Yesterday began like any other day. Logging in for work, checking emails and ims.

And there it was

Out of the blue, well at least to me it was. An email pro porting to be from a member of the family that adopted me. But it’s a strange email address. The type that you more readily associate with web domains or websites. It’s not personalised it’s just the overall domain name or company name @ domain name. So curious. It aroused the suspicions of the other people that this email was sent to.
The message itself was simple. A request that a photograph that’s been online, be taken down. Why, because it shows my adoptive sister and also the natural son of my adoptive parents along with me. The email claims that the publication of this photograph associates the other people in the photograph with my personal views. There were veiled threats of legal action and questions as to whether permission had been granted for use of this photograph. Mea culpa. 

Gag

However on a more serious note; for a fleeting moment I was that eleven year old school child being told off. It’s amazing isn’t what little it takes to revert one back to former behaviours and minds sets. If this message is what it claims to be, then it is obvious that my views on transracial adoption are not shared. But then I never thought that they would be.

I am sure that my APs (Adoptive Parents) see me as a betrayer, a Judas, ungrateful and callous. Looking dispassionately at the situation I can see why. But having undergone years and years of therapy to address the legacy of harm that transracial adoption left me with, then you can understand why I can’t accept the view point that the APs hold, let alone ‘sympathise’ with.

IMHO with hindsight and years of successful therapy behind me there is anger on both sides. Not so much from my direction now. I’m channelling that into positive actions. From my APs I suspect lots of anger. Partly guilt ridden and partly because I no longer feel beholden, I am no longer tied or bound emotionally or otherwise to these people. Therapy taught me that I am not duty bound to feel gratitude, that there is “no duty” that I have to fulfil. I have to get on with my life and what is best for me.

I am sure that the APs view me in negative terms if they view me at all, and I can understand why. If I had not been adopted then I would not be here, living a life or doing the things that I do. But the reason that I am who and what I am is not because of my transracial adoption, it is in spite of it.

No amount of cultural study or language learning will ever return to me what was rightfully mine. I’m afraid that even if the motives for transracial adoption were pure the execution was flawed and the end result was an incomplete person. For me it does not matter what spin you put on it, what trade offs you try to imply. You cannot redact the damage that this has done. It can never fully be repaired, healed or mended. The scars that it has created will remain forever.

There are more and more transracial adoptees coming to the surface, breaking the air and wanting to talk and in talking they are exposing the soft underbelly of transracial adoption. Of course their are plenty of people on the other side who would rather that the negatives, the challenges and real concerns about transracial adoption were not aired.
That will always be the case. I respond very well to threats whether veiled or open. To me it signals that I am on the right track, so it’s a boost giving me extra impetus to carry on 

THE BLANK SPACES WITH BLACK LINES INDICATE PASSAGES THAT I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO DELETE FOR FEAR OF LEGAL REPERCUSSIONS 

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