children currently in foster care awaiting adoption. It’s turned into society promoting private, infant adoption that basically guarantees you a ‘blank-slate newborn with minimal trauma’.

If adoption is about saving children in need, then why are there prospective parents waiting years for babies that haven’t been born yet?

I believe awareness means being aware of all aspects of adoption. That includes the hard parts. That includes the parts that don’t make you feel great.

You don’t get to choose to only listen to voices that make you feel like a savior… Not when the adoptees that were separated from their first families and not given a choice in their lives are speaking up and telling you things are more complex than you know.

I devote my advocacy to speaking up about the things society doesn’t want to face. Many adoptees are here with me trying to educate and trying to truly support those in need. If you want to tell me that adoption is about helping others, then why are you ignoring the main issues that need support?

National Adoption Awareness Month needs to be a month of education and genuine support. It needs to be a month where you sit in discomfort and force yourself to consider new perspectives.

Why wouldn’t you want as much information as possible when it comes to supporting someone in a situation you will never be in? If you are trying to support the child you adopted, why would you ignore adult adoptees opening up about challenges they were too scared to mention when they were younger?

People say they are no handbooks to parenting–especially parenting as an adoptive parent. But adult adoptees are here. We are telling you ways in which we could have been supported better. We are telling you what you don’t know so nothing comes as a surprise. My advocacy shouldn’t be seen as a threat. It should be seen as trying to help and support the younger generation of adoptees so they don’t have to struggle alone like I did.

For my video on what National Adoption Awareness Month means to me, check out this link:

My Adoption Story Pt. 51 | NAAM2019