Desiree shares about searching for Filippino family in our series dedicated to exploring the complexities, challenges, and realities for intercountry adoptees.
Author: Desiree Maru
Adoptee Grief and Zen Meditation
Desiree shares her journey of acknowledging and embracing feelings of grief and loss that arise during Zen meditation. We all try to find paths towards healing.
New Goals as an Adoptee in a New City
Desiree shares the complexities of life as an adoptee, the challenges of finding and establishing ones roots, reinventing oneself, finding a place to just be.
Forgiving and Moving On
Desiree shares about forgiveness, coming to accept the complexities of being adopted, being part of an adoptive family, and living life as an adoptee.
Adoption Can Be a Psychological Prison
Desiree shares about the complexities of breaking away from toxic ties if an adoption hasn't served our best interests.
Finding Strength in the Darkest Hour
Stephanie shares about losing her adoptive brother, homeless and mentally ill; the long term outcomes for some adoptees and how it impacts her moving forward.
What I Lost When I Was Adopted
Stephanie shares questions and thoughts about the complex path traversed to come to integrate losses and gains into a sense of identity as a Filipino adoptee.
Spending Thanksgiving on My Own
Desiree shares the ups and downs of being single as an adoptee, being alone especially in those key holiday times like Thanksgiving or Xmas.
On the Road to Recovery
Stephanie shares her 5 tips that helped her on the road to recovery as an intercountry adoptee. Adopted from the Philippines to the USA.
Thriving in These Shifting Times
Stephanie writes about the intersection of emotional triggers as an adoptee and being able to handle this better now, on a larger scale during this COVID time.
Sunday Junk Journaling
Filipino adoptee Desiree Maru shares her method of Junk Journaling that gives her a tool to help process life and its challenges. Creative, therapeutic, fun.
The Here and Now
Desiree shares her life, coming to terms with her past and moving forward.
A Filipino Adoptee’s Plea to Not Be Erased
Dear Intercountry Adoption Board (ICAB) of the Philippines, I'm a 33-year-old Filipino American adoptee and I refuse to be erased. I refuse to be ignored. I was born in the Philippines and it was not my choice to leave. But it is my choice to return as an adult and to regain my citizenship. Because, …
Finding Love
Denny walked into the library and I greeted him at the circulation desk. Immediately, I felt that he was my soulmate. Later on, I found out he felt the very same thing. He'd visited a few more times, and then disappeared for a few months. In that time, I started learning how to fly by …
Reinventing Myself
I can hear the crickets chirp outside as I write this in my tiny but cozy bedroom in Hawaii. It's been five months since my departure from Arizona to Oahu, and everything's been changing. I've been changing. And life has been a whirlwind, as everyday brings in new surprises, challenges, love, and especially, books, since …
Moving to Hawaii
"Leave the past behind, and walk away. When it's over, and the heart breaks, and the cracks begin to show," the lyrics of an electronic song plays in my headphones as I write this in Hawaii. It's Sunday when I finally start this blog about what's been going on in my adoptee life, during a …
Turning Negativity into Positivity with Buddhism
Desiree shares her experience of trying Vipassana meditation at a Buddhist retreat, a way to expel her negative energies and a way to deal with adoptee anger.
Being Alone
I get up in the morning and I try. That's basically what it's like every morning as an adult adoptee. Whenever I look back in my mind, my past stretches past a million acres of difficult terrain that's emotionally challenging and left psychological imprints on me. An adoptive family I never got that close with. …
The Waiting Period for my Birth Certificate
I received another email from ICAB on June 28, approximately 15 days since I'd emailed a signed form requesting the retrieval of my birth certificate. This email had the subject: "Post Adoption Concern" which made my heart flutter since it sounded so serious and official. The content of this email basically said that ICAB has …
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Immigrant Children Being Separated and Placed into U.S Foster Care
Since May, over 2,300 immigrant children have been forcibly separated from their parents at the Mexican border due to President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy. When I watched the news, I was speechless. I was terrified for the children being placed into foster care because they don't belong there. These children belong to families, they are …
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Requesting my Birth Certificate
I wrote an email to the Intercountry Adoption Board (ICAB) in the Philippines yesterday introducing myself and requesting my birth certificate. It turns out, this significant birth document hadn't been with my adoptive family my entire life. And, it turns out, I need this birth document for dual citizenship to prove that I was born …
Chronicles of an Adoptee in Transition: Living My Dreams
Have you ever had a goal or a dream that you've aspired to since you were a child? For me, it's always been the same one. My dream was to start my own life in a coastal place in an environment similar to my native place of birth. Finding a place I could call, "home," …
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Chronicles of an Adoptee in Transition: My Last Day
A tiny bird found its way into the library on Tuesday. It spent the whole day fluttering around, flying and swooping in circles and ovals around the ceiling. We left a window open for it. The next day on Thursday, which was also my last day of work, a custodian asked if the bird was …
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Chronicles of an Adoptee’s Transitions in the U.S.
After working as a library media assistant at an elementary school on the Navajo Reservation for a school year, it looks like I'm back to the drawing board. Back to job searching, since the school I'd worked for lost critical amounts of funding during the RedforEd strike and I won't be able to return next …
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