Dear Adoption, You Turned Trauma Into Entitlement

I am the product of your twisted world view. I am what you make. You take mothers and children and disassemble them. You rebuild damaged, twisted, tortured children, and reassemble gentle, loving young women into callous, cruel, self-centered, judgmental birthmothers.

Women who were once fit to be mothers, to be HUMAN, are now these self-righteous, overbearing trolls who actually have the audacity to be pissed off at their relinquished adult children. To blame us for being hurt. To think we are wrong to be angry at them. Because in the time between (the time they sign the TPR and the time we finally track them down [because, as "heartbroken" as they are, most of them don't take any steps to find us]), they've managed to convince themselves that they were victimized. They were coerced. Their babes were "taken unfairly" by CPS. No one can check those stories. No one can call them liars. And no one is allowed to judge a victim.

They all now have a perfect out. They now have a perfect reason to shirk all the blame, guilt, and shame that belongs to them. They get to slough that off on us. The voiceless. The ones who actually had no choice. The ones with legitimate lifelong trauma. Adoptees.

Now that our mothers are the victims, they feel entitled to blame us for "choosing to stay adopted". It's our fault the people who raised its are our parents. Apparently that's a choice too. It's our fault we don't choose to just "reclaim" our birth identities (even if we don't know what those identities are).

They also feel allowed to blame us for our trauma, these entitled birth mothers. We're supposed to "deal with it" and "move on". We are supposed to "choose to let go of" the pain, abandonment, loss, nightmares, anxiety...  Because we are not allowed to be angry. We have no right to blame then for their choice.

Because now, 30 years later, it suddenly wasn't their choice at all.

Adoption, you continually come up with new ways to diminish the children whose lives you've claimed. You continually construct new methods to keep us small and silent. As long as we remain marginalized by our adopters, the government, and our own mothers, no one has to listen. No one has to see. And you can go along your merry way, eating our lives and making millions of dollars every year off our little soft heads.

Because you don't really care about us, do you, adoption? You care about your public image. You care about your profits. You care about adoptive parents, your consumers. You care about biological parents, your suppliers. You only care about us as commodities. So you supply them with all the excuses and propaganda they need to keep us silent. To make sure your commodities stay on the shelves. Because if people accidentally hear us, it will disturb the delicate balance you've so carefully constructed.

So you convince adopters they are saviors and saints. You convince them how very lucky, how very entitled they are. Entitled to their pride, their greed, their selfish needs. Entitled that good guy badge and a family not their own. Entitled to that baby.

And the birth mothers? You convince them that they are entitled to be special, angels, saviors, giving the greatest gift. I can be superior. I gave you a better life. Then, suddenly, during reunion, they are owed the pity, kindness, compassion, and understanding of the children they relinquished. Because somewhere over the last however many years, they've decided they're entitled to claim they were victimized or forced to make the choice.

And what are adoptees, the only and real victims in the triad, entitled to? How about a long life of displacement and lies? Obfuscation? Mental anguish? Mental illness, loneliness, isolation, deportation, abuse, neglect, discrimination, diminishment? We are entitled to remain small and quiet; to maintain the status quo and not to disturb anyone's comfort. We are entitled to be grateful, easy going, compliant, pleasant, happy, and defer to the authority of any and everyone. We are entitled to wait on bended knee to be required, immediately available when summoned, and disregarded when inconvenient or even just unnecessary. We are entitled to be disposable, replacement children, summoned to cure infertility or fill the void of a dead baby, easily discarded if we prove too disagreeable, ungrateful, or troublesome.

We are entitled to know we are disposable and never forget it.

We are entitled to always feel alone.

Thanks adoption, for marginalizing my existence.

Sincerely, An Adoptee Who Is NOT Going Away