Fake News & Fairytales: Imagery and Branding

From the Motherbridge of Love

I HATE THIS PICTURE. And if you understood anything at all about Chinese adoption, you would understand why.

The caption reads: The first gave you a need for love, the second was there to give it.

Dear tonedeaf people who wrote this book and the tonedeaf adoptive parents who bought this book, never ever ever speak for my birthmom. She is not a puppet you can make speak when you say speak. She does not have the words you make her say. This image says my birthmom did not love me. This image implies that a baby was unlovable and not good enough to be kept. This image says the white woman was the savior. It says only white women adopt. It says that everyone in this image is happy. It says everyone in this image is willing. And it leaves out the dads.

I think adoptive parents need to ask themselves, "Who are these fairy tales really for? Them...or us?"

Because adoption isn't horrible. But it isn't a fairy-tale either. The genre of happy adoptions is brainwashing and to no avail, because you cannot unteach a child pain and you cannot suppress their emotions.

In adoption, images are vehicles for messages, and who it is who wants certain messages spread is never immediately transparent. As a baby from China, my past will remain unknown unless I get a DNA match and I hear the story from their lips. Until that time, I can only guess. As a baby being told so many fairy tales of my birthmom making an "adoption plan" for me, I can only say I feel irrevocably betrayed by everyone in society: China, for creating such an official farce and American news media, for repeating it. Even when we know better. Even when the world knows that the one child policy doesn't apply to all. Even when the world knows that the communist government brutally hurt thousands of women...we still get idiotic stories of savior parents. AND we still get idiotic stories of these fairy-tales. It's like you think my pain is a joke.

A quote of one of the children books about Chinese adoption reads, "your parents decided not to keep you. Maybe they tried again for a boy." And yet, day after day after day, I see stories of birthparents wanting to find their lost babies, and their three grown children want to find them too, all three of whom are girls. Decided not to keep us? DECIDED not to keep us? Yes, read on to find out how much China's government was really into freedom of choice as they force a 7-month along pregnant woman to undergo an abortion against her will. Yes, a super duper amazing location that fosters individual choice.

Here are the headlines from today's world which don't make me feel much better about myself, but are in stark contrast to the happy bubble we lived in before:

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link, photo on Wiki

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These are just a small sampling of stories out there from the New York Times, NPR, and the Atlantic. No, they are not the whole story. No, they didn't even apply to everyone. And yet...this is part of my cultural history. The one child policy will be a subchapter in a history textbook and I am part of this history. I am a direct result of this period of time.

Adoption isn't Good or Bad. But we need to be aware of the imagery, messaging, and ever evolving narrative we adoptees are forced to live in. This is our life and it doesn't go away. People need to realize that in Chinese adoption, there ARE NO RECORDS. Even "records" they have are often forged or falsified. We cannot just look up our birthfamilies. It isn't possible. As stories of DNA reunions come out month after month, I am forced to swallow a new truth, that no two of our stories are alike, that individual circumstances played major roles in the exact details of that fateful day of separation. When I was growing up, we didn't even have that, and so these fairy tales were not simply bedtime stories, but were more like gospels, iron-hard pieces of truth. They were my personal history, written down and recorded so that I would know where I came from. And they are all lies.

Even for all their flowery language, it never ever made my pain go away and it only made it worse because it put adoptive parents in such a wonderful light that it dishonored my birthmom. It also put words in my birthmom's mouth, attesting to the reasons why I was "abandoned" without anyone ever asking her what happened, and the words these authors chose to put in her mouth were that she didn't love me enough to be kept. She had to give me away. And maybe, if you're a cold hearted individual, you don't see the problem in that. But adoptees will always internalize these messages, and it no longer reads, "my mother gave me up," but "I was not good enough to be loved. I am worthless."

HUMAN TRAFFICKING.

YOUR MOTHER LOVED YOU BUT GAVE YOU UP.

FORCED ABORTIONS.

YOU WERE ABANDONED.

FORCED STERILIZATIONS.

OUR FAMILY WAS MEANT TO BE.

KIDNAPPING.

GOD GAVE US A GIFT AND IT WAS YOU.

GENDER IMBALANCE.

MEET YOUR THREE BIOLOGICAL SISTERS.

ONE CHILD POLICY.

YOUR TWO BIRTH SIBLINGS MISS YOU VERY MUCH.

THE FIRST GAVE YOU A NEED FOR LOVE.

YOUR BIRTHMOTHER TRIED SO SO SO VERY HARD. BUT IT JUST WASN'T POSSIBLE. THEY HUNTED HER DOWN AND STOLE YOU AT THE HOSPITAL.

YOUR ORPHANAGE HAS BEEN FOUND TO BE INVOLVED IN HUMAN TRAFFICKING.

YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL.

Everyone, just be quiet. I just want the truth. I just want my birth mommy.

End note: Accurate, truthful reporting by NBC about Brian and Lan Stuy about what really happened in Chinese adoptions. A must-read.