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WASHINGTON,
DC-DEC-2014: Shaaren Pine with her husband Scott Magnuson and their daughter
Arahv, 6, nickname Ara, at their home in NE Washington. (Photo by (Charlie
Archambault/Washington Post)
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I’ve never been good at
embracing my story, but lately I’ve found help in the most unlikely of places:
my 7-year-old daughter, Ara. A
few months ago a good friend relayed a conversation she had just overheard between
Ara and the friend’s 6-year-old son.
“I
heard you were talking to Graham about adoption?” I asked Ara later. “Yeah,”
she said. “What
did you say?” I asked. “I
just said that I’m kind of like an adoptee, but instead of being taken away
from my brown mom, I was taken away from my brown grandma.”
I
was stunned. There she was, then 6, expressing her feelings about my adoption
so clearly. She was able to acknowledge that like me, she, too, feels she has
been cut off from her family, her culture and her story and that she is missing
a part of who she is.
And
Graham was such a wonderful friend to her. He listened, asked a question or
two, and, most important, didn’t shut her down by telling her she was too
sensitive or overreacting.
In
my almost 40 years, I’ve only recently been able to talk about adoption
honestly and openly. And it is incredibly difficult.
At 4
months old, I was flown from my orphanage in India to my adoptive parents in
Groton, Mass. I would never say I didn’t have a good childhood — I did. My life
was enviable in too many ways to mention.
But what’s also true is that adoption
is a traumatic, lifelong experience that is rarely recognized as one.
Unfortunately, there is no way to convince a non-adoptee that adoption is hard
and that its effects continue into adulthood unless that person is willing to
hear it. And in my experience, few have been.
For me, being an adoptee is
like getting into a horrible car accident and surviving with devastating
injuries. But instead of anybody acknowledging the trauma of the accident, they
tell you that you should feel lucky. Even if the injuries never stop hurting,
never quite heal. Even if the injuries make it impossible to feel comfortable
in everyday life.
So I learned not to talk about
it. Even though my bones ached.
For some reason, my amazing kid
knows that she is allowed to talk about how that car accident has made an
impact on her life, even if you can’t see any visible scars on me and even if
she wasn’t there when it happened. Adoption loss is truly multi-generational.
In her younger years, Ara was
always coming up with ways we could find our missing family. “Maybe,
Momma, if we … call the orphanage or go to India or write a letter … we could
find them.” I wish I had had the strength to verbalize this primal need when I
was a child. But I didn’t. I’m still learning how to express it.
I sometimes imagine what my
life would have been like if I had had her confidence. If I had felt safe
enough to claim my story and the pain of being an adoptee. If I had felt secure
that I could share it openly. And if I had believed people would support me
when I did.
I probably wouldn’t have wished
to die so often starting when I was 11.
And I probably wouldn’t have
started cutting myself when I was 12.
I
know that not every adoptee has had the same experiences that I have had, but I
also know that my story isn’t unique. Adoptees are about 2.5 times as likely to
attempt suicide than non-adoptees, according to a 2001 study of adopted adults published
by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
A 2000 study in the Journal of the
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry concluded that adoptees are
twice as likely as non-adoptees to have received counseling. And prevalence of
substance abuse was 43 percent higher among adoptees than non-adoptees,
according to a 2012 study published in the journal PLOS One.
Adoptees
are often so busy trying to prove that we’re fine, that it’s too late when we
realize we’re not. At some point, I stopped running a knife across my wrist,
but for many years, that was my solution to denying — and being denied — my
truth.
The physical pain of cutting
numbed my emotional pain, and it helped me close the gap between my two falsely
dichotomous selves: the “happy” adoptee who had everything given to her and the
angry adoptee who had everything taken away.
On the one hand I was having a
regular life with friends and sports and sleepovers and school. But I was also
always wondering where I came from, who I looked like, when my real birthday
was and if my mother was thinking about me when I was thinking about her. Did
my mother love me? And if she didn’t, why not? What was wrong with me? Why
would people tell me that my mother loved me so much that she gave me away?
I was also trying to understand
why everyone thought I should be grateful because I was adopted. Or why they
told me that my adoptive parents saved me. Or why people felt that being upset
or angry is an irrational response to living, forever, with no answers.
Can
you imagine being the only person in the world you know you’re related to?
On top of this internal, secret
questioning, I was carrying the weight of growing up in an all-white town in an
all-white family, unbearably alone and hopelessly on display. It was impossible
for me to embrace adopted-ness, or brownness or Indian-ness. And there was no
space for me to be confident or beautiful because I was too busy wanting to be
white or petite or not-adopted, like my friends.
A few weeks ago in my
daughter’s gymnastics class, a little white girl looked up at me and gushed,
“You are so beautiful!” I couldn’t believe it. I am so grateful that my
daughter is growing up in a community where brown can be beautiful. Where she
doesn’t have to wish her skin white.
My daughter tells me all the
time, especially if I’m going out and am dressed up — “Oh, Amma, you’re so
beautiful.” She loves my heels, and especially the Indian outfits. The more
important part, though, as I watch her put on my heels and the Indian clothes,
as she stands in front of the mirror checking herself out, is that she thinks
she’s beautiful.
Obviously,
it’s not just about being grateful that she can see her beauty. I still worry
about how she’ll continue to process her place in the world. Adoptees and our
children, despite being connected to each other, can still feel alone, without
extended families or roots or anybody who looks like us. There is that inescapable
feeling that many of us, ourselves and our kids, have: that we could, at any
moment, just float away into the ether because we have nothing to hold on to.
I hope my daughter always feels
confident in her beauty and strength. And I hope she’s always willing to tell
me her truth. And even more so, I hope I’m always willing to hear her.
Especially if she stops being confident, as I did. And especially if she stops
talking, as I did.
As she says herself, she
already feels like an adoptee.
And being an adoptee,
sometimes, is too much to bear.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com
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