The Ungrateful Adoptee

I suffered recently what can only be to an adoptee a blow. Plans made with biological family that was cancelled last-minute.  I'm not going to lay any blame at anyone's door. Sometimes things do happen, and sometimes things just don't go the way you plan. This isn't about blame, it's really more about the bullshit that adoptees tell themselves when these things happen. Trying to help sort out what it is that makes us torture ourselves. Because we do. We tear ourselves apart for things that we can in no way claim responsibility for. None of these things are true, and intellectually we know it. Someone needs to tell it to our hearts, however. We feel insufficient. Like we aren't enough. I've been gone so long, you aren't really missing anything without me anyway. I'm not important enough to deserve your undivided attention, or to be at the top of your list for once. I wasn't enough as a baby for you to want to keep me, was I?  We feel alone

Let's take a moment to examine your motives. Why do you want to adopt a child?  A) If it's because you're infertile, I have a whole post just for you. Re: I Am Not A Treatment For Your Infertility. You go read that. B) "We feel as though god has called on us to open our home and adopt a child." Bullshit. God never called on anyone to pay tens of thousands of dollars for someone else's child. I recall god saying, "Go forth, be fruitful and multiply." Nowhere, in any of the hundreds of religious texts I've read in my life, have I ever seen god quoted as saying, "Go forth, be shady and coerce strangers into selling you their babies." The word adoption isn't even mentioned in most of them that I recall. Never have I  read, "And lo, Abraham and Sara did adopt a baby." In fact, when Sara couldn't produce a child, Abraham slept with her handmaiden and knocked her up. When Sara later got pregnant, she didn't adopt

You can't just take me away from my biological mother and call me yours. I am not yours, nor will I ever be. I do not belong with you. I do not belong to you. I am not a kitten in the pound free a good home. I am not a bag of flour on a grocery store shelf, available for purchase. You didn't make me. You don't deserve to raise me. You aren't mine.  Did you ever think maybe there's a reason you can't get pregnant? I don't care how much it hurts. You have no idea how much being adopted hurts. You don't know how much it hurts to be torn from your mother's breast. All you can think about is your own pain, your own selfish needs. You need a baby. You can't have one. Well, then, I'll just take someone else's. That will solve your problem and ease your pain. But what about mine? Do you care about that? Do you even think about it? No. Because I an a cute little infant who can't speak. I have no voice. I can't tell you I miss my mother

Are you  grateful you weren't aborted? Why should I have to be? There's this thing that people do, all the time. When I say it sucks be adopted, they say, "well, at least you weren't aborted". Worse are the people who think I should be grateful I wasn't aborted. "You should be thankful that that you were given the chance to exist." "You should thank god he spared your life." "You should be grateful your birth mother decided not to kill you." And the piéce de resistánce: "It could have been worse, you could have ended up a trash can." Ok firstly, who thinks it's ok to talk people this way??? Am I not standing in front of you with eyes and a face and feelings? Do I not deserve basic human decency? Because I'm adopted, does make it ok for you to talk to me like second-class citizen? And secondly, who exactly do you think you are? What makes you think you even have the right to have an opinion about w

Don't defend adoption to me. I acknowledge your positive experiences, adoptees. I acknowledge that your family was beautiful. I'm glad your mother loved you. I'm glad your father was present. I'm happy for you that you were adopted by emotionally well people who gave you a well adjusted life. Congratulations. But don't defend adoption to me. Defend your family, yes. Defend your quality of life, I accept that. Defend your familial bond, by all means. But don't defend the institution of adoption because you got lucky in that system. Adoption did you no favors. The people who adopted you did you the favors. Adoption isn't responsible for your happy life, your family is. Why are you giving the institution of adoption the credit for your good life? Your family are the people who gave you that life. All the institution of adoption did was hand you over to some people and count its cash, assuming the people it gave you to would do a good job raising you. Thos