Comments are welcome from any and all adoptees, but adoptees only. Comments concerning the site are welcome in the Guest Registry. Thank you.
Do/have the major “birthday” milestones pose/d any particular issues for you? How did you deal with/resolve/overcome them?
Growing up in a state with the nickname “Cancer Alley” kind of attuned me to environmental issues, especially as I witnessed what were primarily corn and tomato fields, along with dairy farms and apple orchards, give way to encroaching suburbia and exurban/industrial development. I remember when I was a kid my father coming home and […]
For those who have searched for their birth families and had to have The Talk with their adoptive families, what did you say? What did your parents say? This is not imminent for me. I’m just very curious.
I simply wish to pose the question: what links of solidarity do you discern regarding prejudice against the adopted and the incarcerated? By this, I do not intend to imply that a most adequate way to understand adoption occurs if we think about it in a metaphorical or literal way as a prison, though such […]
When mothers left babies at London’s Foundling Hospital in the mid-18th century, the Hospital often retained a small token as a means of identification, usually a piece of fabric. Each scrap of material reflects the life of a single infant and that of its absent parent. So reads the description of an exhibition of such […]
We are familiar with this I think from our childhoods, someone calling us out as “adopted!” which becomes a disparaging term. What about from adults when we were children? What about from adults when we reach adulthood? I’m interested in hearing from adoptees your experiences along these lines.
As trafficked people, we may describes ourselves as having the strange status on the one hand as inferior—as something deemed by others a tradable commodity—and on the other hand as superior—as something so hyper-desired that it permits human beings (us) to get treated as a tradable commodity. Having read a number of posts and responses […]
A researcher, or perhaps a journalist, Kathryn Boyce has recently written an expose, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption (published 23 April 2013), on how evangelical Christians are preaching the new gospel of adoption. I haven’t read the book; I’m flagging it down here in case someone wants to. My […]
This is quoted from a “comment” from a grad student in clinical psychology. What do you think of those who want to “study” us? Your participation is valuable to my desire to bang my head against a wall.
Some 30 years ago when I was a jerky Jersey Boy listening to new-wave and post-punk music in an effort to be “alternative” and “rebellious” (within the safe limits of suburbia of course) the English band The Beat came out with a sub-song to their “Whine and Grind” entitled: “Stand Down Margaret” [ link ]: […]
I came across this essay by Prof. Asma Barlas [ link ], entitled Racism’s Labyrinth. It’s a quick read, but quite interesting on a number of levels. An excerpt: Whether white people want to claim their whiteness or not, whiteness claims them by positioning them as potential saviors of people of color. Liberals speak on […]
“Through me you pass into the city of woe.” —Dante As adoptees who live on the razor’s edge between places, we are often asked to broker for or engage on behalf of those who are looking for roots as well, either as adoptees, or more often for me I must say, adoptive parents wanting to […]
Elsewhere on the site we have explored the “cost” of adoptee activism [ link ], and we have heard some stories of closed-down blogs and the like. Certain adoptee sites have erased past posts, or willingly avoid or openly mock the so-called “radical” in acts of self-censorship. Much of this is in the realm of […]
In the post discussing the devolution of adoption [ link ], at the heart of what was either seen as horrifying or else a cause for viral reposting was the mediation of an adopted child for public consumption. I am intrigued here because I have often been threatened by adoptive parents either directly or via […]
