I'm an adoptee and my adoptive parents are White Westerners, Swedes and not having a similar appearance always made people at least seem extra interested in me as a child:
Where is she from... (or rather where's he from people assumed I was a boy based on my hair)...
As I grew older it happened more frequently that people believed I was an immigrant or even worse an which I will not write...
One thing you never can escape from is that being an international adoptee people don't respect your personal boundries. Asking questions like: Where are you from..?, by which they actually mean where you were born or more particularly where your parents were born....
Other common questions include:
Can you speak... [insert optional language]... ? Have you seen your parents and meet your birth family? How was it?
Attempting to create a family by international adoption does have its very unique traits like for instance trying to raise your child with awareness of its other family and at the same not implying or pointing to the actual ethnical differences... Some children, or adoptees might feel provoked and irritated by this kind of attitude among their adoptive parents.... For some adoptees the identity only consits of the culture, upbringing and family that adoption brought with it. That should be acceptable as well, although I personally have another opinion...
The other day when mum and I was talking she refered to my renuion trip as a vacation since it not only coinsided with her and dad's holiday but was in fact planned during it. To me, even though my reunion took place in the summer on my summer break to me it was nothing but a vacation or holiday.
Why?
Because I seriously don't think that you're supposed to feel worried, anexious, sadness and suffer from sleep deprivation and disrupted sleep during a holiday. If that's your view of an ordinary holiday then I think you've seriously missed something.
Yesterday, mum reminded my brother of my name change which he seemed to have forgotten and then he asked what I called myself on a daily basis. Again, mum's remark was that I still went by my old name at home, this made me annoyed based on two things.
Firstly, I was in the same room at the time and I'm no longer a child so I should be able to speak for myself.
Secondly, I'm not an item why can't mum seem to understand that !? I usually don't answer when my parents call me by my old name which I by the way completely has removed.
© Taste of Kimchi, Elle
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