How To Adopt A Child Refugee

i am an adoptee and i'm supposedto be grateful about that, but it's just not that simple. as an adoptee, i'm the only person in the world i know i'm related to. i don't have a birth date.

How To Adopt A Child Refugee, my name has been changed. i lack the culture, the family, the religion, the language that i was born into. i'm more likely to commit suicide.

i'm more likely, as an adoptee, to suffer from a substance use disorder or abuse drugs and alcohol. i'm more likely to self-harm and we're not allowed to talk about it, which compounds the trauma, the trauma of being relinquished and the trauma of being an adoptee. i was given the opportunity to talk about it,

a little over a year ago when i was approached to write something for the washington post magazine about being an adoptee. i told my editor to expect a lot of hate mail. most people identify with adoptive parents and adoptive agencies and they forget that, we're not children anymore, we grow up and we have our own opinions about what has happened to us. so i wrote my piece and sent it off

and it went around the world and i braced for the worst. and the worst came. i got email after email telling me i was an ungrateful adoptee, that i should be ashamed of myself. that, i could've grown up in a slum or worse and i should be, lucky that i had the life i had.

but then i also got these amazing emails from adoptees from all over our country and all over the world, thanking me for expressing what they've been feeling their whole lives. thanking me for sharing my story and being brave enough to share theirs.

thanking me, for changing the narrative. and i finally realized that by raising my voice, i was no longer alone.