An Adoptee on Her Birthday, or, The Day I Wish I Had Emerged From a Pod

by: Rebecca Peacock Dragon Today is the fifth birthday I have had since knowing who actually birthed me.  The fifth birthday I have had since knowing what family I was birthed into, the family I was meant to be in.  The family that I resemble, share DNA with, and a common heritage.  The fifth birthday …

Formula-Finding: One Way Adoptive Parents Harm Adoptees

by: Rebecca Peacock Dragon                Recently, a social media page for a magazine with a fairly large following posted the following question:  “If you're an adult adoptee, what advice can you give to current adoptive parents?”  Although I generally find these questions to be a kind of trap for adoptees: respond accordingly if you don’t …

Reunion Repulsion – Let Yourself Get Disembodied if You Can. Float.

By: Rebecca Peacock Dragon ***CONTENT WARNING:  adoption reunion/domestic (for those who have not had, cannot have, or have had traumatic experiences with adoption reunion, this piece may be unsettling…for others, I hope this makes you feel seen)                One of my Adoptionland besties, someone that I came into advocacy with (and also semi-retired with), recently …

Impossible Belonging

By: Rebecca Peacock Dragon I am currently in an MFA program for non-fiction writing, and I reworked one of my older posts. I shared it for student reading last night because I figured that in a room full of writing students, imposter syndrome might be prevalent. Follows is what I read: "I wrote this piece …

Adoptee Soul Dread

By: Becca Dragon **That feeling when you are sitting in your third grade class, and you overhear a group of kids talking about someone’s birthday party, knowing you didn’t get an invitation: wondering what is so wrong with you that you don’t seem to be as accepted as the more socially fluent around you…. **That …

I Finally Know Who I Am

by: Bree aka NoRang You STOLE me from my motherland. You never asked if I was okay with leaving my place of birth, my home. Kidnapping me away from everyone that looked like me, my culture. I was placed into your family. A family who knew nothing about my my Korean culture or heritage. Hell …

Pick A Mom

by: Alana Hart For the first time in my life, I have the opportunity to have both my first and adoptive mothers around my table for Thanksgiving. “Great!” you are probably thinking to yourself. What an opportunity to unite and feel thankful! However, as an adoptee nothing is straight forward or easy. Instead, the guilt …

How Will You Change Your Mind About Adoption

by: Liz DeBetta I teach writing at a university in Utah, which is a very white, conservative, pro-adoption state. Just this week my students gave presentations in class called “Book Talks” based on a memoir/non-fiction book of their choice. I had given them a list of options at the beginning of the semester and each …

Our Lives Are Not Your Entertainment

by: Cherish Asha Bolton Popular TV show This Is Us wowed audiences again with its coverage of transracial adoption. I don't watch the show, and a lot of adoptees can't bring themselves to watch it either. And yet it's immensely popular with adoptive parents. The supposedly "mic drop" scene is as follows: Jack: When I …

The BITE Model, Part Two: Information Control

In part one (read part one first), we examined the “B” of the BITE model: Behavior Control.  In this second part we move on to the I: Information Control.  As a refresher, let’s establish what the BITE Model is, and also present our caveats. The BITE Model was developed by Steven Hassan of the Freedom …