The Declassified Adoptee

Adoptee Rights will get an incredible spotlight tomorrow as Amanda Woolston, Susan Branco Alvarado, and Joy Lieberthal Rho are interviewed by Nnamdi on tough post-adoption issues and policy problems.  Among topics discussed will be the discriminatory way adoptees in the U.S. are expected to access their original birth certificates. The permanent link to the show can be found  here .  You can listen to it live on the web during the noon hour (the last 40 minutes of the hour are expected to be dedicated to these three adoptee professionals).  Transcripts and a recording of the segment should be made available on the page sometime after the conclusion of the segment.

Reading other people's perceptions about adoption isn't always easy.  There are people within the adoption experience who have different roles in adoption that give them different perspectives.  Regardless of role in adoption, there are different feelings, opinions, and experiences.  Adoption is so deeply personal to those who live it.  Even though another person's experience may be different, when adoption is involved, it still may evoke an emotional reaction in ourselves in response. Often times, the personal discomfort brought about by reading a discussion on adoption, or something difficult about being adopted, must be addressed first before the message can be heard.  Here are some things that I keep in mind when I am reading another person's story and think readers of adoptee stories should keep in mind too.

My hair. When it comes to reunion, some might argue that it is not a biological connection that the adoptee is seeking but rather a rekindling of the brief social relationship that began early in life.  As a reunited adoptee, I have never been able to categorize my reunion and reasoning for reuniting so neatly into two clearly separate parts.  At the moment of my birth, my connection to my original mother was comprised of biological, social, and legal ties.  Adoption cut off the social and legal ties with my family.  Adoption practices at the time attempted to cut the biological ties simply by limiting what I was permitted to know about my biological family.  However, adoption did not change my DNA or the fact that I am and always will be the biological relative of my first family. When I  reunited, I sought to re-establish my social connection with my biological roots.  With my planned incorporation of my original surnames into my legal name, I ...

Damian is a donor conceived person, a Medical Researcher, and blogger at Donated Generation  who lives in Southern Australia.  As we've chatted and read each other's blogs over time, we've discovered many shared thoughts and experiences.  I asked Damian to post as a guest here today, and to share with me his perceptions of how adoption and donor conception are similar.  By expanding my understanding on the experience of being donor conceived  and perhaps a reader's understanding too, I hope we can also expand the opportunities to be allies for each other in the quest for truth, identity, and all of our various family ties.  Building empathy for others has helped me immensely on my own journey being adopted; I wanted to share a bit of that with readers today. What do you mean "Half Adopted?" By Damian Adams I thought I’d use this post to discuss some of the similarities between adoption and donor conception (DC). While there are c...

"These were tough things in my life that adoption intersected through like a cannonball,  striking me right in my gut, leaving me feeling winded and sometimes defeated.  I would not get around these things.  I could not pretend like they did not exist."  I continue what I started here over at Lost Daughters .

I was uncharacteristically silent on my blog three years ago when I reunited.  I did not announce here that I had found my original family or that I met my original mother.  I mused about events in popular media in blog entries during that time, staying far away from my personal narrative.  I was frozen in silence from the shock of how real my story had become.  I was balancing a complex spectrum of emotions which I couldn't imagine putting into words. Two years ago, I told the stories of opening the envelope that contained my mother's contact information , contacting her for the first time , and of our first face to face meeting .  What I had gained throughout that first year of reunion was confidence.  What I had received from both families was the reassurance that I could view, interpret, and express my own story, even when it intersected with their stories, in my own voice.  Today, I am taking those stories I told last year and I will v...

Photo by Photo: Dmitry Astakhov published at USA Today In a recent political maneuver, Russia's Vladimir Putin announced that he was placing a ban on adoptions from Russia to the United States.  Putin's ban is reportedly in response to Obama signing the Magnitsky Act, a law which aims to punish Russian officials for human rights violations.  The media has responded in a frenzy.  News articles responding to this ban tend to represent a blend of two angles: the disappointment of prospective adoptive couples who will not be able to adopt from Russia, and the injustice of fewer available homes for institutionalized Russian children. Critiques of the ban largely neglect to mention what Harlow's Monkey pointed out in this eloquent piece , that this ban is exclusively for adoptions by U.S. citizens.  It does not mean Russian children are not being adopted domestically or internationally to other countries.  The responses of major media sources rely hea...