Q: What kind of research are adoptees doing?

(Amy):  There is a lot of great research that adoptees are doing that’s really looking at the outcomes and the impact of adoption. We are seeing research in the areas of identity, grief and loss, psychological and emotional wellbeing, transracial adoption, birth family search dynamics, the need for support, and the importance of connection.

Q: How and when did adoptee-led research start to develop and start to pick up momentum. 

(Elliot): There is a lot of great research on adoptees and the impact of adoption on children, but a lot more research has been published by adoptees within the past decade or so. I think of researchers like JaeRan Kim, whose research includes studying families who adopted children with disabilities, Susan Branco, who created the “adoptee consciousness model,” and Hollee McGinnis, who researches how early life experiences affect adoptees’ long-term health and wellbeing.

(Amy): We’ve seen an increase in adoptee research as the current movement and need for adoptees is expanding from initially seeking and being in community, to still wanting to be in community, but also seeking social and systematic change. Over the years we’ve seen a growing number of adoptees enter the research/scholar field and start to examine the historical and current dynamic and impact of adoption. 

Q: Why is adoptee-led research important? 

(Amy): We have learned and are still learning a lot about the long-term impact of adoption on the emotional, social and psychological wellbeing of adoptees. Before professionals started hearing more from adoptees, there was this thought that adoption was just a one-time act, a child was placed through adoption and it’s done; this thought is very one-dimensional and more in the direction of the adoptive parent’s voice. Adoptee-led research is lending more dimension and texture to adoption. Adoptee-led research is additionally supporting the notion that adoption is this lifelong process and it affects adoptees throughout their whole lives.

We’re learning more and more about some of the long-term implications of adoption and I think it’s really helping families to look at it from an adoptee point of view. We want families to be successful, and we want to help parents be able to be there for their adopted children.

Amy Trotter, Director of Post Adoption Services

Q: So how has all this research influenced adoption practices?

(Amy): We are starting to see more of a shift happening in adoption. It’s so exciting to see more adoptee voices and adoptee-led research coming to the forefront. This change is really reshaping the lens of how we view and understand the bigger implications of adoption practices. The dominant narrative is definitely changing, and there is so much we can learn from this transformation. As professionals, it helps us to better prepare families to raise healthy children.

Q: How have adoptee voices and adoptee-led research informed the development of post-adoption services?

(Amy): For Holt, the importance and value of adoptee voices has impacted aspects of post-adoption services. Holt has a post-adoption team primarily made up of adoptees. There are several post-adoption programs that don’t have adoptees on the team or leading it. Our leadership understands the value of, if we’re going to provide these services, we need to have adoptees in these roles helping to guide us. 

Q: How does having a post-adoption team made up of adoptees make a difference?

(Elliot): I think it makes a difference in that we are able to advocate for the needs of adoptees and the diverse perspectives that we hear on a daily basis. We are also able to say that as adoptees speaking to adoptees, we understand and we are here to support you. 

I also think of how [adoptee voices at Holt have encouraged] training and education not only for parents, but for staff. …  Now I think it’s for the most part pretty accepted that adoptees can love their adoptive families, but also hold grief and loss for their birth family and their culture that they lost. And that it’s okay to have both those feelings. 

(Amy): We’re learning more and more about some of the long-term implications of adoption and I think it’s really helping families to look at it from an adoptee point of view. We want families to be successful, and we want to help parents be able to be there for their adopted children.

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

The post How Adoptee Voices, Adoptee-Led Research is Changing Adoption appeared first on Holt International.

How long have you been going to Holt camp?

I have four full summers under my belt — two in person, two virtual. I’m just back this week for leadership staff, which has been very exciting. It’s been really great to be back in the Holt adoptee community.

Where were you adopted from?

I was adopted from South Korea when I was 8 and a half months old. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, went to school in Massachusetts, and now I’m back on the West Coast and living in Seattle.

And so you didn’t go to Holt Adoptee Camp growing up?

My parents always offered camp to me, but I had other interests I was pursuing — I did a lot of art camps and cooking camps. I never attended Holt Adoptee Camp as a camper. I went to school for psychology and was looking for something to do over the summer and my mom saw that Holt camp was hiring and so it was the summer after my sophomore year that I started. … It was such a great community and it was my first time being around other adoptees and especially at that age and my time in college, it was a really formative experience for me.

Can you share more about why Holt camp is meaningful for adoptees?

For me, being adopted was always just a fact about myself and about my family. … But coming to Holt camp, it was the first time it was part of my identity. I used to say, “I was adopted” and now I say, “I’m an adoptee, I’m a South Korean adoptee” and that’s something that’s really important to me. …

The connections that I’ve made with staff here are just unbelievable. … It’s nice to have people who have understood my journey, my adoption story, as its changed throughout the years and as I find out more information or as I go through certain life experiences or life milestones … Having a community I can turn to has just truly been life-changing. It sounds really cheesy and clichéd, but it’s so true.

Being a counselor and seeing younger kids at camp, how do you think it would have made a difference in your life had you gone to camp at a younger age?

I think the timeline just would have been sped up a lot faster. I think I would have felt a lot more pride in not just being an adoptee, but being Asian American. For a long time, I was trying to fit myself into being Asian American because of what I saw growing up. I grew up in the Bay Area — very diverse, a big Asian American population. I was trying to fit myself into that mold and I think it wasn’t until coming to Holt camp that I realized my experience is still part of that — part of Asian American culture. …

Seeing the campers now and seeing the support systems that they get to grow up with … Every year, they’re always asking to be in the same cabin groups again and asking if the same counselors are coming back. So having peers who are going through the same things as you as well as having older mentors through older campers or the staff, I think would have been really beneficial.

So you grew up in a big Asian American community, but what about within your family? Were you adopted transracially?

Yep, two white parents, Mom and Dad, love them. My brother is their biological child and my sister was also adopted through Holt and also a South Korean adoptee. We’re all very close. … Growing up it was always just like, this is my family!

Are there things you wish your parents had done to support you in finding your identity?

Korean food and Japanese food are just like super popular right now, which is so cool. We definitely grew up with good Asian food in general, but the experience of having japchae or Korean BBQ — that’s something I didn’t really grow up having, very specific cultural foods that are now super popular.

I will say that they did a really great job. … It was also just really nice having other Asian faces around me growing up and in the school system. Not feeling like an outsider that way. But then I think it created this struggle of wanting to be like my classmates who grew up with a second language at home. They would talk like that at the lunch table and I had no idea what they were saying. So that being an interesting kind of layer to it.

Is feeling like an outsider something that other campers share a lot about? Maybe not all of them grew up in the Bay Area, but in rural areas or small towns where they may have felt more that way?

The more common experience for a lot of Asian adoptees is that they are the only Asian person in their school or in their grade or in their town and how isolating that is. And so, my experience is kind of the opposite — where I grew up with a strong Asian American community around me, but not something that I was integrated in. Or I was still kind of orbiting around and not fully being a participant in. So that was also kind of like an imposter syndrome. So a little bit different, but still that same kind of feeling of isolation and not knowing where to fit in. That can be hard as a kid in school.

Does Holt Adoptee Camp give that opportunity to connect with other adoptees and Asian Americans or kids with the same racial identity?

Yeah, at camp we have themes that we talk about every day. So today was identity — so not just racial identity, but it could be your family identity and your culture around what you do as a family and the hobbies that you like and the sports that you play and the music that you love to listen to. A lot of the things that the campers will bring up is — racial identity is the first one that gets shouted out. It’s so top of mind, especially in those middle age groups — middle school, early high school, it tends to be really on their minds. Starting to see those differences or similarities between their peers.

One concern that has been expressed by some adoptive parents about sending their kids to Holt Adoptee Camp is that their child will be exposed to ideas that create a negative picture of adoption and that it’s going to shape their feeling about their own adoption. Can you share your thoughts on that?

There’s nuance. A lot of adoption in general is seen as a very black and white issue and there’s so many shades of grey. A lot of campers have already expressed those feelings of confusion and maybe guilt for thinking the things they do. I think Holt camp provides the campers a space where they can express these ideas freely and without judgement and empowers them to have the language to identify 1) what they’re feeling, but then 2) how to express it in really healthy ways. I think if the concern is that Holt camp is going to make them think differently about adoption or maybe think negatively about their adoption, in my experience, I’ve seen the exact opposite.

At the end of the week — or after coming here for a several years — there’s so much healing that happens just by attending Holt camp year after year. Being able to grow with your cabinmates and experience your adoption story as its evolving alongside one another … it’s kind of [like releasing] a pressure valve. They’re not holding it all inside, feeling confused and conflicted or guilty. They have people they can talk to and they have people who can validate them in their experience and say, “Yeah, I felt that too…” or “That’s something new for you, but I’m here to hold your hand and walk with you every step of the way while you’re going through that.” There’s been tremendous growth from so many campers.

Are there any other thoughts you want to share with our audience of adoptees and adoptive families?

It sounds really cheesy, but I really can’t imagine my life without Holt camp and without the connections that I’ve made to staff, to campers. I always go home feeling so physically exhausted, but emotionally just so revitalized and just being able to see generations of adoptees come through the camp doors. I’m so excited whenever I see adoptees come in and say, “This is my first time!” I’m like, “I’m so excited you’re here! You’re gonna’ have the best time!” And being able to see returning campers come back and have the best week of their life with their friends that they only get to see once a year, it shows how strong the community is.

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

The post The Best Week of Their Lives appeared first on Holt International.

Through a streaky windshield and teary eyes, I waved goodbye to my friends one by one as they drove out of the In-N-Out parking lot. Moments before, we reminisced on our favorite memories and shared our hopes and anxieties about the upcoming freshman year over burgers and animal-style fries (a quintessential California send-off for those who were headed out of state). The hangout seemed like any of our other countless, spontaneous In-N-Out runs all throughout high school, but deep down we knew this one was different. None of us wanted to admit out loud that what happened next  would completely change our friendship forever. 

So, I sat alone in my car, frozen in disbelief, unable to shift into reverse. Because I knew the moment I heard my ‘94 Camry engine rev, I would need to accept a grave reality: this was the last hangout before we all  left for college. It wasn’t until months later that I was finally able to name the uncomfy feeling that we all avoided that afternoon. I would come to know the feeling as grief, a gut-wrenching pain of being  forced to say goodbye to people I love.

And unlike Sam Smith, “I’m (not) too good at goodbyes”. In fact, I am awful at them and hate when people leave me. I attach too easily to people and allow them to get close to me. I readily open up even though I know it might hurt in the end. 

Saying goodbye can be hard for non-adopted people, but for some adoptees this process can be especially difficult.

Transitions in relationships can trigger feelings of abandonment stemming from the primal wound, a theory coined by Nancy Verrier, LMFT in the early 90s, to describe the life-long impacts of severing the tie between infant and biological mother. Through her research, she found the primal wound “manifests in a sense of loss (depression), basic mistrust (anxiety), emotional and/or behavioral problems and difficulties in relationship with significant others…affect[ing] the adoptee’s sense of self, self-esteem and self-worth throughout life.” Because of the primal wound, adoptees take huge risks when it comes to relationships (platonic, familial, or romantic) due to the fear of being abandoned again.

Even though the loss I experienced with my friends occurred as a result of a natural transition from high school to college, nevertheless it triggered my primal wound. At that point in my life, I felt like a jigsaw puzzle and all my friends were pieces that completed the “puzzle of Katelyn.” When Krista moved to Berkeley, I lost a corner piece. As Laura flew to Boston, suddenly I missed a straight edge. As each friend moved away, integral pieces of Katelyn left with them. I felt incredibly abandoned and asked myself, “who is Katelyn without her friends?” 

And the thought of making new friends in college triggered major insecurities around being cool, smart, and pretty enough to be deserving of great friendships. I was also skeptical to find friends I could trust with my secrets, who would understand me and where I came from. On my darkest days I wondered what the point was of making new friends if inevitably we would be saying goodbye four years later. 

A friendship goodbye is just one example of the many goodbyes adoptees will encounter in their lifetimes.

A death of a loved one, setting boundaries with a family member, a breakup with a significant other, or a favorite colleague leaving the workplace all have the potential to trigger adoption wounds. But the reality of life is transition and goodbyes are inevitable. It’s a fact that many people will enter and exit in the story of an adoptee’s life. And for me, this was a hard truth to cognitively accept despite experiencing this loss as part of my origin story. 

Because my body remembers the searing pain of abandonment to this day, I still grip tightly to my relationships in an effort to protect myself. Because my body remembers, I try to make meaning out of the fact I was separated from my birth family, and as a child the only reason I could come up with was that I was somehow unlovable, damaged, or broken. Because my body remembers, I often found myself trapped in unbalanced, one-sided relationships where I gave too much and belittled my own needs. Because my body remembers, I have internalized the lie that I need to perform in order to be loved.  

After years of self-exploration and therapy, I’ve found that most goodbyes are beyond my control. That in itself has freed me from my people-pleasing tendencies, feelings of shame, and the taxing burden of convincing people to stay in my life. I realized people will leave and it’s not always my fault. There’s nothing I can do to make them stay. The only thing in my control is how I react to and process the goodbye. 

Now, I have a more balanced perspective on the comings and goings of people in my life. I am still uncomfortable with goodbyes, but don’t take them as personally anymore. They still hurt just as much, but I have better coping strategies to work through the pain of feeling abandoned (see below). And as far as my high school friends go, thankfully with a little bit of effort and a lot of luck coordinating schedules, we still get together at least once a year to reminisce on our favorite memories. And in those moments, all of the pieces are put back together again in the puzzle of Katelyn. 

A special thanks to Sammie LaFramboise and other adopted friends who helped me put together these tips!

The post Goodbyes, I’m Not Too Good appeared first on Holt International.

I’ve learned a lot about love from adoptees. 

In the beginning of adoption, there was  a phrase “love is enough.” It was touted as expert advice given to adoptive parents, and for many people that meant to love your adopted child as if they were your biological child. It was used to reduce the stigma around what it means to be adopted. So I understand why this phrase was popular. However, over time, we’ve understood that adoptees actually have complex and special needs that biological children do not have.

And this can mean that love is, in fact, not always enough…

Don’t get me wrong, everyone — adoptees included — needs a loving family. But as adoptees, we face some unique challenges, and I believe there are some additional supports and resources we need to thrive.

Adoptee Identity Development

One of the biggest challenges for adoptees is answering the question “Who am I?” 

For many adoptees, it feels like there’s this missing puzzle piece, and you’re always trying to look for that missing piece. But there’s nothing that quite fits that hole in your heart. There’s so much loss in adoption — loss of culture, loss of family, loss of birth language — and for many adoptees, there’s no way to reclaim that sense of loss.  

So, many adoptees are left without context as to who they are. And how do you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve come from, and you don’t have that history behind you to set you in motion? That’s a really hard space to fill and to be in, and to constantly ask yourself who you are. 

For many adoptees, it feels like there’s this missing puzzle piece…But there’s nothing that quite fits that hole in your heart.

For me, my parents didn’t really have the resources or tools to have conversations about adoption and help me develop my identity as an adoptee. So I had to do a lot of exploring by myself, mostly in college. And it was really lonely. Adoption is something that is still challenging to talk about with my parents because they get really defensive about their parenting style and such. But they tried, and I love them dearly for that.

I would have loved if my parents thought about their own cultural heritage and racial background. I think that would’ve helped me to explore my own identity as a Chinese woman and to not feel like I’m a white person walking around in an Asian body, because that’s how I felt growing up. I wish I could have found a Chinese cultural mentor to teach me how to cook, maybe how to speak Mandarin and to just learn some of the traditions.

I think that in this process of identity development, it’s helpful for adoptees not only to have the chance to explore their racial and cultural identity, but also the chance to explore what it uniquely means to be an adoptee. And to do that, finding an adoptee community is so crucial.  

The Importance of Adoptee Community

Adoption can be very isolating. It feels like this really unique experience, and we’re told our entire lives that we’re really special. It feels like no one can relate to us. But that has negative effects sometimes, because you’re always looking for someone who understands your story.

There are some adoptees who’ve grown up in predominantly white towns, and they’re the only person of color there. And that can be really alienating as well.

There are some adoptees who’ve grown up in predominantly white towns, and they’re the only person of color there. And that can be really alienating as well. For me, I grew up in a predominantly Asian and white town, and half of my family is actually Asian. But I still felt like no one really understood my experience as an adoptee. I always felt like I was the “special” Asian, even as an Asian adoptee with an Asian mom.

This is why it’s so important for adoptees to be in community with other adoptees. In community, adoptees can explore and find similarities in their stories and life experiences. Something as seemingly simple as an empathetic “me too,” “I understand” or an “mhm” can be extremely validating for adoptees. It makes us feel like we’re not alone in our struggles.   

And I think that’s one thing that’s really beautiful about adoption — that adoptees can create shared culture and meaning with other adoptees. In adoptee community, we create our own family and our own language, and that begins to fill in the cracks and holes that adoption has left in our lives. 

Resources for Adoptees

Adoption is a lifelong process, and as adoptees grow older, there are milestones in a person’s life, like getting into a new relationship, getting married, having children, going to the doctor for a really significant or intense illness — these are touchpoints in life where adoption trauma is triggered. These milestones touch on the loss adoptees experience, like the loss of birth family, which influences relationship attachment styles, and the complete loss of medical health history, which affects preventive treatment.

Because of this, adoptees need lifelong support. This support could be adoptee-competent counseling and mentorship, or things like U.S. citizenship help or assistance conducting a birth search. I have used some of these resources myself and also saw them benefit so many adoptees when I worked with Holt’s post adoption services department. 

Holt’s Post Adoption Services 

Holt supports adoptees in myriad ways, but I think what really sets Holt apart from other adoption organizations is that Holt creates opportunities for adoptees to grow in leadership skills and mentorship skills, and gives them opportunities to contribute back to the adoptee community through post adoption services.

As they’re on their adoption journey, there’s a phase in which many adoptees really want to tell their story, and they really want to validate their story. They create blogs, they jump on podcasts, they just will tell their story to anyone who wants to listen. 

And then there’s a moment on some adoptees’ journeys where they’re happy with having told their story — they’re good, they feel validated — and then they need to do something with that. Everything that they’ve processed, everything that they’ve learned, the ways that they’ve critically thought about their adoption, that needs to go somewhere. And Holt gives adoptees opportunities to be mentors or camp counselors at Holt Adoptee Camp, where their adoption story can be  a gift and a strength that they can use to support other adoptees. It gives them the chance to come alongside younger adoptees and say, “Hey, I’ve gone through the same life experience as you. Let me help you. Let me support you.” And in that, I think there’s a lot of healing for both adoptees — the mentors and the younger adoptees.

I feel what’s beautiful about adoption — despite the challenges — is that an adoptive family made of diverse people from across the world have come together as one.

I believe that you can tell a lot about what a society values by the way that they treat their women, children and the most vulnerable. I think this can include adoptees too. What I love about post adoption services is that they put the emphasis on adoptees throughout their entire lives. And sometimes this can look like supporting adoptive families with the right tools and information they need to best support their child.

What’s Beautiful About Adoption

Maybe it’s just my vision for our world, but I feel what’s beautiful about adoption — despite the challenges — is that an adoptive family made of diverse people from across the world have come together as one. 

It’s beautiful because I think this is what most people want in our society — the connectedness, loving people who differ from ourselves, who may look different than us, who come from different backgrounds and different cultures. The “adoptive family” is this microcosm, an example of what our beautiful world could be. Adoption is complex. While it can be beautiful, it can also be full of loss and grief. Over time, as adoptees have the chance to process their losses, and explore and come to terms with their identity as adoptees, maybe their adoption experience can begin to feel a little more beautiful too.  

Because when this happens, I believe adoption is this really beautiful, beautiful example of the power of love and what it truly means. 

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

The post The Challenges and Beauty of Adoption appeared first on Holt International.

Over the summer, adoptee Katelyn Dixon visited Holt’s headquarters in Eugene to participate in interviews for a short documentary on international adoption that was set to appear on PBS in November. The documentary only ended up being five minutes long — and Katelyn appears briefly in it at the end! But she shared a lot more in her interview that didn’t make it into the final cut of the documentary. Below, we’ve pieced together a rough cut of Katelyn’s interview to share more of her insights on adoption and the adoptee experience, how Holt supports adoptees based on her experience working on the post-adoption team, and the value she believes adoption brings to society. (Note: At the end of the video, Susie Doig, Holt’s senior executive of U.S. programs, appears alongside Katelyn.)

View the documentary on international adoption featuring Holt staff that appeared on PBS!

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

The post VIDEO: Adoptee Katelyn Dixon on the Beautiful Complexity of Adoption appeared first on Holt International.

Many adoptees have large pieces missing in their early history, gaps that can’t be filled with records or memories. While I don’t know all the details of my birth family, I know that they were not able to keep me, and that a member of my birth family saw to it that I was safely left at a police station so that I would be tended to and properly cared for, and I am deeply grateful for their attention to my safety. 

In addition to not knowing all the details of their young lives before they were adopted, I’ve found there is a grief adoptees* carry in their hearts that is unspoken, often unacknowledged, but nonetheless very real and felt. Children who are abandoned and placed for adoption lose a family at a very young and tender age. They lose a mother, a father, grandparents, perhaps even aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins. They lose a community, a city, sometimes a country, a language and an entire culture. I’ve found that these first wounds of loss can over time cause not just abandonment issues for adoptees, but also significant grief that can remain dormant over quite a long time. 

One reason the pain of loss can remains hidden for so long is that one does not have time or the emotional resources to cope with grief when one is surviving, adapting to a new culture and language, and adjusting to being cared for by a family rather than hospital or orphanage staff. It’s an adjustment, and for a long time, there’s no reason to grieve because the adopted family is meeting the adoptee’s needs. In my case, there was a time when my top priority was undertaking the simple task of trusting men, or trusting a person wearing a white doctor’s coat, without having a tantrum. Safety, comfort, trust issues, adaptation and separation anxiety tend to trump the need for the first wounds of grief to take their full course of healing. 

It’s a strange, curious emotional lull. It lies in the low places, hides out behind feelings of comfort and acceptance — and perhaps the familiarity of routine — until something triggers it.

Adoptees almost inevitably at some point in their lives find themselves bereft and in the grip of sadness and an unnamable pain that blindsides them. The triggers may vary. Maybe it’s when a beloved pet dies, when family dynamics get difficult, when they lose a job or when a marriage falls apart, when a grandparent dies, or when a friend becomes terminally ill.  The grief and other emotions they feel may be out of proportion to the recent stressful events that triggered this underground spring of grief. At that point, it may be nearly impossible to discern what emotional pain is due to the current circumstances and what pain is due to past echoes of loss. It may not be necessary to tease the emotional threads apart. I would suggest that the awareness of such a tangle can help greatly in supporting oneself or a loved one through the maze of grief. 

It’s said that when a person you love dies, all the other people who have passed before rise up and die again. That is, the pains of previous losses are relived as if the recent losses press and dig an unmerciful finger into old wounds. I would suggest that this phenomenon of reliving old grief during times of loss or significant transition can also trigger the loss adoptees experienced when they lost their biological family. This is true whether or not the biological family is living or dead, found and reunited or not. This makes it tricky. It’s a grief that can be instantly coated in shame because to acknowledge that grief may feel disloyal to one’s adopted family. The adoptee may emotionally revisit an uncertain past while their loved ones and friends are baffled and want for very well-meaning reasons to say, “But look, you got another family, a good family, and they care about you very much.” 

That is true and it’s also true that the pain of having lost an entire family at a young age leaves an indelible mark, which needs to be acknowledged, healed and brought to completion in an adoptee’s heart. 

How does an adoptee do all this healing of grief without possibly feeling disloyal to their adopted family? 

It may be helpful to remind one’s support system that these old wounds can be addressed precisely because of the stability, love and acceptance they offer. It is their love and support that allows an adoptee the safety to feel and express their emotions as they arise. If their family is for any reason uncomfortable with hearing these expressions, then they need to be honest, so that support may perhaps be found from other sources — from friends, therapists and teachers. Family counseling is an option. It may also be helpful to keep the lines of communication open and, if necessary, give the adoptee space to sort out conflicting emotions. 

The hidden stream of grief is an unwelcome guest in an adoptee’s life. Fingers get pointed to the obvious causes, the immediate stressors, and it’s very easy to overlook the impact of those first and early wounds. However, if the old unwelcome grief guest can be embraced for what it is — as an opportunity to heal — then the pain offers a hidden gift. It offers the gift of loving two families: the one that gave them birth, life and history, and the one that gave them a stable, loving family and hopeful future. 

It is important to have awareness of this loss that so often goes unacknowledged because it happened so long ago. It is a loss that also very easily gets glossed over in favor of looking at the obvious bright side… “Life turned out OK, you got adopted.”  I want to bring attention to this because awareness is key. Our issues often have a long unconscious history and if you find that you are having a particular struggle with a loss or significant life transition or rite of passage, it can be helpful to ask:

“What other losses could have been triggered by these recent stresses?” 

“What hidden wounds need to be heard, healed and brought into the light of truth and understanding?”

“Maybe my reactions aren’t out of proportion. What about this situation is bothering me the most? Why?”

Inquiry and awareness are powerful. If you’re unhappy, ask, seek help, trust, heal, and know that your best true life is not just the good times where you celebrate all that is going well and right in your world. Your best true life also happens during those times when you feel the deepest pain and unearth the courage to embrace and transform it into love and acceptance. It’s the greatest gift we adoptees can give to ourselves, to be true to every aspect of our lives and ourselves. We must not shrink away from any fear or pain that would suggest we are less than the fabulous creative souls that we are, for we are so much more than our histories, our stories or our wounds.   

May you live your best life with courage, grace, love and hope. 

         Kira Carman

         Kim Han Nah, Korean Name

         Seoul, South Korea, Born 1978, exact birthdate unknown.

Adopted December 19, 1980 at approximately 22 months old.  

         Myrtle Beach, SC

*Kira is not a mental health expert. She learned about grief and loss in adoption while studying psychology in college and through connecting with fellow adoptees as a family member and friend.

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

The post For Adoptees and Those Who Love Them: Healing the Hidden Spring of Grief appeared first on Holt International.

     My passion for the adult adoptee community began in young adulthood. I believed that being an adoptee was the most sacred part of my identity. I realized the deep meaning and need for support after several defining life events — reuniting with several members of my birth family, the deaths of my birth parents and joining an adoption-related writing group during the pandemic. I’ve learned that important components of our experience include knowing that we are not alone, having our lived experiences validated and being able to seek out or belong to a community of adoptees whenever we need it.

     In adoptee social settings and gatherings, I feel as though I’m meeting and getting to know new friends. But at the same time, we are already linked by a common thread and a shared understanding. The understanding comes from so many commonalities: the way our lives started, a collective loss, a deep desire for connection and bond, knowing that we are invited to share as much or little information as feels necessary and the knowledge that others will listen. In my experience, I have not been able to find this same level of understanding among the non-adopted people in my life, despite their love, care and concern, and the extension of their hearts towards mine. The adoptee community shares a bond, one that can be expressed through words, hugs, smiles, tears, writing together and joining in the same room for acknowledgment and healing. 

     I have heard these stories through listening to adoptee panels, the written word and personal interactions with adoptees. Each story is a paint brush stroke on the larger canvas of our truth, our human experience and needs.  

     My goals as the adult adoptee community outreach coordinator at Holt are to be a point of contact for adult adoptees seeking resources, community, a thoughtful and caring listener, and a knowledgeable representative of the adult adoptee population — one who understands and believes in the power of highlighting our experiences.

     I believe that for adoptees, it’s also an empowering and comforting experience to know that as we grow into adulthood, we have a supportive group of fellow adoptees to lean on as our perceptions, identities and the comprehension of our life stories begin to unfold. For me, there is no feeling like expressing a part of my story to a group of fellow adoptees and seeing them nod in appreciation and understanding, apologizing for what I went through during a difficult period and reminding me that we have each other.

     The evolution of my experiences with fellow adoptees began when I was a young child and continues into adulthood. As a school-age child, my mom and I traveled each year to the “Brazil reunion” where we met with other children who were adopted around the same time and from the same children’s home as me. Eventually, these get-togethers didn’t happen as often, but their impact on my life remained. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t have another connection to fellow adoptees, and I cherished the time when I was surrounded by people who could most closely understand how I felt deep down. 

     This longing later evolved into meeting other adoptees through volunteer work and social gatherings. We each brought a story unlike any other, but all parts of the collective adoptee experience. Sometimes these stories were comments about how they would also like to find their birth families or were curious about their identity. Others shared that they might, one day, like to travel back to their birth country. 

     During the pandemic, I joined a writing group that once again brought a large, diverse, thoughtful, caring, ambitious group of adoptees into my life. We sat with each other through computer screens, connecting our deeply impactful trials and triumphs through words of support. We knew that the community, the friendship, the joy of being together in the same room, although virtually, gave us the confidence that we needed to share our stories and feel part of something bigger.

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

     Adoption is a lifelong process, one that is complex and includes both grief and trauma, even amidst the happiness and sense of security that can simultaneously exist. I know this from my own personal experience. I grew up in a loving home and was adopted into a supportive family, but still vividly remember the impact of learning each of my birth parents had died. I dealt with uncertainty and a level of grief I’d never known. This piece of my identity follows me everywhere I go, whether I’m fully conscious of it or not. It’s always ready to serve as a reminder and I must stand ready to acknowledge its presence. 

     As the adult adoptee community outreach coordinator, I aspire to create a place for adoptees to go for resources, community and support. A place where they know that they are seen and accepted. I hope for adoptees to feel empowered, acknowledged and understood. I firmly believe in adoptees having the space for their voices to be heard, that we are powerful beyond measure when we speak up and bring awareness to our experiences.

Carmen Hinckley | Holt Adult Adoptee Community Outreach Coordinator

Read Carmen’s other blogs, “This Way to Your Birth Family” and “The Loss of My Birth Father.”

The post Introducing Carmen, the Holt Adult Adoptee Community Outreach Coordinator! appeared first on Holt International.

This zine (short for magazine) is divided into three sections: surface culture, deep culture and surrounding soil. Using a fruit tree analogy, we will explore the nuances and complexities of being Asian and Asian American through the lens of two Asian adoptees.

By the end, we hope you will be able to answer these questions:

• What does it mean to be Asian and Asian American?
• How can we support adoptees as they explore and embrace these crucial identities?

Fostering your adoptees’ Asian and Asian American identity is a multi-faceted journey. Providing multiple opportunities for your adoptee to explore birth culture not only on the surface, but also on a deeper level, is pivotal for their racial and cultural development. The culture we see above ground is only a small part of the cultural whole. There are intricate cultural roots that lie deep within the soil waiting to be discovered.

Culture does not exist in a vacuum.

The surrounding soil we live in is the United States. To grow up Asian in America is a contextualized experience. Asians have a long and rich history in this country and for adoptees, we often feel like outsiders and imposters in the Asian American community because we have not learned about the history or had access to the ways Asian and American culture has mixed to create Asian-American culture. Surface culture, deep culture and the surrounding soil are three important facets to explore with your Asian adoptee, so they can grow and thrive in their new home.

The Authors

Joli Hanlon, Holt Adoptee Camp Director

Katelyn Dixon, Holt Post Adoption Programs Lead

The post Fostering Asian American & Adoptee Identity appeared first on Holt International.

I’ve been working in post-adoption services for more than 16 years. While unique histories and individual circumstances have brought thousands of adult adoptees to us over the years, many come asking similar questions about topics like adoption files and birth search. I’ll be providing insights and answers to some of those questions in this limited series I’m calling “Tips from Post Adoption Services.”

Read part one, “File Copies” and part two, “Birth Search.”

Part Three: Exploring Identity as an Adoptee

As a wrap up to my “Tips from Post Adoption” series, the recent announcement of Holt’s 2021 adoptee scholarship winners presents a nice opportunity to highlight a common theme that permeates most of the work we do in Post Adoption Services: Adoptee identity.

The idea of adoptee identity reveals itself in bits and pieces in Post Adoption’s services: a file copy to demonstrate we are, in fact, U.S. citizens, a quest for personal origins and belonging through birth search, short-term coaching or mentoring youth. The extra layers of identity adoptees have to wade through are apparent when observing the aggregate of our work, but less clear to anyone outside the department and Adoptee community.

One of the beauties of our scholarship competition is its ability to clearly articulate this complexity through hundreds of submissions from Adoptees themselves. From bold proclamations of their ties to birth country, fervent defenses of their adoptive homes or authentic statements of being comfortable with the “in-between,” they all express the complicated journey that is Adoptee identity.

I would encourage you to explore the submissions from Holt’s 2021 Adoptee Scholarship Winners (and past winners from 2020 and 2019) to get a sense of the often-unspoken truths of the adoptee experience. While you’re exploring the essays, videos, music and art of the winners, consider these few points to reflect on:

How does this relate to your experience at a similar life stage? Most of the featured authors and artists are/were graduating high school seniors. Even if you’re like me, 25+ years removed from high school, you might find the similarities these submissions have with your high school experiences oddly familiar.

What questions for the artist/author might help you better understand their perspectives, and in turn, your own? All adoptees are different and have different stories. However, there is a lot of evidence that suggests a commonality around certain parts of the adoptee experience, and understanding others’ experiences can often clarify steps along our own paths of identity development.

Are the stories inspirational, motivational or even exhausting? Experiencing adoptee stories can be affirming, validating and triggering all at once. While it’s typically better to know you’re not alone in your experiences, the simple nature of the information can be a reminder of past challenges you have faced. If you feel uneasy or drained through this exercise, be sure to take care of yourself and decompress with a friend or activity that relieves stress. If you’d like support from a staff member in Holt Post Adoption Services, please contact our team by emailing pas@holtinternational.org.

Figuring out who we are and where we belong is a universal experience that evolves and shifts as we age. Being adopted is one of countless variables that complicates that pursuit, and understanding its impact on your journey can be challenging to identify and articulate. If you’re at a moment where you feel adoption is especially relevant in your life and would like to talk about how it’s impacting you, all of us in Post Adoption would be delighted to listen.

If you are interested in counseling, beginning the birth search process or receiving copies of your files, please contact Holt’s Post Adoption Services department at pas@holtinternational.org.

About the author

Steve Kalb is an adult adoptee from the Midwest. He received his masters of social work in 2009 and is currently pursuing his PhD in social work and social research, focusing on adoptee community and empowerment models.  Since 2005, Steve has worked directly with hundreds of adoptees through adoptee camps and birth search counseling.  He has seen the need for, and benefit of, a strong adoptee community; that experience guides his adoptee advocacy work at Holt.

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

The post Adoptee Identity: Tips From Post Adoption Services appeared first on Holt International.

I’ve been working in post adoption services for more than 16 years. While unique histories and individual circumstances have brought thousands of adult adoptees to us over the years, many come asking similar questions about topics like adoption files and birth search. I’ll be providing insights and answers to some of those questions in this limited series I’m calling “Tips from Post Adoption Services.”

Read part one, “File Copies: Tips From Post Adoption Services.”

Part Two: Birth Search

We receive dozens of birth search requests each year. It’s the big question adoptees are asking and the big question that many of us ponder.

Today, I’ll be focusing on some of the most common expectations adoptees have about birth search and compare those to what I’ve observed over my career serving adoptees. Let’s go!

Expectation: I’ll call my adoption agency and they’ll give me the name of my birth parents.
My observations: Holt rarely has names or other identifying information about birth families. Whatever information we have, it’s been given to your adoptive parents through the adoption process. If you’d like your own records, we hold file copies that are readily available to you. The overseas partner agency might have additional information on your birth parents, but the choice to release that information is at their discretion.

Expectation: The search process will take (x) amount of time.
My observations: Timelines for search are unpredictable. There are many variables at play like the adoptee’s current age, birth country infrastructure, the extent of the birth parent(s)’s involvement at time of relinquishment, and more. I’ve seen searches take as little as two weeks to complete and others take years. Most successful cases fall somewhere in between these extremes, but in reality, the odds of finding birth parents in a closed intercountry adoption are low. They’re not zero, though, and if you feel the need to search, I strongly encourage you to contact your adoption agency and explore your options. It’s your right to search and we’re here to help.

Expectation: My birth parents have forgotten about me and I mean nothing to them. After all, if they really wanted to know me, they could just ask the agency.
My observations: Nearly every birth parent I’ve worked with admits to thinking regularly about their relinquished child and hopes they’re healthy and thriving. However, there is a complicated web of cultural and personal barriers in place that prevent them from searching for us. In most cases, two common fears prevent the birth parents from reaching out.

First, they fear the cultural stigma of being discovered by the people/community that led them to relinquish in the first place. For many parents, our birth and relinquishment are secrets, and contact with an adoption agency risks raising suspicion.

Second, birth parents fear rejection from the adoptee. Many birth parents carry so much shame over the relinquishment that they assume we are angry and resentful towards them. It’s completely valid and normal to have feelings of anger towards our birth parents, and they know that. However, they feel our legitimate anger means we’d never want them in our lives, which for many of us, couldn’t be further from the truth.  

Expectation: When I find my birth parents, all my questions will be answered.
My observations:Kind of. It depends on the primary motivation for search. If you’re mainly interested in concrete, tangible answers to questions like “Why was I relinquished?” or “Does cancer run in our family?” these are relatively simple questions that can be satisfied by a couple of email exchanges. But if you are driven to search in a quest for identity, the foreignness of our birth parents, figurative and literal, can serve as a painful reminder of all we’ve lost in the adoption process. While this experience can help clarify some things about the adoptee identity, it can be in a disappointing way.

Despite differences in motivation, there is no “wrong” reason for wanting to search and every adoptee has a right to do so. 

If you’re looking for more discussion on this topic, our post-adoption services department created a series of videos about birth search in which a group of Holt adoptees talk about their motivations for search and the complexities of the process. You can watch them on our YouTube channel.

If you decide to embark on the birth search journey, our post adoption department is here to support you, answer your questions and help as much as we can. Please feel free to contact us at pas@holtinternational.org.

About the author

Steve Kalb is an adult adoptee from the Midwest. He received his masters of social work in 2009 and is currently pursuing his PhD in social work and social research, focusing on adoptee community and empowerment models. Since 2005, Steve has worked directly with hundreds of adoptees through adoptee camps and birth search counseling.  He has seen the need for, and benefit of, a strong adoptee community.

Did you know our team provides support to all Holt adoptees?

Every adoptee has a unique and complex life experience. Our team strives to support all Holt adoptees, by providing help with birth search, citizenship and more.

adoptee support

The post Birth Search: Tips From Post Adoption Services appeared first on Holt International.