Sometimes I get angry because I am confused about my role as an adoptee in the eyes of my biological family. I have been thinking about this for several days and finally realized that my biological family is struggling with understanding the difference between involuntary departure with voluntary departure. 

1. Involuntary Departure means that an infant, child or adolescent left the family and moved away to live with people they didn’t know. They had NO SAY in this. Those new people became their family and their brain started to reshape itself to think that the “now” family is the most important or only family they will need. These children and adolescents are NOT responsible for “giving back” to their biological families.
2. Voluntary Departure means that a grown up decides to leave the country either through marriage, job, or other opportunity. The grown up moves to a new country where they can find a job, make enough money, and send money back to their family to support those who live in another country.

There is a huge amount of guilt that comes with being adopted.

Birth family Guilt They were coerced and finding out that the promises were all LIES makes them feel guilty. They were told that they did the “right” thing.

Adoptee’s Survival Guilt-We feel that we owe our birth family AND our adoptive family because somehow we “made it” and so we should be “thankful” for the new life we have.

Adoptive Parent Guilt-The fact that they fell for the Kool-Aid being offered and failed to keep their child’s heritage alive makes them feel guilty. The fact that maybe they really didn’t “save” the adoptee leaves them feeling guilty. The fact that maybe love was not “enough” creates guilt.

So what do we do with this information? 

1. Adoptees  owe their biological parents  NOTHING.

2. Adoptees  owe their adoptive parents NOTHING.

3.  Adoptees owe themselves EVERYTHING so adoptive parents and birth parents need to provide them with everything they know to help create a stronger adoptee.

My biological brother got upset with me one year because I was asking him a lot of questions. He told me that ALL I WANTED was information.

Yes. I wanted information. HE HAD ALL THE INFORMATION and I had NONE.

So he got upset with me, telling me that I did not want to be part of the “family”; that I just wanted to know, know know.

Fuck him.

I decided that when people withhold information from you and then blame YOU for not wanting to be part of THEM, they are not worth YOUR time. Fuck them!

So, adoptive parents, if you withhold information from your adopted children, YOU ARE NOT WORTH THEIR TIME. Fuck you!

Birth Family, if you withhold  information about the life we could have had (because you are embarrassed, or you feel it will hurt us) then YOU ARE NOT WORTH OUR TIME. Fuck them!

My birth family expects me to drop the life I am living, and pick up a life I never knew, while withholding information I never knew existed.