Pound Pup Legacy

As I typically do, I was perusing various websites for and about the adoptee.  It seems only We of adoption's aftermath can put into words the true feelings that go behind the mask a purchased child wears for the sake of strangers.  I personally think more attention needs to be paid to adult adoptees bathed in the residue adoption has bequeathed us, but then, mine is not a popular, widely approved and published belief.  Such is the lie  behind free-speech and  liberal political correctness.

I found a most interesting page I'd like to share:

http://www.eurasiannation.com/articlespol2003-06abductees.htm  Below are the excerpts that really reached me:

Stephanie Cho and Kim So Yung are co-founders of Transracial Abductees, an organization that works to educate transracial adoptees and communities of color and expose the unequal power between the white adoption industry and children of color adoptees. They choose the word "abduction" to describe how the adoption industry forcibly removes children of color from their families and communities and assimilates them into their new white families and society.

In this article, they reflect on their experiences growing up in the Northwest United States, when they started thinking about racism and adoption, and how they became political about it.

Stephanie:  When I first came here, my mom used to say I was so small I looked like a "china doll". She meant that as a term of endearment but I would describe it now as racism.

Knowing that I was adopted and recognizing racism happened at the same time for me. People acknowledging the fact that I was adopted was also acknowledging that I was a person of color. This would usually result in someone saying I looked like a "china doll" or saying something about my imported status, like when did you get her like I was just shipped and delivered onsite (which I was).

So Yung: I always knew I was adopted because of the obvious difference in looks between my white adoptive parents and me. My parents always tried to downplay it, and teach me that I was no different from anyone else, meaning that I was "as good as white." All the time I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to question my parents' definition of what my being a Korean adoptee meant. I wasn't allowed to explore Korean culture or ask questions about the war in Korea. I especially wasn't allowed to talk about racism.

As a baby born outside the borders of the USA, I found these two author's perspective both oddly familiar and insightful.  I remember my mother introducing me to her friend, Kathy, telling me she had adopted a daughter, too.  Both women made a strong effort getting the two adopted daughters together, hoping (I guess) that we'd become close friends.  I remember thinking, "So... because we're both adopted, that's supposed to bond us in a way that makes us immediate best-friends?".  I remember meeting Suzie; I was no older than six or seven.  I remember feeling an immediate sense of jealousy.  She was Korean.  She was visibly different.  She was immediately seen as The Adopted Child, it was accepted, and that saddened me deeply.  She didn't have to be told she looked like her adoptive mother or father, and fake the "private joke" adoptees like me had to play for the sake of our parent's pride and well-being.  She didn't have to pretend  to NOT be different, and her parents couldn't lie about her place of origin or heritage.  She was a single entity well-defined by her features, and she owned her facial identity without a fight or struggle.  I envied the gift of visible difference she was given through her adoption.  We were both born outside of the US, both adopted, both younger sisters to natural-born and kept sons, but Suzie and I were world's apart in terms of the adoption experience we each got sold and traded by our own countries.  We were the same, but different.  

I was born in Newfoundland, but my parents were not native Newfies; they were both born, raised and just before I was born, both living in Alberta.  [Yes, believe it or not, I studied enough to know  there is indeed a demographic difference between the two Canadian provinces.]  I grew-up thinking I was from viking-stock, only to learn I'm a farmer's girl.  It may not mean much in terms of black-and-white issues, but knowing such information has always been important to me.  False information is false, and details about myself and my parents were never freely given or offered.  I was not allowed to dwell or discuss Them, (my parents), and the tiny bits and scraps of conflicting information I was given was supposed to satisfy my insatiable need for Answers. I always accepted the nature of never knowing the whole truth about my root-family-departure, but I did expect to have what little information I was allowed to learn to at least be correct.  After all, knowing one's country and region of origin is important, is it not?  Black, white, beige, green or orange, we each need to know where our native Homeland is.

My mother is/was French, my father is/was Ukrainian.  [I did not know this until I was in my thirties.] I am assuming both speak/spoke English.  I am as white as white can be, and was sold to pass as "one in the (new) family", despite my VERY different national origins.  The fact that I was told I was matched to fit my adoptive parents always disturbed me deeply.  In my mind, it implied shame.  Instinctively I knew, Someone was supposed to feel ashamed of my being born and sold, otherwise why would so much attention be given to my physical features, "matching" them to my adoptive parents?  Suzie's parents didn't have to match her, why did mine have to match me?  Something about that "family secret" always bothered me, but I was never allowed to discuss or explain it.  I was too busy fitting-in a human puzzle that made no familiar sense to me.

Being adopted does seem to have a universal trademark that renders said placed child feeling different, and incomplete.  I always knew I was missing something vitally core to my own understanding of myself, but it went far beyond a language of words and groans, cries and moans.  I have always been seen as "over-sensitive", whereas I have always felt deeply misunderstood and unrecognized.  The loss inside of me has always been naturally ingrained, and tightly kept, as I was expected to be grateful for not being an orphaned bastard left outside American borders.  I look now at my four different looking children, and think, could my sense of loss have been tempered had my family heritage not been denied and taken with my visa?   I can only speculate, but I do know this: once I learned my true, real origins, the foggy gaps in mismatched feelings I had related to my personal understanding of myself  seemed to suddenly clear and dissipate.  Dumb things, like the shape of my jaw suddenly made perfect sense, as I began to allow myself to imagine with a little more certainty in truth, "I bet I look more like my Ukrainian dad than I do my French mom."  I find sad comfort knowing WHAT my parents were, even if I never know who they really were/are.

Reading the written words of two female adoptees of non-American origins makes me wonder, how many of us outcasts/imports are burdened with a sense of incomplete ethnic/national identity?  Whether lied to, or denied, is the gap a race or adoption issue?  I don't know... I simply think NOT knowing anything about our own homelands and family culture is sub-human, period.  Open Adoption may have changed the rules to  access and availability of vital bits of truthful information, but for those of us born and sold during the Closed Era, the damage done to all sides of adoption's borders has already been done.