My Supportive Family

Our insecurities, fears, and hopes can sometimes lead to "either-or" thinking. But adoptees don't need to "choose" between their two families, two lives, and two existences. We can love our birthfamily and our adoptive family. They are not mutually exclusive.

Actually, I never feel more a part of my family now than when they support me as a human being, in whatever I want to do.
That includes making this blog,
Talking about adoption,
Leaving my orphanage group,
Seeking new adoptee groups,
And searching for my birthfamily.

When my grandmother was still alive, she used to take me out to restaurants. She and I were real foodies and she always loved trying the next best place. My grandparents were sitting with me, and the restaurant was small, so the other eaters got a little nosy. On our way to pay the bill, one of the other women in the restaurant pulled my grandmother aside, asking about me: "Who is she?" And my grandmother, without even thinking about it, snapped back, "She's my granddaughter," in a tone of voice that said "Weren't you paying any attention?" She didn't do it to defend me, or to take a trailblazing stand for adoptee rights. To her, it was the stupidest question she had ever heard. It was iron-clad fact, irrefutable: I was her granddaughter. I don't think she realized how much it meant to me that she didn't even dither around, wondering how to approach this awkward situation. I was in college by this point, the very first time in my life people were treating me like I didn't belong because I wasn't white. I never felt Othered in my entire life until college, so the topic was on my mind a lot. My grandmother was tried and true. She was blunt as always and I loved her so much and still do. Rest in peace.

And while my extended family may not be in on everything my immediate family knows, they make sure I know I belong every which way. Even if they can't take away the pain or understand everything, they try to make sure their end of the portal is healed. Even outright just saying I’ll always be a part of this family, makes me feel warm and fuzzy. A part of me feels embarrassed I need to hear these things like a two year old, but I appreciate their effort.

I often watch the footage my parents took of going to adopt me from China. You can clearly see that these frumpy-to-business casual over fifty-year-old parents in their Walmart tees and windbreakers aren't on a religious conversion crusade or a white savior mission. They genuinely believed this was the very best day of their lives. My parents went to adoptee counseling and knew the footage might one day be desired by me, and that adoptee was right, even if that adoptee was in the fog herself and didn't know everything. You can just see how wanted and loved I was. Even though my parents were the only couple thinking about how institutionalized care and separation trauma could affect me at the time, you could see that they just absolutely adored me. It was so innocent. Not objectifying. Not creepy. Just a simple, she is our daughter.

Because the burden of gratitude is very much a thing for adoptees, I only say that I am "reasonably" thankful for my parents. Reasonably, being defined as the extent of thankful that every other biological kid feels in regards to their parents. Saying "I'm thankful for them" just makes you fall down the rabbit hole of "I'm a burden and I should just kill myself because I'm absolutely worthless and I don't deserve parents and I don't deserve to live because I don't have the same rights as biological kids because I, unlike them, have to be thankful all the time for even breathing every day because I very well couldn't have been adopted..."

My family understands this. My family does NOT want me to be thankful. My family wants me to feel loved. I owe them nothing. I do not have to pay for my existence in orphan tears and gratitude. I do not have to grovel every day for living like a human being. My family supports me. I am a part of my family. And everyone else who calls me "lucky" can just fuck off.