#AdoptionIsNoFairytale

by Aurélie Lever, transracial adoptee from French/Vietnamese origins raised in the Netherlands – expert in adoption by experience and education.

I often try to keep my mouth shut or sit on the constructive side of what seems to be a never ending dialogue. But this story. makes. me. furious. Please, watch this video of Dilani Butink speak about her legal outcome in the Netherlands this past week.

It concerns Dilani’s case that is barred, as it has been past 20 years since the adoption process took place. Is this a so-called bitter pill that needs to be swallowed once? No folks, it’s a narrative that keeps returning: a government that creates laws to allow adoption, but doesn’t want to take responsibility for the actual consequences of adoption. A supposedly moral knighthood, to give the child a better life, but when it comes to it, the adopted self is moved forward to catch the sword of Damocles.

There is no concern for the human side of this adoption case in the legal field. It’s about the hard facts. It’s been over 20 years, so case closed. But when will the human facts be taken into account? To help, here are some of these human facts:

1. It often takes an adopted (or fostered) at least 20 to 25 years to realise what the process of distance and adoption or foster care has done to him or her. Mainly because there is a lack of correct aftercare for adopted and foster adults.
   
2. After this realisation, an adopted often ends up in a rollercoaster of loss and grief traumas around different themes. Feelings that have often been there since baby time, but that cannot be expressed. A baby cannot categorise trauma feelings, cannot place the emotions associated with them. This doesn’t mean a baby doesn’t feel everything though. The feelings are stored in the body and continue to exist. Until that moment when this is triggered and often then a storm comes around the corner. With all the consequences; burn-out, depression, psychosis, suicide-it’s things in the daily vocabulary of adopted.
   
3. It doesn’t help that society puts pressure on an adopted, telling them to be grateful or happy, because it was so beautifully collected here in the West and this life would give them such a (often materialistic) prosperous life. Or having to be thankful that the child was taken away from the mother for his own good because the mother couldn’t take good care of the child. Like this, happiness is determined for us. But who can decide for us what happiness is? And how do you define that at all?
   
4. It also doesn’t help that there is often no room for these processes of grief and loss in this society. This causes misunderstanding for the fact that the child inside is often dead-unhappy. What would help? Empathy and support. Ask yourself as an unadopted how you would feel if your child was taken away from one day to another and put up with someone else, and then you are told to be thankful because your child will have a better life have. I literally heard an unadopted once say, then you die inside. Exactly, many adopted people die symbolically inside and must struggle their way through these feelings to feel vitally alive again.
   
5. There are still too few therapists who can really help adopted people. Ultimately, adoptees have to do specialised studies for years themselves (after years of self-research) for years to be able to provide the right aftercare for other adoptees. Thank God they are slowly emerging, although I think there are only a handful of specialists who really understand. So just like art, something beautiful eventually grows out of all that destructivity. Only this isn’t about art, it’s about human lives.

These are far from all facts, several books were written for that. And yes, there are certainly positive stories too. Just like there are people of colour that suffer from racism, and people who don’t suffer from it. It’s never black and white. You will never hear me say there are no happy adopted, or adopted who claim to be happy because they were adopted. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep quiet for the rest.

There is currently social support for LGBQT, for BlackLivesMatter, for victims in the gymnastics world, but what is the social support for adoptees? There is not enough. Let’s create a movement. Adoptees deserve justice. Who’s in?

#ADOPTIONISNOFAIRYTALE
#ADOPTEEMOVEMENT
#STOLENIDENTITY
#ACTIVISMFORADOPTEES
#ADOPTEERIGHTS
#JUSTICEFORADOPTEES
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