Sunday, November 1, 2015

#FlipTheScript on National Adoption Month 2015

#FliptheScript #NAM2015 Lost Daughter Prompts
In November, I break from our usual format of the adoptee vs. birthmother perspective on shared topics to focus instead on the voice of the adoptee in response to National Adoption Month and the Lost Daughters' #Flipthescript campaign to amplify the adoptee voice in the adoption narrative. 



Talk about what National Adoption Month means to you as an adoptee. What is missing from the traditional narrative promoted during each November? Why is it important that adoptees’ experiences and opinions are heard during NAM? What does it mean to you to Flip The Script on National Adoption Month?




I didn't know November was National Adoption Month until just last year. 

In the past, I used to avoid a lot of things about adoption. Adoption wasn't in the forefront of my identity. There were a lot of aspects to who I was. I didn't want to be outspoken. I didn't want to make a fuss. 

Then I started to write about my adoption experience. Funny how the thoughts lurking under the surface of your psyche don't have a voice until you write them down. It is as if writing your thoughts releases them. And, like the furies, once released, they won't stand being locked away again. 

But, it's hard for an adoptee to speak out:
you get labelled
the "angry" adoptee ... the irony being that the more explaining you have to do about not being angry, the angrier you get,  
you get brushed off
if you had better parents, you wouldn't feel this way ... but I had good parents! you retort 
you get belittled
you need therapy ... ah, don't we all?
You have to stand up to these assaults. They try to silence your experience because it makes someone uncomfortable, or confused, or defensive. It brings up feeling they can not just sit with and accept. Instead they have to fight them with all their power to try to overcome them because they're just too hard to feel.

You remember reacting that way. You get it. Because to write about your adoption experience means you have to overcome the one voice that is fighting for its life to silence you. Your own.

It's the one that says:
your experience isn't important
until you remember all those stories you're read, stories similar to yours, and different from yours. stories that remind you that every experience is important.
a lot of people have had it a lot worse
until you realize that just because others have had things worse, doesn't mean that what you experienced wasn't real, wasn't true, wasn't hard.
not everyone feel that way
and then you recognize that is exactly why having so many voices in the conversation makes it so rich and valuable.
Last year my sisters decided to #FlipTheScript to say that adoptee voices should be part of the conversation about adoption. The furies flew and the chaos they caused was considerable. They took National Adoption Month and forced their voices into the conversation. 

They were voices that said that the adoptee experience is important. That even adoptees who had it good, also had it hard. That there were hundreds, thousands, millions of adoptees voices and they deserved to be part of the conversation, part of the truth of what adoption is. That their voices matter. That they matter. 

#FlipTheScript

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Thoughts? Reflections? Opinions?

Please comment!

2 comments:

  1. Good on you for speaking your truth, adoptees have been left out of adoption, sounds so odd and so very strange to even think of but we are not permitted a say, on past, present or future adoption agenda's. We were denied a proper and equal place with the mothers into our own inquiry into ,"Former Forced Adoptions", apparently many of our issues did not meet the terms of reference. So very strange indeed? Adoption is a very hard a road for so many of us, especially of those adoptees who choose to remain connected to their adopted family. Of those of us who pull away or are pushed away, we have been able to find our voice much sooner. For those who have wanted nothing but our two families to connect and learn to love each other as we love them, has often remained nothing but a dream. Governments do not want to understand that children can love both sets of parents, just like when we marry and are accepted into a new family tree. Adopted children can love and accept ALL the parents with in their life. Why do adoptive parents and their advocates, want to own us, control us and feel insecure about who we love. Our biological tree is the core our roots which are embedded in our DNA, it is the beginning of who we are. Our adopted family is the trunk of the tree, representing, how they teach us to cope with our adoption and life's trials and tribulations/ it is where we learn our value and worth. We need both our biological family and adoptive, to grow to be fulfilled, happy and complete. We need to know that we are loved and accepted no matter how we came into the world, how different we are, or why we came to be adopted. When our relationship with our biological parents is destroyed and their character discredited our own self worth becomes corroded and eats away at us with often devastating results. For what does it prosper a person to obtain a child by adoption, only to destroy it's soul by lies and falsehoods, participating in beguiling language and actions that demand that the child love them above all other parents. What can it profit them when the love given by the child cannot being given to them of their own free will, openly and honestly but driven by fear of rejection. and judgement. Adoptees should have everything to say about adoption awareness week in Australia and Adoption Awareness month in America, stop silencing us and covering up all the damage done via the institution and act of adoption. We are Adoption! We are the experts on what adoption can and cannot do for a child. We are the professionals of how it affects us, for our entire life. Yet we are treated as if we do not have an opinion worthy of a hearing, or value and the same mistakes are made over and over and we wonder why so many children are in state care, why so many adoptees suffer mental illness, physical disease, family breakdown, substance abuse, self hate and self harm. When will our government wake up and allow adoptee's their rightful place at the family conference table..instead of being sent to our rooms and punished for wanting to take part in fixing their broken system and corrupted views of adoption.

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    1. Kerri! Your words strike a chord! Love, love, love this, "Our biological tree is the core our roots which are embedded in our DNA, it is the beginning of who we are. Our adopted family is the trunk of the tree, representing, how they teach us to cope with our adoption and life's trials and tribulations/ it is where we learn our value and worth. We need both our biological family and adoptive, to grow to be fulfilled, happy and complete. We need to know that we are loved and accepted no matter how we came into the world, how different we are, or why we came to be adopted. "

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