Transracial adoptee voices of love and trauma
[Applause]
my journey
as an adoptee and thus the story of me
finding my birth family
starts with this photo this is the only
photo i had of my birth mother for
nearly two decades
growing up this photo made me feel
unavoidable and unfathomable grief
it was this overwhelming and profound
sense of inexplicable loss
and i couldn’t understand why
you see i was a newborn when i was
adopted so these feelings of separation
and loss i was feeling
it didn’t make sense to me but
after going through therapy for a lot of
years thank you mom and dad for paying
for that
but also talking with other adoptees i
learned that these feelings
i was feeling were called trauma
responses to my
experience with adoption i learned that
these trauma responses may come in waves
or feelings of grief
and loss and separation but also anger
and abandonment curiosity confusion and
more
these trauma responses may percolate
into work and professional life
relationships both intimate as well as
with family and friends
and mental and physical health and
well-being
studies have shown that adoptees are
more likely than non-adopted individuals
to experience psychological distress be
diagnosed with some form of mental
illness
struggle with substance abuse and in a
staggering statistic i learned that
adoptees
are four times more likely than
non-adopted individuals to attempt
suicide at least
once in their lifetime that’s a shocking
statistic to me
i like so many adoptees had unanswered
questions about my home country
my culture my language my identity and
my lost heritage
and these deep-rooted emotions i was
feeling only magnified this curiosity
within me
but i am not alone in wanting answers
many adoptees want answers
in a study of american adolescents the
search institute identified
that 72 percent of adoptees wanted to
know why
they were adopted 65 wanted to meet
their biological parents
and 94 wanted to know which biological
parent they looked the most alike
in 2018 i was blessed enough that my
parents were so supportive of me
that we wanted to go to vietnam and so
we braved the intense heat
and humidity of vietnam in the
summertime and let me tell you it is
hot and we walked through these
beautiful temples and landscapes that
were so
intricate in design vibrant in color and
rich
in history we first landed in hanoi
which is in the north of the country of
vietnam
and we descended south stopping in
cities along the way and spending a
couple of days
in each one i ate so much food
i drink so much vietnamese coffee but i
also
basked in this oddly comfortable glow of
the vietnamese sun that just felt like
i was hugging an old friend needless to
say
vietnam was a comfortable space for me
it just felt like i was catching up on
lost time
vietnam was also an interesting
experience for me for two reasons
the first was that for the first time in
my life i was no longer a minority
i was no longer the only asian person in
the room i was no longer the only
vietnamese person in the room
but i was surrounded by people who look
like me and that was exciting and
refreshing
the second reason was that i had this
very real and funny experience of
thinking that every person i passed on
the street was a relative
i figured that maybe a 50 or 60 year old
woman might recognize me as her daughter
and we would have one of those epic
movie moments of like slow motion
running and hugging so i spent a lot of
time
feeling very hopeful time being
discouraged and a time
searching for a lot of faces for
recognition i’m sure
they thought i was a bit creepy when we
first landed in hanoi our wonderful
translator ben had told us about this
private investigation agency
whose services i learned had a high
success rate
of connecting people once disconnected
by circumstance
i was so nervous at the thought of
hiring somebody to help me find my birth
family
because i wasn’t ready for potentially
bad news
you see for the longest time my parents
used to send
my birth mother or the address on my
birth certificate
photos and memories and letters of me
growing up so she could know that i was
safe
and that i was doing okay they also sent
her return posted so that she could send
something back
so that we knew that she was getting
these photos and not just some
random family somewhere but we never got
anything in return so we stopped sending
them
and i in my mind there existed three
alternatives for this
the first was that she could have moved
away
she could have given us the wrong
address
or she could have passed away and i
wasn’t ready for that potentially bad
news i wasn’t ready to learn how to cope
with that kind of devastation
so i didn’t know if i should hire them
or we should hire them
but we did anyway because like when else
are you in vietnam when else
am i that close to my birth family
and we waited two weeks later we were in
ho chi minh city
or the city of my birth it’s also known
as saigon
and it was late at night and my parents
and i were sitting in our hotel room
kind of packing up because we were
supposed to be leaving within the next
two days and we get this email
on my dad’s computer and my parents rush
over to his laptop
ready and eager to open it to see the
contents of what’s inside
and the hotel room filled with this
hopeful and dense
silence that my mother ultimately broke
when she exclaimed
they found them they found your birth
family
they did in fact find my birth family
i learned that my birth mother mai
had five other children including me
she was also living with her husband
which was surprising to me because
he was unnamed on my birth certificate
he was una
identified so i didn’t know who he was
but i also learned that i had siblings
which was really surprising and
beautiful and shocking to me
the eldest was a boy he was married and
living elsewhere at the time
and then there was a girl she was
adapted to france
in the late 80s and then mai
had another boy he was only a couple
years older than me
and he sold lottery tickets on the
street
unfortunately a year after we met my
birth family
he was taken into enslavement and we
haven’t heard from him since
and then there was me adapted to the
united states in the early 2000s
and called causing a lot of trouble ever
since
and then i had a little sister i didn’t
know i had this little sister so you can
imagine my shocked
when there’s a little girl that looks
exactly like me
so we canceled all of our plans the next
day
my parents and i are in this car driving
up this busy
and bustling street in ho chi minh city
and we see her
the woman in the photo i had grown up
staring at all my life
standing on this street on this busy
street corner with motorcycles and
mopeds passing by
and she was pacing anxiously waiting for
our arrival
when we get out of the car she hugs my
mother first
and recognizes her immediately and they
have one of those epic movie moments of
slow motion running and hugging it was
beautiful
and then she hugs my father and then me
and she grabs my hand and we walk
through this narrow street
among these tall houses
when we get to her house my birth
mother’s house
we’re sitting on these little stools and
i don’t know if you can picture this but
my dad is like six
two and he was crouched down on this
like little baby doll stool and it was
really funny
but i turned around and i noticed that
we have gathered quite a crowd
there’s people from the neighborhood
that gathered just trying to
get a glimpse of what was going on and
they some were eating noodles
others were facetiming people elsewhere
in the city and some were trying to talk
to my parents and i but because we
didn’t share a language
i had little to no idea what they were
saying
and then my birth mother comes down
these stairs with a folder
do you remember the photos we used to
send her when i was growing up
she had them the photos the memories the
letters
she had kept them but she not only kept
them she traveled with them
and clearly she kept them very close to
her heart
we take my birth family out to lunch and
we had this gorgeous feast
of food and i don’t think i could tell
you what i ate that day
but i was taking mental photos of the
moment that i had dreamed of all of my
life
you see i was sitting next to my birth
mother and my adopted mother
i was sitting next to my birth father
and my adopted father
and i was sitting next to a little
sister i didn’t even know that i had
we get permission and we take my little
sister back to our hotel room for the
evening
we walked through the streets together
we found an italian restaurant
and i think she had a cheeseburger for
the first time
and then we take her shopping and
because we didn’t share a language i had
no idea what i could buy for her
so we played hide and seek in the
clothing racks instead
but the most beautiful part was is that
she had this very strange and wonderful
protective instinct over me
and she held my hand to make sure i
didn’t get hit by a motorcycle
on the highway
when we take her back the next day and i
turn around as we’re departing the
street
i see my birth family waving smiling
and hugging as we’re driving away
i was just catching up on lost time
so you may wonder why don’t more
adoptees find their birth family
right like there’s 23 in me and
ancestry.com so
why don’t more adoptees do the search
unfortunately i don’t just have one
answer and frankly i don’t think there
is one
every adoptee has a different unique
experience
and narrative and story every rhyme and
reason as to why
so no i can’t give you one answer but
what i can give you is perhaps guidance
toward understanding just my take and
perspective on the situation
so many times in my life and in many
adoptees lives we’re told that we’re
lucky
that we’re chosen you were hand-picked
you should be so grateful
you were given a better life i once had
a teacher tell me that
i was in trouble of course but this
teacher told me that i should be so
grateful that i’m in this country
that my parents were kind enough to
adopt me i call this the lucky narrative
and what this lucky narrative does is
that it so often assumes
the best of those that adopted us often
calling them saviors
while subconsciously implying that our
ethnic cultures are lesser than
and in doing so it denies access
to the cultures we lost our heritage
and our roots if we only focus on what
adoptees gain
well not also addressing what adoptees
lost
it oftentimes denies the opportunity to
come to terms with the trauma that is
associated were often associated with
that loss
mindy stern a fellow adoptee says this
talking about adoption with idealized
language creates an unrealistic paradigm
one where what we lost isn’t just
diminished
it’s denied you see this is an unusual
position to be in
because when we confine adoptees in this
role of exclusively presenting gratitude
or this luckiness we oftentimes deny
this opportunity of experiencing
identifying and processing through this
wide
spectrum of other emotions that often
come along with adoption
and in doing so we confine them to a
single narrative
many people family members and friends
look toward adoptees for the reassurance
that we’re happy
content grateful and well acclimated
but what is missing and what so often we
forget is this opportunity
to experience these things these
feelings of love and gratefulness and
and and all of these other beautiful
feelings and
and struggling through and grappling
with this trauma and sense of loss
and displacement
this is not to say that all adoptions
cannot contain happiness and love but
when the conversation only includes
happiness and love
the other side of adoption the side
where we look
at adoption through the lens of an
adoptee is not often talked about enough
bringing adoptee voices to the
conversation
is not talked about enough
and i argue that you can’t really have
adoption without an adoptee
right so i feel like we should start
consider
bringing adaptive voices to the part of
adoption and the conversation of
adoption
so you may ask how do i amplify adoptee
voices
well so many adoptees lately are coming
forward with their
experiences stories and narratives
that it’s getting easier to find them
so i encourage you to do what you’re
doing now and hey
you all are doing a great job you’re
listening amazing right
a skill that we so often forget that we
have because
a lot of times we like to jump in with a
conversation about like
your ex-girlfriend’s dog that was
adopted right
but sometimes that’s probably not the
best way to talk about adoption with an
adoptee
so i encourage you to start amplifying
adopting voices
in your life when you’re reading about
adoption think about the adoptee
and i promise you that as you do this
adopting voices are going to become
more beautiful broad and nuanced and
vibrant more so than you can ever
imagine
so thank you for amplifying my voice
today
and thank you for coming to my tedx hope
college talk
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