Ask Hope vol. 5

Now that you are in new educational and work environments, has being adopted or a former foster youth come up? If you have shared the information with new friends or colleagues, how and when have you chosen to share that information with new people?  

Yes it has come up before. In high school and middle school people wouldn’t really think much of it being adopted. Since I’ve started working I’ve found that surprisingly a lot of people including adults are oblivious to the fact that not everyone has two parental figures in their life. They all assume that I have two parents, and I’ve had some really immature reactions to telling people that I’m adopted.

As for when I choose to share that information, there isn’t really a specific time. If someone asks about family I usually just say I’m adopted; I’m pretty open about that stuff. It’s never really been anything that was difficult to talk about. Sometimes people can’t wrap their head around how I have a mom that isn’t the one who gave birth to me, even though it’s not that difficult of a concept. It’s only difficult when I say it and someone acts like an immature 12 year old. More than anything I just can’t be bothered with someone who would act immature over such a thing.

I imagine people assume you and ABM are bio family most of the time in public? If that is the case, how does that make you feel? I imagine a lot of TRAs feel extremely hypervisible, which seems quite stressful and like they never get a “break” from being obviously adopted. I’d like to think that it would feel better to not be so hypervisible, but I don’t want to assume.

I like that people think I’m biologically related to my mom, it makes me feel like we are blood related family. I’ve never had any issues with it. Since I was adopted people have said that I look like my mom and that makes me happy.

I don’t have any problem with people knowing I’m adopted, It doesn’t make me feel any different from anyone else. If anything, if someone I know doesn’t know then I tell them, and most of the time people I know forget I’m adopted. I don’t know if It has anything to do with the fact that I was adopted into a black family, but I’ve never had any issues.

Have your thoughts/feelings about adoption changed at all over time? And if so, in what way?:

I don’t know if I can say my thoughts or feelings on adoption have really changed but there are things that I definitely understand more since I’ve grown up.

I can say that I maybe understand myself more during that time and just the entire adoption and adjustment process in general.

I’m not gonna lie, before I was adopted I thought adoption was something out of a movie, I never really thought I would be adopted. Adoption seemed like a really fancy movie to me; it seemed almost unreal in a sense. After a short while I realized that we would have disagreements and good times just like any other family would, though I didn’t really know how other families were.

In the end, I am the daughter of my mother and that is just that.

If you have a question for Hope, feel free to send it to the main blog email adoptiveblackmom@gmail.com; be sure to put “Ask Hope” in the subject line!