No doubt that some of you have read this WASHINGTON POST piece from an adoptee as I have seen it all over adoption FB pages today and I am always happy to see voices heard, though I do feel that many of them have been very one sided recently... so as you read this post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/please-dont-tell-me-i-was-lucky-to-be-adopted/2014/12/31/9e9e9472-6f48-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html
PLEASE remember that EVERY adoptee is an individual and feels differently about their adoption. Your child's feelings may be totally different than Ms. Pines' feelings.
While I have felt for the place that life left my birth mother and the choices she had to make--I was feeling for her. I have never felt anything negative or painful about my adoption. I was adopted from care at 14 mos old. It is not something I grappled with but I know there are some adoptees who carry a lot of pain about theirs.
It is such a fine line between hoping to support your child and borrowing trouble. Listen to your child. Be sure he/she knows communication is open and you are there to help and will not ever judge or be hurt by her feelings. I think so often in our effort to do the right thing and out of love for our children we borrow trouble (especially in the adoption community). We just need to give children a safe place where their voices are heard and valued. Where are arms, hearts and minds are open.
I am so glad I did not grow up in a home where (even out of love) my parents defined me by my adoption-- I am so many other things.#adoption #MANYscripts
{ I am lucky/blessed/happy/imaginative-- I am a Mommy/daughter/writer/designer/dreamer & somewhere in there, adoptee}
So read articles and books, listen to other adoptees BUT PLEASE REMEMBER-- even with all of those voices-- there is NO VOICE ON or ABOUT ADOPTION THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT than that of YOUR CHILD!
I was responding to a comment on this article somewhere else and this came to mind.... The writer of the article and I seem to be fairly close in age, both adopted from other countries at about a year old and yet she says "she does not know any one she is related to"-- where as I look at it as I know everyone I am related to, we just don't share DNA. We are all only human and all handle things different ways-- just do not assume the way YOUR adoptee will.