作者： Tamieka 小

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Life Lessons from an Adoptee – Part 7

This is a series written by Tamieka 小, adopted from Ethiopia to Australia.

‘Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge ourselves and we see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice you can see forever’ – Nancy Lopez

Your voice matters. Our voices as adoptees matter. When you’re a person of colour, an international adoptee, queer person or a woman we all experience unique aspects of oppression from society. Our experiences are valid, our trauma, our abuse are valid and real.

Quite often there are people who try to tear us down, discount marginalised groups and gas-light us into believing that our pains and hardships were just a figment of our imagination; that we’re overly sensitive, that we’re ‘snowflakes’, but we must not let them have power over us, and over our minds. We know deep down when something isn’t right, when we have experienced something we shouldn’t have.

You have a voice, don’t let anyone make you doubt yourself. Don’t let anyone repress your intuition. Stand up for yourself, call people out, speak from your heart because your voice matters, and you’ll be surprised just how many people will feel the same as you, who will resonate with you. You will always find someone trying to bring another person down but we cannot let that dictate our lives in any way.

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Life Lessons from an Adoptee – Part 6

This is a series written by Tamieka 小, adopted from Ethiopia to Australia.

‘Be your own hero, be your own saviour, send all your suffering into the fire. Let no foot, mark your ground, let no hand, hold you down.’

Patrick Wolf

I don’t know about you but as a woman we are force fed the idea since we were little girls that a big strong man will come along and ‘save us’ from our troubles and fix all of our problems. And maybe not everyone believed that literally but I think you will find that especially for women the fantasy may linger in our subconscious more than we think. It can sometimes be a narrative we subconsciously place ourselves into, especially in relationships where all our inner fears and unhealthy beliefs are mirrored to us.  I also know especially for the younger generations that love is painted as this happily ever after where the partner will come along and solve all our problems if we just find the right one, when really it is no one else’s responsibility but our own to fix our problems.

Maybe that’s just the nativity that comes with youth and young love. And for me personally I believed that as a little girl and when I got older I thought that to an extent that my partner should be there to go through every battle with me, to hold me up, be a shoulder to cry on, to cheer me on, to be everything to me, and I went through an abusive 3 year co-dependent relationship to realise that is not love. Its co-dependency. And co-dependency tends to happen with people who haven’t worked on themselves and their unhealthy coping mechanisms to defence mechanisms to having an unhealthy definition of what love is.

With being adopted as a little girl in some way or another I would dream of getting a letter from my birth family to come in the mail and to come tell me everything as to why they abandoned me. To come and save me from my loneliness, from feeling like I don’t belong in this country or community. It felt like I was an alien that fell out of the sky with no history, no past, just a blank canvas. I remember watching films like ‘Lilo and Stitch’ and feeling like Stitch exactly; who was exactly an alien with no real parents and trying so hard to understand why he didn’t. I felt like every hero and heroine who had no back story, and would often fantasize about being suddenly whisked away on an adventure, where I would find out an epic story about my roots and my birth family and realise my place in the world.

Basically, I was waiting for someone to come save me, to help me understand my pain but no one ever came. And that was devastating.

What I realised growing up, and from having experiences in different relationships that I was the one who had to save myself. I was the woman who had to pick up the sword and fight my own battles, to find out my own truth, to wipe my own tears from my face. I had to be the hero in my own story. I had to be the one to unpack my trauma and unhealthy coping mechanisms, unhealthy definition of love, and heal myself because no one else was going to do that for me. And frankly it’s no one else’s responsibility but mine. I think as adoptees we need to realise that, take accountability in our pain and trauma and take the steps in unravelling that and healing ourselves.

Because honestly if we’re told since children or traumatized into a narrative where we have to rely on others for our happiness and our rescue from our pain or suffering; we rid ourselves of our own personal power to do so. We put ourselves into a narrative where we become even more powerless than we already imagined ourselves to be as orphans or children or adoptees. But we have a choice when we get to adulthood; we can choose what our narrative is, we have the power, the proverbial pen to our story in our hands.

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Life Lessons from an Adoptee – Part 5

This is a series written by Tamieka 小, adopted from Ethiopia to Australia.

‘Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall’.

One of the quotes that has sat for me since my high school years is this one; one I feel embodies the symbolism of the phoenix rising from the ashes, much like the previous quote before this is rebuilding ourselves anew. This one is more about never giving up no matter what. That a quitter will never be a winner, but a failure, or someone who fails but continues to try will one day in fact be a winner and be successful in whatever endeavours they find themselves on. Inner strength can be evident in the moments we pick ourselves back up and keep moving forward. Not giving into our most basic instincts and our egos (shadow self) or a negative-self-talk is so fundamental to our survival and wellbeing.

And every time we fall and pick ourselves back up we learn something new and shed outdated beliefs or perspectives that no longer serve us, whether those beliefs be about ourselves, the world at large or how we perceive love or success. In each mistake there is a new lesson to be embraced and a new aspect pf ourselves to be explored, and we can expand and become more than we ever imagine ourselves to be; and no longer limit our potential by limiting beliefs or perspectives which is essential to personal growth and life.

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Life Lessons from an Adoptee – Part 4

This is a series written by Tamieka 小, adopted from Ethiopia to Australia.

‘When we are at our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change’.

Avatar Aang

I think it’s safe to say that for almost every person they may hit rock bottom at some point in their life or very damn near close to it. For adoptees, a lot of us endure some of the most painful experiences and battles, from being abused or neglected in orphanages or families, suffering from homelessness, being kicked out of home, substance abuse, child trafficking and the list can go on.

This is another quote I learnt from Avatar: Legend of Korra when the heroine’s past-life-self came to her when she had lost almost all of her powers as the Avatar. Aang appeared and told her this; that when we hit rock bottom, when we lose so much or everything, we have our minds and souls are so cracked open and vulnerable that we are exposed to seeing new perspectives on life and our pain; in a way that we can help rebuild our lives in a new way; that we can start over anew. We can finally see what we did that wasn’t working then we have the chance to use new tools or solutions to our problems. When we have fallen so far, it is a good opportunity to rebuild ourselves anew from the foundations of the ashes upwards. When we become humbled this way, our ego has less of a hold and power over us, and we choose to transform and change into a better version of ourselves that serves our highest self and happiness.

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Life Lessons from an Adoptee – Part 3

This is a series written by Tamieka 小, adopted from Ethiopia to Australia.

‘If we look for the light, we can often find it, but if we look for the dark it is all you will ever see.’

Uncle Iroh

This is truly one of the best quotes I stumbled across from, yes, Avatar: Legend of Korra (an Americanised fantasy/spiritual anime based in an alternate reality). It was quoted from Uncle Iroh when Korra stumbled across him in the spirit world in her child form. In her child form she was crying and giving into her negative thoughts and the audience got to see how it impacted the world around her; making the other spirits angry and sad, and turning the sky dark with clouds and anger. Uncle Iroh emphasised to her how powerful her inner thoughts are, how our thoughts can impact our perspectives on reality; and dictate our beliefs about our reality, and ourselves and how it can bring down and uplift up the people and environment around us.

It’s important as a human being, and especially as an adoptee to not give over our power to our negative thoughts, and I know that is easier said than done. This is especially hard when living with trauma or other mental illnesses, sometimes it’s a constant battle we all deal with maybe all of our lives. But it’s important to realise that there is plenty of darkness in the world, and in our personal lives, but if we give in, we give in to our most basic instincts, we give into our egos and all the things that tormented us as children. And these thoughts can taint how we see the world around us, the life we live in. If we let the darkness in by just an inch sometimes it can overwhelm us, and feel like that is all we see in the world; and when you turn on the news it’s easy to give into the belief that we live in a dark world. When we live a difficult life it can make it even harder to not fall into this type of headspace, so it is important for our survival and our sanity as well as our wellbeing to leave a light on for ourselves; to give to ourselves the chance to live a happier life by choosing every-day to choose to see the light in every chance we get and in every challenge life throws at us.

When we start to put in a little effort every day to see the light we do have in our world it makes it just that much easier, and the light will shine back on us. When we build a reserve of light and happiness for ourselves it gives us more to ground ourselves when we face any hardships in our lives. Sometimes light is what we give ourselves in our darkest moments, a gift we give ourselves as a form of self-care; kindness and understanding and self-love.

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Life Lessons from an Adoptee – Part 2

This is a series written by Tamieka 小, adopted from Ethiopia to Australia.

‘Forgive those who have wronged you, not because they deserve forgiveness but because you deserve peace’.

Depending on your unique individual adoptee story, adoptees in general experience a lot of hardships, from trauma, separation trauma, to abuse. Trauma can rewire the brain sometimes in a way that makes us more susceptible to pain, whether that be from rejection, bullying, abuse or stress. It’s very easy to hold onto pain and build resentment and anger, and I know for me personally growing up I was the type to hold grudges, even years after the wound had been inflicted.

It wasn’t until I stumbled across this quote that it shifted my perspective on forgiveness; that it isn’t something we do for the other person, but what we do for ourselves, for our own sanity, for our own healing and wellbeing. Carrying around pain (and this is not to say we have to do this to deal with trauma as trauma is more complex than that, that’s not to say it cannot be a part of that process) is a heavy burden to carry, and you might not think so, but when you begin to unravel all the past pains, whether that be on your own or in therapy, and you see how it can affect you emotionally, psychologically as well as physically, and spirituality you will be surprised about how big of an impact it can have on a human being.

Carrying around anger or resentment is like carrying around poison, it may be repressed and under the surface, maybe buried down deep, but it can eat away at the beautiful soul you have underneath all that pain. You can easily spot someone who is plagued by their past and pain from a mile away, you can feel the weight of their pain within the way they carry themselves, the way they speak and speak about themselves and the world around them.

When I found this quote and I truly embraced it into myself. I felt so much weight being lifted it was almost euphoric; although for me I carried around years of pain and anger, from being bullied all my childhood to separation trauma and neglect. And truly I did sit there and think ‘why should I carry around this pain while this other person goes on with their life with no care in the world? Why should I suffer for their mistakes or their mistreatment made from another human being?’

Sometimes it’s a choice we make for ourselves, whether or not to move on, or carry that pain with us, or to let it go so that we can find the peace and happiness we deserve.

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Life Lessons from an Adoptee – Part 1

This is a series written by Tamieka 小, adopted from Ethiopia to Australia.

‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life, don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking, don’t let the noise of other people’s opinions drown out your inner voice, and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.’

Steve Jobs

There are studies that show it is common for adoptees to create a false sense of self – usually between two identities – the perfect golden child who does everything for the approval of their adoptive families so they will never face rejection, or the rebel who may reject their families before they can reject them (again). The golden child can look a lot like the astute student who pours hours and hours into their classes, gets straight A’s, is terrified to get anything less than this, someone who never disagrees with their parents opinions or ideologies, and may claim there is nothing to complain about in terms of being adopted. They may end up being the type in fact (and of course you don’t have to be adopted to do this) but to live out the life their adoptive families want for them. They may want them to study to be a doctor, a surgeon, a scientist, an engineer instead of doing what their heart truly desires.

For me personally, I was definitely one of those types of false selves that adoptees may tend to fall into, the over achiever, the perfectionist, the one terrified of their parents’ disapproval, or letting my teachers and mentors down. For me ever since I was a child, I always wanted to be an artist. I knew deep down that’s what I wanted to be my whole life; and my parents were very aware of this. However, they tried to bring me back down to reality; saying that I had to be the best of the best in the industry like Picasso or Van Gogh to get anywhere in that field. They especially emphasised this when I got to late high school and had to think about seriously what I wanted to do in my life as a career.

I ended up choosing psychology as that was a science, something tangible and structured that I could follow according to society’s expectations. Don’t get me wrong-psychology; human and social psychology and behaviour does interest me but it didn’t ignite a fire or a spark inside me the way that art does. In the end I chose to study Animal Behaviour when I graduated and got accepted into university. When I was exposed to the outside world, the real world I realised how much of my life I was allowing to be dictated by my parents. I realised that I had to live my own life and my own dreams. And yes, it was scary to face my parents and tell them I was transferring to the Bachelor of Arts and I wanted to be an artist. But I paved a path in my life of so much self-discovery and knowledge; where I met so many wonderful people, I aligned with in so many ways. I don’t regret it to this day.

Let me just say this from personal experience to fellow adoptees; live the life you want to live, not what society dictates you should do; not what your family or friends think you should do – do what you want, what brings you joy, excitement, what makes your heart sing and your spirit soar.

Because when your family and those friends or whoever aren’t in your life anymore you are going to be stuck with the life and dreams that you made. No one else has to live it but you, and you will experience your happiness or lack of happiness, not them nor anyone else. You will be the one who will go to bed every night feeling either fulfilled or unsatisfied with the decisions you make every-day, so make sure you forge your own path, your own dream so you can find true happiness. It isn’t easy sometimes, but nothing in life that is worthwhile is.

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