November Is Adoption Month ~ The Problem With The Adoption Label

The first label that I was branded with was the one at my birth.  Its the one that identified me as being given away that I unknowingly carried with me throughout my life.  This one time adjective word allowed everyone & their mother to know I wasn't the real child yet the one that was adopted, taking on a life all of its own.  You see, people still refer "US" as adopted, no matter how many years later, the label of this past action still actively exists to describe our place in this life.

I remember as a kid feeling shame about this label & how hard it was being different.  Kids at school would be cruel,  teasing me that my parents weren't my real parents & that my real mother didn't want or love me & that's why she left me.  Feeling & being reminded that I was abandoned was an instrumental factor in all my insecurities that played out all through out my life.  These wounds left life long marks on my body & soul that remained invisible to the human eye, yet were the pathway of my self loath that I suffered from in silence.

 Most adopted children that I know of didn't speak freely about their true desires out of fear of jeopardizing the relationship with their families.  Many would lie if they had to in hopes of avoiding a deeper darker truth to save themselves from a sense of punishment for their hidden secret.  Many adopted children grow up believing that there is something wrong with them for wanting to know who they are, because of the reactions by the unhealed adults who couldn't have their own children. We have be programmed & taught that our adoption was gift,  giving us unknowingly a heavy burden to bare of someone else happiness that becomes really big empty shoes to fill.

We become someone else adopted storyline, being filled in with someone else personal information that biologically has nothing what so ever to do with us.  Our real self is left numbered in a sealed manila folder that holds our birth name & the links to our being for all intensive purpose.  It had never been personal about the people who adopted me, yet the questions inside of me on a genetic, biological soulful level with the basic understanding principals of who I am outside of the storyline I was given.  My birth name was Lisa Anne Cummings.

Adoptees share an unspoken union & understanding with one another, bypassing the social bullshit the moment you discover this truth.  There is a unique kinship attached to this energy, acknowledging what the outside world is unable to see.  Maybe it is the unconscious energy surrounding this subject & the abandonment we have all had to face or process alone.  Sometimes the adoption box that society neatly puts us in, unknowingly becomes a neat & tidy descriptive reminder to the trauma we suffer inside from this act.

I wish the media would stop labeling the children of famous families as adopted, singling them out as if they are different than any other.  I can't stand when I read something that shows the label & separation between the parents & siblings (for instance Brad Pitt & Angelia Jolie kids), making me want to educate the press on how upsetting that might be to those that it effects.  I wonder if people are even aware of this, or is it just me because I'm adopted seeing it with the wounds of my own idenity.

Its taken me my entire lifetime to remove the stigma associated with this label, allowing me to feel beautiful loved despite what it once represented at the moment my biological mother handed me off to social services.  It is a conversation many people need to begin to have in this day in age, so the barriers of this label can begin to be removed for the healing sake of the child that it effects.  Peace Love Faith Hope <3 <3 <3