If searching for your family was a game show, it would be called ‘How much do you really want this?’
It would be a round robin game where endurance and dedication to the cause win out. Along the way, you’d get thrown obstacles that you have to navigate. The last adoptee standing would get to meet their family.
To describe the search for your first family as a game show isn’t really far from the truth. Game shows rely on at least some element of luck, and when it comes to adoptees finding their family, luck is sometimes the only thing that leads to success.
Stephanie McDonald as a child.Unfortunately, luck hasn’t been on my side, and I wonder how much I’m willing to keep working towards something that I so desperately want, but that might never happen.
I was 16 when I made the first tentative steps toward searching for my birth mother. Like a lot of teenagers, I was struggling with my identity and I had grown up in a very white environment. My mum cooked sausages, mashed potato, peas and carrots most nights. On Sunday we had a baked dinner.
My brother, also adopted from Korea, and I were the only Asian kids in the entire school until about year 10, when a handful of other Asian kids began coming to my school.
I felt so white I once caught my reflection in a window and was momentarily shocked to see my Asian face. Who was this strange person with Asian features staring back at me?
Top Comments
Great post. As a Korean adoptee I feel like this was a valuable blog to read for other people that might be going through the same thing.
I think it's a difficult issue not just for Stephanie but also for the adoptive Australian parents. For all intents and purposes they have presumably been there as parents through all the good and bad times in her life and yet they don't get a single mention in Stephanie's article? I can understand Stephanie's need to find her origins and am not saying it's her fault, but I'm sure it must break her adoptive parents hearts at least a bit. I think this is another problem with adoption that some adoptive parents who have been there throughout are sometimes swept aside by their adopted child's (understandable) need to bond with their biological parents. I've seen this happen first hand and it's no-one's fault as such but it is presumably a terribly heartbreaking outcome for the adoptive parents to feel like 'second fiddle' in some cases after 20+ years of being everything for their adoptive child. My husband and I weren't able to have biological children and when we were asked 'are you going to adopt' our joint response was 'no way, not for us' partly for this reason.
There are a few presumptions here that sadly, I feel the need to clarify. When you adopt a child, that child already has a first family and culture. My adoptive parents did not deny this and encouraged me to explore my roots growing up. When I eventually showed interest in birth family search, they were completely supportive, although it was difficult for my adoptive mum at times. Over the past 5 years since my birth family reunion, my adoptive family has supported me through the highs and lows, and the whole experience has made us closer. Forging new connections with my birth family has been emotionally intense, but they do not replace the existing relationships with my adoptive family. Each family occupies separate spaces in my heart.
I consider myself very lucky, as not all of my adopted friends have good relationships with their adoptive parents, and indeed, some had abusive and negligent adoptive parents. Still, I resent the need to justify my birth family search by affirming that yes, I still have a strong relationship with my adoptive parents and overall, I had a positive adoption experience. Labels such 'angry vs grateful' adoptee and 'positive vs negative' adoption do not even begin to capture the complexity of our views and experiences. Moreover, they are irrelevant to the universal human need to know one's roots and form a complete identity.
Finally, most adoptees are hyper-aware of considering their adoptive parents' feelings and many even put off undertaking birth family search until their adoptive parents have passed away. Although this article does not focus on an adoptee's relationship with her adoptive parents, it does not mean that the adoptive parents have been 'swept aside' or 'feel like 'second fiddle''.
This article was not about the adoptive family and I see no reason why they should have been included in it just because. The relationship an adoptee has with their afoptive family is completely seperate from the relationship with the adoptees birth family. By the sounds of your comment, I would agree that adopting a child was not for you.