Matthew Salesses explains that adoptees may not be able to find all the answers they’re looking for, and that needs to be okay.
—This was originally published on the author’s blog.
Editor’s Note: This is an open letter to Ann Brenoff and @HuffPoParents about her piece My Daughter’s Baby Picture.
Dear Ann Brenoff,
Earlier today, I read your essay about taking your adopted daughter to China to get her some answers about her adoption. I noticed that the comments are overwhelmingly positive, and also that they are overwhelmingly from other parents. I’m a parent, too, but I am writing to you as an adoptee, not as a dad.
I won’t beat around the bush: your essay upset me. Angered me, even, at first. Because it simplifies the issue of adoption and suggests that answers can be gotten from a quick trip to the birth land and a photograph. Then I realized I wasn’t truly angry but sad.
I wish I could make you see how much you are leaving out, how you are giving your daughter and future adoptive parents the wrong (and perhaps harmful) impression. That there are “answers” that can set someone at peace with being adopted. Peace for an adoptee does not come from seeing the place she was left. (Or even, I might argue, how or why.) I know this. Peace is not about answers. As far as I can tell, from everything I have learned and questioned about myself, it is about accepting that there will always—always—always be questions. The answers are never really answers.
I can’t say whether meeting one’s birth mother would give one a real answer—maybe it would. I haven’t found my birth mother, and probably couldn’t even if I tried hard. I was abandoned and found by an orphanage as a baby, where I was raised until I was 2-and-a-half. Or so says the orphanage and the adoption agency I came through—though I learned recently (an important lesson), from an adoptee who eventually found her birth family, that these organizations often lie. Maybe things have changed since when I was adopted. Maybe things are different in China.
But speaking from experience, finding out about the orphanage that raised you does not allow you to understand your adoption. If, Ann, you meant to talk about specific answers, like what the place was like, and who took care of your daughter when she was there, and what kind of baby she was, then I wish you had framed your essay like that. I wish you hadn’t made it sound like adoption had been answered, like your daughter is healed now of that deep deep loss we never truly “get over.”
Adoption isn’t simple. It’s the most complicated thing I know. Answers are not easy and not firm and don’t answer the questions you’re really asking—or, as the case may be, not asking. Adoptees may wonder about their real birthday, or what it was like where they grew up, or even why they were abandoned (getting closer), but what they are really asking is much more complex than that. I have asked those questions both out loud and in my head my entire life. And underneath those questions are further questions—like how has adoption made me who I am, and who is that, and how would I be different if I knew my birth family?—and underneath those questions are questions I don’t even know how to ask, or know to ask, since the part of me that would know what to look for is a part of me I can’t recover. I am searching for answers, but I am searching for questions. And answers always lead to more questions, at least in my experience.
It is complicated. Adoptees need their adoptive parents to know that it is complicated, and to tell them so. The language in your essay, Ann, makes implications that could be damaging for adoptees looking to understand, and for adoptive parents looking to understand. Confusion is how adoption is. Adoptive parents, please acknowledge this. Please don’t try to tell us differently. Please don’t try to tell us the fog isn’t real. Just stand there with us and let us hear your (true, honest) voice.
When you say, Ann,
One of the cold realities of adopting an older child from China is that she comes with a lot of questions, many of which you can’t answer.
Why cold? Why older? Why China?
One of the realities of adopting is that there are questions that can’t be answered. There. This is the truth. It doesn’t matter where that child is adopted from or how old she is when she’s adopted. The questions will always be there, and I wish all adoptive parents would know that this is universal and that it is okay and that it is not cold but simply real.
When you say, Ann,
Still, it was an orphanage and what she didn’t have during those years was what she wanted most: a forever family. Us.
How do you know what she most wanted? How do you know it was “us”? Again, we do not really know what we want—that’s part of it, that there is such a deep rift in your life that you don’t know how to climb down into it to see how far it goes or what is at its bottom. On top of that, though, why do you think that what she wanted most wasn’t her birth parents? I love my family. I love my parents and am enormously, endlessly grateful to them. I am so so grateful. And yet they weren’t what I wanted, as a kid. Of course they weren’t. What I wanted was what other kids had, or seemed to have. What I wanted, at least, was to know what it would be like, to be part of a family from which I sprung, even if to find out that what I needed was my adoptive family. Which I do.
When you say, Ann,
But I also heard from many, many more parents who told me that their children’s orphanage visits went smoothly, were cathartic and helpful.
Why didn’t you ask adoptees? Why didn’t you ask adoptees who had grown up a little since then, who have some perspective and could tell you what those trips meant to them? I wish I had gone to Korea when I was 14, or younger. I went when I was 24. And I learned a lot. I learned so much. And I have even more questions for all the “answers” I found. It was great and eye-opening and important to me to go to Korea, but I can tell you that no trip is going to answer what being adopted means. I can tell you that at 14, I might have thought or even made myself believe that I had figured something out, but I wouldn’t have. I don’t think a trip back to an orphanage really answers the real questions at any age, and I know it takes time, a lot of time, to process what you feel. Six years after my first year in Korea, I’m still trying to figure out what that trip meant to me at 24, having married a Korean woman and with a child of our own.
When you say, Ann,
that Sophie got her answers. But what the trip gave me may have even upstaged that: I got a baby photo of my daughter taken when she was just 40 days old.
You make it sound like she got all of her answers. You make it sound like she is suddenly whole, as if adoption can be put behind her. You make it sound so easy and so complete. And then you make it sound like even if your daughter got answers, a photo is more important to you. I can’t even begin to say what is wrong with that. That makes me so sad, to take the focus away from her. That makes me the saddest of all.
On the other hand, when you say, Ann,
We saw where Sophie once slept and I immediately knew where her aversion to itchy blankets comes from.
I love that this is about you understanding her. That is an essay I would have loved to have read. The mother’s perspective, how the trip brought the two of you closer. That is something beautiful and empathetic.
But when you say, Ann,
And yes, Sophie got her answers. She was given the details of how and where she was found. The story made her cry and I wept alongside her. The truth sometimes hurts and there is no greater pain than the one you watch your child experience.
I get so sad again. That you would let her think that knowing how and where she was found was enough, or that you would think that it is enough. It isn’t. It isn’t enough. Are those the “answers”? Are they?
When you say, Ann,
She knows that the small scar on her arm wasn’t caused by anything noted in the orphanage records, suggesting that she may be one of the Chinese babies whose birth mother marked her, hoping to be able to recognize her should their paths ever cross again.
I worry that the orphanage records wouldn’t record abuse (of course). I worry because I have unknown scars, and because orphanages and agencies that make money selling babies are not always the most honest organizations, and because you suggest that the scar might be from your daughter’s birth mother, a suggestion that could influence her opinion of her birth mother and make her think her mother thought too little of her body, or her pain, when there is no evidence for that. There are more questions here. I want us to see the questions not being asked.
Lastly, when you say, Ann,
Later, when we visited her finding spot in a village on the outskirts of the city — led there by a map provided by the orphanage — I caught my trouper of a daughter staring into the faces around us. Unable to help myself, I asked if she was looking for her birth mother. “No,” she said, “You’re my Momma and I’ve found everything I came looking for,” she said.
I looked at her baby photo and thought: “Me too.”
I know that your daughter loves you. I am glad of it. I love my mother and I would tell her the same. But I would tell her that out of love. I wouldn’t want her to worry that I hadn’t learned enough, that I still felt incomplete. I might even use my love of her as an excuse not to figure out more. I know I have used it. I wish you had encouraged your daughter to find out more, and more importantly, to question more. I wish you hadn’t thought you had found everything you were looking for. I wish you had passed on, as a parent, how unknowable the future and the past are, and how a photo is nothing compared to the moment in time trapped within your daughter’s heart.
Sincerely,
Matthew Salesses
For more from Matthew Salesses, check out his article Yellowface in Cloud Atlas.
Matthew, this is a perfect response. I find Ann Brenof’s writing to be problematic most of the time, for exactly the same reasons you have so clearly articulated. Thank you for complicating adoption and for challenging this essay.
This is an excellent article, very articulate with a fulsome analysis. *Thank you for writing and speaking these truths.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about acura tl rims.
Regards
Excellent essay. My father was a foster child thankfully raised by the same family for most of his childhood before they were able to adopt him at 12. I recognize a lot of my father in your essay though he like most children of his time was matched by ethnicity and religion to his family. As a foster child he had an added concern: the fear that his birth family might come for him someday and take him from the only parents he ever knew. An excellent father, and a committed husband, he had a successful and blessed life, but… Read more »
I’m an adult adoptee, 50 years old and over educated. I think Matthew hit the nail on the head and anyone who is not part of the adoption triad really has no business putting there 2 cents here. I’ve worked with an adoption therapist who teaches adoption therapy to other therapists and colleges, she has written books on the topic and wait for it….she was adopted too and found her birth family later in life. She would agree w him as well. Her name is Dr. Marlou Russell, PhD and I invite you to contact her w questions and comments… Read more »
Matthew, I am looking forward to our radio program together with Rebecca Vahle tomorrow! I just read your blog article:-)
I love hearing the voices of adult adoptees. I think you can provide so much insight for adoptive parents most of the time. However, I also enjoyed the Huffington Post article that you are referring to here (although I did agree that the baby photo should not have the same level of importance as the healing that Sophie was yearning for). I think as adoptive parents we are simply loving our kiddos the very best we can. Ann (the Mom) wrote the article from HER perspective. She cannot begin to know the feeling or experience of all the questions that… Read more »
I have five adopted sisters who came from Korea and Vietnam in the 1970’s. I can tell you that each sister would respond differently to Ann’s article. not only that, I also know that they would have responded differently at different ages- we are all middle aged now! I have learned from my sisters that adoptee experiences are diverse and individualistic. No one can truly represent all adoptees- that is not so different than a parent who assumes her daughter’s experiences based on her own needs or wishes. And as I raise my own daughter adopted from China I know… Read more »
You are correct that every adopted person feels and responds differently. I am an older adopted women and have a brother who was also adopted. He are I are not the same people, in the way that no two siblings are alike. I have always been very comfortable, not feeling that anything is missing, not abandoned etc, while my brother has struggled more. I think it would be wonderful if we could recognize that adoptees are individuals and as such respond differently. As a parent of an adopted daughter I so appreciate the thoughts of other adoptees in that there… Read more »
My oldest daughter is adopted from China. I have worried/comtemplated/struggled with how I am going to explain her adoption. I don’t know if she was loved, the circumstances under which her family abandoned her, nothing. That bothers me. Shortly after we returned from China, I found out I was pregnant. I worried my entire pregnancy about my oldest child feeling as though she’s not part of our family because she is not biologically ours. I love to hear what adult adoptees say. It gives us, as adoptive parents, more insight than any other. Thank you.
Very glad that you posted this response. It’s helpful to hear from adult adoptees and for me as a parent to be real about adoption and what it means for my kids.
Thank you.
Thank you for writing this Matthew. Thank you so much.
THANK YOU for sharing your story! I am an adoptive Mom and I’m just SO GRATEFUL for your perspective.
Thank you, Matthew! Your letter was amazing. I couldn’t agree more with the dangers of neat little endings, with pretty little bows wrapped around the same. I processed your words through two different filters: (1) My son is adopted – he’s 3; and (2) I was not adopted, but I was raised from the age of 4 by my abusive father and step-mother (and, still-to-this-moment, I have questions that have been answered that still cannot be thought of as closed, questions that have never been asked, questions that have never been fully formed and, my own personal worst-case-scenario, answers that… Read more »
Thank you for your perspective; as an adoptive mom of three all with very different circumstances – I need to hear this. The perspective of adult adoptees is SO important in this journey. That being said – and without speaking for her, perhaps Ann’s daughter got her answers that she needed FOR NOW. I know that the questions my year old has about her adoption & all that surrounds it are very different than the one my 10 year old has. Ann’s daughter has questions now – she expressed them and her mom did what she could to provide the… Read more »
Matthew, thank you for speaking your truth and for sharing from the adopted persons perspective. I take to heart every word you wrote and I hear you clearly stating the fact that there will always be questions in the past, present and future and that adoptive parents can not fix them, but can “Just stand there with us and let us hear your (true, honest) voice.” As an adoptive mom I stand with you on this, I hear you, and from the bottom of my heart I get this for my kids. Thank you for speaking the truth that adoption… Read more »
Matthew, thank you for this – from the bottom of my heart. I have two Chinese-born daughters who are now 14 and 17. We’ve returned to China several times, and each time, my daughters found tiny pieces of their emotional puzzles – not answers, exactly, but feelings. What China, and therefore the surroundings of their birthfamilies, smells like, sounds like, feels like. Because we’ve been in many cities and several rural areas, they took away what was similar in all those places, and very different from the US. It helped widen their understanding, but no, it didn’t sew everything up… Read more »
I am both an Adopted person and an Adoptive Mother. I really appreciate your point of view but it doesn’t reflect my experience at all, or did the article you were refereing to. I’m going to save this in case your speaking my son or daughters langugage at some point, I am at peace! I believe God gave me to the family I was supposed to be in, not complicated at all. I have complete peace about it too! I hope my kids feel loved and at peace with their past. People put too much value on how they came… Read more »
Thank you for this essay…my niece was adopted from Korea as a baby, too, and she found out this year that she was adopted…I feel relieved that her parents shared this with her…and life goes on….she is well loved and I just try to focus on having fun with her and my son when she comes over…children are a great precious gift and I always tell her how much more fun things are when she is around!
I have to totally agree.I’m adopted and found my birth mother. It did answer many questions but it also caused confusion and more questions. I then had to deal with my birth mother’s issues of giving me up. The best thing to come out of it was some medical history. I now know where my birth father is and I’m afraid to contact him after dealing with my birth mother. What disturbs me the most is people who adopt children from various countries and don’t realize all the issues that come with it. I think society, adoption agencies, and adoptive… Read more »
I am an adoptee and adoptivemom of a biracial child. It has helped me keep my eyes open about alot of things. I never found my bmom. Found out a year after she passed who she was. Would my life had been different? I have no idea, but I was brought up during a time when you didn’t tell your kids they were adopted. I found out on my own at 38. Which felt like a kick in the gut, that my parents were dishonest about it. I believe with my child it is important to be open and honest… Read more »
Also as an adoptee, I read that piece when it first came out and thought, “How lucky that they have the resources to bring a 14 year old to China to see where she came from.” Since I am a domestic adoptee, I didn’t have to leave the country, but I still clung to some of the minor details available to me and created stories about them. In fact, because I was told that my birth mother was of “English origin,” I became an Anglophile, and eventually spent a summer in England at 15. I felt connected. Except my birth… Read more »
As an adoptve parent I have received endless advice from grown adoptees. What I have found is that every adoptee’s experence is as different as the people themselves I take my clues from my children. If they ask questions I try to provide answers. If no answers are available I tell them that. I do resent the remark about agencies who “sell” babies. Even not for profit groups need to charge for services. In a perfect world they could run their agancies on donations. That simply is not the case and they need to provide for the children in their… Read more »
Sandy, Your remarks were defensive from the beginning, but “We all carry scars from childhood, adopted or not.” was really uncalled for and disrespectful to the author. Are you so insecure about this subject that your reaction to this thoughtful, heartfelt letter was to immediately attempt to invalidate everything he said? I too carry scars from my childhood, which did not involve adoption. But that doesn’t prevent me from understanding that there are profound losses and common experiences to life as an adopted person, or appreciating the courage of the author who shared his thoughts as a person who has… Read more »
Excellent. The complexities of adoption are just that–complexities. And coming up with simple fixes or easy answers do not give respect to the complexities of adoption. Moreso, they do not give respect to those who are living adoption.
Great piece . No matter how amazing an adoptive parent is they will never fully understand what their child experiences on a day to say basis nor should they assume. Many beautiful things come out of adoption but it is also extremely sad. The best way I’ve heard it described is “always living with a broken heart.”
I’m American Indian. I’m also a Family Therapist who has done a lot of work with transracial adoptions. Most citizens of the United States and Canada are unaware of a very painful and harmful history regarding federal policies to remove American Indian/Alaskan Native and First Nations children from their biological homes to be adopted into White families. In Canada, this was termed “the Scoop.” About one out of every four American Indian children were adopted out–the percentage in Canada was higher. The American Child Welfare League had a federal contract to help conduct this “child-stealing”– In a formal apology from… Read more »
Thank you for sharing this information. It was hard to read because it is so horrifying what has been done to these American Indian children and their birth families, but it is important for the world to know these things happened.