Adult Adoptees - No Longer Adopted 'Children' - Speak Out Introduction by Anne Patterson This section on Origins is written specifically by adults who were adopted. Like our natural mothers and fathers, we have also been silenced by the adoption industry. Many of us have found it difficult to have our feelings recognized by society in general. In adoption, we have a myriad of feelings associated with being separated from our families. From anger, to sorrow, to confusion, the range leaves little in between. We each want to be heard, we each want to be recognized that this loss in fact is very real.

Wherever we are on our own journeys, our need to be heard and respected will always be of importance. In finding our families and re-claiming our identities and in just simply finding our own truths, we are all on our own paths. I believe we share a larger path though as adopted adults: a common path of grief and loss that each of us is trying to survive.

The system refuses to answer for its practices of past adoptions and current adoptions alike. As those adopted, we above all have the right to create our own language for our experiences. We have the right to define our own loss according to those experiences, and most of all we have the right to be heard as adults and experts of adoption - we live it, we are experts each and every one of us. Above all, as survivors of adoption we have the right to gauge for ourselves if this system was ever in our best interests.

Like our natural parents, too many others speak for us. From baby brokers, to adopters to social workers they silence us. Sometimes the public in general tries to do the same. As to the public some with good intentions, some with rather dubious ones: regardless we need to speak for ourselves. Too much was taken, too much was lost and in the mire of illusions we need to come forward. Not only for ourselves but also for others along the way: fellow adoptees, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and others who will benefit from what we have to say.
Adoption by and large focuses around adopters. Though we have been amputated from our natural families, causing unwanted trauma and pain, we are rarely ever consulted as to how we really feel. It seems that everyone one is an armchair expert when it comes to this issue, yet it is those who were brokered in the adoption system as well as our parents who lost us who are the ones who continue to live with what was done, all too often in not being heard at all. Our invisibility in the world is a constant albatross that I hope to slay with real education.

The definition of the "best interests of the child" has been recklessly used against our parents and us as well. It was and is used as a tactic to separate babies from their families, and to further annihilate our connections and voices today. We reserve the right above all to gage this term specifically, and to openly and honestly share our own experiences regarding the outcome for us in adoption. Adoption is not a singular event: it is a lifelong process that shapes the very trauma we struggle with. It is a journey of many places. We vary in degrees of trauma but I think I can safely say that globally those adopted are all trying to rise out of the blank slate epitaph, to re-claim ourselves and what was lost.

No longer can the definitions created by adoption hold us as prisoners in a system that was never about us in the first place. As intelligent, capable adults, we are speaking out. We hope that our voices will make a difference in both education and healing for those adopted, natural parents, siblings and others. Only in breaking the silence and in re-claiming our voices will we ever find our way. Whether it is back to us or to our own families the lines are often one in the same. The very least in surviving adoption is in speaking the truth. And with that note, welcome from the experts: those adopted themselves. We hope you enjoy the various articles. We share them in good faith with all, as we reach out to each other and the many others who care about us along the way.

Origins Canada co-founder Anne Patterson is an adopted adult. She is a licensed private investigator and writer who specializes in adoption reunions. She is also an activist for open records and natural family preservation. Anne can be contacted at searches @sympatico.ca

 

- Back to index page -