The Letter
On January 17th of 2020, I sent my a-parents a letter.
I wrote down my thoughts and feelings that I've been having up until that point.
Today is May 14th, 2020. As far as I know, neither of them has read it yet.
When I first sent it, my a-mother shared a lot of her thoughts. Much of which were hurtful. But, she didn't read the letter. It would have brought to light a lot of what I was going through. Maybe she would have replied differently. But then again, in her words, "Whatever you feel or think I validate even without reading anything."
A month later in February, I sent them a message in the group chat asking whether or not either of them read my letter. I got zero responses. Not even an acknowledgement of my question.
Then again in March, I sent them another email letting them know I still wasn't sure if any of them read it.
And so, I will post that letter here. If it helps someone else, great. But at least it will be read by somebody.
It’s been a few months now since I’ve spoken to either of you, and I feel like now is a good time for me to just unload some of my thoughts. I have been seeing a therapist to help me with my current state, and one of the things he told me is that I need to do, is just figure out what I want moving forward. That is what I’ve been trying to figure out since discovering my adoption. For now, I just want to get a few other things off my chest.
I’m writing all this down because there is so much more to say. I don’t feel like everything I needed to say/share was said/shared while you both were here. And I can’t just “sweep it all under the rug” and move on.
I want you to understand that I still consider you both to be my parents. I need you both to not mistake my anger and grief as a lack of gratitude. Just to state the facts:
I am angry because you both lied to me for 34 years.
I am grieving because I lost my roots. I lost whatever connection I had to my mother and father the day I was relinquished. And it sucks. There is a feeling of emptiness that I don’t quite honestly know how to explain. I still hate looking in the mirror and not knowing where the person looking back at me comes from.
As an adoptee (let’s be real here, I am an adopted person), when I say you’re my parents, what I mean to say is that you’re my mom and pop. You’re the people who raised me. And that’s really what adoption is about. Legally speaking, when all the paperwork was signed, my mother and father gave up their parenting rights to you when you adopted me. So even though you both are not my mother and father, you are however my parents.
You may consider me to be your son, and that’s okay. But you both had 30+ years to let that settle in. You were able to accept it. But I never had that courtesy. I was plopped in your arms, and kept in the dark.
The hardest part about writing all this and sharing more of my thoughts now, is that you both have already shared your voices and opinions.
Pop, as you said, feelings and emotions don’t matter to you. All you care about is gratitude. You may not see it. But I am grateful. Even after knowing that you never wanted children. This is something you’ve shared a few years ago while we were still living in Texas. I remember when you told us you never wanted children. And I know that I thanked you in that moment. For providing for us even though you didn’t want us.
Even so, I cannot fathom what that must have been like. Not wanting to have children, only to have your arm be twisted into adopting children. Not only did you adopt us, but you didn’t even get to pick us.
Mom, you already shared with me how you lied during the second adoption process just to adopt. You mentioned that you said what the social workers wanted to hear.
You also shared that you would have taken this knowledge to the grave if it wasn’t for me taking a DNA test. Even though you apologize for the pain I’m going through, I don’t believe that you’re sorry for your decision, all things considered. While I respect and appreciate the amount of honesty you’re giving to me now, it is difficult to feel validated.
If you wanted to access your original birth certificate, a family tree, and/or your medical history, you could. All that is readily available to you and anyone else that wasn’t adopted.
As an adoptee, I don’t have the same rights as those born within their natural families. This adds another painful layer of grief and loss I’ll have to experience throughout life. Never knowing.
So, when I choose to explore my roots and/or express grief over my loss, it does not mean I am ungrateful. It’s something I do for me. Because I want to know these things that were taken away from me.
Simply put, my roots are a part of who I am, and who I am matters.
Not only did you take my roots away from me, you also took it away from my children. They too will never know where their roots come from. It stops with me.
I feel like a one-man family tree. The only branches I have now are my children.
You know, as the new year crawled in this year, I have never felt so alone. Even though I wasn’t alone. And just about the only people that understand this feeling are other adoptees.
Nothing, and no amount of love you can give me will ever satisfy the yearning to know about my roots. It won’t, and can’t fill the hole that is the loss of my biological family.
Now that I’ve read a lot about adoptions, and listened to other adoptees and their experiences, I’ve developed my own opinions about adoption. I’ve said it before, as beautiful as adoption can be, it is still very messy and difficult.
Adoption starts with loss. Loss in the couples lives that can’t have children. Loss for the birth mother relinquishing her child. Loss for the child that is separated from their birth parents. Yet, nobody seems to be aware or care to address it. Adoption is all about the adoptive parents and giving them the family they couldn’t have.
One of the things I believe now in regards to adoption is that it's the parents' duty to prepare an adopted child for their future while preserving that child's identity.
It's the parents duty to teach their adopted children how to navigate life without their mother and father. It's a challenge that every adoptee has to face. Coming to terms with not having their biological mother and father. Coming to terms that they are adopted. Coming to terms that they were relinquished. I have to figure out a way to accept that fact. You should have prepared me for that. The truth was bound to come out.
And now I have to navigate this new challenge in my life by myself.
It's hard enough to have to deal with the grief of not having a mother and father, but now I get to have the added trauma of knowing that I was lied to and manipulated into believing that you were my mother and father.
Now, you may feel like all of this sounds as if I’m some ungrateful prick. But I’m going to point you towards this post:
I want to quote a line from there:
“Many will read this and think I don’t sound grateful at all; that I sound bitter and closed off. I assure you, that isn’t the truth. I’m thankful for my life. I’m even thankful to have been adopted but I will never conclude, with any amount of certainty, that my life is better and that I am indebted to life more than anyone else.”
Whether or not you believe me, I am grateful. You both gave me a good life. In spite of all it’s problems, it’s been good. Yes, you could have been better. But I do understand that nobody and no parent is perfect. But I can’t help but reflect on my past and try to dissect every moment now. How many of those troubling times could have been improved if only I had just known that I was adopted?
If I could put all my anger into a rock and throw it at someone, I wouldn’t quite know where to throw it. I’d throw it at you for lying to me. I’d throw it at my birth mother for relinquishing me. I’d throw it at the Indian ideals and shitty social stigmas that led to my relinquishment. I’d throw it at society's view on adoption and how it’s made out to be such an exotic and wonderful thing, all the while forgetting the loss of a person's birth family. In a perfect world, couples wouldn’t have issues conceiving, women wouldn’t be harshly judged or mistreated for having children out of wedlock or what have you, and there would be no adoptions. But that’s not the world we live in.
And the fact of the matter is, at this moment, I honestly do not know why I was relinquished. I’m still upset at both of you for lying. Even after confronting you both. And just how long it took for you both to admit the truth. As my parents, you’re the people I trusted the most as a child. It’s hard for me to see how the people that proclaim to have loved me the most are also the ones who withheld such big information about my identity from me.
And yet, I am still grateful for the life you gave me. You did what you were supposed to do as parents, in that you raised us and provided for me. But you also took away my beginnings and force-fed me a made up story of your choosing. So here I stand, with a rock in my hand that I’ll never be able to get rid of. It’s a rock with no purposeful destination.
There are still so many other unanswered questions. Questions that have no answers and may remain unanswered. Like, if you both could go back in time, would you change it? Would you have told us we were adopted? What if you never adopted Indian children, and the children you got were a completely different race than either of you? Would you have done the same and lie to them and everyone else around you claiming them as your own? These are all difficult to think of, but they are the things that go over my head
With all these thoughts, I don’t know if I’m ready to search for my birth family. And even though you both expressed your willingness to assist in this search. I just don’t know if I’m ready to trust you to be honest about it.
I do still want all the information about my adoption in front of me first. Once I have it, I can then decide how I wish to proceed. That being said, I find it difficult to believe that you don’t know where any of the adoption paperwork is. Paperwork of this nature seems to be too important to disregard so easily. You’ve kept everything else from our childhood safely but that. How am I supposed to react to this?
As I mentioned above, my therapist told me that at this point I should figure out what I really want. And that’s what I’m trying to do here. If I am to still have any sort of relationship with you, I get to set the direction. I need to lay down some rules if you will and set the precedent. I need to in order to protect myself from being hurt again. It’s a hard thing to accept; When the tables turn and your children grow up to be adults and now they get to set the rules and establish boundaries. But that is life. And I have witnessed you both set boundaries with your own parents and families, and they too learned to accept those.
The thing is though, I honestly do not know what I want right now. I’ve already told mom to give me space. And that is what I need. I’m still processing my anger, pain and grief. So yes, for now, I need space to process. Our relationship was already strained before knowing I was adopted. This just adds another layer to it. To me, the best way to explain it is that I feel as though you took away the chapter 1 of my life, and fed me a made up story just to fit with your life's narrative.
If we can just have a conversation about my adoption like adults, then maybe there’s a new way to establish a relationship. One that should have been done right from the beginning. We can have different views and opinions, but in regards to my adoption, it really is going to have to be something we’re all on the same page with. That’s the honest truth.
I don’t know if this helps, but I feel that the child in all of us wants to lean on our parents during troubling times. With that, how is a Late Discovery Adoptee supposed to lean on their parents when they are also the ones that lied to them about being their parents?
The fact is, you both are getting older. And I am glad I found out while you both are still alive. It leaves room for change. It leaves room for growth and a direction. We can still talk about the adoption and I can still get some answers. If you (mom) truly got your wish and I found out after you both pass, my anger and frustration would have had no bounds. I would be severely heartbroken being left in the dark.
Here’s a few other links I’d like to share with you. If you really wish to know what some of the thoughts that go through my mind are, this will give you some insight. A few are just the thoughts of other adoptees like me that found out they were adopted as adults. I share them because you both need to know that a lot of what I’m sharing with you is a common theme with other adoptees and late discovery adoptees alike. This isn’t just me talking. This is every adoptee that experience the same troubling issues. The same internal struggles. I hope you both take the time to read through them.
1) Dear Adoption, Hello - I highly suggest you read through some other posts on this site. But specifically, I want to point you to this one:
https://dearadoption.com/2019/09/24/dear-adoption-hello/
Here are a few lines that deeply hit me on an emotional level:
Dear Adoption,...
You dotted the i’s, crossed the t’s, collected your payment, and erased me from existence – metaphorically, literally.
You didn’t ask me how I felt.
You didn’t comfort me.
You didn’t check on me.
You didn’t see me.
You didn’t preserve me.
2) From familypreservation365.com: Adopted adults are telling you, “Adoption has hurt us.” If we aren’t listening to the very people adoption has professed to save, we are exhibiting willful ignorance.
3) I’ve shared this one before in WhatsApp, but I figure I’d add it here again:
https://medium.com/@mirahmirah/when-adults-discover-they-were-adopted-be60c4a242ad
4) Someone shared this from the UN. Very interesting to read:
United Nations: Convention on the Rights of the Child
https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx
Article 7
- The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.
- States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless.
Article 8
- States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.
- Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity.
5) "As an LDA I continually ask - why? Why was this kept a secret from me? Why are there still secrets? Why did my adopted parents, who instilled the life lessons of honesty, truthfulness, and integrity, turn around and willfully deny me the knowledge of my true identity?" - LDA group member.
6) https://ellecuardaigh.com/2019/01/30/if-adoption-is-beautiful/
There is so much more that I have to say, but I guess this is a good stopping point. I don’t know how you read this letter. I do hope that you read it in a neutral tone. I hope you read it like it’s coming from a person. And not just as your son. Because only then will you read it objectively, and without letting your emotions get in the way.
I do still love you both.
-Kris
In April, I left a group chat that I was a part of. In it, I mentioned that I still wasn't sure if either of them had read this letter. I told them that I was getting tired of seeing their opinions within the group chat, and until they read this letter, I would not communicate with them concerning my personal life, or thoughts on adoption. I told them that they could still reach out to me individually if they needed to.
I have not heard a single thing from them since then. It is what it is.