Gift of Identity

“Whenever anyone asked questions about the circumstances of my birth and adoption, or my birth country, I recited it like I was telling a story about someone else. When I got to my birth country, all of that changed.”

The narratives of our lives are important, and for international adoptees owning their information is truly significant. “Perhaps the most powerful experience adoptees can have is to travel to their birth country and learn first hand about their roots,” reports Heather Ames, MSW. For ten years, Heather was the director of Post Adoption Services at Wide Horizons for Children, one of largest adoption agencies in the U.S.

The experiences the adoptees are having with the other adoptees cannot be overstated. Their comfort level with each other is evident from the start. No explanations needed.

With a foot in two worlds, they gain a realization that they also have a community they can be part of if they choose. We often hear, “Wow! I am not alone. I have made friends that will last a lifetime.”

“We all bonded on the first night. We came here as strangers and left as a family,”  Nicholas Brunson, 15

We often think community is the greatest gift of the journey — built around two cultures shared experiences. To find a place to belong is among life’s greatest gifts.

The journey’s significance is deeper yet because it allows adoptees to grieve the losses of adoption, heal and move forward.

Parents never want to see their child hurting, but if they are hurt, we would all like to see them heal. A homeland journey allows for healing by giving adoptees a chance to grieve in the ways they need to grieve, which is almost always a different experience than what parents expect.

Most adoptees do not go through the trip overflowing with tears. In fact, on a typical Ties trip, we sing on the bus, laugh hysterically, and enjoy the sense of “being” in birth country with other adoptees who share a similar history. When grief comes in the outward and traditional sense,  it comes in waves and bursts.

But for most adoptees, it comes in ways that go pretty much unnoticed by all around them. It comes in linking—the finding and holding on to points of connection, in the same way a grandmother’s wedding ring, passed from mother to daughter can bring comfort.

Linking often involves a very tangible piece of of something as they travel—a small baggie of soil, collected from their homeland and cherished forever or a brick from the orphanage where a child once lived. 

But linking can be much more invisible–Amy’s Story

Linking can be invisible and abstract, as it was for Amy. Amy and her family were visiting the clinic where Amy was born, nearly 10,000 miles from where she had been raised in a wonderful adoptive family. They were scheduled to meet the doctor who delivered her. After their visit, Amy’s mom came to our staff hotel room, crying. She said the visit had been awful. “Amy couldn’t have cared less. While we were in the waiting room, she was all over the place, first sitting in one chair, then another.” We hugged and talked about visits not always being what we dreamed about. Mom left and we were all sad.

About 30 minutes later, there was a knock on our door again. It was Mom.

Through her tears, Amy’s mom said, “Amy just told us she sat in every chair in the waiting room so she would be sure to sit in the chair where her birth mom must have sat.” Linking. At nine years old.

“We LOVE Analisa.” “Thom is SO cool.” Like camp counselors, the people adoptees interact with on a homeland journey are oh-so-important. In a study by Hollee McGinnis, MSW, of the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, traveling to the birth country and interacting with role models of the same race were rated very high among the things internationally adopted people use in forming identity.

Adoptees on a heritage journey are imprinted with positive messages by interacting with people in their birth country. One young Vietnamese adoptee relayed this story to me. “I never felt pretty before I went to Vietnam. But then, I was in a shop, and a Vietnamese woman came up to me and said, ‘Oh what a beautiful girl you are.’ It felt so amazing to have someone who was really Vietnamese think I was pretty.”

The imprint is deep, lasting, and useful in the work of identity building.

IT’S ABOUT CULTURAL AND GLOBAL AWARENESS

It is impossible to travel and not be touched by the amazing people and cultures that make up our global experience.

“It changes the way you see the world,” Caroline Conway, 14.

As we all become more culturally aware and global in our thoughts and actions, adoptees of all ages soak this in, and in many cases express a distinct desire to help a world cause. Check out Peruvian Hearts–It’s founder, Ana Dodson is a Ties adoptee! And she was only 11 years old when she started this wonderful organization.