If all adoptees felt not only safe, but empowered in their families and their communities, I would feel better—but not lucky.
After we got home, I tucked my baseball bat by my bedside—just in case I heard footsteps come up the stairs, just in case someone had finally come for us.
These are the words my mom, Mary, heard repeated to her the day of our field trip. A panel of three judges had overturned my adoption, granting custody to an extended relative of my birth family.
did
lucky
When we insinuate that an adoptee is lucky, we often invalidate the unique challenges they experience, and paint adoptive parents as saviors.
Seven years old. That is how old I was when I told my birth mom that I wanted to live with Mary and Janet. I would be lying if I said I felt guilty for it, or felt that I made the wrong choice.
But there is often a sadness that comes with making the right choice, and I carry this sadness with me every day. Sometimes people ask me if I have any contact with my birth mom today. It’s always awkward, painful, when I tell them “no.” I know she may feel that I do not want her in my life, that I didn’t want her in my life when I was seven, even though this could not be further from the truth. If she reached out to me now, I would tell her that I still love her, and I still want to have a relationship with her. I would love to speak with her and see her smile—people often tell me they love my smile, and I got it from her. My birth mother remains a part of me: the person I try to be every day, the person I hope I will become.
Though my birth mom and I are no longer in touch, I did have the chance to speak with her again, briefly, a few years ago. She told me she was sorry she did not raise me or my sisters; that she wished she could have. Part of me will always wish she could have as well. I think I would have liked growing up with her, with my sisters, if she’d been able to raise us. Before she said that, I had never really imagined all of us together, sitting in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon, talking and laughing. As wonderful as it sounds, it also seems like a scene from an alternate universe, from a lucky someone else’s life.
Tony was adopted by his parents Mary and Janet in the mid 1990s. He writes about his experiences growing up as both a interracial adoptee and as a child growing up in a same sex headed household in his memoir "The Son With Two Moms." Today, Tony is an advocate for families like his, having served on the Board of Directors for Rainbow Families, an organization devoted to promoting the rights of LGBTQ Families everywhere. He also has been invited to be a speaker at conferences on foster care/adoption throughout the nation, especially those involving interracial placements. In the fall of 2016 Tony was awarded a full scholarship to begin his PhD studies in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the Univ. of Maryland Baltimore County where he has begun work on his dissertation, which focuses on racial connectedness among interracial adoptees. Tony co-facilitates the Transracial Adoption Group (TAG) at FamilyWorks Together along with Master Clinical Trainer, Erica Moltz, MA, NCC. Follow his work on goodreads or on his Facebook author page.
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