March: Changing the Script on Adoption, Luck and Microaggressions

by Avril McInally

By now, many of you have probably experienced the “Lucky to be adopted” commentaries that society heaps upon adoptees and families formed or extended by adoption. It’s March, I’m thinking about St. Patrick’s Day with its accompanying themes of rainbows, pots of gold and luck.

When I think about luck and I look back on my life, I’m struck by the intrusiveness of luck conversations which began occurring after I adopted my daughter. So many strangers have said to my child, “you’re so lucky to have been adopted!” Sometimes, this commentary would include remarks that my daughter should be grateful for my “rescue” of her. As these assaults accumulated and I learned more about race and racism, I began to view them as microaggressions. As I processed and unpacked more of my daughter’s lived experience, I arrived at the basic fact that luck had nothing to do with her adoption journey at all!

Understanding Microaggressions and Their Impact

Microaggressions are defined as the everyday, subtle, intentional — and oftentimes unintentional — interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups. The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination or macroaggressions, is that people who commit microaggressions might not even be aware of them.”

This lack of awareness…this obtuseness has caused my children and my daughter’s family of origin cumulative damage and pain. Yet if I were to tell the commenters of the damage they were causing, they often would react defensively. They disregard and have no understanding of our children’s loss of their family of origin and their family of origin’s loss of their child! Luck has no place in adoption.

Taking some liberties with the article “Microaggressions are a big deal: how to talk them out and when to walk away" by Andrew Limbong, I made some edits in order to reflect our particular perspective.

Oftentimes people of color [, adoptees and children] are asked to educate white [non-adopted, adults] people on issues that the person of color [adoptee and child] has lived with and thought about for their entire lives. That can be very psychologically and emotionally exhausting for a person to then have to care about the white [non-adopted and adult] person's feelings and to take those extra efforts so that they can learn something that they should have — and could have — learned throughout the duration of their life.”

Microaggressions from the Perspective of a Transracially-Adopted Child

In most of the literature I've read about microaggressions, the status of the adoptee is not considered. So, I took the liberty (with apologies to the author) of viewing this theme in particular from the perspective of a transracially-adopted child. There’s not a lot written about microaggressions in adoption. That’s why I’m talking about it here and why I’m shining a light on a useful article called “Helping Your Adopted Child Handle Adoption Microaggressions” at creatingafamily.org. Not only does the article identify microaggressions towards adopted children, but it gives some scripts you can rehearse with your child to prepare them for these intrusive comments and questions.

Being Our Children's Allies

At the heart of the matter, we need to be not just our children’s parents, but their allies. When they’re old enough, we can ask them how they would like us to respond in situations like this. Until they’re old enough, it’s up to us to stand up for our children. The adults in these conversations often unwittingly challenge or harm our children’s identities. These conversations are not ok and the children entrusted to us will mature into adults that may still need their elders to stand beside them.

After having read and researched this month’s feature for our newsletter, I’ve come to see the term microaggression is falling from favor. In the book How to Be an Antiracist, author Ibram X. Kendi writes, “I do not use ‘microaggression' anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts - ‘micro’ and ‘aggression.’ A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term ‘abuse’ because aggression is not as exacting a term.” Dr. Kendi is clearly addressing racism here and not the intersectionality of the adoptive status of our children, but we can call it out for what it is.

These luck conversations and savior conversations are abusive.
Whatever you call “it”, Dear Reader, recognize it for what it is and continue to protect and love your children.

For help starting conversations about the "luck" language with your adopted children, see Preparation: Transracial Adoption: Be Ready! and refer to our post last year, The Luck Code.

What can help is to hold some space for having a conversation with your family about this month’s prompts. The conversation starters on our cards could help when it comes to others’ reactions to our children and families, as well as the ensuing comments of luck and saviorism that may also be aired.

This post is from our March, 2023, newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, as well as information about our annual Transracial Journeys Family Camp and our monthly Zoom call to provide support for our transracial adoption parents please subscribe.


Preparation: Transracial Adoption: Be Ready!

Have you had strangers ask inappropriate questions of you and your family? “Is she/he/them yours?” - “Where are they from?” - “Your child is SO lucky”. These invasive questions are part of being a family that does not match and where differences of race are obvious to the world around you. It is important to be prepared for these intrusions.

March Pro-Tip to Foster Conversations About Transracial Adoptions

At Transracial Journeys we send our families conversation cues each month, from our Transracial Journeys card deck, given to all our families at Family Camp. The card deck contains three cards for each month, designed for the children to ask their parents. Below are the questions for March. Before letting your child get started, prepare by reading the parent pro-tip, from the Parent Guide, each month.

March Pro-Tip for Parents: Make sure you have thought about specific times when moments of intrusion or inquiry have happened to your family. Think about the conversations you have had with friends and extended family when they were reflecting on how they feel or think you and your children should feel about adoption. These are intricate and complicated realities and thinking about them and talking about them will help ease what often lives under the surface.

Transracial Adoption Resources

CARD ONE: IDENTITY
• Do you feel lucky to be my parent?
• Do you think I should feel lucky to be your child?

CARD TWO: RELATIONSHIPS
• How do you explain our family to friends and family? How about to strangers that ask about us?

CARD THREE: EMBRACING AND FACING DIFFERENCES OF RACE AND CULTURE
• What are some unlucky things about adoption?

This post is from our March, 2023 e-newsletter.  Pictures on the website are from Family Camp. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, with Family Camp updates, please subscribe.  You will get invitations to our Parent Meet-Up each month, a virtual meeting to act as a transracial adoption support group - sharing issues, ideas and strategies for creating a culture of communication and curiosity in your home, as well as monthly card prompt to keep the conversations about race, adoption, family, love and relationships front and center all year long.  And lastly, you'll always be made aware of important dates for our main event;  Transracial Journeys Family Camp!


Book Corner – March 2023

Somewhere Sisters:
A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the
Meaning of Family

By Erika Hayasaki

 

Vietnamese twins Loan and Ha were separated when they were babies. Ha was raised by her aunt in a loving home in rural Vietnam. Loan was adopted, renamed Isabella, and grew up in a loving home in a Chicago suburb. Isabella’s American family weren’t told their daughter was a twin, and when they found out, Isabella’s mom started to search for Ha. After many years, Isabella and Ha finally met and began to truly reunite.

Somewhere Sisters is the story of Isabella, Ha, and their families, but it’s much more. Their story is a framework for information about many aspects of adoption and twinship. Readers will learn about twin research, the history of international and transracial adoption, how a child’s environment affects them, and much more. Somewhere Sisters is touching, informative – and very hard to put down!

Book Recommendations for Families Created in Transracial Adoption

Our Transracial Journeys families regularly seek out books to share with their children and to read for themselves, as white parents of black children. We are fortunate to have a resource in the Transracial Journey's Board of Direcors Secretary, Avril McInally. With a Master of Library Science from Kent State University and over 35 years as a public librarian, Avril and her colleague, Vicki Richards, collaborate to curate phenomenal book recommendations for our children and parents.   The Book Corner is a regular feature in our Transracial Journeys monthly newsletters. If you would like to receive monthly book recommendations via email, please subscribe.


February Intersections: Love and Black History Month

With St. Valentine’s Day and Black History Month, this short month brings so many foundational elements of transracial adoption to explore.

February Pro-Tip to Foster Conversations About Transracial Adoptions

At Transracial Journeys we send our families conversation cues each month, from our Transracial Journeys card deck, given to all our families that attend Family Camp. The card deck contains three converstion cards for each month, designed for the children to ask their parents. Below are the questions for February. Before letting your child get started, prepare by reading the parent pro-tip, from the Parent Guide, each month.

February Pro-Tip for Parents: Be extremely honest with yourselves about what may be a real lack of knowledge and experience with differences of race/class/culture prior to parenting transracially. As you think about this, also think about ways you are addressing and will continue to address this lack.

CARD ONE: IDENTITY
• What is one thing you love about yourself?
• What is one thing you love about me?

CARD TWO: RELATIONSHIPS
• Who was the first person you loved?

CARD THREE: EMBRACING AND FACING DIFFERENCES OF RACE AND CULTURE
• What makes us different?
• What makes us similar?
• What are some new ways we can honor and celebrate Black Excellence, Joy, Resilience?

This post is from our February, 2023, e-newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, please subscribe.  You will get invitations to our Parent Meet-Up each month, a virtual meeting to act as a transracial adoption support group - sharing issues, ideas and strategies for creating a culture of communication and curiosity in your home, as well as monthly card prompt to keep the conversations about race, adoption, family, love and relationships front and center all year long.  And lastly, you'll always be made aware of important dates for Transracial Journeys Family Camp.


February Featured Article

How Do We Balance Love, Black History and the Reality of Police Brutality?

author: Avril McInally

It’s February. Our chronologies and calendars feature both Black History Month and Valentine’s Day (read this month's parent conversation theme, February Intersections: Love and Black History Month). Fresh on our minds, is the recent murder of Tyre Nichols. As we attempt to process the pain and the confusion, we are reminded of how vital it is to the intricacies of the Black experience and celebrate Black excellence every single day of the year. As the world and our media shouts, “love, love, and more love” and “Black history is important and relevant,” we sit with the reality of how urgent it is for white people to be anti-racist and work to truly have empathy for what it means to be a Black person in the world today!

I began writing this column around the release of the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols’ video - January 27, 2023. While sorting out my own complicated thoughts and emotions on whether or not to “witness” the video, I held a twin reckoning of my children’s reactions to seeing the video. How do I do this? How do I hold my own fear and concern while making space for my children’s fears also? Then, my phone blew up with text messages from other parents, who were like me, worried not only about their children seeing the video but also their extended family members of adoption, their friends and the Black community at large. Like them, the concern snowballed quickly from my family, to my community to the more universal community of Black and brown folk living with these brutal conditions of race in America day in and day out! How to love? How to respect? How to protect? How to care? How to have compassion? How to make change? How to engage? These are all questions we can ask ourselves not only at times like this (when, absurdly, the media is celebrating February’s themes of love and Black beauty while simultaneously featuring assaults on Black people), but all year long.

In part 5 of April’s, “How to Love a Transracially Adopted Person”, she writes, “I can’t help but wonder if all of these losses of our Black and Brown brothers and sisters are actually my Black and Brown brothers and sisters. I wonder if I will lose members of my family of origin before I find them. I wonder if they are ok and as I am worrying about them I realize I need people to worry about me and wonder if I am ok. I need my loved ones around me to recognize that these heartbreaking losses hit me different and I am losing part of myself.”

How are you checking in with your children right now? How are you supporting them and listening to them? How are you checking in with the Black and Brown community and showing them support and love too? This awareness and diligence is my forever Valentine to my children and to the people who share their race.

In the words of Nikki Giovanni, remember:

"Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us."

This post is from our February, 2023, e-newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, please subscribe.  You will get invitations to our Parent Meet-Up each month, a virtual meeting to act as a transracial adoption support group - sharing issues, ideas and strategies for creating a culture of communication and curiosity in your home, as well as monthly card prompt to keep the conversations about race, adoption, family, love and relationships front and center all year long.


Create Gates and Doors for Your Family with the Calendar

Happy New Year and happy January! With the dawning of each new year, many of us make pacts or contracts with ourselves to either do or not do something, so we make New Year’s resolutions. The Roman god Janus, for whom the month of January is named, comes to mind. He is depicted as a man with two faces, one face looks forward and the other looks back.

This two-headed depiction of an old, Roman god may resonate with those of us living in families experiencing multiple dualities ourselves. Families like ours, formed by transracial adoption, experience dualities of identity in which there are several intersectionalities. Race, gender expression, religious beliefs, class, disability and adoption are but a few of these intersectionalities.

Janus was also the guardian of gates and doors. He presided over the temple of peace, where the doors were opened only during wartime. It was a place of safety, where new beginnings and resolutions could be forged.” How you manage your gates and doors this year to promote your own temple of peace may take some planning, some resolve or some resolution.

Parenting with the calendar

April gives some great tips for January and nurturing this type of intentionality in her deck of cards: Read January Relationships: Honoring the Whole Family

  • “Think about culturally diverse holidays that can be added [to your calendar] and make a plan to learn about these new holidays together as a family.”
  • “Work together to decide the best way to honor both the fun days and make room to honor and prepare for the harder ones.”

Parenting with the Calendar: Gateways and Doorways

As parents, we manage gateways and doorways constantly. Think about the calendar year ahead, and write down some gateways or doorways you may want to nurture opening, guard and keep closed or crack open a little? How do we purposefully navigate our dualities? Like Janus, how can we look back and how can we look forward? How can we honor, celebrate and mourn as families where we have been and where we are going? Using our calendars to light the way can be a start.

For more ideas about governing your calendar read our previous post, The New Year and Hard Relationships.

This post is from our January, 2023, e-newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, please subscribe.


January Relationships: Honoring the Whole Family

January is a time when folks traditionally take stock of where they are and may even make some resolutions for a new diet, more time exercising, or commitments to spending quality time with family. For families experiencing transracial adoption, January can offer a time to think about the year ahead and together as a family, continue the expansive journey of purposefully navigating family and differences together.

January Pro-Tip to Foster Conversations About Transracial Adoptions

At Transracial Journeys we send our families conversation cues each month, from our Transracial Journeys card deck. The card deck contains three cards for each month, designed for the children to ask their parents. Below are the questions for January. Before letting your child get started, prepare by reading the parent pro-tip, from the Parent Guide, each month.

January Pro-Tip for Parents: Do some pre-planning so that you have time to process some of the harder anniversaries or days on the calendar before discussing with children. Have some ideas to share for new dates to mark on the calendar so your children can react and be inspired to think about what they’d like to add as well.

CARD ONE: IDENTITY
• Each family member thinks about a few dates they want to add to the calendar - from a whimsical day like “national doughnut day” to Birth Mother’s Day (the Sat before Mother’s Day) to the anniversary of the death of a loved one. Each
one of these days can be placed on the calendar with ample time to prepare!

CARD TWO: RELATIONSHIPS
• Work together to decide the best way to honor both the fun days and make room to honor and prepare for the harder ones.

CARD THREE: EMBRACING AND FACING DIFFERENCES OF RACE AND CULTURE
• What are some unlucky things about adoption?

This post is from our January, 2023, e-newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, please subscribe.


Black Excellence – Chris Kennedy, the Black Santa

Two years ago, Chris Kennedy put up an inflatable, seven foot tall, Black Santa in his front yard. An angry community member responded with a racist note stating:

“Please remove your negro Santa Claus yard decoration,” the letter, signed by an anonymous “Santa Claus,” read. “You should try not to deceive children into believing that I am negro. I am a caucasian (white man, to you) and have been for the past 600 years.”

In response to the note, Mr. Kennedy did not remove his Santa and added a second Black Santa. He posted about the incident on Facebook and his neighbors and community responded by decorating their front lawns with Black Santas too.

Chris Kennedy's front lawn in Little Rock. After he received a racist note demanding he remove the Black Santa outside his home, he added a second one. (Courtesy of Chris Kennedy)

In response to the note, Mr. Kennedy did not remove his Santa and added a second Black Santa. He posted about the incident on Facebook and his neighbors and community responded by decorating their front lawns with Black Santas too.

Inspired to further action, he stated,

“I couldn’t let hatred win,”...“You don’t like me having a Black Santa in my front yard? I will go and be the Santa Claus for the entire city.”

So he rented a Santa suit, began taking photos with his daughter and then traveled across the country from his home in North Little Rock, Arkansas to attend a Santa Camp run by the New England Santa Society in New Hampshire. At camp, he was the only Black Santa. His experience at camp is portrayed in a new HBO documentary “Santa Camp” along with the stories of a disabled man and a transgender man. Get your hankies on hand before you watch!

(Rated TV-MA for mature audiences. The content is intended for adults, and isn't really suitable for children under the age of 17.)

Chris Kennedy became a professional Santa Claus after receiving a racist note two years ago, demanding him to remove the inflatable Black Santa from his front lawn in Little Rock. (HBO Max/John Tully)


Creating New Traditions to Reflect Our Families and Celebrate Their Identities

author: Avril McInally

For many of us, holidays can be a combination of many emotions and elements. Do we have all the candles we need for our Menorah or for our Kinara? Have we gotten our holiday lights and decorations up? How are we managing our budgets? Is the house tidy and clean enough for our house guests? Do we have enough food? Speaking of food, what about those special recipes we need to prepare? Do we have all of the proper ingredients? And the gifts? Did we purchase enough gifts to make sure no one is left out or one child gets more than another? These are the scenarios for many families at Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa or Yule, yet what of our families? Our families manage these aforementioned holiday traditions of hosting, eating and gifting as well as creating space for our adopted children, their race, the family they were born into, their culture, their religion and more!Read our previous post: ‘Tis the Season to Reminiscence

Because our families represent multiple aspects of identity, heritage, and culture, we visit the idea or concept of intersectionality. Some intersectionalities that help to describe our families include race, gender, sexuality, adoption, age and religion. We have several aspects of intersectionality to honor, celebrate, foster and sometimes protect. There’s a little more “juggling” for us to do to manage these precious aspects of our children’s and family’s identities. One way to celebrate “us” is to create new traditions that reflect our families and honor their identities. Read our post about the conversation cards this month December - Reflections: Making and Breaking Traditions 

Traditions can be a way for families to connect and memorialize important life events. To adoptive families, creating traditions is more than a way to bond, but it can also be a great way to commemorate each family member’s roots. By incorporating activities that celebrate birth culture, adopted children can develop a strong sense of identity.

This year, I’m going to work on creating a holiday card for our family with my family. I’ll make a list of our intersectionalities with my adult daughters. Black, White, Adopted, Not Adopted, Atheist, Immigrant, American, Cisgender, Female, Male….. You get the picture. Then, we’ll draw a Venn diagram of our family’s identity and decorate it. Heck yeah, “This is Us”! This is who we are with some holly on top! This could be a new holiday tradition for us. If you start this tradition now with young children, you can save your cards every year and watch how your lists morph or mature.

In addition to creating and honoring traditions, it’s important to make time to honor our extended family of adoption as we gather to eat a special meal, to light a candle, to build a fire on one of the longest nights of the year or simply when we tuck our children into bed at night. Remember it’s important to honor and/or acknowledge the family members absent from your home. It’s the “most wonderful time of the year,” yet at the height of festivities and anniversaries, our children may be experiencing loss and sadness. Make space for children who are processing these emotions and thoughts and love on ‘em a little more and give them space to talk about their feelings. And last but not least, you may also have emotions surrounding losses or complexities that can come up as well.  Building a tradition of inclusion, empathy and love starts with tending to ourselves!

This post is from our December, 2022, newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, please subscribe.


December – Reflections: Making and Breaking Traditions 

The December holidays give us an opportunity to think about traditions tied to different cultures and religions. Regardless of what you and your family honor and celebrate, we can be inspired to take a closer look at what traditions mean to us and how we can expand our thinking and actions.

December Pro-Tip to Foster Conversations About Transracial Adoptions

At Transracial Journeys we send out cues for conversations each month. Our Transracial Journeys card deck contains 3 cards for each month that the children use to ask their parents questions. Below are the questions for December. Before getting started, read the parent pro-tip each month.

December Pro-Tip for Parents: Resist the urge to hold tight onto traditions that may be holding you back from fully embracing new ideas that may better honor your child’s culture. Also think about simplifying or modifying some of the traditions you now honor to make room for new ones.

CARD ONE: IDENTITY
• As a kid, did you celebrate any December holidays?
• If so, which ones?

CARD TWO: RELATIONSHIPS
• Were there things that you would do year after year as a family during the month of December or maybe other months of the year?

CARD THREE: EMBRACING AND FACING DIFFERENCES OF RACE AND CULTURE
• What are some new traditions or holidays you’d like to learn more about and/or try?

This post is from our December, 2022, e-newsletter. If you would like to get our newsletter in your inbox each month, please subscribe.