IntenseDebate

9 years ago @ Lost Daughters - ROUND TABLE: Adoption ... · 0 replies · +1 points

I have done a course in mindfulness, and I did find it helpful. Without the structure of a class, though, I struggle to make time for it. Mindfulness makes it impossible to ignore the feelings, and sometimes, that's all I want to do.

9 years ago @ http://www.adopteerest... - Double Whammy Adoptees · 1 reply · +2 points

I moved away 16 years ago, and it still took another 10 years to get to an honest place where I could admit to needing to search.

9 years ago @ Lost Daughters - Thoughts on re-naming ... · 0 replies · +5 points

I was a newborn adoption and wasn't named. If my first mother named me, it's too painful to her to tell me.

But I'm watching this with an acquaintance who is adopting a second child from the state. This person has asked for my thoughts a few times, knowing I'm adopted, but has also blown off most of them. SO MANY adopter mistakes. Everyone the adoptive parent knows knows every last detail of the child's journey to foster care and eventual adoption. The prospective parent has been open about how much they cannot wait to change the child's name -- even though the older child (also adopted!) has expressed concern about why this would be okay. It is painful.

I wish my name reflected my roots, and my journey, but accepting it for what it is has actually been a big part of my own adoption/awareness/reunion journey.

9 years ago @ http://www.adopteerest... - The Adoption-Reconstru... · 0 replies · +4 points

The first therapist I went to interrupted my story, the very first time we met, to tell me how "brave" my first mother was (she used "birth mother") and how "grateful" I should be to my adoptive parents. I hadn't even laid out the bare bones of why I was there yet, which was just help in processing how complicated reunion is. I did not go back, and even though she started the session telling me that if we weren't the right fit, she'd help me find someone who was, she was not very nice when I called to say I wasn't making another appointment.

I'm lucky that the next therapist I found was great, and when we reached the end of our road, she helped me find another to work on the things I still need help with, which is still managing the trigger-filled, stressful world that doesn't understand. Only a few people close to me know that I'm getting help, and they haven't laughed it off or questioned me.

It's hard to admit we need help, even to ourselves, when we've been told, over and over, that we don't, that nothing is wrong, that we should be fine.

9 years ago @ - Why I Find #ShoutYourA... · 0 replies · +6 points

I hate to say it, but this will carry more weight in the adoption community because an adoptive parent wrote it -- but thank you for being a true ally in adoption and recognizing that political agendas rarely help CHILDREN who are theoretically the focus of adoption. As an adult adoptee, it makes me cringe to think of these children, years in the future, finding these simplistic politicized photos of themselves still on the internet, and how complicated those feelings will be.

10 years ago @ Lost Daughters - Is Knowing Our Parenta... · 0 replies · +3 points

I can't imagine why this is seemingly good for everyone else, but somehow bad or wrong in the case of adoptees or donor-conceived people. The best argument I can come up with is that Ancestry is so popular that the US government has ceded public documents over to it to share with subscribers. This drive other people have to find out who they are, to go back generations, is denied to us. Why? That is the rationale I'd like to hear.
My recent post Mid-Summer Snowflakes

10 years ago @ Lost Daughters - Rooted to Resiliency: ... · 0 replies · +5 points

I didn't recognize my loss as a child, but I was inexplicably sad a lot. And felt bad and wrong for it, as I was told over and over that I had "no reason" to be sad. I was so numb by adulthood that I could not even mourn my adoptive father when he died.

Coming into my own feelings has hurt -- but I'm so glad to finally feel that hurt.
My recent post Mid-Summer Snowflakes

10 years ago @ Lost Daughters - How to Respond to a Ne... · 0 replies · +2 points

I am also Irish by adoption and very not Irish by blood. The latter was never acknowledged at all growing up, and it's caused me some confusion as an adult in reunion. I think there is a way to acknowledge difference without emphasizing it. The difference is fact. Acknowledging it doesn't make it true -- it just lets the adoptee know that the adoptive family recognizes it.

10 years ago @ Lost Daughters - Thoughts on Family aft... · 1 reply · +7 points

The thing that made the most difference to me in reunion was hearing another adoptee say, simply, "Reunion is hard."
YES!!!

The reunions that are portrayed outside adoptee communities are either a) blissful joy fests where everyone is happy and feels complete, or b) total brutal rejection. Most actual adoptees I've talked to experience a much wider spectrum of emotion, because we're people. For me, it's 4 years in and I am just digging out of the holes. The emotional toll -- both "good" and "bad" emotions -- was rougher than I expected. No matter how it turns out, I'm glad I did it. But it was complicated.
My recent post Adoptee over-reaction

10 years ago @ Lost Daughters - Transracial Lives Matt... · 0 replies · +4 points

I'm not as interested in Dolezal's motive as I am in how that larger story of race, appropriation, and the lived experience of transracial adoptees intersect these stories, as that's why I come to LD to read. Thank you for sharing this perspective.
My recent post Drafty

IntenseDebate Comment System

Connect with 77yan

People I'm following

77yan