The Ungrateful Adoptee

If you were adopted at birth, you may have only known yourself for a few days before it happened to you. But rest assured you knew. I was eight months old. I knew who I was when they started trying to bury me. I screamed and threw off the dirt. "Julie's not dead. I'm Julie!" But my "mother" was determined, older, stronger. She could shovel on more that I could throw off. I was slowly buried under the daughter she named. She shoveled the identity over me with her violence and her cloying, syrupy, overprotective "love". She subverted my real self, dictated that I was "theirs" and therefore should be "like them". I fought her until I was four... It's the only explanation I have for the violence escalating so far against such a young person. I must have resisted and rejected her efforts to pretend to be my mom. Why else would you knock a two year old unconscious? By the time I was four, I was pretty well subverted. Complia

Sacrifice. It's such an abstract concept. It's basically and frequently defined as: giving up something for the sake of something else. (Or killing livestock and children in the name of a diety. Since I refuse to allow adoption to be referred to as a diety, I'll be sticking to the former.) But what does that really mean? For adoptees, it means everything. Because that's what we give up for the sake of something else.  I gave up my family. I gave up my name. (I was eight months old when they "got me", I knew my bloody name.) I gave up my original unfalsified documents and my access to them. I gave up knowing where I came from. I gave up lifelong relationships with siblings and the connection they  afforded. I gave up my concrete identity and sense of self. I gave up my ability to ever fully trust anyone to stand beside me. I gave up my ability to believe in anyone's "best intentions" or "love". I gave up a life. for the sake of somet

I wrote a blog not too long ago about ways adopters can "help" their adoptees cope with being adopted. Let's face it, it was a list of a couple of do's, and mostly don'ts. Problem. I've since come to a realization, with the help of adopter apologist Nancy Verrier, Adoptive Families Magazine, Adoptions with Love, Brave love, and Gladney adoptions (not to mention multiple mixed groups of adopters and adoptees on Facebook)... There's nothing you can do to make it better. If you're the kind of person who thinks it's ok to adopt, you're NOT the kind of person who can help an adoptee cope with abandonment and relinquishment.  Even Nancy Verrier, author of the primal wound and supposed "adoptee advocate", was not the kind of woman who could do any good for an adoptee. Yes, her points about developmental trauma and the severing of the maternal/infant bond are spot on. But not even she can own her adopter shit. For instance: "...altho