"'I was adopted because I have _____________'"

How many times have we adoptees filled in the blank about why, oh why, oh why we were given up?

Finally, some good news:

I just read this little article at the Adoptive Families Magazine website in which a social worker explains that it's important that adopted children get to make their own "lifebook" or scrapbook so they can express their feelings and ideas about being adopted and so that their adoptive parents can witness those feelings and ideas.

Let me just say: we have come a long way, baby. Doing something like this was so far off anyone's radar screen when I was a little adopted kid. I wish I had been guided as a child to express some of the fear, confusion, and guilt I felt as an adoptee. Instead those feelings had nowhere to go and so instead they got stuffed away somewhere and have been seeping out for decades in everything I've written and all over every relationship I've been in.

So, kudos to you, social workers who encourage adoptive parents help their their adopted children do this emotional work, kudos to the parents who have the guts to do it, and most of all, blessings on the forthcoming generations of adoptees who may grow up with the ability to name, expose, and dissipate the shame, guilt, and fear associated with being adopted.

Did you read the article in the New York Times Magazine on 1/31/10 about "Solastalgia," a term for " the pain experienced where there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault... a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at 'home.'"?

It's a really interesting article,--read it if you have time--and it made me think about the potential analogue between the psyches of people whose home has been taken away or degraded and the psyches of adoptees and birthparents.

As a person to whom home landscape matters immensely, and as an adoptee, it makes a lot of sense to me.

But what about you?

New Study

(Pictured: One of my brothers, his son, my son, and me)

Ok, my son's in the bathtub, so this is going to be quick:

I was just perusing my email inbox and found this article on a study in Adoptive Families Magazine. It's about how adoptees fare psychologically when compared to their non-adopted siblings.

Often, I find the articles in Adoptive Families frustrating, as they tend to wax Pollyanna about all things adoption. However, this study seems to have some solid research behind it, and frankly, it's a breath of fresh air after reading all those studies about how screwed up adoptees are. I'm tired of feeling screwed up.

What do you think about this study? How does it compare with your experience in the adoption constellation?

Adoptees' Rights--Protest Coming Up Soon!!

Check out this adoptees' rights site!! I'm so excited--just found it. There is going to be a march/protest in Philadelphia on July 21st to demonstrate our rights to open records of our birth. The site tells you more. I hope you can attend--I can't; I'll be out of state, but I'll sure be there in spirit!!

What about you?


(More soon, I've been busy, busy, busy running a day camp for my six year old son and ten of his dude-friends. Man, do I feel old and tired!)