Twitter thread

Sigh…

Before you dive in, read the definition of legal fiction that happens in adoption which is pertinent to the thread.

The question that sparked the thread is “one thing you refuse be open-minded about” and Jill answered adoption.  Her concern is being legally stripped from her biological family and that there is no way to dissolve and regain her biological family status as an adult.  It’s a conversation that happens from time to time.  Some want it because they want to remove everything adoption from their lives.  Others don’t want to remove everything adoption, they just don’t want it to be either/or, they want both which happens in a Simple Adoption but not in a Plenary Adoption.  The desire is to be legally recognised in their biological family line, whether for their own personal heart driven needs, or a legal requirement such as the opportunity to get dual citizenship that stems from their biological line.

Like everything adoption, it’s complicated.  While I would never want to dissolve my adoption, I talked recently about the sting of not being listed in my family of birth ancestral bio here.

Jill has the patience of a saint in the thread, she remains consistent, she doesn’t trash being adopted or adoption, she just doesn’t like the legal fiction that happens in adoption, and that it removes her status in her biological family and ancestral line.  She doesn’t even respond to the “You’ve really insisted that adoption as a whole is a bad thing.” or further down “But your situation is not the average adoption.” as if there is a cookie cutter adoptee we all must model our thoughts and feelings about being adopted on.  I think that is what gets me the most from conversations like this from the non-adopted; the stereotype of the typical adoptee that doesn’t exist in reality because we are all unique, our relationships, goals, dreams, hopes and feelings are ours alone.

The thread below requires you to scroll up and to read the start, having said that, there are replies from others that are missing but I couldn’t find a better way to link.

https://twitter.com/maddenmichelle2/status/962449555500478464

And of course, there’s always going to be the adoptee as a gold-digger motive assigned comment as well: “An adoptee shouldn’t be able to screw a family out of a large portion of their inheritance or something.”  Which is something that non-adopted often assume is why an adoptee searches, and in this context, is why the push-back on an adoptee having a legal mechanism to dissolve their adoption to regain their biological lineage.  And yet, I’ve never met an adoptee who had that motive for searching. I’ve met many who want to know things like why they needed adoption, does their mother ever think of them, would they want a relationship, are they like their family of birth, do they look like them, their ancestry, their family health history, the list is endless.  But back to the reactive  assumption of a gold-digger motive is one I’m sure crossed my siblings minds to start with because of bad timing, it may still be in some of their minds, who knows, and perhaps, it was my request to the searcher to ask if they’d share any pictures they had of our mother that sent them down that rabbit hole, as I doubt my wanting to warn them about a rare disease I’d been diagnosed with didn’t.

This is what adoptees deal with trying to explain a complicated subject to the non-adopted, it sucks.