Why Adoptees Need Community—and How Adoptive Parents Can Support Them
Love is powerful. The love of a parent for a child is especially powerful. But one person’s love cannot do all things for everyone. Like all moms, I wanted to be everything for my daughters—to love them so fiercely that they would never feel the weight of the losses that came from having been adopted. But love cannot replace culture. It cannot rewrite history. The truth is, our children don’t need us to be everything. They need us to recognize what we cannot be. They need us to empower them to find what they need that we cannot give them.
It took me a while to realize that if I tried to be their entire world, I would be making their world smaller. I saw how when we had real talk about their first families and provided contexts and opportunities for our girls to explore their identities, their sense of self and belonging blossomed. My own journey led me to becoming involved with the Adoptee Mentoring Society, which provides one-on-one mentoring, and The Adoptee Lounges for adoptees facilitated by adoptees. Angela Tucker, the CEO and an adoptee herself, shared with me a recurring, quiet confession from some of the adoptees she has mentored. They say; "I can’t tell my adoptive parents that I’m talking to other adoptees because I think they’ll feel betrayed."
This fear is not unfounded.
Walking through Times Square with my daughters.
Too often, adoptive parents interpret their child's need for connection with other adoptees as an indictment of our parenting, or a failure to provide our adopted child with everything they need. However, I believe that facing the feelings of grief and loss that are inherently intertwined with adoption is one of the best ways that we can love them. I accept that some of that “everything” is found in places that I cannot go, roles that I shouldn’t play and in conversations that I will never fully understand. I have found deep joy in providing encouragement, curiosity, and openness as my children explore their identities. Having a mentor through the Adoptee Mentoring Society has been key for my oldest child.
We've all heard, "It takes a village to raise a child." It is time that we adoptive parents put this into practice.
For adoptees this means access to communities of other adoptees where they can express all their feelings and process their unique experience with people who do understand, mentors who know that it’s possible to love your adopted parents and miss your first parents, possible to feel grief and loss about being adopted and love your family at the same time.
One of the most tangible ways we can do this is by funding adoptee centered spaces. That’s why I’m launching the Adoptive Parents 4 Adoptees Fund to make adoptee mentorship free and more widely accessible for adoptees. Adoptive parents—who have benefited from the adoption system—should be key players for investing in adoptee well-being.
It’s time to make way for our children to experience additional types of support and love. Because adoptee mentorship isn’t betrayal. It's a necessary resource for them. It’s survival.