{"id":5107,"date":"2021-01-24T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-24T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lillyfei.com\/?p=5107"},"modified":"2021-01-22T19:02:37","modified_gmt":"2021-01-23T01:02:37","slug":"transracial-adoption-grief-and-imposter-syndrome-as-a-bride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lillyfei.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/24\/transracial-adoption-grief-and-imposter-syndrome-as-a-bride\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wedding Series | Transracial Adoptee Grief and Imposter Syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As I plan my wedding (again), I feel like a total imposter.<\/strong> I scroll through Pinterest trying to find ideas of how to incorporate my birth culture into my wedding. The options either feel very shallow or they make me feel like I\u2019d be a fraud for doing them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think about how if I held a traditional tea ceremony, I would be serving tea to two sets of white parents. I would be the only Chinese person in the six-person ceremony. I consider wearing a qipao as one of my dresses, but I don\u2019t want people staring at me and asking me questions about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all feels so foreign and at this point, it just doesn\u2019t feel fair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t fair that on one of the most important days of my life, I am stressing about how to be my authentic self. How I can pay homage to a culture I was born into but didn\u2019t grow up in. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I still imagine having my first family there. I picture both of my fathers walking me down the aisle. I have no clue if they imagined this for me. I\u2019ll probably never know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While those around my stress about keeping out guest count down and wondering whose feelings will get hurt if they aren’t invited this time around, I think about the people who are supposed to be there but can’t be. The ones who should be sitting in the first aisle, but don’t even know I am getting married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hardest part of it all is this is supposed to be the happiest time of my life thus far.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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But no one talks about how emotionally heavy it can be. When I was planning the first wedding and shared my video about wedding woes, no one expected that would be one of the videos where I cried from sadness and grief. And while I appreciate that people want this to be a happy time for me and they want to reply with the typical, \u201cOf course your first family imagined this for you,\u201d I prefer to sit with all of the emotions and my reality. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, I am happy to be where I\u2019m at. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so proud of the work my partner and I have done to be able to confidently be together and plan a wedding. There is always that grief in the background too. And that\u2019s okay. That\u2019s just my reality as an intercountry, transracial adoptee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more posts from The Wedding Series, click HERE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

For part 1:<\/p>\n