a brief update: families, of all kinds.

I apologize for the month-long lapse in posts.there has been a lot going on - a health crisis, my partner and I arranging for our families to meet for the firs time, changes to my body that have set off some serious dysphoria...not to mention the pressure of working and saving for my Korea trip, processing the ways race, gender and "trendiness" of need functions in crowdfunding, and of course, receiving my first letter from my birth mother.

while my adoptive parents were in town, I told them about finding my birth mother. I wanted to tell them face to face. I wanted to tell them - I'm not sure why. looking back, I probably shouldn't have. my partner's family was also in town, and they were treating us really poorly, so in contrast, my parents seemed to be behaving brilliantly. anyway, I told them I was not ready to and did not want to talk about it. the next day, my mother says: "I know you said you don't want to talk about it but -" and then proceeded to tell me that they were 100% supportive and excited for me. 

she was unable to respect my wishes because she needed to center herself in my experience. she needed to reassure me (and herself) that she was a "good" and supportive adoptive parent. in order to do so, she had to violate my trust. she had to make it about her. 

she tells me that when I'm ready she is excited to hear about it. my experience serves to enrich her existence.

in an adoptee's life, it is almost never about us. our needs. our experiences. there is always someone else trying to project their narrative, their interpretation of history, onto our bodies.

perhaps you have seen a post floating around where a white adoptive mother made her adopted daughters hold up white board signs with fucked up things people have said to her about them. TO HER. ABOUT THEM. literally projecting her needs onto their bodies. it got a lot of praise. I don't know why. it is viscerally repulsive to me. a white woman printing words of hate onto the bodies of her transracially adopted daughters. (i'm not linking to it here because i don't want to give it any more attention)

she says she wanted her daughters to know that people said these things out of ignorance, not meanness or hate. but isn't racism mean and hateful? words like "ignorance" delegitimize the pain of our experience. calling it ignorance tells me that I shouldn't feel bad when someone calks me "chink" or mocks my eyes or hair or shouts "5 dolla! me love you long time!" across the street. saying "oh, he didn't know better" teaches me that people who hurt me are really just good people so there must be something wrong with me. "ignorance" tells me I'm too sensitive. it teaches me to never trust my instincts. to keep unsafe people in my life because I have to give them a chance. it makes me wonder what i did to deserve people treating me so cruelly.

it draws a line in the sand, when white adoptive parents claim "ignorance" instead of racism, instead of hate. it draws a line between white and brown. when white adoptive parents claim "ignorance", they are taking the side of the racism. they are dismissing the pain of their children in order to avoid personal discomfort.

their needs, ahead of ours.

how do we protect ourselves when we are not free to name our enemies? how do we feel safe when the faces that taunt us tuck us in at night? 

I am constantly reminded, unpleasantly, of what my adoptive family is capable of, and what they are not. our relationship has improved as I have come to expect less of them. I think that is a good thing. realizing the limitations of family - of all kinds of family. of adoptive family, of family of origin, of chosen family, of friends, of community. no one of these spaces can be all things to me. and I would be cheating myself if i tried to push one kind of family to be all things. I am too complicated for that. I deserve better than that.

one thing I have come to love and appreciate at this time in my life is my queer adoptee family, and by extension my queerean family. but truly, the queer adoptees who have my back (and heart) right now are life saving. 

사랑해요. you give me strength.