The Declassified Adoptee

"Where are all the happy adoptees? Aren't there any left who are grateful?" one woman wonders in the comments section after reading adult adoptee comments on a New York Times blog. I couldn't help but be amused by this comment as the comments were not really all that "angry."  They simply seemed to have a non-stereotypical take on the adoption story presented.  Adoptees expressed things like loss, ambivalence, and--dare I say it--disagreed with the author in some regard and her portrayal of an adoption issue. "Angry adoptee" is universally defined as someone who expresses anything negative about adoption. It is said that these adoptees have had "bad adoptive parents" and "bad experiences" because they express a feeling of loss or point out a social or policy in adoption.  As an adoptee, sometimes it seems like people believe that the loving family I received through adoption must be repaid to society through my silence.  I am...

"We're all adopted!" I've heard ministers say from the pulpit countless times. The congregation would emphatically nod its head in agreement.  This never sat right with me, even as a child.  I felt somewhat belittled by this claim of false empathy to my experience. I knew that spiritual adoption was not the same as physical adoption on earth. Christians praise God for their redemption from sin and for redemption from the impending inevitability of hell for the unsaved that sin brings.  Salvation saves a Christian from the clutches of sin and brings them home to God's family. Perhaps when we judge single-parenthood poorly (or as second-best) and perpetuate the stigmas against being poor it is easy to make the connection of adoptees likewise being "redeemed" from something horrible.  Many Christians take physical adoption as a charge from God due to the parallel we make to spiritual adoption. I ask fellow Christians to take a closer look before de...

( Photo credit ) A distressed Laura Silsby currently pleads from captivity in Haiti that she and the 9 other members of her Baptist-church-based group "did nothing wrong." She claims that they came out of love in their heart for these children. She tells an interrogator "we did not understand all your rules." She is upset by the fact that the laws in Haiti are so confusing and that the Haitian lawyer appointed to her does not even speak English. She thought that her group could come in, take children out of Haiti for adoption, and that her benevolence was enough to conquer any details she had missed. These children, many of which were crying out for their mothers in a language their 10 Baptist "rescuers" couldn't understand, were were taken with the intention of being adopted to families in the U.S.  Clearly lacking humility and a respect for another culture, they sought to take these children out of their Haiti without looking for their Haitia...