5 Secrets for My Younger Self

1. Seemingly contradictory things can both be true at once.
Adoption can both be happy and sad. You can love your family now and want to find your birthfamily. You can miss your birthfamily and the life that could have been and enjoy your life now. You can feel terrible and also wonderful. There's no such thing as a good adoption or good adoptee, because people are fluid and emotions are fluid, and we have every right to feel the spectrum of every emotion and experience available to us.

2. There will always be ignorant people.
No matter what age you are, no matter where you go, you will inevitably run into some ignorant people who want to poke too much, make fun of you, ask personal questions, or give their two-cents about how to live your life. There is nothing that can force these people to change and you are not responsible for educating them or having the patience to teach them how to be better. Bullshit is everywhere and everyone deals with it. Things that bother you may not bother others. Regardless, don't be surprised when adoption slaps you in the face at really inconvenient times because other people think they are more important and entitled to your life.

3. Adoption affects your current life in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
Even if you were adopted as a newborn, as a small baby, as a toddler, as a teen, adoption will affect your life. As someone who was raised for the first year of my life in the orphanage, it seems ludicrous now to think it didn't have an impact at all on me. When I say adoption, I mean the entire shebang, the law enforcement coming to seize me as a baby, the possible forced abandonment, the days and nights and weeks in the orphanage, and the transition to America. Yes, I can see how that can affect someone, but I didn't think so, and so my problem ran amok because of my lack of self-awareness, but also because our brains block traumatic events out until we are able and old enough to unpack them. Adoption just doesn't go away, even if the issues aren't adoption issues, many other problems are direct results of institutionalized care and PTSD.

4. You own your own life.
No matter what anyone says to you or about you, how lucky or grateful you should be for being alive and well, it isn't true. No one owns your life and soul but you. No one can determine how to live but you. You own your life and your decisions in your life. To be "lucky" or "grateful" implies that this life was granted and not yours ever to have, to keep, to enjoy. Adoptees should not owe a life-debt until they die. That is cruelty. You own your soul, no matter what the world would have you believe.

5. All adoptees are individuals.
Some adoptees are sensitive. Some adoptees are more angry. Some are more sad. Some don't think about it at all. Some pretend not to think about it at all. Some feel like orphans. Some feel like first generation immigrants. Some adoptees like talking about adoption. Some adoptees don't. Some want to talk about attachment theory, PTSD, and trauma. Some want to talk about race relations, microaggressions, and stereotypes. Some don't want to talk at all. Some experience racism. Some don't. Some adoptees like apples. Some adoptees don't. We are all different, and though there may be similarities between us, do not ever make the mistake of dismissing us as individuals because you happen to know more than one adoptee. We are all individuals and we all matter.