I am surprised and dumbfounded that the actual realization of being an “adoptee” recently just hit me— first at the age of 16 but truly at the age of 35.
I have admitted before that most of my life that I never really labeled myself as an adoptee. It was not a conscious decision and it wasn’t intentionally pushed away or placed on the back burner… but I never really identified with being an adoptee. Maybe because I honestly had a really great life filled with love, support and openness surrounding my placement.
Being an adoptive mom I have felt a deep sense of knowledge and connection with adoption. Taking on the role as an adoptive mama, even after being a mama to my biological son, a part of who I was as an adoptee became more alive as I was going through the adoption process. Adopting helped me understand the needs of navigating multiple families and a deeper love, maybe within myself as well. During this period of my life, I am finding myself needing more than ever to connect with this part of my heart and who I am… the adoptee side of the triad.
As I settle more into my identity as adoptee, I am recognizing more often when inappropriate language makes adoptees sound like a commodity. I might have heard it before – but it’s like I’m seeing it through a new lens.
I want to be loud and clear that adoptees are humans!
We are not objects.
We are not items.
We are not materials up for exchange or upgrades or enhancements.
It is unfair to just think of us as infants and children but adoptees are also grown adults. Learning and navigating our stories, our experiences, and our voices as we go from infancy to adulthood.
Through social media, I have read the hurt that adoptee’s genuinely feel these types of emotions. I have seen adoptees’ existences through the screen be portrayed in light of materialism. Something to obtain to complete others’ happiness.
Last month, in real life, I sat with 7 women, on a large, white serene L-shaped couch, all with the same label as “the adoptee”. The whole couch to spread apart on; use to our comfort levels, and yet we were all consoled by closely sitting encircled with one another. Before me I sat with real breathing people. I cried with them. I held their hands. I hugged them. I sat with open hands at my knees. I handed tissues and accepted them. My heart was held with warm welcoming hands. The words coming out of my mouth were validated but also validated through personal experience. Within this triad, we had a circle, I felt HUMANS. Living, breathing, connectedness, emotional humans.
This was the moment I truly felt my adopted identity. Right here, cozied on this L-shaped couch. It has not been fully realized through my reunion with my birth mother, or my 3 new biological sisters, or my birth father and his parents. It has not been my unspoken connection with my daughter or my sister through adoption. It has not been through squares on a screen or through emotionless hashtags. It came from sitting with others that could relate.
I didn’t have to censor my thoughts or thoroughly explain my emotions.
I didn’t have to add extra verbiage to the complexities of my reunification.
I didn’t have to hesitate to share or feel the need to go into greater detail to help them understand.
I felt a sense of connectedness that was unspoken.
I didn’t need the thoughts in my head to make sense when they flew out of my mouth because they understood.
I didn’t have to feel insecure with parts of my reunion because they are in my corner. Sometimes a few would finish the thoughts I was struggling with putting to words.
Sometimes we’d sit in silence when the thought was impossible to complete, which wasn’t awkward but warranted.
On this day, in the spring breeze of February, in the middle of the desert, on this couch, at this moment, I was seen.
WRITTEN BY KIRA MCSHERRY
Kira is an adoptee who recently reunited with both sides of her biological family after living a closed adoption her whole life. She lives in the hot desert of Phoenix, AZ with her husband of 7 memorable years. She is a stay at home mom with their miracle boy, Beckett, who was born at 29 weeks gestation and brought their daughter, Brooklyn, home through adoption in 2016. She also works part time as a Social Media Manager for a local adoption agency. Photography is her addiction; writing is her therapy; working out is her cure. She loves to open up her world in hopes to help shed light and bravery at the times most needed.
