Ownership

“Naming is claiming – go for it!!!”

There’s power in a name, naming and claiming a child for yourself.  So many adoptive parents, re-name the child they adopt, and thereby seek to make it something the child was not born as – their own.

Tied like charms to a ribbon are thorny bits of memory…perhaps pre-verbal.  A sense that one had been someone else “before” adoption.

There’s far too much power given to adoptive parents over a child.  When they endow you with a name of their own choosing, you become their property.

An adoptee was always who they were born as.  No one thought to ask their permission before they changed the child’s birth certificate to create a false identity for them because they were simply too young to ask.

Of all the reforms I have been learning about from the adoptees themselves, not changing the names they were born with or re-doing their birth certificates to take ownership of them, like one would with the title to a car, would be a respectful and considerate decision.

If they want to change what the world calls them when they are old enough to understand the power that is their own name, then that is their choice, not someone else’s.