Once upon at time, I was an angry adoptee. I wrote columns and commentaries railing against the big bad system that had placed me in a unsafe home and stolen my documentation, along with my identity.  Of late, I have read quite a few blogs and posts by adoptees who still reel in a emotional whirlwind of hate and blame.

Blame by Yuliya Nemova/Flickr

These ‘blame the birth mom’, and ‘adoptive parents are greedy’ commentaries, make me realize that I’ve entered a new realm of adoptee reality. I am no longer a proponent of  blame. Nor, do I hate the people who placed, abandoned or adopted me.  In its wake, hate has been replaced by the realization that adoption is a necessary but flawed system.  Just ask a foster kid who awaits a forever home. Without the system, too many children would face a lifetime of broken promises and emptiness where connection belongs.

People who enter the adoption triad rarely do so knowing how it will change their souls and life paths. It is easy to blame, but far better to look at our adoptions as one more example of human frailty.  All segments of the triad suffer some sort of  catastrophic break.  As adoptees, our shattered identities often take a lifetime to find and stitch back to the shadows of our lives. We deserve to know where we come from, who we looks like, our genetic identities.

I see my old self in the faces and words of  blaming adoptees, and  I ‘m not sure whether it is age, or finding my family at age 27, and knowing them for twenty years that transformed anger to action.  I just know that I feel better these days, and have much more empathy for all sides of the triad.

Birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees can not be defined with a single sweeping categorization. I have seen attacks on each group of the adoption triad, and whether in it by choice or happenstance, attacking a group as if they are all one kind, is immature and hurtful.

The adoption system requires a transformation to open access for all. It should encourage the retention of identity and all first life connections.  It should not make anyone wealthy. There should  be no lies or altering of documents involved in the placement of children.

Like all things worthy in  this world, adoption should be honest, caring and healing.  The fact that the adoption system is in dire need of an overhaul does not  give us permission to play  the blame game,  attacking members of the adoption triangle. It is time to embrace change with action, not anger.

Blessings for a less angry adoption transformation,
V.L

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Waving Backwards, a Savannah novel (SYP Publishing)
Imagine not knowing who you are,
until you find yourself in a statue 800-miles from home.
COMING TO A BOOKSTORE NEAR YOU AUGUST 2015