“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
This quote. It popped up recently and I couldn’t shake it. It pierced a part of my heart that so needed to be reminded of why I have always felt so passionate about sharing our truths, and it brought me back to the place where I dropped my pen and it prompted me to pick it back up.
A few years ago now, I chose to publicly chronicle our two pregnancies which ended in two losses after birth. I subsequently published a book about it and then journalled our journey into parenthood through adoption. And looking back, it feels as though I did it with ease. Not without personal cost, but with an ease to share without anticipating a fight. And I have slowly watched as the online climate around us has evolved and shifted – seemingly overnight at times.
This beast that was made for connection has, in this trying time, turned into a battlefield where stories often seem to be either weaponized to prove a point or kept unpublished to keep the peace. And nothing really in between. And this is largely true in the world of adoption, albeit most other arenas as well.
I was chatting with a close friend recently about how difficult it has felt to share parts of myself that I used to share without batting an eye. We talked about how it feels almost as though every post, once you press publish, is an open invitation to debate our truths rather than simply sharing a personal experience with no other agenda than to provide another human perspective. Another human experience.
But I think that we can claim it back. Maybe it feels regressive to inhale the words of our community and resist the urge to wage war, but I am suggesting that it could be progressive to venture beyond the warzone and carve out a space where storytelling is just that: storytelling. Not a debate, not a weapon. Not a battlefield. A cry of authentic truth and complex human experience that provides a real opportunity for growth.
I can’t tell you how many people with powerful, diverse, and varied stories within the adoption world have told me that they feel they cannot share for fear of attack. They aren’t wrong, but it should not be so.
There’s no competition here. We don’t have to measure out whose story is harder, whose truth is more primed for debate. If we are looking for a playing field that is the most fair, the most even, the most agreeable, we’ll simply never find it because life is far too layered for that to be true.
But this is me saying that we each have a right to speak freely our stories and be met with open hands. There is bravery in the choice to put forth personal truth just as there is bravery in the choice to absorb a truth unfamiliar to us. It is only with practice (and often through mistakes) that a culture of acceptance, grace, and humility will grow. For me personally, stepping into a space in which the truth of others has been foreign, and even uncomfortable, to me has taught me valuable lessons I hadn’t been exposed to previously.
Such as the importance of personally taking control when it comes to vetting the professionals, or recognizing cues from my Black son regarding his relationship with his identity that I might have otherwise overlooked, or understanding more fully the rhythms and seasons of our open adoption from the perspective and needs of a birth mom.
The merit consuming the stories of those different from us cannot be overstated.
And in that growth comes powerful, confident, and authentic diversity that will sit right at our fingertips to take from and grow from. Where else could we sit amongst such manifold voices? Truly, these spaces and the voices that fill it are a gift we’ve yet to fully open.
WRITTEN BY JORDAN TATE: Jordan might be the most type B person you’ve ever met, and she most certainly cannot form full sentences before her first morning coffee. She married the boy from next door and she is an infant loss mama x2. She is also an adoptive mother to two. More than anything, she appreciates transparency and real talk about the harder moments of life.
