Tag: Family Members

National Adoption Awareness Month

The original intent of this effort was NOT to take newborn babies away from their first parents but to raise awareness about ALL of the children in foster care who may age out of the system without supportive people in their lives.

In his LINK> proclamation, President Biden committed to “extending the adoption tax credit to legal guardianships — including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives — which would make it easier for loving family members to care for children who need their support.  This measure could also help reduce racial inequities in our country’s child welfare system, which too often render some children of color more likely to be removed from their homes and cut off from their families and communities.” This is a reform to the adoption system long advocated by activists and that I frequently mention here.

President Biden also said – The Department of Health and Human Services will provide training and technical assistance to State child welfare agencies in order to better support LGBTQI+ youth, whose needs are often unmet in the foster care system, and take steps to ensure all youth are placed in supportive environments. 

Additionally, the administration is committed to ensuring that older adolescents transitioning from the foster care system have access to housing and education and can pay their bills and prepare for adulthood. President Biden has proposed increased funding for the John H. Chafee Successful Transition to Adulthood program by 70 percent. John Chafee was a Republican, Governor of Rhode Island and a US Senator. He also served in the Marine Corps. He died in 1999.

Being Understood

When faced with complex feelings related to complicated situations, people with no experience with that reality will try to throw in a feel good positive but that does not indicate that they really understood how this experience has affected you.

A woman in my all things adoption group received this response from a friend and she acknowledges – My friend means well but they really don’t grasp how adoption IS trauma. This is my main support person. The only person who is there when no one else is and to have such a huge disconnect cuts deep. They are very accepting that everything is just the way it is and not allowing trauma to define your life. Which at times is super helpful – yet right now I’m hurting and on this subject it doesn’t actually work.

She goes on to explain – Saying that it “Wasn’t that bad” or complimenting me by saying “as amazing as you are” does not help. Was adoption not that bad because it shaped me into who I am ? Or is it that who I am is that resilient that I make being adopted seem like adoption isn’t that bad ? See I can’t have one thing without the other. I’m not allowed my identity without adoption being brought into it. I can’t be truly separated from my trauma, so that it wouldn’t define my life, which in turn makes me feel like a living breathing trauma in a skin suit. I’m like 2 people in one body that feels one story 2 different ways.

A birth mother can struggle in similar ways. One said – I am not an adoptee, but a birth mother and I relate so much to this situation. My dad and I are very close and any time I try to talk to him about my feelings regarding my birth daughter, he says things like “it could be so much worse than it is”. It would be so nice to have friends that genuinely understood.

One of my own reasons for writing this blog every day and sharing a diversity of situations and experiences is so that people without any adoption or foster care in their personal experience might understand these situations better and find a greater degree of empathy for an adoptee or birth mother, than these people usually encounter in their own everyday life.