Beautiful Tree, Uniquely Me
A guest blog for the LGBTQIA+ and Adopted series by Haley Hudler
Greetings beautiful people,
My name is Haley Hudler, and I am a Chinese bisexual adoptee with she/her pronouns. My adoption from China happened in 1997 during the “One Child Policy.” In this period, many Chinese children were adopted overseas, and my adoption has impacted my sense of self in feeling powerless over my life and autonomy. I feel my adoption was inevitable because so many children were being aborted and/or given away due to coercion from the government. I DO feel blessed by my adoption because I had a good childhood, I have an adoptive family that loves me, and I gained many years of education and have travelled to many countries in my short life already. But also, I resent this life I was adopted into because I know that my relinquishment was probably unethical and not fully voluntary from my birth family. As well as many things were taken from me including being raised by my birth family, knowledge of my ancestors and larger family tree, my cultural and ethnic heritage of China, my native land, foods, and language, and most of all, loss of my identity because of traumatic separation from my mother during my development stages as an infant. I am unsure exactly at what age I was separated from her, but I am certain I spent almost an entire year of my life in an orphanage with other children and care staff. My recommendations for understanding the situation in China is by watching the documentary called “One Child Nation” by Nanfu Wang; as well as reading the book “China’s Hidden Children” by Kay Ann Johnson.
I want to quickly explain the title, “beautiful tree, uniquely me.” My Chinese name is 高樟荣 (Gao Zhangrong) which translates to “Large,” “Camphor,” “Glory.” And my mandarin speaking friends have said whoever named me probably wanted me to grow into a tall and glorious Camphor Tree. So I have concluded that I was named after a tree. I hope to make whoever named me proud that I do grow into that tall and proud tree I was named after.
As I think about who I am as a cis-gender Chinese woman, I feel shame about being a woman. Not only was China’s “One Child Policy” affecting families with more than one child, but also baby girls because girls were given away more than boys because boys were favored in patriarchal China. It is very likely I was given away because of my biological sex and I had never really understood why I felt hate towards myself for being a woman and my body. And now, as an adult, I am able to connect why I feel shame towards myself for being a woman because it was a factor in my relinquishment. Try to put yourself in my shoes, “I was unwanted because I was a girl.”
I am a cis gender bisexual woman and I have just come out recently (2019). Luckily for me, I already had gay people in my family, my Aunt Kim and Aunt B who are married. I truly feel if it weren’t for them, it may have taken me more time to recognize within myself my queerness. I also grew up in a progressive Christian church denomination, the United Church of Christ (UCC). In the UCC, I have heard the messages that gay people belong in the church and are loved. So I truly had a lot of support around me to come out and the true hurdle was to realize my own gayness. My friends and family had no strong reaction to me coming out and it was not a big deal to my community because I already had gay role models in my life and within my friend groups.
Now being bisexual has its own struggles. I feel even though I grew up with gay role models, both gay men and lesbian women, I did not feel I could necessarily relate to either of those groups. I believed in a misconception growing up, in that, I could only love one gender. The ability to love more than one gender was not taught to me; that bisexual people actually exist. Growing up when talking about the LGBTQ+, it was only spoken about in monosexual terms, either gay or straight, and Bi people are neither. We are not 50/50; or some people like to call it “half gay, half straight,” and these ideas are wrong in understanding bisexuals. I feel bisexuals and polysexual people (people who love many different genders) need to take up more space in the narrative of what it means to be LGBTQ+. We need to have our experiences heard and have people believe in our ability to love. For me, it was not about feeling shame towards gayness or queerness - but just lack of education and access to understand more about different sexualities.
I feel adoption had a huge positive impact on me being in the LGBTQ+ community. Like I said, my family is queer affirming and I would not have been able to come out to myself or others without being adopted into my USA family. Also I think about what if I stayed in China and was adopted domestically there. I would highly not be able to come out to my friends and family in China because I do not believe the LGBTQ+ community is openly welcomed or safe in China; just not yet. I hope in the future their society will change and be more accepting. (This is also not to say that there are not LGBQT+ Chinese people, but I do not think they are as safe as LGBTQ+ people are in the USA).
The last thing I want to say about this intersecting identity of being bisexual and adopted is how adoptees can positively impact the LGBTQ+ community! I feel a lot of same sex couples think about starting a family via adoption, donor conception, surrogacy, etc., and they may not know of anyone who has been the product of those decisions. So, we can use our voice to assist in preparing queer couples for what to expect and become educated on becoming the best parent(s) they can be when thinking of creating a family, alternatively to natural conception. I agree that queer couples can be great parents and parental figures, but I do not want the LGBTQ+ community contributing to the adoption industry. I hope the LGBTQ+ community takes advantage of the voices from adoptees, because many of us, may or may not become their children.
Thank you all for listening to my story and voice.
Haley 樟荣 (Zhangrong) Hudler (she/her)
Twitter: @MissHaleyHudler
Instagram: @HazyHuds
Clubhouse: @HazyHuds
