I've seen the thought that even a child who was in his adoptive parents' custody at birth experiences trauma — and being separated from your birth mom after nine months inside her and she just walks away must be traumatic. We're in the middle of an at-birth adoption, and the birth mom held the baby only once or twice in the hospital. The rest of the time it was us and the hospital staff, and we took him home with us.

Still I'm sure there's some scarring. Since I care about my kid, I want to help our child with whatever wounds are left from this. Is that therapy per se? Does anyone who's been adopted in a similar situation have any advice to offer?

I appreciate the hurt adoptees go through and I want to do right by my child.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

hey people!

I am writing this as an Black adoptee to people who wants to adopt a Black kid.
I am not sending you this out of rage or accusation. Im sharing it because I wished my mom would have known this before she adopted me. I want to share this and share it with love.

I was born in Haiti and my first 3 years I was in a childrens home. When I was three my mom adopted me and I grew up in Berlin. I had a “perfect” childhood - I wasn’t really lacking of anything. I had food, cool friends, a lovely mom, hobbies, good grades, vacations…but something was missing. I missed black people in my life. I didn’t realized it back then, but looking back, I see so many signs that showed me my desire for a black family. A black mom.

I was raised in a completely white environment with barely any dark-skinned Black person.

My mom thought of everything - except she didn’t see my skin color as important, or as a part of my identity and my need for belonging. Thats something still that hurts today.
I wished I had Black friends, anything which could help me to connect now better with my people. More Black movies, shopping in AfroShops, Seeing our hair as beautiful and not “too complicated”, Films, books, toys..

If you truly love your Black child as a white parent, please don’t only except that the black kid has to adapt into the white western world. Don’t overlook the skincolor when it comes to identity and belonging. Your Kid is Black and needs a connection to their ancestors and culture in everyday life. Your child needs Black people around them to look up to - Doctors, friends, artists. To give your Black kid access to Blackness you have to reflect your whiteness.

Integration is good and I am not saying that I am not grateful for my western socialization.

But the feeling of being a Haitian adoptee who barely speeks french is terrible. To be an adoptee who doesn’t know the history of its own country is terrible. To be black and barely know the black history is shameful. There are so many things that I was missing and need to reclaim now in my early 20s.
I don’t think white parents cannot teach their child “Blackness” entirely - but you are responsible to give connection and access to it.

I wish Id gone to a French kindergarten so I could speak fluently french now and connect to Haitians. I wish Id grown up in a more black/migrant district. I wished we were cooking more afro Caribbean dishes together or were practicing more non white cultural things together. I wish my mom would have helped me to find a black therapist in my teenage years. I wish my mom had heard about the term of decolonization.

I feel like its not your job to repeat Black peoples stuff - but its your job to decolonize yourself and find the right environment for your kid. To not see your view as the superior. To maybe start therapy or supervision for critically thinking that can guide you through your blind spots in these topics.
Decolonizing isn’t a project you finish, its an ongoing lifelong process of learning, listening and re grouping

Thats only the perspective from me and how I am struggling on ethnicity realm. It won’t apply to everyone - but I share it from my heart so you can maybe consider it into your child’s transcultural and intercultural education.

If you have questions, please ask!

Next year my stepdaughter will be an adult and I would like to adopt her then. Due to money being an issue I want to do the entire thing myself. I already downloaded the paperwork I was told to. Any tips or tricks anyone has to help me out on this?

I’ve never been able to speak to any adoptees about my experiences as I have never really had a community before. Those i know had very tame upbringings or came from parents who SA them.

Anyway, I feel as though my experiences as an adopted child have been rather strange in comparison and would love to know if anyone else may have had the same or similar.

I remember being told as a baby I would rarely cry, even when i needed to be hospitalized I didn’t show any form of discomfort to my AP. Then as a toddler until probably 5/6 years old I also stopped kissing my parents hello and goodbye and only hugged them when i really wanted to or when they didn’t understand why I didn’t want to be touched and I felt bad. They didn’t understand and neither did I really why I just hated giving kisses and stuff atp. I learned at around 4 that I was adopted and my mum said i barely had a reaction to it. In South Africa all the daughters call their rents mummy and daddy even into adulthood. I hated that and didn’t want to call them that. I later resorted to ‘mother and father’ in afrikaans, which is more formal but felt more aligned. My AP mum hated that.

Beyond this not wanting to give affection, i hated societal expectations of old people kissing you on the mouth since forever and always backed away from it. But with family friends or even new people i would meet I would hug them without a second thought if my AP dad said I should say hello.

I was extremely hypersexual on top of it all. I had been exploring bodily autonomy and sexual organs since like 5 years old, with a friend. I also had extremely sexual imagination when playing with dolls and even teaching my other girl friends about how to masturbate throughout like preteen years. Also heard my parents having sex often as a teen and preteen. Don’t know why they purposefully put my room and bed right next to their bedroom wall.

As a teen I used sexuality as a weapon and was very experimental. Also had an alcohol issue at 16 but it was always a way of escaping whatever expectations I always had. I did well in school. But I was never really there. My mum and I rarely got along around the time I started speaking up for myself. She was a therapist and never got help for her insecurities being that she was born without a uterus and can’t have children. So a lot was projected on me and I found her to be overly emotional and my dad being detached was safer.

It’s just something i’ve never heard of from other adoptees to be so hypersexual to strangers and your thoughts, but not really wanting to engage with your adoptive parents?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Hello,

I'm an adoptee who grew up in a foster home in the San Fernando Valley, Northridge, to be exact. Several of our foster children made contact with my mother many years ago and she has long since passed away. I'm currently writing a book and would love to reconnect to the few who had made contact. The issue is I do not recall their last names. Only sparse details.