BASTARD PLANET

“I Wish You Knew" 

Check me out as I share my adoption story on DKN’s “I Wish You Knew” which brings young professionals into the important conversations impacting their lives.

Biological Family

Birth Mother: P. Biological Father: T Siblinging on my birth mother side: Roddy (brother), Tee (sister), Quan ( sister), A. ( twin brother)

Sibling my my biological father side: S. ( sister) Quan ( sister) A. ( twin brother)

So me, Quan and A. are full siblings.  However… Tee and Roddy’s father believe’s I am his biological dauther because I look exactly like his son! There has been no DNA test done though. So do I know who my biological father is for real? Nope but I love all of my siblings. 

Adoptive Family 

Momma: S. Dad: N. Siblingings: Wil ( brother) Meme ( sister)

My parents fostered me and my twin from five months old to about seven years old. In that time span she was able to have two children naturally. She thought she couldnt have kids initially and thats why she became a fostered parent. Boom! She ended up with four kids. My twin and I was seven, Wil was five, and Meme was probaby a year old.  I am the oldest of four and the second youngest of six. I am older than my twin brother. Talk about awkward middle child!

O·wíse’ - Oneida (lit - “glass”)

Ó:wise - Mohawk

Owíse - Tuscarora

Owí:sä’ - Seneca

Owísä - Onondaga

Owí:dra’ - Cayuga

Owís - Nottoway

Unesdala - Cherokee

March 1st marks the 100th year anniversary of the 3.1 Movement in Korea. 100 years ago, Koreans took to the streets to protest against the forced occupation of Korea by Japan. In remembrance of all those who fought for Korean Independence, 대한독립만세!

<<<<<< Trigger Warning >>>>

Yesterday my less than sober dad came to the house and my mom was not particularly in the mood for it. I was sitting on the bed making sure my dad didnt touch my knee or my leg brace. My sister Meme was on the other side. It was raining and my dad was trying to get me to ride to the store with him and Meme. I cant drive at the moment. My mom said I shouldnt go because I could slip on the porch or slide on the steps. My intoxicated dad ( Meme was going to drive) said “ I am her father and she can go!” I said “ technically he is” as a joke. I like to pop a few here and there. Meme said “ Who is your father? Melvin?” I said “ No that’s my grandfather.” My mom said “ T.”  Meme said “ Oh that’s right! I said “ Thats what they told me but who knows? “ Again another joke. Meme said “ Are you a bastard child?” in a serious tone. My mom nipped the convo in the bud right there because I think it started to get a little sensitive for her.

Am I a bastard child? Well my bio parents were not married…ever. So I was born out of wedlock I guess. I never really explored my feelings about my biological father. He was in jail when I was an infant but I have the letter he wrote from jail and I met him about three or four years ago. I feel a void but honestly not as big as the one that I felt before I met my birth mother. 

There is some saddness that lingers. I dont know if I can trust the info that I have or the fact that B. could be my bio father. I decided that had gone far enough in my journey of finging answers. This is the only stone that I have yet to unturn and its a little more complicated than I anticipated. A DNA test would turn the stone over but I havent gotten there yet. I dont know if things will get there.

I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:

Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.

Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.

Don’t do more than is expressly asked of you, and do what you are asked with such an intense attention to protocol that not asking you at all becomes more effective than even bothering.

In this case:

“Have you seen an illegal immigrant?”

“Could you describe an illegal immigrant, officer?”

*officer describes a person who is in the country without appropriate paperwork, or who has crossed the border illegally*

“No, sir, I haven’t seen any illegal immigrant.”

Hey friends! So I wanted to give somewhat of an overview of my adoption story so you dont have to scroll through almost 900 post to figure out what I am talking about!! 

My name is Aerial and I am twenty-six years old. I am from Virginia here in the U.S. I was born as a twin. By the time we were four months old we were taken out of our biological home and placed in foster care. Not only were we placed, my older sister Quan was placed, my first cousin was placed and we all were basically seperated however the social workers kept me and my twin brother together. 

I recently found out that my birth mother P. did not leave us in an apartment by ourselves ( me, my twin brother, Quan, and two of our first cousins) her late sister did. Between the ages of four months to nine years old left with a druggie alcoholic lady. 

My birth mother raised all Hell in the social workers office trying to get us back but unfourtnately over the course of the next five years she was deemed unstable to care for her five children.  My foster parents now my adoptive parents had just secured three acres of land, built a two story house and had two kids naturally. We were legally adopted by the time we were seven years old.

I found out I was adopted around the age of eleven or twelve however I had a feeling around nine that I was different and I started asking questions. I am Black and my adoptive family is Black so nobody really mentioned anything. “Why are their no baby baby pictures of me?” “ Why are there no ultrasound pictures of me? Nobody really had the answers for me. I was putting clothes in the washing machine in the basement and I tripped over a small box. I picked up all the letters to put them back and one had my name on it but my name was different. It was court case papers that confirmed my adoption. My mom found out and she was not very happy. 

Condensed Version

I found my biological siblings on facebook and we met in the summer of 2010. My birth mother called me on my 18th birthday we had a secret phone relationship until I met her in a hospital for people with mental conditons. I met my birth mother’s father side of the family and my biological father in the course of the next three years. 

I started this blog in 2013, I think, just to really get my thoughts down becaue I didnt really have anyone to really talk to honestly about how I felt and found a beautiful community of adoptees, people who dealt with foster care, adoptive parents, biological parents, and advocates of the adoption triad. 

Yes I have been on this journey since I nine. I have experience the positvie and the not so positive…trying to escape generational traps, being a good daughter to both my mom and birth mother, acceptance and rejection…and the joy of being an Aunt to all these kids that I adore with my whole heart ( three nephews and two nieces). I can truly say I wouldn’t go back and change it if I could and I hope sharing my story will inspire you to do to the same.

Feel free to reach out to me. PM me for contact info outside of tumblr. Take care of yourself! 

by Mia Mingus

Today is November 6th, the day I was brought to the adoption agency to be adopted, the day the adoption agency recorded as my birthday, and the day I celebrated as my birthday for 25 years. It is the day I left my birth family, never knowing if I would return. It is the day I left my first home, my first land. It is the day that a strain of longing was born inside of me for something that I do not even know how to name or explain. It has eaten away at my insides, at times turning me into an empty shell of myself. It has taught me how loneliness can be a comforting friend.

My birthday, as is the case for many adoptees, is a complicated web of sticky feelings, some of which I decide to feel or not feel and some that overtake me without consent, pulling me in, down, back and under. November 6th got recorded as my birthday by an industry that profits off of the erasure of my birth family, the convenient construction of someone with no past. My life did not begin when I was placed for adoption; I was already here. Today is not my birthday.

I hate the confusion that surrounds my birthday. People still getting confused, “so which birthday do you celebrate?” “When is your real birthday?” Since finding out the truth, sometimes I would rather deny my birthday all together, no celebrations, no worries about what or how birthdays are supposed to feel like to someone who does not even know how to think about her own birth.

It only marks another diasporic year that I have spent separated from pieces of myself that may or may not even exist; pieces of my self that made me, created me, but don’t know me. It only marks a deep sadness at having celebrated something that was so wrong for so long, something that wasn’t real, the way sometimes entire decades of my life have felt.

It is a part of me, but it is not a birth. It is more like a death, a loss or a closing. And it means talking about things that sit so close to my heart, things that I don’t even completely know how to hold, let alone say. I have been missing korea before I even knew what “missing” was.

Having been ripped from one piece of earth and shoved into another, sometimes I think the only land I know, the only land on which I belong, is the shifting tides of the ocean. The place that has always brought me solace and has been able to hold my shifting adoptee disabled korean queer girl self. Sometimes I think that what so many of us are doing, the bravery of finding home and attempting to create it, is something I know nothing about. Something I have no business being a part of. I have no home, but myself, and even that isn’t always true. Belonging is something I know nothing about. Living on the other side of dreaming is nothing I know about, having only ever had dreams, distant blurry memories, to keep me alive.

I know I existed before November 6th, even if there is no trace, even if I can’t remember how my mother smelled or my sisters’ six inquisitive eyes gazing at me. I know I knew something about home at sometime, even if it, like everything else got re-written and stamped and filed away.

Maybe all adoptees find home in their own ways, maybe some of us never do; maybe our homes are in the leaving, in the moving; in the shifting of the wind that carried so many of us past the horizon. Maybe I belong nowhere; maybe that is how they like it—a living, breathing, constant experiment.

36 years ago I left my very first home for another temporary home, a foster home, before being adopted. Six years ago I left Atlanta, the first place that ever really felt like home, to build home in Oakland. Maybe this is a re-birth of some sort, into a second chance at belonging and creating home, a kind of returning all on to itself.

I know I knew something about home at sometime, maybe I will find it again.

It was not erased, just like me.

You’re fine, I’m okay with talking about this stuff.

A white kid adopted by parents of color would be considered transracial, but it’s a very different situation. There’s a lot of complications of white privilege with both adoptees of color raised by white parents and white adoptees raised by parents of color, but in the end, a white adoptee is still white.

Where I live, being white is considered the default, and any other race is deviant and has to deal with deep, persistent stereotypes that affect both the way we view ourselves and the way society views us. Because of this difference, there isn’t really a cohesive “white culture”. However, there are still different ethnic cultures. So a white adoptee could get in touch with their German heritage and culture, but not really a white culture. 

Non-white adoptees also face different struggles than white adoptees. Here’s an interesting quote from this article: Adopted children of color “are given certain rights and privileges that aren’t given to children of color in homes of color,” he said, but that privilege “has a shelf life.”   

I was partially sheltered from racism because my parents never really talked about race. I never learned that the way some people treated me was racist because I wasn’t really taught how to recognize the nuances and types of racism. That’s part of the problem, and sometimes part of the danger. I’ve read stories from black adoptees about how their parents never discussed racial politics with them or safety with the police. This article talks about how adoptees of color become less protected from racism as we get older, and why white parents must to discuss racism, especially with their non-white children. These kinds of events lead to articles like “What I Wish My White Parents Knew” and discussions on the very ethics of transracial adoptions. This isn’t the same for white adoptees raised by parents of color. 

For your second question, an East Asian child raised by black parents would also be transracial, but again, the experiences wouldn’t be the same. Even though the racism Asian people face and black people face are different, the black parents would still likely have experienced or been taught about racism on a personal level. Where I live, people of color can’t afford to be “colorblind” in the same way white people can.

People of color raised in a white-centric world have very different experiences from white people raised in a white-centric world.

Great! I’m glad I could help. I know it was long (believe me, I took out a LOT before posting) but I appreciate you taking the time to read it.

Boosting our voices and correcting people using the wrong definition is definitely one of the biggest ways to help. It makes me so happy when I see others doing this.

Otherwise, I’d say being generally aware of transracial issues and racism in general. 

For instance, a lot of transnational adoptees were being sent to their birth countries because they were never granted citizenship. Since many transnational adoptees are also transracial, this affected many members of our community. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 made it so all minor adoptees (but not adult adoptees) at the time were granted citizenship if their parents hadn’t gotten them naturalized already. There is currently a bill, the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2018, that will grant all US adoptees citizenship. (Read more about it here)

Another way to support us is to make sure discussions of race are inclusive of transracial people. It doesn’t have to be huge, but just acknowledging that not everyone has the same background, even if they’re the same race. (Which doesn’t just apply to transracial people, but is something I see a lot anyway.)

Indigenous water protectors gather and jingle dance at an Enbridge shareholder meeting in Calgary, Alberta last May to protest the Line 3 pipeline project that is proposed to cross the most pristine lakes, rivers, and sacred anishinaabeg territories across Canada, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. This pipeline threatens the well being of the earth, and its peoples. It is important that we fight back for the next 7 generations.

I found this quote that says:

it is when I stopped searching for home within others

and lifted the foundations of my home within myself

i found that there were no roots more intimate

than those between mind and body

that has decided to be whole

~ Rupi Kaur

I think I have finally recovered from my situation dealing with both my older sisters. The grief of losing my sisterly relationship with them has subsided. We don’t talk like we use to… in the sense of how much we talk and how we talk to each other and even though I miss that deeply…I had to let it go.

So I thought to myself “What now?”

I was taking medication for nine months to help cope with anxiety and waves of depression. I was doing well as far as not having panic attacks or worrying too much about things I couldn’t control. I even went to visit my birth mother by myself and felt emotionally safe enough to do that. She was very comforting and I felt like I just really needed to hear her voice.

I have been dealing deeply with myself since May. Self care has not really been a priority for me. I have been living off of basically cereal and cool blue gatorade…ripping and running back and forth to work and trying to make time..literally for my boyfriend( I don’t really like using the word boyfriend).

Right now the home within myself is junked up with depressive stuff. I can barely make it to work on time because I don’t want to leave my bed. Sometimes I start crying for no apparent reasons. I find myself coming up with excuses not to hang with friends or with my boyfriend because I just don’t want to. I am “on break” with my therapist which is mandatory. I stopped taking my meds because I felt like I was becoming emotionally numb. I felt like I was externally expressing my emotions in situations that called for emotions. A few days ago I had a bad panic attack at work and I think I have to start the meds again. I stopped taking them because I thought I was ok. Maybe not.

But here is the game changer:

I know I am about to root down and find my home. When a seed takes root it has to break open. That breaking is what I am experiencing right now and it is painful. There is uncertainty of what this is going to look like but friends I deserve to be the flower for once in my life. Does anyone watch A Million Little Things? Maggie told Rome who is dealing with depression that he gets to be the flower.

I am grateful to have a community of people and you all who love and support me. It will get better friends.

Peace & Love

11/01/18

Jay Ledford’s journey as a Filipino-American transgender ballerina

When she was 17 months old, Jay, who was born in Leyte, moved to Indiana after the Ledford family adopted her.

Five years into learning pirouettes and splits and arabesques, Jay bagged full scholarships for summer ballet intensives at the Kirov Academy, the Rock School of Dance, and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater.