Truth, Accountability, and the Possibility of a Different Relationship

In Part 5, Lynelle and Kristin reflected on reunion, first families, and what responsibility toward those families might actually mean.

In this final part, they ask perhaps the most difficult question of all: Can truth strengthen relationships rather than destroy them?

Kristin

One thing I continue thinking about is the fear many adoptive parents carry when these conversations begin. I think many fear that if they fully acknowledge the harms and injustices within adoption systems, the relationship with their child will collapse.

There is often a quiet fear underneath these discussions:

“If I admit these truths, will my child reject me?”

But the more I reflect on our conversations, the more I wonder whether silence itself is often what damages relationships most deeply. Perhaps honesty does not destroy connection, perhaps avoidance does.

Lynelle

I think many adoptees already live with the truth internally long before adoptive parents are willing to speak about it. The grief, the questions, the confusion, the loss, the disconnection, the identity struggles — those things already exist.

Silence does not remove them. It often just leaves adoptees carrying them alone. And what many adoptees long for is not perfect parents. We long for honesty, emotional safety, accountability, and the freedom to speak openly without fear of punishment, rejection, or emotional collapse from the people closest to us.

Kristin

That distinction feels very important because many adoptive parents interpret criticism of adoption systems as criticism of the family itself. But what I increasingly hear from adoptees is not, “You should never have loved me.” What I hear is, “Please stop asking me to silence parts of myself in order to protect everyone else.”

Lynelle

Yes. Most adoptees are not asking adoptive parents to erase the love or care that existed inside the family. We are asking them to hold more than one truth at the same time. That adoption may have involved love, and also loss. Care, and also harm. Connection, and also separation. Those truths can coexist. But many adoptees grow up in environments where only the positive side of adoption is emotionally permitted. That creates enormous fragmentation internally.

Kristin

I recognise now how much emotional pressure that creates for adoptees. Especially when adoptive parents need adoption to remain a morally comforting story in order to protect their own sense of self. Stepping outside that story can feel deeply destabilising for adoptive parents but perhaps remaining inside it comes at an even greater cost for adoptees.

Lynelle

I think it often does. Adoptees frequently become responsible for maintaining the emotional stability of the family narrative. We learn to minimise our pain, soften our truths, hide our anger, or suppress curiosity about our origins. Over time that can become emotionally exhausting.

Many adoptees eventually reach a point where continuing to silence themselves becomes psychologically harmful. That is often when relationships begin to fracture. Not because truth suddenly appeared, but because truth could no longer be suppressed.

Kristin

That changes how I think about accountability. I used to think accountability primarily meant acknowledging historical problems within adoption systems. Now I think it also means becoming emotionally capable of hearing adoptees fully, even when what they say challenges our self-understanding. Perhaps accountability also means remaining present in the discomfort rather than retreating from it.

Lynelle

Yes because accountability is not only about apology. It is about what happens after the apology.

Do adoptive parents stay engaged? Do they support the adoptee’s healing? Do they help pursue truth and records access? Do they support reunion if the adoptee wants it? Do they acknowledge the first family? Do they stand beside adoptees when systems have failed them?

That is where accountability becomes real.

Kristin

Something else I have reflected on through these conversations is that adoptive parents often entered adoption believing they were solving a problem. Yet many adoptees spend adulthood trying to recover things adoption disrupted: identity, history, family, culture, language, citizenship, or belonging. That is confronting to sit with as an adoptive parent.

Lynelle

And I think many adoptees would not expect adoptive parents to have all the answers.

What matters more is willingness — willingness to listen, to learn, to reflect, to acknowledge harm,
and to stop prioritising comfort over truth.

What becomes painful is when adoptees are left completely alone in carrying the consequences of systems they never chose.

Kristin

I think that is one of the most important things I have taken from these conversations. Adoptive parents were adults with power inside these systems. Even when we acted in good faith, we still participated in structures now being critically examined around the world. If adoptees are carrying the burden of confronting those truths alone, then something is deeply wrong.

Lynelle

Yes and I think that is why so many adoptees value the rare adoptive parents who are willing to stay present in these conversations without becoming defensive or withdrawing. Not because they are perfect but because they are willing to remain human, honest, and accountable.

That creates the possibility for something different, not a relationship built on silence or obligation but one grounded in truth.

Kristin

I do not think these conversations offer easy resolution. There may always be grief inside adoption. There may always be unanswered questions or things that cannot be repaired but I increasingly believe that refusing these conversations causes far greater harm than entering them honestly.

And perhaps part of love, as an adoptive parent, is being willing to sit with truths that unsettle us rather than asking adoptees to carry that burden alone.

Lynelle

I agree. These conversations are difficult because adoption is difficult but avoiding complexity does not protect adoptees. It usually isolates us. If there is hope inside these conversations, perhaps it lies in this — that honesty may create the possibility for deeper connection than silence ever could.

Kristin

And perhaps accountability begins with something very simple —not looking away.

This concludes the series Conversations Across Adoption between Lynelle Long and Kristin Molvik Botnmark.We hope these reflections encourage more adoptees and adoptive parents to begin difficult conversations grounded not in defensiveness or silence, but in honesty, accountability, and care.

Reflection

We recognise that these conversations may have been possible partly because we are not each other’s adoptee or adoptive parent. There is less personal history between us, less accumulated family pain, and perhaps less fear of losing the relationship itself.

For many adoptees and adoptive parents, these conversations happen inside deeply intimate family dynamics shaped by decades of silence, grief, misunderstanding, loyalty, dependency, and unresolved trauma. That can make these discussions far more emotionally difficult and triggering for everyone involved.

For some people, it may feel safer to begin these conversations outside their immediate family relationships first — with other adoptees, adoptive parents, support groups, therapists, or trusted community spaces. Perhaps part of the process is learning how to have these conversations gradually: practising how to listen, reflect, stay emotionally present, and hold complexity with people who feel less emotionally charged or connected to our own personal histories.

Over time, those experiences may help us become stronger, more self-aware, and more capable of approaching conversations within our own families with greater sensitivity, honesty, and care.

We do not offer these conversations as a model of perfection or simplicity. Rather, we hope they demonstrate that difficult dialogue is possible when both people are willing to remain present, reflective, and honest — even when the conversation becomes uncomfortable.

We also recognise that many adoptees and adoptive parents may need therapeutic support, mediation, or separate spaces for reflection before these conversations can happen safely together.

Honest dialogue does not erase pain but silence rarely heals it either.

Resources

The value of vulnerability in relationships

Emotional safety: what it is and why it’s important

Talk to me! 6 ways to create emotional safety in our relationship

7 ways to create emotional safety in your relationships

Understanding the trauma in intercountry adoption

ICAVs Global Post Adoption Support Directory