Since coming out as an adult adoptee, posting about the making of my independent documentary, performing in my one woman stage play and writing about my personal views on transracial adoption; apart from being trolled and griefed, I have been literally inundated by requests to become a guest writer on this blog or that website.
Initially I was flattered, until I started to look into the requests in more depth. Most of the organisations, and I use the term “organisation” very loosely, are groups, whether for adoptees or adopters, that are what I call, “born again”.

Evangelical in their pro adoption at any cost and more often than not deeply religious. Anyone who has the temerity to question their views on adoption, are one step down from being the devil incarnate. It would also seem to be true that none of these groups actually read or know how to carry out basic research on the people that they approach to guest write.

Tongue in cheek aside, there is a very serious and disturbing aspect to the above. It’s the amount of groups, organisation, NGO’s and not for profits that are out there. They see and promote adoption as if it is a right. That somehow families and parents from the west are superior to those from third world and the Far East. That by being adopted by a western family is an act of salvation. Fore sure financially and possession wise yes I suspect that being in the west, being adopted by a reasonably affluent family the adoptee may well be “better off”. They will probably want for nothing. They will not know what it means to be truly starved. They will be educated and they will be clothed. That’s the shell, the husk taken care of. But what of the being inside? What becomes of them? Closing your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears or burying your entire head in the sand will not miraculously dissipate the inevitable. We all know want to know where we came from (and I’m not talking birds and bees) we all want to be able to trace in some shape or form our lineage. We want to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and be able to place the reflection that we see alongside all the other faces in our immediate family and the society that surrounds us. The transracially adopted child with its distinctive facial features or darker skin tones and uncharacteristic non Euro-centric hair cannot do this. How then does this child for all it’s material wealth cope with a deeper and intrinsic ticking time bomb? Who will be there to pick up the emotional pieces? How many more emotionally scared, traumatised or damaged adults are in the making?
Not every transracial adoption goes sour but not every transracial adoption has the fairy tale ending of, and they all lived happily ever after. In a day and age when the world comes to you via fiber-optic cables. I worry. We have not as yet fully acknowledged past generations of adoptees, let alone the new ones in the making. Yet it would seem the insatiable appetite to adopt transracially goes on apace and the grief, the loss and the emotionally scarring continues

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