A guest blog by Mare for the LGBTQIA+ and Adopted series.
Hi I’m Mare, my pronouns are she/her, and I am a transatlantic adoptee from Belarus at the age of one. I was raised near Chicago and still have a slight soft spot for this city. My adoption story has been a difficult topic until recently. I’m more confident to share my honest feelings.
If you had asked me 15 years ago about how my adoption has affected me, I wouldn’t have been able to answer, I wasn’t able to connect my mental health to my adoption. Now fairly recently coming “out of the fog,” I can say many of my anxieties and other mental health challenges can relate back to my adoption. I prefer to call my adoptive parents, my parents. The reason? They’re all I’ve known. In my experience I have “bonded” with them, I know they love me. But their extended families have made it abundantly clear that my sibling (who is also adopted) and I are not family and we do not belong. No matter the amount of times our parents would say, “they love you” I would never believe it and still don’t. Not only have I overheard on numerous occasions negative words spoken about us, I know by their actions that they do not “love” us. And now I have a constant fear of never belonging and never being a part of a family. On top of that fear, I am terrified of losing the people I care about most, or constantly thinking everyone I know will eventually stop talking to me. I don’t know if I belong anywhere.
I am the B in LGBTQIA+, and it’s been a really long road to open up to the people in my life. I always knew I felt differently about people when it came to my sexuality, but actually opening up about it took years. My mom (AP) used to say bisexuality is just an “excuse” for people to get the socks off. That one little comment was the reason I stayed silent about my sexuality and let people assume. The fear of being rejected by the people who have raised me. The other fear was adding another check to the list of why I was different from the family. I didn’t tell either of my parents I was bi until after I moved to LA and I still have not told anyone in their extended families. In my opinion... they don’t deserve to know about my life. In LA I was able to start figuring out my identity in this world. An identity that didn’t hide in the shadows of trying to please and “not change” too much for those I’ve known my whole life. It’s in LA I felt safe and brave enough to even be honest with myself.
Like all adoptions and adoptees, we are each unique with our own experiences. That being said there needs to be more support for adoptees and their subgroups, ie LGBTQIA+ adoptees, foster adoptees, international adoptees and transracial adoptees. The space on social media platforms and the connections between adoptees is what I have found helpful to have those completely open conversations with people like me. The need to censor ourselves is not as great when you have more people to confirm you’re not being overly sensitive, online is where I found I’m one of many to have similar if not the same feelings.
I still cannot tell you how I feel about adoption as a whole. Am I anti-adoption? In the way this system is currently, yes I think I am anti-adoption. If there were significant changes with adoptees having some input, then maybe. But I do not have the answers right now.