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Family Separation, Transracial Adoptees, & A Call For Adoption Reform W/ Tiffany Henness
37 Plays1 year ago
Tiffany Henness @coachhenness is an author, mother, and biracial transracial adoptee. Tiffany joins Willing To Learn to give a critical examination on the adoption industry. We talk about how adoption is NOT gospel, love isn’t always enough, and she calls for more resources and practices that prioritize keeping families together. Tiffany offers recommendations for current or aspiring adoptive parents, while amplifies a voice for the often-silenced adoptee experience.
For more information on Tiffany, visit:
- Instagram: @coachhenness
- Website: http://callinginthewilderness.com
Tiffany’s recommended resources:
- Angela Tucker- http://www.angelatucker.com
- All You Can Never Know by Nicole Chung
- Adoptee Influencer Network -www.AdopteeInfluencerNetwork.com
FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM:
- @willingtolearnpodcast
- @ashddominguez
Contact: [email protected]
Produced by: Jeffrey Anthony
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:06
Speaker
This is willing to learn.
00:00:16
Speaker
What's up, everyone? And welcome to Willing to Learn podcast, where we believe that when we learn more, we can do more. I'm your host, Ashley Dominguez. Today we have on guest instructor Tiffany Hines. Now, Tiffany is a mixed race person of Chinese and German-Americans descent, but she is also a transracial adoptee, which means she was adopted at birth to distant relatives of her white first mother or birth mother.
00:00:46
Speaker
And in her case, it was a domestic kinship open adoption, meaning that the relationship could be open. She could visit with her brother first mother while she was growing up. She has over 35 years of intimate experience navigating the pros and cons of human adoption, which means she really has great authority on the nuances of adoption today, especially as it relates to American Christian culture.
Background in Adoption Research
00:01:10
Speaker
She's done extensive research on adoption as a metaphor in the Bible, which you can find on her website, callinginthewilderness.com.
00:01:19
Speaker
A few reminders before we jump into the interview. Don't forget to go rate, review, subscribe, and share the podcast with a friend or family member. Go follow at Willing to Learn podcast on Instagram and Facebook to stay in the know with all future programming. Have an idea for a future guest or topic that you want to hear about on the show? Send me a DM and we can get it in the books. Stay tuned after the interview to get valuable resources and hear what the call to action is this
Transracial Adoptee Experiences
00:01:47
Speaker
week.
00:01:47
Speaker
And now to our guest instructor, Tiffany Hennis. Welcome to Willing to Learn. I appreciate you agreeing to be on the show. I'm excited. Thank you for contacting me. I'm like, oh, this is great. I love the whole premise of this. Thank you.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, I came across your Instagram and then I read on your website and read some of your blogs and as someone who is biracial, as someone who's a Christian, I think the way you talk about adoption and transracialism is something that's so under discussed and it needs so much more light. So I was like, yes, I hope she has time and she can come on.
00:02:32
Speaker
With that, will you just give a little bit of background and introduce who you are? Sure. Here comes my kids. I sacrificed my cell phone so they could watch a show on it. Hopefully that works. Yes. So that was my two year old. But so I am a mom. I have two boys, but I am a infant domestic open adoption, private adoption, transracial adoptee. That is the sort of key words about
00:02:59
Speaker
my adoptee identity. I was born and raised in Oregon and I'm also mixed race. So my first father was Chinese Canadian and my mother
00:03:15
Speaker
white, Western European American blonde hair, blue eyes. And I got more of the, a little bit more of the Asian jeans, skip wise, but a lot of people do still consider me ethnically ambiguous. They're not quite sure. So I, I have often got the question, you know, what are you, where are you from?
Involvement in Racial Education
00:03:38
Speaker
Um, ultimate, that's the first question.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, I worked in marketing. I'm a writer and a creative. That's just how I like to make sense of the world in my life is by writing and processing that way. So having a blog originally, I had a blog that was about running and fitness and health. I was a running coach and a certified personal trainer.
00:04:01
Speaker
And I had clients online, virtual clients. I really was comfortable engaging with people personally through the internet, sharing my story. But when I had my first son about five to six years ago, I realized that my identity as an adoptee and as a mixed race person, a multi
00:04:23
Speaker
racial person was something that I needed to finally dig into and understand. I had just ignored those things and felt like they didn't matter. And so it felt natural to start writing about that process. It felt really natural to go to Instagram or to create a new blog that was really about adoption, my Christian faith, deconstructing that at the same time. Oh, yes. Okay. Thank you, kiddo.
00:04:52
Speaker
and racial identity, ethnic identity, the intersection of those three things. I now, I work from home. I do some contract work with Be the Bridge, which is a black women-run nonprofit focused on racial education, and also do some volunteer work and do some community organizing. So I'm on the leadership for a local movement of volunteers called Safe Families for Children that aims to reduce family separation and the need for child welfare
00:05:20
Speaker
to intervene. I'm also currently serving as the vice chair of my city's DEI committee and have been working really hard. I live in a rural white county in Oregon, and so I've been working really hard to try to find ways to really build community for Black, Indigenous, people of color, like a multicultural community.
00:05:50
Speaker
He's our honorary guest. He's our honorary guest. I hope you hear his voice and it sounds cute. But yeah, I stay pretty busy really trying to find ways that I can have the most impact and use my lived experience and perspective.
Critique of Adoption Narratives
00:06:06
Speaker
So that's interesting. So you describe it almost as like having this
00:06:09
Speaker
awakening when you were pregnant with your first. Was there like something about being a pregnant mother that helped, that like made this curiosity come alive in you? Yes, I would say there's a good chance that if I had never had children and gone through the process of pregnancy and labor and delivery, that maybe I never would have confronted some of these things. So 100%, what I came to realize was in the late stage of my pregnancy,
00:06:37
Speaker
I was in the same position that my first mom was in when she was deciding to give me away. And as the first time mom, it's the first time I realized what that decision really might have meant to her because I was already bonded with my child in my womb. And so for me to think that she was having to make that decision
00:07:01
Speaker
to go through labor and delivery and holding my son for the first time and to recognize that all the love that I had for him and all the excitement I had to see him and how much I had learned that infants are soothed and comforted by their mothers, their heartbeat, the sound of their voice, they can smell them and know that it's them. And then to realize I didn't have that, that was all
00:07:25
Speaker
taken from me and to be a womb fresh, one day old, less than a day old infant, suddenly have that person disappear. Learning that research shows that the infant recognizes that as trauma in our nervous system, even though it's pre-verbal. So pre-verbal memory, like we don't have a memory of it. We're not able to articulate it. It does get coded into our nervous system as trauma and our bodies remember it.
00:07:53
Speaker
There's a great book that I have not worked up the courage to read yet, but it's called The Body Keeps. The Score by Bessel van der Kolk. And it talks about how our body's trauma is something that happens in our body and it's something that we remember. And so I think being pregnant, being pregnant and having my first child, my body remembered. It was the closest experience to what I had lived through as an infant.
00:08:20
Speaker
And I was grieving instead of being the new mom who was like, yeah, I'm having a baby. I was grieving at the end of my pregnancy and I was experiencing just mental and emotional struggles that I had never experienced before.
00:08:36
Speaker
And this is my second kid who's chatting in the background and it was the same. When I had him, I thought, well, okay, now that I know what this is, it won't be as bad. But it was really, if the second pregnancy and childbirth, the grief was there again. And that was part of why I was like, okay, there's enough.
00:08:53
Speaker
for living this. That's what forced me to come to terms with there's grief here, that you need to learn what's going on so that you can heal and you can start to process. And that's really what sent me on the path to understand adoption in a broader sense.
00:09:13
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. And I think that is so true. Sometimes it's not until we go through those experiences ourselves in a different role, we can't help but to self reflect and be like, wow, like what was really happening here? So that's very unique. But I know we did throw a bunch of definition like words without definition. So I want us to like go over a few of those. So first, transracial. Can you unpack that a little bit for our listeners? Yes, if you are
00:09:42
Speaker
a child of color adopted by a white parent or parent. So that is the most common circumstance that gets called transracial or interracial adoption. Really all it means is that the parents are a different race than the child they adopted. And so it could be
00:10:01
Speaker
Asian parents adopting a black child just as much as white parents adopting a black child or other child of color. But if you look at the statistics, and I wish I had them off the top of my head, it's predominantly white parents raising children in color.
Systemic Issues in Adoption
00:10:17
Speaker
Like, I want to say almost like 70% or something of transracial adoptions.
00:10:22
Speaker
are white parents. And there are systemic reasons to that. There's reasons why a white family's white parents have historically been considered the more fit to parent and they make it through the process better. They have the right, quote unquote, qualifications. But, you know, transracial or interracial adoption, there's two different terms. Some people prefer one more than the other. I often say transracial or TRMRA. Okay.
00:10:51
Speaker
And then you also said first is it first family and then adoptive family? Is that how you describe it? Yeah. Yeah. So I, I have learned as I have heard from more first mothers that during the time period of what's called the baby scoop era. So this is in like the fifties and sixties when it was really shameful for a single woman
00:11:12
Speaker
or a young girl to be pregnant and she would just go away and for the year, oh, she's just staying with an aunt, right? And really she was going away to deliver her child. So that era is when adoption agencies started calling them birth moms. And I've heard from a lot of women, that was an offensive term. And that's what I'd grow up calling my first mom was a birth mom. I didn't realize that there was a history of that being a hurtful term.
00:11:40
Speaker
because it just like biological mother. All you are is biology or birth mother. You're just here to give birth, but beyond that, you're not. That's all that you're going to miss then. And trying to recognize first mother means like I have two moms. I was in an open adoption. My first mom is more than just someone who gave birth to me. I have a relationship with her. She's still
00:12:04
Speaker
my mother as well as your life. So that's why I try to use. Yeah. So that's why I try to use first mom, first, first dad, first family and open adoption. And then you said open adoption. So can you explain the differences there?
00:12:19
Speaker
Primarily, if you learn about the history of adoption, it wasn't always with the child's needs in mind. It was often what was best for the adoptive family. They needed kids to work the farm, so they would adopt children who came on the orphan trades. Like this is a whole thing that people can research if they want to.
00:12:40
Speaker
So, adoptions were considered closed when, after the legal process was completed, the adoptee would have no contact with their first family. The first mother would have no rights to contact some same race adoptee. We're never told they were adopted.
00:13:01
Speaker
And they found, maybe they never found out or maybe they didn't find out that they were in their fifties or sixties. That actually still happens today. And a closed adoption simply means there's no contact between first family and adoptive family and the adoptee. And typically the child, the adoptee grows up with this feeling that.
00:13:20
Speaker
there is a big secret that they have been prevented from having critical information or having a relationship with their first family, first culture. Now open adoption is our society's way of, okay, now we recognize that was problematic and that was harmful. Okay, we get it. So let's improve upon it. Let's adapt and change and let's make the experience better and healthier for
00:13:46
Speaker
adoptees by having the adoption be open. And so that means there's some degree of contact or communication between first mother or first family and adoptive family and the adoptee, but it's not often something that is legally enforceable. So once a child is adopted, the adoptive parents have full parental rights and whether or not they keep like in touch with the first mom or first family is totally up to their discretion. And so that's an issue.
00:14:14
Speaker
So the first family, they can decide if they want it to be open or closed and they can decide if they do want it open how open they want it to be.
00:14:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's a weird thing. Like the first family, the first mother, for example, she can say, I only want to adopt to someone who agrees to an open adoption and who agrees to this amount of contact. And they can state that the adoptive parents can promise that, but in very few cases, is there an actual contract written where that's legally enforceable? And so a lot of the issues with open adoption is that
00:14:47
Speaker
It's really subjective. It's great in theory that a child will still have connections with their biological family. They'll have people who look like them and they'll have access to medical information and they'll be able to work out those relationships on their own terms.
00:15:04
Speaker
but it's not a fix all to adoption. I had an open adoption and even though that has a lot of quote unquote benefits compared to closed adoption, it doesn't mean that there's less problems for adoptees. It just means the problems that we face in an open adoption are different ones. Right. Okay.
00:15:25
Speaker
Okay, good. So I want to start by just attacking and dispelling some of the bad information out there about adoption and transracial adoptions. What are some of the common misconceptions that people have about adoption? Number one that I hear
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah. The number one myth or misconception that I hear is that adoption really is or can be a win-win-win situation. There's three wins because traditionally we see three parties involved in an adoption. We call it the adoption triad. It's the first mother, the child, the adoptee, and then the adoptive parents. And it's a myth that it's a win. The myth goes like this.
00:16:10
Speaker
First mother doesn't want to parent or isn't in a place where she can. And so it's a win for her to relinquish her child and so that she can move forward with her life in the way that she needs or wants to. It's a win for the child who gets raised in a more stable home environment and terribly, you know, we have more resources, more financial stability typically because of an adoption.
00:16:35
Speaker
And then for the adoptive parents, it's a win because they get to have the child that they always hoped and longed for. And so everybody's happy. And that's a huge myth. And I still hear this from friends who will say, you know, well, I know some folks who've adopted and it's just like, it's been great for everybody.
00:16:54
Speaker
And typically I say, oh, OK, how old is the adoptee? And they're usually not an adult yet. And I was like, OK, well, wait another 15 years and then ask them if they still think that it's been without problems. I know that's so true. You know, that that also goes with that thinking of like it's almost like the parents. It's all about what the parents want. And like the children are like that they're less
Challenges in Transracial Adoption
00:17:22
Speaker
talk, they're less concerned with the children's perspective, namely in part because they might not have the age or the language or the mental capacity yet to be able to understand what's happened and what is happening to them. Kind of like what you said, like it wasn't until your, I think early thirties you said that you had this awakening conscious revelation moment in your life.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, I, as, you know, a 15 year old, I remember somebody asking me about being an adoptee because they had a child who was adopted and they wanted to interview me, you know.
00:18:02
Speaker
Um, and I said all those things. I said, God put me in the family that he wanted me to be in. And it was so great. I was raised by them cause they weren't able to give me what I needed. And my first mom is great though. And it was good for her. She was able to get her feet under her in life and we have a relationship. So it's all fine now. And I just saw only the benefits.
00:18:24
Speaker
none of the issues. And that is a big reason why when it did hit me that, oh, wait, I have something to grieve. I actually have a trauma embedded in my adoption experience that no one who is close to me and who loves me knows about. It's hard for them to acknowledge. This is something that Dotty's talk about is disenfranchised
00:18:47
Speaker
grief. We have a grief that is not recognized by anybody around us. A lot of times it's not even recognized by mental health professionals. We can see a therapist because we're feeling depressed, anxious, suicidal. We can, as adoptees, we can see a mental health professional if we're self-aware enough to say, hey, I think there's some issues here with adoption.
00:19:07
Speaker
I've heard many adoptees who were literally told by their therapist, like, well, no, that's probably not it because their perspective was that adoption was good. And that couldn't be the source of some of their dremels. It's really hard to see. So that myth that everybody wins in the best case scenario of adoption is, but what it does is it completely erases the ability for the adoptee or even the first mom to be able to acknowledge the hurt
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah. That it was hurtful and hard decision to make on her behalf as well. Yeah. Right. And so instead of being met with compassion and empathy, as we name
00:19:50
Speaker
those struggles and process those things. Sometimes we're simply dismissed, but a lot of times we're even attacked for saying something that goes against that myth, that narrative that everybody won. So another one, and I think with that, now that you're talking and you're describing it,
00:20:10
Speaker
With that, it's easy to say when because you get to deny any trauma or hurt that's being experienced by any of the parties. But with that, I think another myth that I was reading about was this idea that adoptive parents should be celebrated for their generosity, that adoptee should be so grateful that someone was willing to take them in. This is a myth, correct?
00:20:35
Speaker
Yeah. So the altruistic, you know, that the only people who adopt are people who are completely selfless, completely charitable, doing it from the depths of their belief in loving like God loved us.
00:20:50
Speaker
That is definitely a myth. It doesn't take too much to do some research, to look up some articles from the 50s, the 60s, the 70s. There are news articles that were written about how one of the primary reasons that adoption became a popular thing to do in Western civilization, America, the UK, it was because of infertility. So adoption became the way to
00:21:18
Speaker
get the child you couldn't have. And while that's not necessarily a bad reason to adopt it, like I couldn't have kids, so this is another way to build a family. The problem with that setup is that a lot of adoptive parents never really grieved and dealt with their infertility before they just moved to adopting a kid thinking that kid was going to replace the ones they couldn't have. And that created a lot of really unhealthy family dynamics.
00:21:48
Speaker
There's also the reality that some parents who are taught end up being really abusive family home environments. So there's a lot of adoptees who are adults who share how they were abused by their adoptive families. So you cannot convince me that those people were adopting for the most altruistic reasons. There was something flawed in their decision
00:22:11
Speaker
to take in a child. Sometimes a family lost a child. And so they would replace that child with an adopted one, but always hold that adopted child to the standard of the child they lost. And an adoptee grew up feeling like, I'm trying to live somebody else's life. I'm trying to replace somebody and I'm never good enough. So there's a lot of really unfortunate reasons why people would come to see adoption as something that they want to do.
00:22:40
Speaker
To be perfectly honest with you, and I don't know how theoretical you want to get in a conversation, but even as someone who's had my own biological children, it's really hard for me to think through the process of why we decided to have kids and come up with a reason that wasn't selfish.
00:22:58
Speaker
I wanted them. I wanted the kids. It's about me. It's about what I wanted. And so there is an element of selfishness and what a parent or future parent wants that is always at the heart of it.
Identity Formation for Adoptees
00:23:15
Speaker
And so I think that's a dangerous myth.
00:23:17
Speaker
that adoptive parents should always be celebrated, never questioned about the integrity of their decision. But this idea that adoptive parents should be celebrated and she questioned and really adoption can be a very selfish act by the parents because you even as a biological mother, you could say, I had my children because I wanted my children. It was something that
00:23:42
Speaker
I wanted. I think a tip of the hat to the selfish tendencies of folks who adopt is really if you look at what the legal process of adoption means. And so that's something a lot of people don't think about. They think about adoption as
00:23:59
Speaker
a family took in a kid who needed a home. But adoption, the legal definition of adoption is very concrete. And it means that a child's identity is completely changed to their adoptive family's identity. And often the adoptive family gets to rename the child. Now, in what situation is that in the best interest of the child to have their identity erased and replaced?
00:24:21
Speaker
And with the closed adoption, that's been more common throughout the history of adoption. And what does it benefit the child to have been lied to, that never told they were adopted, to be prevented from having any contact with their biological family? It's only in extreme cases, really. It's rare. But sometimes there is a case where the biological family is a danger to the child.
00:24:45
Speaker
the child needs to disappear for their safety. But that is not most cases, right? And so who does it benefit to have that kind of a setup? It benefits the adoptive parents. They get the legal parental rights to this other human being. They get to name them like they've always wanted to. They, they get full control. They don't have to negotiate sticky things with another family or another mom. They get to just say like, this is our child and
00:25:12
Speaker
we don't have to consider the family or the community they came from. And it's really only been in more recent, you know, a few decades that it's been common knowledge
00:25:27
Speaker
that a child's ethnic or racial identity is important. But that being said, you will still find many people, primarily white Christian people who adopt, who believe that love is enough. That's another myth. Love is enough. I just need to love my kids.
00:25:45
Speaker
And that will be all that they need. And so if a white parent is raising a child of color that they don't need to make sure that child has access to real relationships with people from their own racial and ethnic group, that they need to cultivate a healthy racial and ethnic identity
00:26:03
Speaker
in their kid of color and that their love as a parent is going to be enough. And that is unfortunately not true. You can look back into, I was adopted in the eighties and the racially colorblind approach. Don't talk to your kids too much about race. Cause then they're going to think they're different from you and you want to enforce how they're the same as you. That has been really harmful.
00:26:25
Speaker
So a lot of the ways that adoption has been done historically really show that the adoptive parents' needs and desires were always prioritized over everybody else. Their timelines, their what they want, and it's not really been about the needs of kids out there in the real world.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's another myth that you're touching on is that race. The myth that race doesn't play a role in adoption. That, like you said, the covering of love and a healthy, unified family will be enough. And that race doesn't play a role in adoption.
00:27:01
Speaker
And I think that's something that makes it more complex and dynamic. And I think you make a great point of this idea that people in this case, more often than not, it seems like the white Christian, the savior complex comes into play. And it's like, well, if I love you and if I speak God and the word of the Bible into you, then that will cover us and we'll be able to be happy and have healthy relationships and healthy self-identity and all of those things. But it does complicate it quite a bit.
00:27:31
Speaker
Another one that I know that you've talked about is adoption is a very Christ-like thing to do and that you've seen this more popular in Christianity in particular. Can you speak a little bit about that? Yes, this is something I wasn't raised hearing, thank goodness.
00:27:49
Speaker
because it just would have been way more damaging. But when I started really looking into adoption beyond just my own family's experience, it became really clear how this metaphor in the Bible where it talks about
00:28:08
Speaker
believers being the adopted sons and daughters of God became something that was co-mingled with the idea of if we adopt children, then we are doing for others like God did for us. And so it's a very gospel thing to do. And so hashtag adoption is gospel. You can find that on Instagram and just be presented with that whole mindset
00:28:35
Speaker
very quickly. I know that some books have been written by prominent Christian theologians and speakers who are at white adoptive parents. And they basically promote that view that it is the Christian thing to do to adapt a child because God adopted us. And number one, I just, I don't believe that's really good biblical exegesis. I don't think that's actually reading the scripture in the way it was intended and understanding the metaphor
00:29:04
Speaker
that Paul used in the New Testament in the correct way. And number two, it ignores what the Bible already tells us about how to care for kids in need. And that's caring for the orphans, the widows, the poor, and the foreigner in your land. The Bible already tells us that we should be looking out for marginalized people like
00:29:24
Speaker
families in crisis or women at risk or children in crisis. And that we should prevent them from falling through the cracks in society. We should actually come around and that looks like keeping families together. Not taking a child from a family because they're poor. It's a hard pill to swallow if that's somebody's faith-based perspective of adoption. It really, you do. Okay, go ask brother for more please. Say more please.
00:29:53
Speaker
I'm so glad my five-year-old can reach the water dispenser in the fridge. This makes my life so much easier. For Christians who believe this, you're really challenging a core piece of what has come to be their identity, and so there's no way you can really address that without them feeling personally attacked.
00:30:14
Speaker
Because you were telling me I'm not a good person. And I adopted this child with the best of intentions. And if you tell me that it was unethical or my child from Ethiopia might have been trafficked, like I will deny that. Yes. You're challenging the things that are so near and dear to who I am.
00:30:31
Speaker
believe I am and what I believe to be true and good and loving. And so that is why I don't know if you watch the TV show, this is us, but if any of your listeners do, they're probably very aware of the black transracial adoptee character named Randall. I don't watch the show. I just hear about it because I'm the first I believe.
00:30:53
Speaker
Okay, well, if anybody has on social media, go to Twitter, go to any place where people are talking about what Randall's doing, and look at how people talk about how terrible it was that Randall, the adoptee in the show, was honest about his grief or trauma or his difficulties growing up as a black kid in a white family. You'll get a glimpse of how really angry people will become
00:31:18
Speaker
and how nasty they will get at adoptees who are speaking truths. And that tells me that it's about more this Christian idea of the gospel and adoption and all of that stuff. It's about more than just adoption. When people get that angry about an opposing viewpoint, when they become
00:31:39
Speaker
that vicious and attacking the person who's saying, hey, this hurt me. Those are the dynamics that you see that tell me, okay, there's layers here of systems of oppression. And this Western Christian idea of adoption is really layered
00:31:57
Speaker
in with Western traditions of how Christianity was compromised with white supremacist ideas, how Christianity was compromised with patriarchal ideas, colonialism. And so you start to see that if you challenge the Christian view of adoption that says adoption is like the gospel and we should adopt kids because God adopted us and people get really angry, it's because you're speaking truth to power and power is not happy to be called out.
00:32:25
Speaker
on the abuse that it's caused. And that's, that's like a smarter people than I have written about these things. But to me, that's the telltale sign when people get really angry because an adoptee is saying I'm hurt and this has harmed me.
00:32:38
Speaker
as opposed to somebody responding with, I'm so sorry to hear about your hurt. How can I support you? Or what can be changed so that this doesn't happen to more kids, right? That would be the loving response. And that would be the one that would say, oh, tell me how we can learn from this, right? And we've seen this time and time again, where people who are a part of a certain institution or group
00:33:03
Speaker
They want to protect and uplift and uphold that institution because in a way, if you don't, it'll undermine the integrity of what your membership means.
Adoption Industry and Legal Challenges
00:33:14
Speaker
And we've seen it in a lot of different cases in the Me Too movement and like the USA Gymnastics allegation where institutions are protected at the cost of those who are being abused, who are enduring trauma, and the list goes on.
00:33:30
Speaker
So with that, let's get on to some truths. What do listeners need to know about adoption when specifically transracial adoption? I think I always start with a saying that there is no adoption without family separation and family separation is always inherently traumatic. So there is no adoption without trauma. There is no clean slate baby you can adopt that doesn't have
00:33:59
Speaker
those issues. I have seen a lot of parents or adoptive parents or prospective adoptive parents react to adoptees who are saying, this hurts by saying, well, my kid's not going to have those issues because we didn't have that situation. And it's like, well, whoa, like maybe they won't have my particular issue, but there is something inherently traumatic about being separated from your family.
00:34:23
Speaker
And so there is no adoption without that. If we can just accept that, we'd be making huge progress. I think even if you were an infant, which I was, I was adopted the day I was born. It was planned before I was born. And that is something that there is a high demand for infant adoptees. It's another thing that kind of shows adoption is more about the needs and wants of adoptive parents.
00:34:49
Speaker
If you go to an agency or an infant, so I would like to find a birth mother who's wanting to relinquish, they'll say, great, you'll be on a waiting list. But if you go to child welfare organization and say, we would like to foster to adapt, they're like, great, we've got a bunch of kids lined up ready who are eligible for adoption in the foster care system.
00:35:07
Speaker
So why do people want the tabula rasa, the blank slate kid, the kid who doesn't have adverse childhood experiences, who isn't going to come with baggage and drama because they were in an unstable home environment and that's why they were put into foster care.
00:35:25
Speaker
They want the experience of a baby. They want to create the, they want to do the nursery. They want to pick the name. They want to have more control over what kind of child they get and raise. And so an infant is the golden goose. And that's why you see so many adoptive parents working really, really hard, paying big, big money to get picked by somebody who is thinking about relinquishing their yet to be born child.
00:35:52
Speaker
That's what I was curious about. What is the process for adoption? How do people typically go about this? I've not personally experienced that process, but from the outsider's viewpoint, it's pretty obvious. You get on Google, you're quickly funneled to an agency who answers all your questions. I've read those articles, how to adopt, how to go about it. What do you need to do?
00:36:15
Speaker
You fill out some paperwork, you have a consultation to determine if that's the agency that you want to work through. You have to be vetted to some degree. Different agencies have a different process for that. So are you stable or financially stable? Do you have a good home? There's some kind of process to make sure that agency
00:36:36
Speaker
documentation, records, financial statements. It could be a house budget. A home study. And then once you have been approved to adopt a child, there's sometimes there's a matching process. Like the agency considers who you are as a family and they try to help match you with a kid or a perspective, like expectant mother is often what they'll call them.
00:36:58
Speaker
now instead of birth moms. If they haven't given up their child yet, they'll call them expectant mothers. And sometimes the expectant mothers are given a book of eligible adoptive parents and they can pick who they want to adopt their child and see if it's a good fit. It's like a mutual selection process. Although a lot of adoptees and birth mothers say that practice is inherently unethical.
00:37:21
Speaker
Why is that? And so you have to first understand the context of most women, perhaps not all, but most women who are pregnant and considering not parenting, considering giving their child up for adoption. There are reasons for that.
00:37:39
Speaker
financial crisis, a temporary situation in their life where they're in a place, they're pregnant and they're scared. They don't feel like they are enough. They don't think that they can provide for their kid the way their kid deserves. And so if you give that woman a book full of happy, smiling couples with a big house and a pool who can put their kid in a private school and give them a really great education, obviously it's gonna be like, wow, I'm so unworthy.
00:38:07
Speaker
I couldn't give my kid all this. They'd be so much better off with those people who are so happy and have such a good family and have a great house and buy them all.
Open vs Closed Adoptions
00:38:17
Speaker
It almost reinforces. It reinforces you're not fit to be a parent. It is actually the best idea for you to give your child away.
00:38:26
Speaker
So they start to visualize and they, it almost gets to the point where you're selfish. If you decide to keep your baby, if you decide to keep your baby, then you're taking away this better life from your child. How selfish of you that you would decide to keep your child. And that is just all kinds of
00:38:42
Speaker
abusive, you know, like you should never tell a woman that instead. So there are some agencies I've heard of that are trying to change that. And so when an expectant mother comes to them, they are given an education about they're asked, like, what would make you decide to keep your child? Is it financial stability? Is it like what if something changed in your life that what would that be? That would make you be like, yes, I'll keep my child.
00:39:09
Speaker
And then they'll be like, well, how can we connect you with a service that will help you do that as opposed to, Oh, you want to give up your child? Great. Well, here's how it happens. And here's the parents who are ready. And you won't even talk with you about whether or not, you know, the other thing is a lot of times they don't tell expectant mothers.
00:39:26
Speaker
what the long-term effects of relinquishment are both for their child and for themselves. And so sometimes telling an expectant mother, you're already bonded with your baby. When your baby is born, that child is going to look for you, is going to feel a sense of loss and trauma when you're not there anymore suddenly.
00:39:49
Speaker
Um, and a lot of, a lot of expectant mothers don't know that I didn't know that until I was pregnant and I was going through a class and they were talking about that in the child preparation class. And I was like, wait, what? Um, and so just really making sure that expectant mothers are fully informed. And a lot of times they're not really
00:40:11
Speaker
fully informed about what this means long-term. And they're just like, I'm in a bad situation right now. I really feel bad about bringing a kid into this situation right now. And the easiest thing seems like adopting them out so that they can be in a better life, in a better family. And then I can try to get my stuff together. I can't even remember how we started on that option for adoptive parents. So the process of adoption, like it's so competitive.
00:40:38
Speaker
There's just not that many women who are pregnant who don't want to parent, but there's way, way more people who want to adopt an infant. And so I've seen how they, there are the agency or maybe another organization or group will help these perspectives.
00:40:57
Speaker
adoptive parents or hopeful adoptive parents, we call them haps or paps. We used to call white adoptive parents waps, but then a song came out that made that. It was like, hey, adoptees have been using that term for way longer. And then suddenly it's like people are accusing us of saying something that we're not. No, but so the hopeful adoptive parents, they'll do a whole photo shoot. They'll do a whole book about who they are. Oh, okay. You got water.
00:41:25
Speaker
In order to market themselves, really what they're trying to do is market themselves. They'll create Facebook pages and social media accounts and they'll be in local community groups. Even here locally where I live, there was some prospective adoptive parents who had created a Facebook page.
00:41:41
Speaker
And they posted in a local community support group, does anybody know a pregnant woman who doesn't want her kid? Please send her our way. And here's our page with all of our info and our photos where we have put our best foot forward to try to vie for being the next adoptive parents. And there's something really disturbing about that to me. The adoptive child has become a commodity.
00:42:07
Speaker
Yeah. What it sounds like is the supply demand, right? Because there's more people who want children than there are women that are having children and giving them for adoption. Yeah. Okay. So relinquishing for adoption. That is why we, if you look at adoption as an industry, which some people are really offended by the suggestion that it's an industry, but it is money changes hands.
00:42:29
Speaker
So there are people who are professional, there's agencies, even if they're nonprofit, they're still making money and their CEOs are still making money. There's attorneys who their entire career as an attorney is based off of facilitating adoptions. So there's several ways in which livelihoods are made simply because of the lucrative industry that is adoption.
00:42:54
Speaker
So with that, because there's power, because there's money, because there's high demand, corruption is inevitable, right? Like there's different ways. Inevitable. Oh yeah. If you've got people, if you've got a white couple in the U S with money who says they want something, you guarantee anybody in the world's could be like, I'll find it for you. Right. And that's why it's more obvious an international adoption. There's a lot of international adoptions countries who.
00:43:21
Speaker
have stopped the process of international adoption because the corruption and the child trafficking had gotten to the point where they realized, well, before we send out any more kids, we need to figure out what's going on. There are international adoptees who have grown up, gone back to their birth country, found their families only to be told by their families, you were kidnapped. I was at work. You were supposed to be a friend or someone was supposed to be watching you and they sold you to a trafficker.
00:43:49
Speaker
And then when you were adopted to a family in the US, the agency said, oh yeah, their parents died. It was so tragic. They were orphans. But no, they're intact family. Mother and father is still in their home country wondering what happened to their two-year-old. When those stories come out, I think the tendency for some people is to think, oh, that's anecdotal. I mean, that's tragic, but it's so rare. But the more that I have been paying attention, and that's the key is, are you paying attention?
00:44:19
Speaker
Right. The more those stories keep pouring in and how even adoption agencies themselves, there was a big expose not long ago about Korean adoption agencies who knew that these children had living parents and still adopted them out to the USA or other Western nations.
00:44:38
Speaker
But it's still an issue with domestic adoption. And that's a harder thing for people to grasp that our child welfare system still disproportionately separates families of color and families of certain communities. And children who find themselves being adopted in the U.S., there can still be trafficking. There can still be coercion.
00:44:57
Speaker
There can still be, I was in the hospital as a single mom and I gave birth and I was drugged up and then suddenly they were discharging me. And I was like, where was my baby? And the nurse was like, what are you talking about? And like those situations are.
00:45:13
Speaker
heartbreaking and I think if anybody had the view that adoption really was supposed to be for caring for kids in need that if they heard that there would just be this giant uproar of we need to change how this is done because there there should never that should never happen something that is meant in our minds to be for good should never ever result in a child being stolen or trafficked
00:45:39
Speaker
or hand it over to a family just because they had enough money. But I see instead an apathy where it's like, folks are like, I believe that adoption is primarily a good thing. And I'm apathetic to folks who say that there's some problems that need to be addressed. And it seems really similar to like the white people I grew up with who were who were thinking, I believe race issues are pretty good now compared to before. And I'm sort of apathetic to any person of color who claims that
00:46:09
Speaker
systemic racism is still causing problems. Yeah, it's the person, it's the classic, the person in power is the one that's least affected and it does not witness or have any experiences with the injustice and the impressions that it's existing. And I think in this case too, it's the children, the adoptees that may not have that voice
00:46:30
Speaker
to be able to express themselves. And when they do express themselves, they're shunned and they're criticized and they're considered ungrateful or they challenged by their. And we're just trying to be drama queens. Yeah. Right. Challenged maybe by their adoptive family, who they see as their family and making them feel like they shouldn't speak on these things.
00:46:52
Speaker
Silenced, right? Silenced, yeah. I think it's another myth is that adoptees are just, they're just kids. Like people forget that we grow up and we become adults, but you know what? When we're adults, it's not easy to see our adoption. We're no longer walking around with our families that don't match us for people to be like, oh, you're adopted, right? You're just an adult in the world and people don't know that your family at home is an Asian, just like you are.
00:47:18
Speaker
Right. And so they forget that adults, adult adoptees are still adoptees. We're still adopted people. And we are the voices of the kids who cannot yet articulate or even comprehend or understand or process or communicate what they're going through. We are the adults who are doing the hard work of putting words to that experience. We're going back through our childhood. We're repenting ourselves.
00:47:46
Speaker
Sorry. It sounds like a huge dog. She's a large dog, but she's just, we live out in the forest and like way out there. So it's nice to have a really scary sounding. Yeah. I agree. But as soon as somebody gets close to her, all she does is try to sniff their crotch and then she runs away. So she's not a guard dog, but she sounds scary.
00:48:11
Speaker
So I know we've been, we've obviously been justifiably critical of the adoption process, but are there benefits? Like what is the other side of the, maybe the beauty and the blessings that can come from adoption? Well, I would say, I would probably say it this way. I think that the way our system is right now,
00:48:35
Speaker
In order to help, for example, kids in the foster care system who need to be adopted, in order to have a more permanent situation because their parents have already lost their parental rights, adoption is probably the most expedient way to help those kids out. I don't think that justifies continuing to practice adoption the way that it's currently practiced. I think we need to be working toward a long-term
00:49:03
Speaker
reform, and to minimize the need for adoption. I honestly think that it should be the very last case scenario. And there are different types of adoption. And that's another thing that folks forget, I forget. A child being raised by one biological parent could be adopted by a step parent. And that's good. I think there's that step period gets to then become the legal parent of that stepchild.
00:49:28
Speaker
But when it comes to stranger adoption, when it comes to non-biological family adopting a child, I honestly think that there's no need for that in the majority of situations. That we have other legal pathways like legal guardianship that gives
00:49:45
Speaker
an adult, the ability to make all of the decisions for, put the child on their medical insurance, everything that a parent needs to do up until that child's 18 years old, but legal guardianship does not change the child's identity.
Navigating Trauma and Healing
00:49:59
Speaker
It does not change their birth certificates or remove access to their medical records or sever their legal relationships with their biological family.
00:50:08
Speaker
But legal guardianship does allow a stable household to take in a child in crisis for as long as they need it. But if the biological family is able to return to a place where they can care for, the child can go back to their biological family.
00:50:24
Speaker
because their identity and legal status hasn't been completely permanently changed. So when it comes to the benefits of adoption, I really struggle with that, especially with where I'm at in my life journey of being an adoptee. I am estranged from my adoptive family.
00:50:44
Speaker
I do feel like adoptees do not have adequate support over our lifetime. Adoption impacts how we experience life over the full course of our life. I didn't realize that until I became a mom. But I was like, wow, adoption is changing the way I perceive and engage in motherhood in the way that my friends who are not adopted, they don't understand what I'm talking about.
00:51:10
Speaker
And it's gonna impact my experience of being a grandmom. It's gonna impact my experience of when my parents die differently than folks who aren't adopted. There's still a lack of mental health resources that are helpful for adoptees. A lot of mental health professionals aren't necessarily what we call adoption competent, where they understand common adoptee issues. I would say that there are some adoptees who say,
00:51:40
Speaker
that even though adoption has been traumatic, that because of that, some of us have learned how to be very adaptable, very resilient, very quick learners to learn in a new environment how to fit in and how to blend in. And even though we recognize that we shouldn't have had to have done that, we shouldn't have had to have grown up
00:52:03
Speaker
constantly learning how to read the room when folks were surprised to see our parents kid walk in and it's not a blonde haired blue light kid and how to disarm that discomfort like as kids we shouldn't have had that burden but it gives us some skills as adults sometimes that this is just that's the only thing that we know we we know how to
00:52:29
Speaker
to adapt on the fly sometimes. And that's not true of every adoptee, but what I guess I'm trying to say is some adoptees recognize that those skills that we've learned or those tendencies that came from living life as a, yeah, from overcoming adversity are things that we can use to our benefit now. And we can use for the benefit of others now.
Complexities of Adoption Identity
00:52:51
Speaker
I do think it's great that there are many families who adapt with the right reasons.
00:52:58
Speaker
And I think there is some beauty in that, that there are a lot of folks who really do have the right reasons at heart. And I know some really great adoptive parents. And yet, I think that even though that's true, we can't use those good experiences or good moments.
00:53:20
Speaker
to dismiss or erase the larger body of evidence that adoptees are bringing forth and say, on the whole, we're not doing this right. Yes, there's good adoptive parents. And yes, there's kids who really were raised in great environments who were able to get the medical care they needed because they were adopted that they wouldn't have been able to have gotten otherwise or in their home country. And those things are good. And yet, that doesn't mean that we should just keep things the way they are.
00:53:49
Speaker
and ignore the problems that are happening at a systemic level. So what recommendations do you have if any for adoptive parents or perhaps adoptive parents with children of races different than their own?
00:54:04
Speaker
The first thing is that they would educate themselves. It's easy to start with like follow adoptees for justice or the adoptee rights campaign or something like that. It's easy to start with some of the justice initiatives, legal policies that adoptees are trying to change, international adoptees who don't actually have citizenship because of some loopholes in the laws during certain time periods. And they're actually in some cases being exported back to their home country.
00:54:33
Speaker
haven't been in since they were two. All adoptees should have their citizenship tomorrow. Like that should be a done deal. But it's, it's just not as high of a priority for our federal government as it should be, as I think it should be because it's a
00:54:49
Speaker
It's everybody should agree, Democrat, Republican, libertarian, this is not a partisan issue. But yeah, educate yourself on the adoptee justice issues, on the lack of access to vital records, medical history, and find how you can contribute to having those legal and policy issues changed. Maybe you're in a state that still denies adoptees their original birth certificate, so you can contact your representatives.
00:55:18
Speaker
Or maybe you can donate some money to adoptees for justice as they're trying to fight for citizenship for international adoptees who don't have it. And that could be an estimated 40, 50,000 people in the US. That's an easier entry point, I think, to start educating yourself there. And what about for parents specifically of different race than their adoptive children?
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah, I honestly, it's hard to think about that and not think automatically of just white adoptive parents, right? Even though there's plenty of parents of color who have adopted children of a different race, it's predominantly white adoptive parents. And so my recommendation is always do your own racial and ethnic identity development work. You need to understand what it means for you to be white
00:56:07
Speaker
Do your own family genome, like a history. It's a, you can look it up. It's a great process to understand who you are and how you move in this world as somebody who's racialized as white makes a big difference and understand what that, like really be able to talk about race meaningfully that way. There's the organization I work with Be the Bridge has Be the Bridge 101. It's an online course you can take where you can learn about those things. You've got to know what whiteness is, how to
00:56:36
Speaker
see it, define it, recognize it.
Community Support for Transracial Adoptees
00:56:38
Speaker
You've got to know how to understand white privilege isn't something meant to guilt or shame you, but it's something you have. And how can you use that actually to help your child? Would you say the onus, would you say it's on the onus of the adoptive parents to create opportunities and relationships for their, for the adoptees to have more access points to, to learn about their heritage or to interact. Oh, for sure.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's the other thing that adoptive parents have to do. And again, the organization that I work with, Be the Bridge, they have a transracial adoption guy that people can purchase. And it does talk about that. It talks about if you are a white family and you live in a predominantly white area, you need to think about that before you adopt a child of color and you bring them into a community.
00:57:28
Speaker
where they're going to be a racial or ethnic minority, is that really fair for that child? And some families, some adoptive families have moved so that they could live in a neighborhood or a city where their child would have teachers who were the same racial or ethnic group as them who could go to a church where there was a large group of folks from their own racial group to have relationships with and to have families to have play dates with. That's not as common, but
00:57:58
Speaker
I've seen it happen and it is 100% the parents' responsibility to make sure that the kids not only have representation or mirrors like books with people of their racial ethnic group, but they actually have meaningful long-term relationships with a variety of people from their racial ethnic group, meaning grandmas, grandpas, aunties and uncles, kids to play with. And the parents themselves
00:58:26
Speaker
need to have relationships with adults of that racial or ethnic group. And they, because unless they have a strong like friendship, like someone who's willing to call them out and be like, Hey, this is what's going on with your kid. And you need to know it's just,
00:58:42
Speaker
there's always going to be blind spots for a parent, and they need to have a community to help them. And if they don't have that, they might not realize that it's difficult or that it's problematic, but their kid is being harmed.
00:58:57
Speaker
because they don't have that kind of community support and real relationships with people who can humanize what it means to be Chinese-American or what it means to be Black, what it means to be and to celebrate.
00:59:14
Speaker
and to love who you are, who God made you to be in your fullness, right? I was raised in what I call racial isolation without real meaningful relationships with any Chinese Americans or Asian Americans really at all. And that caused me to internalize racism and to hate the part of me that was Asian and not really realize that's what I was doing.
00:59:39
Speaker
That was also about the same time I was going through my adoptee identity like wake up call. And I know that's not what my parents wanted. They didn't want me to do that, but they didn't see the signs of it because they didn't know what that looked like. And it really came from the fact that the only exposure I had to my racial and ethnic identity was stereotypes and like tokenism, tropes on TV. So I had a very shallow and unhealthy and negative view.
01:00:08
Speaker
of what it meant to be Chinese or Asian American. And the only way that I could have had anything more rich and in depth was to have actually had relationships with other Chinese American families and to get to know them as real, fully, well, like dynamic and complex, full human beings and to understand what that looked like. So yes.
01:00:30
Speaker
It's the parent's responsibility completely. And I wish it was something that was taken more seriously. Are you willing to literally find a different job and relocate your family so that this child does not grow up?
01:00:45
Speaker
Right. If you want to if you want to position adoption as this selfless act, then make sure you're being selfless. Right. Right. Yeah. You're willing to. What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to lay down?
01:01:01
Speaker
I think the other thing that I encourage adoptive parents to do, and all people, honestly, it's everybody. It's to start being really aware of when adoption, the theme, the topic, the word comes up into your view, whether it's yours.
01:01:18
Speaker
social media feed, whether it's the news, a TV show, a movie, and to be intentional about getting less information from mass media, from adoption agencies, from adoptive parents, but start following adoptees, like subscribe to our podcasts and our YouTube channels. Follow our social media accounts.
01:01:37
Speaker
so that you're seeing our stuff balance your feed, right? It's the same thing we talk about in racial literacy or education work is, are all your new sources white? Okay, we'll start balancing your feed, right? And I think with adoption, we have to be just as intentional. Start following first mothers who have started family preservation organizations or start following adoptees who are sharing
01:02:00
Speaker
information and stop sharing the adoption porn like the video of the girl who's so happy she was adopted that she's crying and saying I love you so much to her white adoptive parents stop sharing that video not like I call that adoption porn it gives everybody the good feels but you know what adoptees see when they see that seven-year-old girl who's just crying tears of joy that she's been adopted we see a child who
01:02:27
Speaker
knows that this is the acceptable feeling to emote, but might also be crying because of the overwhelming emotion that she's realizing that she now will never be reunited with her first family. Right. That's not those tears aren't always happy tears.
01:02:44
Speaker
Those tears aren't always happy tears. And even the happiness that we emote and exude and the gratefulness that we emote and exude a lot of times is because we don't know what we're feeling and how to make sense of it. But what we do know is the adults around us respond well when we show gratitude and when we show happiness.
Protecting Adoptee Narratives
01:03:03
Speaker
And there are so many things that happened in my life.
01:03:05
Speaker
Like the first time I met my first mother, I had so many emotions going on. It was just like, I was, I can't even begin to try to unpack it now. I was overwhelmed. So the only thing that I knew how to do was say and do and present the things that I knew was going to make it more comfortable for everybody else to show great gratitude, to be happy, to deny that I was bothered by anything. Because if other people were comfortable and happy, then it made it easier.
01:03:35
Speaker
And I had no idea at 10, 11 years old that I was literally avoiding discomfort, but I had so much of it in me. And I just was like, I don't know what to do with this. I don't even know how to name it, what to call it. So yeah, when we see those videos of those kids,
01:03:52
Speaker
those kids aren't old enough to give consent for that video to be shared on the internet, you know, of their life of this intimate and really tragic moment. And of course, we want to please our adoptive parents and the people around us. So of course, if they say, Do you mind if we take a picture and share it? Of course, we're going to say yes.
01:04:14
Speaker
Of course, we want to be the center of attention. We want to be celebrated. We're kids. Do you think that plays into the fear of abandonment or not feeling like you belong to like perform? Overcompensate. Yeah. To perform what you think is going to be applauded because you want that. I mean, why feel like you belong?
01:04:34
Speaker
You do. And even more, if you're a transracial adoptee, you constantly have to prove you belong because you're always coming across strangers who look at your family and they're like, wait, why are you here? They don't say it that way, maybe, but they'll be like, oh, is that your child? Like, surprise? Like, I have a friend that says,
01:04:54
Speaker
I have a white friend. When my white friend would like come to play or be with us at a camping trip, people would always assume she was the daughter and I was the friend who came along. And I'd be mad because I'd be like, no, this is my family. And being really intentional wasn't a conscious thing.
01:05:12
Speaker
feeling this need to prove that I belong here. This is my family. That is my parents. And always looking for things that affirmed that and denying anything that challenged that. So if there was anything that came up
01:05:27
Speaker
that would challenge my place in my adoptive family. It was easier for me to just like, nah, no, like that's not a problem I have or to suppress that feeling, that discomfort, that whatever, to ignore it. And yeah, like stop sharing those videos. They're not kind to the kid in the video. They promote the false narrative of adoption. You like it because it makes you feel good and that's super selfish.
01:05:55
Speaker
Like, look, look how happy they are. They have me. I know. Yeah. And yeah, that's I would tell adoptive parents, too. I would really love it if adoptive parents would not like make their child an Internet online public face and personality. There was Micah Stauffer, who is an adoptive parent who had a YouTube channel that was pretty much centered around their adoption of an Asian boy who had special needs.
01:06:22
Speaker
she heard about this and they had challenges navigating challenges she had they ended up rehoming him so that's another thing to know about adoption is that if the kid doesn't work for the adoptive parents they can give them away so essentially they couldn't handle his special needs
01:06:42
Speaker
I think that's what it was. Yeah, but they got a they got a huge following and a lot of attention. Like again, like she was full. She was a full time YouTuber. So she was making enough off of the money she made from her YouTube channel, which centered her as this wonderful mom of this child of special needs. So to me, she made money off that kid. And then when it got to be too much,
01:07:06
Speaker
And he was getting older and the challenges were still there. The kid disappeared. And a lot of YouTubers were like, where is he? Where is the kid? What happened? And then it came out that they decided to rehome him. And sometimes rehoming is a process that
01:07:24
Speaker
actual child welfare people are involved with. And sometimes it's not, and it can be really sketchy and shady. And so there was a demand that the local authorities there confirm that this kid was placed in a good home and wasn't just sold to somebody. And the fact that's even a question. So anytime an adoptive parent, especially with transracial adoptees, because there's really something about kids of color,
01:07:53
Speaker
optically with white parents that people love to see. It's like, oh, this is so great. We're solving the race problem when white people adopt kids of color. But please save all those photos, share them on your social media, but have it set to only your friends. See them like private privacy, because someday that, that child is going to become an adopted adult.
01:08:16
Speaker
And if you have a social media platform and you've monetized that or you've made a name for yourself off of sharing your life since they were an infant with your followers. Yeah, it's crazy. There's a good chance your child's going to grow up and feel used by you.
01:08:34
Speaker
so that you could be popular or get followers or make money. And you know what? I'm so glad social media wasn't around when I was a kid that my parents could post publicly on the internet for internet strangers to liken hurt and love bomb. I say, Hey, save all those things. And you know what? Someday.
01:08:51
Speaker
if your adult kid is like, I love all these photos, let's share them all publicly online, then you can do it together and have big fun. And it's big to make that decision though, as an adult, because it's their life and it's their story. I think adaptive parents need to protect and guard
01:09:07
Speaker
the story of their adopted children, what their circumstances was, why they were relinquished, how they came into your family. That story is just as much ours as anybody else's. And it should be up to the adoptee who has grown up and processed that, how they want and where they want that story shared. And it makes us very vulnerable. When we share our story, people can react in such terrible ways. It's very hurtful.
01:09:32
Speaker
I grew up hearing my story shared with strangers was just, oh yeah, she's adopted and it was this and it was that. And I learned not to value my own boundaries about what is intimate information that you don't need to know. You don't have a right to just ask me that and to hear the sorted details of why I was relinquished. That's none of your business, right?
01:09:54
Speaker
It's normalized. If we grow up believing our story exists for the consumption of everybody, then there's something that tells us that we exist for everybody else's entertainment or curiosity. Do you think that's not a healthy? Do you think that's something that people need to know at home is like you shouldn't be asking why or how someone was relinquished?
01:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, honestly, I think if that's something that an adopted person wants to share with you, then they'll make that decision, right? I think a lot of times I have overshared because I felt like if I got it out in the open, it was preemptive. I'm not going to be hurt by your stupid nosy questions and assumptions because I'm just going to lay out all my cards in the beginning so that you don't even have an opportunity to ask a question that
01:10:45
Speaker
insinuates something that I'm not comfortable with. I'm just going to tell you all right out front.
01:10:51
Speaker
And so many times, walking away from those interactions, feeling used, feeling like, oh, okay, that was interesting. Anyway, by people asking me about my ethnicity, and then when I say I was adopted, because they're like, oh, well, were you raised, like, because some, almost everybody knows something about what it means to be Asian. And then I'd be like, well, I'm adopted, so I wasn't raised with the culture as the language. And then, oh.
01:11:18
Speaker
And it's just like, within the five minutes of meeting someone, if they're asking you those things, that's not because they care about you as a person. It's because they're trying to put you into a box so they can figure out how to categorize you. Like, are you someone I can be cool with? Like, are you down? Like, are you, whatever, can I make anti-Asian jokes in front of you or not? And I just wish that people would realize like, Oh, okay. That's something that is, if you see a family and clearly
01:11:44
Speaker
the parents and the kids don't match really try hard to be aware of how you react to them for the sake of the kids. Okay. For the sake of the kids. Yeah. You might be super, super curious about how mind your business, mind your business. But it's what's more important that you know, these details about these strangers or that those kids get to go out and be in the world and feel like who they are and who their family is accepted. And it's not weird. And it's not,
01:12:13
Speaker
something that people point out as being wrong or different. It doesn't require explanation. And because I really just, that's all I wanted. I just wanted to be seen as having, being someone that belongs. Adoption certainly affects my life in many ways, but it doesn't define me. I'm so much more than just that. Growing up as a transracial adoptee, especially, there's such a tendency to have everything wrapped up in that experience of being an adoptee. Everything colors it.
01:12:42
Speaker
It doesn't concentrate your entire idea, right? It's not all, it's not everything about us. And yeah, I just, I wish, I would ask that people shift the influx of information and shift their perspective by intentionally seeking out and consuming Adopti created materials, content, art,
01:13:01
Speaker
music products like we're entrepreneurs, we're writers, we're musicians, we are sculptors, we're using dance to communicate our complex stories. So there's just so much that is out there for folks to follow adoptees to
01:13:20
Speaker
let that challenge their perspective to see us as people. We are experts in our own personal story of adoption. I'm not an expert on all of adoption, but my experience on it, you bet your touch, I'm the expert.
Rapid-Fire Opinions on Adoption
01:13:34
Speaker
Right. And with that, I want to get to our last game because I know I had you for quite a bit, which is actually called, in my expert opinion,
01:13:44
Speaker
which essentially this is rapid fire. I'm going to list off topics and I just want you to give your hot take initial reaction to the matter and then explaining like, I agree or I disagree because blank. Cool. Okay. All right. Number one, adopt may experience shame around their birth parents or ethnic backgrounds.
01:14:05
Speaker
Oh, 100%. Yeah, for sure. I feel like I experienced shame. And some of that was maybe even tinged between race and religion. And being as that my father was Chinese, and being as that China is often seen as a foreign threat to the USA, there was
01:14:23
Speaker
political rhetoric I picked up on as a kid. China's this communist country. It's a spiritually dark place. It's where only the bravest missionaries go because it's so dark over there, right? And so I had this thought that like my Chinese ancestors or like maybe they were like dragon worshipers or something. And I am like carrying this bad blood of like these very unchristian anti-God communist people or something. And it was
01:14:49
Speaker
kids make up the craziest things. They never tell their parents. I have a healthy imagination. So for sure, like this was not something that my adoptive parents told me. If they had known that thought was going on in my head, they would have corrected me and educated it out of me. And yet that was still a sense of shame that there was something inherently anti-Christian, anti-US about my Chinese ancestry. And that's another reason why I struggled to want
01:15:18
Speaker
to identify as Chinese American or Asian American. Yeah. First family slash racial ethnic identity, or first mom, even though my mom was white, the idea that she was a young unmarried woman who got pregnant. And that is, I actually carried a fear
01:15:37
Speaker
That was like a generational curse. I was bound and destined to repeat that I was going to be an unwed mother or get pregnant before I got married. And how shameful would that be? Because that was, that was my mom. And so therefore that must be true about me. And these, of course, I hope people who are listening to this are like.
01:15:56
Speaker
What a terrible thing to think. That's so untrue. But I would say there's a lot of adoptees who have felt similarly about those things. Right. And whether these messages are explicitly said to you, or maybe they're implicitly implicit bias or messages being subliminally transferred to you, or maybe it could be some things that just come up in your mind. It doesn't matter if that shame is grounded in truth.
01:16:19
Speaker
you can still experience shame. And that's why we do need truth, right? Because it's the only thing that's going to make that shame dissipate. So we have to have these open and honest conversations about what shame we have carried and why so that we can start to unravel those things. If we're not allowed to talk about our pain and our shame, we can't heal. Exactly. Okay. Number two, adoption is a spiritual journey.
01:16:46
Speaker
No. Is surviving cancer a spiritual journey? Sure. Anything that we, we're spiritual beings. So anything we have that happens to us in life, you could loosely call a spiritual journey, but to be honest with you, you know,
01:17:00
Speaker
I, I, that just, that seems like what we call that marketing fluff. It's a phrase somebody who's not adopted came up with to, to, it sounds good, but that, I don't, that doesn't resonate with me and I'm not even a hundred percent sure like why people would say that. Right. Okay. Number three adoptees can embrace their ethnic and heritage, even if it's different than their adoptive parents.
01:17:27
Speaker
Yes, yes. And that is an area that I really hope more adoptees start talking about. How do we come to embrace our ethnic and racial heritage and culture and ancestry when we're raised by parents of a different race? I definitely believe that is possible. I think a lot of adoptees feel like that is impossible. Imposter syndrome, where we really feel like we don't belong
01:17:55
Speaker
is real, like Asian adoptees, for example, we say, well, I'm not Asian enough and I'm not white enough. What am I? I think this is, I think the adoptee, transracial adoptee experience in this way overlaps with multi-ethnic people, mixed race people, and that we live in the hyphen.
01:18:14
Speaker
were not, I'm not fully Chinese. I'm not fully white. I'm the something in between. And even if I were fully Chinese, but I was raised by white parents in a predominantly white culture, I would still live in the something in between Chinese and white culture America, right? I think that
01:18:32
Speaker
It's definitely possible how each adoptee comes to a place where they have a healthy celebratory sense of their racial and ethnic identity is going to be, it's going to look different for everybody. And there's going to be a lot of things that some of us have to overcome, whether it's internalized racism, whether it's just anger or unforgiveness toward first families or countries that sent us away.
01:18:55
Speaker
For some of us, it's like, I don't want to identify with the people who rejected me and that's valid. Okay. And so they are going to come to have a healthy sense of what it means to be who they are. It's going to look very different than it does for me, but it is possible. And that is something that I hope more adoptees who are doing that work or who have done that work start sharing about. I'd love there to be some academic research.
01:19:24
Speaker
On this, I did actually ask a transracial adoptee who's an academic researcher. I believe her name is Dr. Gina Samuels and she sent me a paper she did on transracial adoptees raised in white culture and biracial identities also. So I do think there are some adoptees out there who are doing some research on this because I think it's something that more adoptees need to know is possible for them. You can have a healthy racial and ethnic identity and embrace your ethnic heritage
01:19:53
Speaker
It's going to look different for you than your non adopted counterparts. Sure. But it's not less valid. It's not less, you're not less Korean or less Chinese or more Colombian or less black because you were raised with a white family.
01:20:08
Speaker
It's just how you embody your ethnicity might look different. And that's okay. And hey, that's good. We're not a monolith. That's good. I love that. I love that. Let's see another one is adoptees don't have to express gratitude for being adopted.
01:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree. I think that is expected, that we express gratitude and that we say we recognize the good and the blessing and the positives of that. Here's the thing, though, if your adoptive family
01:20:42
Speaker
is truly loving and supportive. And this is true for biological family. If I am a loving and supportive and respectful mother to my children, then the gratitude they feel for me will come naturally. It'll be an organic response to being loved and respected by their parent. But for those parents, biological or adopted, who haven't healed from their own stuff, who are passing on their traumas to their kids, and yet still expecting their kids
01:21:12
Speaker
you owe me gratitude because I adopted you or because I gave birth to you or because I feed you. That is like, that's really a shame or guilt tactic to try to get the kid to behave or to tell you what you want to hear. I think that it's really hard.
01:21:28
Speaker
to say in the best case scenario with a really loving family, an adoptee would naturally show gratitude and respect toward their adoptive parents and there would be a healthy relationship. I can get down with that, but I can't get down with saying across the board every adoptee owes or must express gratitude.
01:21:47
Speaker
because the reality is every adoptee is not in a healthy and loving home environment. They're not fully supported and respected by their adoptive families in the fullness of their experiences as adoptees or who they are as their racial and ethnic identities or even other identities that they hold. I think like with my kids,
01:22:08
Speaker
I don't think they owe thanks to me. Like I would love to hear that. Thank you mom for loving us. Yeah, of course I'd love to hear that. But I think like if I'm doing a good job loving them, then that's going to happen. But for me to be like, you don't show me enough gratitude.
01:22:24
Speaker
That feels more about control. And I think that. I know I was like, what is that pitted in this need of like wanting gratitude for something like what childhood wound or trauma? Like what is that? What is that coming from? Well, I think.
01:22:40
Speaker
Honestly, I don't know if it's necessarily childhood, I associate this with patriarchy. Honestly, I associate this with the idea that there are certain roles men play, women play, and children play. Biblical roles, some people call them. I think that comes more from the patriarchy structure of wives owe their husbands.
01:23:04
Speaker
the hierarchy of people who's in control who deserves what from the other and so the husband deserves the complete obedience fidelity sexual access to his wife at all times and then the children owe that fidelity to their father and their mother too but primarily like
01:23:24
Speaker
I will obey them. I will not dishonor their name. I will make them proud. It looks a lot like to me that there are some folks who feel like this is what a good family should look like, right? Where, what is it? The Proverbs 31 where the children will rise up and call her blessed. And so a lot of times it seems like parents are seeking those outward signs of success, but they don't really know how
01:23:53
Speaker
necessarily to make that happen organically. They're just looking like, oh, if my children express their gratitude to me, then that's a sign I'm doing something right. So I need validation to do that. How do I get them to do that? Yeah, it's validation. Totally. Okay. Last one. Adoption should be a last resort.
01:24:12
Speaker
I definitely think that's true. Unless adoption meaningfully changes in the legal process of what it means, but as it stands now, being a complete legal change of identity, legal severance from biological family, all of the things we already talked about, yes, adoption should be a last resort.
01:24:30
Speaker
an overkill fix for simply putting a child in a caring and stable home environment. Like I said before, there are other things we can do, legal guardianship, if we need a child to be raised in another home.
01:24:45
Speaker
that's less invasive on the child's rights. But ultimately, adoption should be the last resort because we as a people, as a society, as a church are finally taking seriously the systemic inequities that cause families to be separated to begin with. We are caring for the orphan and the widow, which is a child and their single mother.
01:25:06
Speaker
in the biblical like cultural context, when a husband and a father die, then the child was considered an orphan because the wife, the mother had no agency in that society. So she could not meaningfully care for the children. And so an orphan and a widow was a child and their widowed mother. They weren't, they just didn't have the father anymore.
01:25:31
Speaker
And we need to actually start caring. And that's by adoption. I think should really be a less resort is because we started to address those other things much more seriously and much more effectively. Right. Okay. Well, thank you so much. You've been truly enlightening and I've learned so much from this conversation. And I really think there needs to be more light in discussion around the social issues adoption. And I think you've done a wonderful job of highlighting that adoption is not, there's actually quite a lot of critique.
01:26:01
Speaker
an examination and discussion that needs to continue to happen. Before you go, do you have any resources you recommend for listeners to check out? Oh, for sure.
Recommended Books and Media
01:26:11
Speaker
One book I'm currently reading through is called The Child Catchers by Katherine Joyce. It's just so you could have a visual. This actually is a journalist who gets into the religious approach to adoption, primarily Christian, American Christian approach to adoption and the phenomenon that it's become.
01:26:30
Speaker
I think it's a really, so far as I'm getting through it, it's a really great piece to understand how we're getting some things backwards. Another one that I would recommend, even though it's not specifically adoption focused, is the one I mentioned before, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van Dijk, because it does talk about trauma in a way that really helps adopt these to
01:26:52
Speaker
name what they're dealing with in a way that, that nothing else has really like touched on before. There's a documentary by Angela Tucker called closure. I think it's on Amazon where she finds her, her first mother. I think that's, she does a great job. Angela Tucker is a great person to follow. She does a great job of holding the nuance and the balance between, I am grateful for my life. I have now because it's afforded me so much. And yet.
01:27:21
Speaker
I also recognize and hold space for all of the trauma and the hurt and the tension of those two things. She does a good job of that. All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung was the first book. So she's a Korean American adoptee, but I had never read somebody put into words my own thoughts. I got like two pages into the book and I nearly threw it across the room because I was like, oh my gosh, somebody has been spying on me and taking notes about my life.
01:27:49
Speaker
And I literally had never had that experience before because I hadn't really talked to a lot of other Asian adults. She was putting into words and she even grew up in Oregon too, right? So she was saying some things that was like verbatim, the same things my parents told me, her parents told her. And I was like, what? It just blew my mind. So I'd love it if people read her book because
01:28:09
Speaker
I think she also does a really good job of talking about broader themes, but also giving a picture of adoption that complicates some things, but she loved her adoptive parents. They had a good relationship too. So it's not a just a ever going to bash on adopters and call them all child traffickers, but it really does help humanize the experience, the complexities of adoption. So those are some
Adoptee Influencer Network
01:28:34
Speaker
things.
01:28:34
Speaker
And of course the Adopti Influencer Network, which I started last year in the pandemic. I started the Adopti Influencer Network because I saw so many adoptees who are already online sharing their stories so bravely, whether they do it on YouTube or whether they do it on Instagram or they have a blog or they write op-eds.
01:28:53
Speaker
And they really do have influence. So adoptees who are sharing their story really do have a lot of influence, not in the sense of I'm on Instagram selling diet pills influencer, but in the sense of they're influencing people's thoughts about adoption. They're changing hearts and minds with their personal stories and they're sharing very bravely and they're educating people. So I wanted the network to be a place where these adoptees could collaborate.
01:29:23
Speaker
And we could increase our reach, increase our impact. I really think that the more adoptees are leading the conversation on adoption, the more we are going to get to adoption reform that's meaningful, the more that the adoptees who are kids now are going to grow up to be adults who find they do have access to resources to support them unlike us.
01:29:43
Speaker
It's going to be easier for that next generation. They're not going to come across somebody who, when they say, yeah, adoption was hard on me. And that person's like, oh, you're such a selfish world, Brett. Like people aren't going to respond to adoptees that way anymore in the future because it's going to be known.
01:29:57
Speaker
this is a complex experience and a lot of us do have hurt. So that network has been this slow burning project. I don't have a lot of time to put into it, but as I grow it, my goal is to get a way to funnel people toward adoptees who are writing and sharing and away from the agencies or the adoptive parents who are dominating
01:30:18
Speaker
the algorithms. And so it's like, we're going to fight this battle with search engine optimization. And, you know, I love that. Build solidarity, create a platform to express your voice. And that's how change can be made. Incremental change can be made steady and consistently.
01:30:37
Speaker
follow our network. And what is the website or the influencer network? Yep. Adoptie influencer network.com. And then we have Facebook and Instagram. I'm not really able to get into the Twitter space. So we have one, but we're not really able to man it. It's
01:30:55
Speaker
There's only so much I can do, but we are building a video. We have a video series that we're cutting right now, interviewing adoptees. It's going to be released on our own video channel. People can subscribe to, and we have articles that we're going to post on our website, which are designed to drive traffic of people who are searching for info on adoption. So it's going to, it's going to capture some of that traffic and then point them toward the adoptees who are already writing and sharing and creating
Personal Reflections and Gratitude
01:31:25
Speaker
videos.
01:31:25
Speaker
And then my personal, like I have my own blog calling in the wilderness.com and a Facebook page and an Instagram at coach tennis. And that is adoption, but it's also Christianity critiquing some things I learned growing up. It's also racial and ethnic identity. It's also my garden and people want to follow everything with. Yeah. If they want to engage with me there, Instagram is like where I micro blog.
01:31:50
Speaker
A lot. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. She's over here working. She's got babies on her shoulder. You've really been a champion today. And I appreciate your patience and willingness to speak with me despite the hard job of being a mama too. Oh yeah. And hearing them in the background and the dog in the background. They're great kids, but this is just real life, right? Yeah, it is. It is. And I think it's also important for people to know, hey, working moms have
01:32:19
Speaker
A lot to handle, a lot to manage. That's the honesty of the experience. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for asking these really great questions and giving me a chance to flush out some of my ideas. I appreciate how I get to experience this as like this is a great opportunity to feel heard and to be able to say the things that a lot of people don't give me the time to explain. So I appreciate that so much. Good. Thank you.
01:32:45
Speaker
Wow. Thank you so much to Tiffany for joining the show. And if you've made it this far, thank you. And I appreciate you. I know it was a long episode, but Tiffany just had a wealth of information to share and I didn't want to cut any of it out. I found it so useful for those who are aspiring to be adoptive parents who are currently adoptive parents or who are adoptees and who have lived this experience and perhaps are debating or in questioning their own identity and how adoption has impacted their lives as a whole.
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:33:15
Speaker
My major takeaway this week is really to educate yourself on adoptee social justice and policy issues if you're interested in adoption. Now Tiffany blatantly discussed this and called you to make sure that you do the work and that you're very aware of the system and how children are moving through the system before you involve yourself with it.
01:33:38
Speaker
That means doing your own racial and identity development work if perhaps you are a transracial adoptive parent where you're going to be taking on a child who has a different racial background than your own. I really love the fact that she says, create more access points for transracial adoptees to connect with their home heritage.
01:33:58
Speaker
That could mean a lot of things, but one idea she said was some parents even moving to help kids make those connections or going to a church that has a variety of mixed diverse individuals. Your schools, your friends, all of these things matter and adoptees need to see that their identity is not erased, but they still have a connection to that even if it is different from their adoptive parents.
01:34:26
Speaker
All right, everyone. Thank you. I appreciate you. Don't forget to go give her show her some love at Coach Henness and let her know that you listen to this week's episode. All right, folks, that's all for this week. Remember, when we learn more, we can do more and we can be more for ourselves and others.