Tag: adoption is trauma

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Being Adopted

by Marcella Moslow born in Colombia and adopted to the USA; trauma therapist

The heavy realities that adoptees must navigate are staggering and complex. The voids we carry with us are enormous and no matter the amount of love we receive, it often feels like it is not enough. The connection and attunement we seek, the culture that we have a right to, the attachment we were wired for is stripped from us, leaving deep wounds behind. This is devastating to an individual’s system and carries into future generations. We grapple with the reality that not only did we have something happen to us, but we also were deprived of so much of what we needed. Trauma can be both — what happens to us, as well as what doesn’t happen to us.

Follow Marcella at Insta @marcellamoslow

Her new podcast can be found @adopteesdishpodcast

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Finding Strength in the Darkest Hour

My brother, adopted 2 years before I arrived in our adoptive home, died homeless and mentally ill in the Philippines last week. He was an intercountry Filipino American adoptee, just like me.

We don’t know what happened. He was involved with bad company. I have a feeling that the death was assisted. Neglect was involved. It was in Mindanao, in a rural area, where it’s dangerous for Americans to travel into, I hear. Real kidnappings happen there if they find out you’re American. I couldn’t go to see if this was real. The only person informing was a lady who was bad news from the start. She always asked him for money. Hounding my brother to get a hold of my adoptive mother. And she was a part of this death, taking photos of my brother days before he died homeless of suspected alcohol poisoning.

The news hit me and the grief process has been real and harrowing. I had trouble giving the news to my co-workers. The first day back at work, I cried in the last hour.

What I want to write is what I’ve learned from my life and world as a Filipino American adoptee. This life has never been easy. It hasn’t been fun. I was never comfortable with my white, adoptive family. And I had a mentally ill brother who was from my birth country, brown like me, and only two years older than me, and I loved him with all my heart.

However, he was never healthy. He was abusive to me growing up. He was mentally ill and his abuse grew to where he inflicted it on himself. And he tried to involve me with that too, so I had to have boundaries. I waited for him to get better. I thought he would, but he only got worse. And it made me feel worse as the years went on, carrying this pain. Not knowing where to put it, who to blame, why it was there.

After everything, I want to say that there comes a time when you just need to choose. Where instead of reacting as you had before, you look up and take a new breath because it’s all just gotten to be too much. You notice new details in the clouds and realize that you’re still kicking and you can’t keep having the same thoughts, or the same habits. You feel a shift. You see the need to face the adversity and want to grin in its ugly face instead. You see the need to give yourself the space to be the real you. Because there’s no going back.

I spent so many years hiding in the grief and trauma of my past and I guess I’m writing this because those times are over.

All I know, is that from here, I am going to be strong.

I honor my experience as a Filipino American adoptee with reverence. I will never be ashamed of what I’ve gone through. I will not be embarrassed of my suffering, which I caught myself feeling today, around my co-workers. I will not carry the burdens of my brother’s pain anymore either, which I had. I will love myself. I will forgive myself. I will be gentle on myself. I will no longer be so hard on myself, as before.

All this time, I’ve been carrying around the burdens of a life I never had. I held on to the pain of a love I never got to hold.

Of a family I never got to know.

But my brother died, the only person in the world that I probably ever loved. The only person in whom I ever saw to be real family. And something changed in me.

I breathe, writing this. I am alive, writing this.

I am here in the present. I have survived all of this messed up shit. Being orphaned as a baby in the Philippines. Having to traverse the American life I was given, because that’s how the cookie crumbles. We are given what we’re dealt with and you have to deal with it. You have to adjust. And sometime in adulthood, you learn the importance of being kind to yourself and others in the process because wellbeing is a part of one’s survival.

After all of this, I feel a sense of palpable resolution in the bones of my being. It is to be strong. It is to love what I have in this world today. And it is to not give up.

My resolution is to keep working. To live a healthy life. To be authentic. To live true. I am still here in this world. And I am alone, but I made it out with my faculties in tact.

I haven’t made a lot of friends on this path but I was stern in working hard, turning to a world of art, libraries and schools for an outlet.

I lead a life of reserved strength. I developed my own expression of creative media, wild in my own intellect and undertakings.

And I am just starting out in this world even at 36-years-old.

I don’t know if anyone will relate to this blog but if someone does, just know that I am never going to give up and I don’t want you to ever give up either. Because I’ve been blessed with hearing the stories of just a few of you, and having met a few of you on Christmas, and it has been something to treasure. And you are so vital in this world, you truly are.

I will believe in you and in love as I did when I was younger and I will never stop. Just the way I believed in God as I did when I was younger and I never stopped either. I won’t stop believing in the human race. I won’t stop working towards a higher purpose because that is what gets me up in the morning.

I am here today to say, that the pain and the trials and the struggles will serve a purpose in time.

There is a reason for living and you will find it.

In the darkest hour, you will find strength.

Or strength–will find you.

Read Desiree’s previous blog at ICAV: What I Lost When I Was Adopted

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Bought and Sold, This is Adoption!

by Lina Vanegas adopted from Colombia to the USA. You can follow Lina on Instagram @linaleadswithlove or on Twitter @LinaLeadsWLove

When we talk about adoption it’s important that we are honest and transparent and avoid sugar coating things or inserting toxic positivity or adoption propaganda.

The reality is that many people do not truly understand adoption, what it it entails, what it is and the impacts, trauma, grief and loss.

To break it down, I was bought and sold in 1976. I lost everything and my identity was erased. This is heartbreaking and devastating to me. It’s hard to wrap my head around it. I can’t honestly fathom how this could have happened. The tragic thing is that I am one of millions. Yes M I L L I O N S. There are an estimated 7 million adopted and displaced people and the number is growing. 2 million of us are intercountry adopted.

I just saw a comment on Facebook last night that was commending a white adoptive parent for sharing a positive adoptive story and they also stated we need more positive adoption stories. If positive is what you want then adoption is not the topic to equate with it. There is always trauma, grief and loss with adoption no matter the circumstances. This is a given and guarantee. When we talk about adoption, we must be honest about what it entails. It’s not beautiful, a fairytale, rainbows, sprinkles and unicorns.

I was bought and sold in 1976. This is my lived experience.

You can read Lina’s other articles shared here at ICAV:
Demystifying the stigmatization of Adoptee Suicide

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My Father’s Death Anniversary

by My Huong Le adopted from Viet Nam to Australia (living in Viet Nam); Co-Founder of Viet Nam Family Search; Director of Nhà Xã Hôi Long Hài.

My Huong’s father, Elbert

I started the quest for the truth of my life when I was a teenager. Despite being told my mother had died, I sent a letter to an address in Vietnam when I was 16 and amazingly, I received a reply. She told me about my childhood and gave me information on who my father was.

In 1989, I searched for this man who had been an Australian soldier in Vietnam, but sadly he had already died. I did a DNA test with potential siblings, but it wasn’t conclusive as DNA testing 30 years ago didn’t have the accuracy that it does today. Nonetheless, I accepted them as being family and over the years I got to know them well and love them dearly.

In 2004, I returned to Vietnam. Having long lost written contact, I searched for my mother and was reunited with her. 14 years later, I received a text message giving details of another woman to be my birth mother. This was to unravel everything I had believed and sent me on an emotional roller coaster.

That following day, was the first time in 47 years that I embraced my true mother. She stroked my hair and through tears in her eyes told me all she ever wanted was to see me before she died.

My Huong’s mother honouring Elbert

That same day, when I showed my mother a photo of who I thought was my father, she said it wasn’t. It turns out that as my mother lay unconscious after having a severe haemorrhage after giving birth to me, two friends from the city came to visit. One of them told my grandmother she would take me to Can Tho and care for me while my mother was sick. My grandmother had my two half siblings at home, two of her own children and with my mother seriously ill, she agreed. Six weeks after my mother recovered, she went to Can Tho to see her friend to bring me home, but this lady had vanished. My mother then spent years in vain searching for me.

The fake woman stole me, telling her boyfriend that he was the father, to convince him to remain with her. She had me taken to her hometown to be cared for by her parents, with everyone believing that she had given birth to me in the city. Nobody was none the wiser. How somebody can be that cruel and deceiving, plotting such an evil scheme is incomprehensible.

My Huong and her mother celebrating her father’s death Anniversary

Having new information from my mother, I set out to search for my birth father. In October 2019 through doing a DNA Ancestry test, I had several close matches with relatives and learnt that my father had already died. Given that he was 20 years older than my mother I wasn’t surprised. What is tragic is that 6 siblings had also died. My eldest sister died four months prior to me finding the family and the remaining died too young. I am fortunate that one sister, Joy, is still alive.

I am very blessed to now be in contact with cousins, nieces, nephews and their children. A week ago, I got to speak to my Aunt Gloria. What she said touched me deeply and afterwards I was filled with a lot of emotion and cried tears of joy and grief.

I could question, why, why, why forever, but what good would that do. The fake women’s web of lies has caused deep wounds. All she ever wanted was financial gain. I always forgave and supported her, believing she was my mother, but she is nothing but a master liar, deceiver and manipulator and has no remorse or regard for anybody. As a result of her actions, I have been robbed of so much time that could have been spent with my true mother and I could have found my father’s side of the family sooner.

I know though I must now focus on the present and am daily thankful to God. He has moved mountains in my life, revealed the truth, and above all my sweet mother is living with me. I am surrounded by a large loving family in Vietnam and I am building relationship with family in the USA who have all been so accepting of me. I hope next year it will be possible to travel there to meet them in person.

Anyway, my Aunt Gloria is 89 and is the only remaining sibling of my father’s. Through all my new found relatives I am learning about those I never got to meet, my father, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I have been given many photos and articles which are priceless gifts.

Elbert, bottom right with his twin brother Albert next to him and two brothers behind them.

My father comes from an exceptional family of 11 children. 9 boys and 2 girls. My grandmother in 1947 was voted “Mother of the Year” by the Naval Air Station as all her 9 sons served in the military at some point. My father joined the navy in 1941 and was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. He served 5 years in the navy then enlisted in the Army. My father served in WW 11, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

According to my mother, my father was a very kind and handsome man. More than anything, he gave her the greatest gift, that of a daughter. Today at my mother’s insistence and according to Vietnamese culture we celebrated his death anniversary. In Vietnamese this is known as đám giỗ.

I have always tried to live a life that is pleasing to God and that would honour my parents.

Today I honour my father on his 30th death anniversary. I also said a special prayer for my siblings.

Read My Huong’s other blogs at ICAV:
My Mother
Evacuation out of Vietnam on 20 April

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The Ocean, My Mother

by Allison Young adopted from South Korea to the USA.

And on those days when we walked to the sea and found Mi-ja waiting at her usual spot in the olle, Grandmother recited common sayings in hopes of comforting us two motherless girls. “The ocean is better than your natural mother,” she said. The sea is forever.” 

~ The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

One year ago on September 11, after a lifetime of waiting (and one devastating almost-encounter in 2003), I finally met the woman who carried me for 9 months and gave birth to me.

I would like to say it was a happily-ever-after situation, that it was cathartic and I’m so thankful for the meeting but due to her circumstances, I was told we could never have a relationship or even further contact. 

Although I have compassion, this hurt more than I could allow myself to feel. At the time I allowed myself one day to fall apart and then I put those feelings away. I had 3 kids in a tiny apartment in a different country and was soon going to adopt my son. I knew it would probably come back for me later — because that’s how trauma and grief work.

To be rejected by one mother figure broke my heart and then a few months later, to be scorned by my other mother nearly broke me.

Sometimes it takes a life-altering event to realize what love is, to see who is actually loving you and who is kicking you down, while calling it love. I have learned so much in this past year, by far the hardest year of my life. I am learning the meaning of self-love, self-care and boundaries. I am mothering myself, decolonizing my mind and body and allowing the ocean to heal me.

I did seek professional help and am working with a therapist. I am making changes to my life for the better, for my own future and so I can break the cycle for my kids.

When I look at my 4 beautiful children, I hope they know that while I’m far from perfect, I will try so hard to be a good listener — to learn, grow and change; to value what matters most to them and see them for who they are.

백절불굴 (baekjeol bulgul) is a saying which means “indomitable spirit.”

My birthname,수은 (Soo Eun), means “grace of water.”

I will be okay. And I am ever grateful to those who helped to keep me afloat this past year.

For more from Allison, check out her thoughts on What’s in a Name? Identity, Respect, Ownership?

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Shape Shifting

by Marie, a daughter lost via adoption from her Chinese father who shared his story last week: The Sin of Love

I put the truth on a pedestal, but I also see how she’s a shape shifter, whose form changes depending on who holds her and their state of mind. In the few months since I found my father, I believe he’s understood my need for the truth and tried to offer it to me. But that truth keeps changing as my arrival in his life has been equal parts joyful and traumatic.

Confronted with me, the lost daughter he’s longed for, he’s also reliving the past. A past he’s suppressed because it was too painful, alone with memories in a society which erases birth parents and their grief, as if it is something they had agency to prevent. He had no wise mentor and no safety through which to process his pain and loss, not only of me but of his first love. I believe the woman he loved died to him when she signed the adoption papers. While acknowledging she probably had no choice, he couldn’t reconcile that woman with the one he loved eternally. So although he had clues as to where she was, he never looked for her because his love must surely be gone — the Agnes he loved couldn’t have given away their child; in doing so she compelled him into signing the adoption papers too. He tucked away that grief and entered a life in which loss unconsciously drove his decisions.

Years later he sleepwalked into a marriage. Another pregnancy would garner his commitment to his wife and to another child he couldn’t lose this time. But Agnes was a silent guest in his marriage and family – she would never leave, and neither would I.

Since I’ve returned, the truth evolves and shifts. Agnes has been unconsciously a perpetrator, a woman who gave up her flesh and blood and simultaneously a victim of a bigoted and controlling mother who altered the destiny of all three of us. As the months since our reunion have gone by, my father has been tormented by the past: guilt, anger, confusion and loss have plagued him with what he calls “sudden floating rubbish”. Neither of us can ask Agnes what happened from her perspective because she died in October 2016. 4 years before I found her obituary and 5 before I found my father and confirmed it was her. In her absence we both thrash about with what we know, attempting to piece together the puzzle which for me has even more missing pieces which are gradually leaking out of the memories my father accesses in flashbacks and increasing empathy for my mother. He stares, as I do at the one photo we have of her, posted on her obituary. She is young and smiling and though her features individually aren’t mine, somehow her face echoes mine. I saw myself in her, knowing who she was as soon as I saw the picture.

As he moves through the memories now with an altered lens of compassion, and perhaps conscious of how I would view my mother and how he wants me to feel about her, my father has revealed memories which again shift reality and truth. As my birthday approaches the revelations seem to be increasing. In his recollections, now she’s happy and smiling on the day I was born. They named me together and all seems fine when he leaves her that day. But a week later he’s called to sign adoption papers and compelled by a judge to do so when he refuses. He would never make sense of the decision and never talk to Agnes again to unpack what happened. His anger and confusion would hold her at a distance more successfully than her absence, until I arrived sending photos of myself in which she is ever present. In the last week he has seemed to need to share new puzzle pieces, as he puts it back together himself. He now believes he has wronged her.

In his own grief he couldn’t comprehend what a traumatic loss she endured. Yesterday he revealed another piece of the puzzle. When he finally searched for Agnes, he too found her obituary so he sought out her brother, his friend, to find out how she died. What he was told led him to believe she took her own life. This news has shifted reality again for me. While not knowing anything of her life, I can only assume losing me was a devastating event which forever impacted her state of mind and her family life.

I can’t help correlating the month of her death with its anniversary of my adoption. I suspect each year my August birthday would summon a silent grief and perhaps linger through to autumn when two months later, I went home with another family and within a few months unknown to my parents, to another country. I don’t know if she knew when I left the mother and baby home. It’s not clear to me if I was with her for those first two months of life or living in its adjacent orphanage under the care of nuns. Unrelenting in their views of what was best, the nuns lied to my father when he travelled the seven hours from Taiping to take me home, where his mother awaited, wanting to welcome me to their family.

What the Church told anyone is under question and with Agnes gone, perhaps only her siblings might know. It’s possible she shared something with her second daughter or husband. As I think of my maternal sister, I now wonder if my existence would unlock a mystery for her too. If she never knew about me, perhaps her loss also involved a traumatic secret lost in death and added to her grief. I remain stuck with what next in my search – for now just happy to be part of my paternal family and all the absorbing realities of getting to know the family and culture I lived without for almost 49 years.

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Tears of Trauma

by Christina Soo Ja Massey, aka YooNett adopted from South Korea to the USA.

Artwork by CS Massey aka YooNett

The Tears of Trauma I cry as a helpless Orphan, I cry as an Adult throughout my Life.

This piece of art deals primarily with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Trauma of being abandoned, left to fight for my Life, but being unable to do so … The fear, anxieties and hopelessness of the situation. I attempted to convey how this Trauma persists throughout my Life. I have come to my Adopters already deeply scared only to relive old Experience via new Scars.

Read Christina’s previous blog Adoptees Need Mental Health Services.

For more of Christina’s artwork, visit YooNett.

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The Aloneness of Motherloss

by Mila Konomos, adopted from South Korea to the USA. Poet, artist, activist.

Mila with her child, embracing all that was lost to her as an infant, separated from her mother.

I have been processing the Aloneness of #MotherLoss a lot lately.

Intellectually, I know what self-talk to cultivate. I know I am not alone. I know that I have people in my life who care for me and value me.

But this aloneness is deeper than that.

This aloneness is the the aloneness of Mother Loss.

I feel so alone so often because I do not have a Mother.

I lost my First Mother at 5 days old.

I lost my Foster Mother at 6 months old.

I grew up with a Mother who could not see my trauma. Hence, she did not know how to love or comfort me through the loss, pain, and grief of my Adoptedness.

I feel alone because I was always alone in my pain and grief.

I feel alone because I have spent most of my life crying alone.

I feel alone because I have rarely known what it is to not be alone, not only physically but emotionally.

I feel so alone so often, because Mother Loss is a loss that remains for a lifetime.

There is no way to replace a Lost Mother.

No one else on earth can compensate for a Lost Mother.

Only One Mother bore me in her own body. Only One Mother’s heartbeat, breathing, and voice were what I heard for 9 months. Her scent, her face were as though my own.

I watched a documentary recently during which the narrator said, “Babies think they are a part of whomever they are within.”

This is profound in the context of Adoptees severed from our mothers as infants. We must have experienced separation from our mothers almost as though being ripped in two, torn away from ourselves. Split violently apart.

I have to allow myself to grieve this Mother Loss. It is eternal. Even 12 years post-reunion, Mother Loss remains. I can never get back the Mother I lost. I cannot retrieve the over three decades of my life that I was lost, compounded by the loss of language, culture, and geography.

There is a pain and loneliness that is hard to describe when you find what you had been looking for all of your life and yet it still slips through your fingers.

This pain of being so close yet still so far.

As though looking through a window but never actually getting to go in.

Mila with her son and a special Korean children’s book called, “Waiting for Mama”.

For more from Mila, follow her at her website, The Empress Han. Her newest poetry album Shrine is being released in May 2021.

#adoption #transracialadoptee #adoptionreunion #adoptee #adoptionistrauma #adoptionloss #adopteevoices

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