Had enough of this, we aren’t in high school anymore…

Imagine what it would be like if those challenged by infertility, or pregnancy losses were split into two groups.  One group grappled with the very deep feelings of pain, inadequacy, losses that were directly caused from not being able to have children.  The other group would include people like me who when I was ready and wanted to have another child, couldn’t have one because I waited too long, I adjusted quickly and continued on.  That doesn’t give me the right to dismiss how others feel who can’t have children, I’m not them, they aren’t me.  It doesn’t give me the right to blame how they feel on their genetics, how they were raised, how positive or negative they are naturally.  I don’t get to mock them to make myself feel like I’m better, or stronger, more well-rounded.

And it would not help them, it would hurt them.  It would also make them feel less-than, bad, make them wonder if something was wrong with them for not being able to just get over that very real loss and the pain that goes with that.

I know, what am I talking about?  I’m getting there, I promise.

I’m tired of people who want to box in adoptees who have felt challenged by grief from never knowing their mother or father, felt abandoned, rejected, had trust issues, or just bad about having been adopted, if they had self-esteem issues because they believed something wrong with them is why they weren’t kept, whatever way they felt, they felt it, and feel it.

Feelings are feelings, they are reflections of what it means to be human.

What I’m feeling right now is sick and tired of people bashing adoptees, applying labels, mocking them, creating images with words of a one-sided person who never feels all the emotions we are capable of feeling, only anger.

I’m especially tired of this divisiveness by other adoptees.  It makes me angry.

The same type of anger that I used to feel when I attended church, and would listen to grown-ups talking to other people, and they would have nothing but good things to say to, and about them, yet, as soon as their back was turned, their voices reduced to whispers, and ugly words would spew out of their mouths about how they really felt about ‘those’ people.  It’s amazing to me how two-faced they could be.  The anger is at the hypocrisy and shallowness.

No one is ever angry all the time, nor happy either.  We are all able to, and do, feel every emotion humanely possible based on what has happened in our life, or happening now.  We are shaped by our lived experiences.  Whether we promote adoption, are against adoption, speak critically about what is missing in adoption today, or have issues and challenges that stem from being born in one family and raised in another.

We need to stop labelling, belittling, and dividing adoptees – we need to be focusing on fixing what is wrong with adoption.

Things that should be important to all adoptees such as deporting adults who were adopted as children from other countries, and their parents failed them by not obtaining their citizenship.  Real, live, adoptees who are going to be deported back to the country they were born in because their adoptive parents failed them.

This matters, instead of this stupidity of needing to be seen as better than another.  We need to do better, we are better, and we should all be damn angry this is still happening 15 years later.

The Deportation of International Adoptees Must Stop and make sure you read about Adam Crapser.  I deleted the original link and replaced it with this link.