Blog Week: Biological Curiousity

BLOG WEEK:

What bothers you about the Adoption Establishment?

Excerpt from ONE SMALL SACRIFICE: A Memoir (2nd Edition)

Never before had I experienced such difficulty with one story.  I repeat: never.  I took to writing like a duck takes to water.  Most days, writing and doing research is like breathing.  This time was different.  I struggled.  I knew I’d hit something so I had to slow down, to process, to dig. This history, my history, similar stories, had to be somewhere.

How many countries do not allow adoption?  Several.  Iraq is one.  No children from Western Europe, Australia, or Canada are eligible for adoption by Americans right now.

Nonetheless, America’s adoption reach has been global, widely publicized, some insist saintly, God-like of those who adopt orphans, even if money is exchanged for babies.

International adoption really began after the Korean War, when American GI’s left numerous orphans with their poverty-stricken mothers; then Korean and American-Asian orphans were brought here to be adopted in the United States.  After that, Americans adopted thousands of children from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.  There is no bigger adopter.  In 2002 alone, U.S. families adopted over 20,000 children from various Third World nations. 

The overall topic of adoption begged one question for me. “Wait, how do adoptees feel?”  No one had asked me when I was young or old.  I wanted this answered so I dug in.

An adoptee movement makes headlines these days.  Adoptive parents are usually shocked to hear their adopted child say they need to know who they are and what happened.

My Alaskan Native-Celtic friend Anecia says, “The power of identity is stronger than fear.” That’s a powerful statement about adoption, yes.  Anecia went full circle as an adoptee and met her birth mom and dad.  Her adoptive dad helped her.

The reality is adoptees do have a strong biological curiosity. It’s awful scary not to know who you are.  My first goal was discovery —how I lived a mystery and solved it, and I survived spiritually intact and remarkably well.  Other Split Feathers need to know how this is possible, even after our pain.

This memoir is not about my recovery from depression or addiction or self-mutilation or suicide attempts, not at all.  Apparently adoptees do suffer from these more than the rest of humanity.

Facing my own situation head-on, what choice did I have? I was an abandoned baby—it was my initiation into being human.