Blog – Page 6 – Transracial Journeys

Mother, May I?

- authored by April Dinwoodie,
Part-time Executive Director of Transracial Journeys

As a Black/Bi-racial transracially adopted person, do I need permission to love more than one mother? This May, I am once again faced with the “mother” of all holidays. It is a big one that warrants attention because of the complicated emotions that come up for so many adopted persons and members of the extended family of adoption. On top of the emotions that may already be present, there are the marketing messages that flood in from brands reminding us to celebrate the women in our lives that care for us.

As a kid, Mother's Day, was about my mom Sandi, the only mom I really knew. I was usually caught up in creating the PERFECT gift for her -- something to honor her, make her feel special and something I thought she’d really love. At some point though during the time leading up to Mother's Day, or on the actual day itself, thoughts of my biological mother crept in. I did not have the language to articulate them, so they came and went, or so I thought. What happened in reality is that my pain, grief, and loss, stayed present and unaccounted for, creating deep emotional confusion that would take years to unravel.

While I knew that I was adopted and there was another woman that I was connected to, there was no open door for me to consider or have a conversation about what that all actually meant and how I was to hold that information factually or emotionally. No one around me at the time had two mothers. It made sense for me to have only one, Sandi was a great mother, did I really need another one? Did I need another one that did not keep me? To be clear, my mom did not ever try to deny there was another woman that I was born to but she never encouraged me to think about her and we never really talked about her until I was a young adult and started to search.

Throughout my search I never thought about being mothered by anyone else but my mom, Sandi. I was not looking to replace my mom but I did have a deep desire to know and create some kind of connection to the woman who gave birth to me. At one point, early in my search, someone close to me asked me if my searching for my birth mom was weird for my adoptive mom and would I then have two mothers? While I was not looking for the two women to co-mother me, I did immediately wonder why having two moms under any circumstances would be a problem. At this point in my life, I had many examples of two families where two women were caretaking children so why is it that in adoption, there is often the either or versus the both/and?

After years of personal healing work, running a research institute for adoption and foster care, working in schools, and being part of a community where I am connected to thousands of members of the extended family of adoption, I have come up with a few things for adoptive parents to consider and actions to take when navigating the both/and of Mothers’ Day.

● As a starting place, think about how you hold Mothers’ Day and how you were mothered. For some, these are not easy reflections to have. For others, there is only joy and beautiful feelings. And likely for many, there is both love and joy, and complexity and pain. If these mix of emotions around mothers can be true for you it stands to reason that a mix of emotions can be present for the child you parent through adoption. Start with you and investigate how you truly hold this most sacred relationship.

● Once you have a sense of how you feel about your connections to mother, think about your holding of your child’s mother of origin. Are you in touch? Do you know her name, birthday, what she is good at? Do you know about her medical history? Do you know if she held your child? These are all things for you to think about and act where you can to gather up some of this information. You don’t have to jump in and do the most, but even taking a few minutes out over the next week or so to have some quiet time to reflect could go a long way. And remember to even mark your calendar to give yourself time to think about your emotions connected to this throughout the year. Make sure you are not tucking your thoughts, feelings, and emotions away. Demonstrate that you can be open with all that comes with adoption and understand this can be a gateway to important healing.

● With some of your emotions in check, you can work to be in even better conversation and connection with your child centered on the topic of mothers. Too often I hear parents transactionally asking their child “do you think about your birth mom? Do you ever want to try to meet her?”. Those big questions can be too much to negotiate with some children and youth. I love it when parents that have grounded themselves and have a sense of how they feel. They can open up a healthy conversation with the child they are parenting by first sharing their thoughts and feelings. Something like…”Today I thought about XX/your birth mom, I wondered how she was and I was sad that we don’t know more about her. Do you ever wonder about her too? Do you want to sit down and talk with me about that?” Remember, you know your child better than anyone so use your personal style to communicate, just don’t miss an opportunity to communicate and keep a door open.

● As you create the conditions at home for open and healthy dialogue and connection to mothers of origin and extended birth family, remember outside of the home your child can be challenged by having more than one mom to consider. This is the time of year when school projects in celebration of Mother’s Day are happening. If you’ve had the conversations about your child’s birth mother and they wanted to create art for them too, teachers and caregivers need to know that your child may need some extra time. If you are not there yet and your child does not want to share their family structure for a school project, you can create something together at home. Even if you are not in touch with the birth mom, you can create something special for the time you might have a connection. There are usually complex circumstances at the root of adoption. There will be a lot of work that will go into creating and keeping connections to family of origin but it does not mean you can’t keep an open conversation especially when the world around us is reminding us of the special people of our lives.

Who says we can’t have more than one mom? Why can’t we have love for two significant women in our lives and be connected to them in different ways? Do we have to ask for permission to love the people we care about? As mothers and as parents today entrusted with children through adoption, you have the amazing opportunity to actively expand your hearts to the people connected to your child. Even when it’s highly complex, there are ways to have open and caring conversations about and real connections to extended family.

Book Corner – May 2023

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.

Black Excellence: Maya Angelou – April 4, 1928-May 20, 2014

Poet, author, singer, dancer, activist, playwright and director Maya Angelou nee Marguerite Ann Johnson was born April 4, 1928. Over the span of her life and career, she accomplished many things, but the list of her extraordinary accomplishments may have started in San Francisco where, as a girl of 15, she became the first female African American streetcar conductor! Close to the end of her life, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 by President Barack Obama.

One of her most notable works was her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” which begins with the story of her life in Stamps, Arkansas where she was raised with her brother Bailey by their grandmother for part of their childhood. Angelou overcame almost insurmountable hurdles in childhood throughout her life to become one of the most important voices of American history. She is thought by many to be a “symbol of strength and leadership for the plight of women and the underprivileged.”

Mothers’ Day: Claiming Family Realities

May 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 May. Before letting your child get started, prepare by reading the parent pro-tip, from the Parent Guide, each month.

May Pro-Tip for Parents: : Be sure to build in time for you and your child to process all of the feelings that may come about surrounding Mothers’ Day. Resist the urge to expect gifts and instead give yourself something special to honor yourself as a mother or mother figure. Be prepared to help your child hold the both/and of this holiday.

This post is from our May, 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 - registration is open now!

Black Excellence: Martin Luther King, Jr formerly known as Michael Luther King, Jr

This month’s Black Excellence piece concerns famous African Americans who either changed their names or had their names changed by someone else.

With your child, choose someone from this list and try to do a little independent research on that individual and the names they’ve had. Have a conversation with your family about these name changes and why they happened. After that, have a conversation about your own names, their meanings and the reasons why any of your names may have changed. You’ll discover that people change their names for many different reasons.

Did you know Martin Luther King, Jr’s name was changed when he was five years old? His father, for whom he was named, made a visit to a Baptist World Alliance convention in Berlin, Germany in 1934. While there, he learned about the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. King Sr was so impressed by Martin Luther that he changed his name from Michael to Martin. Even though Martin Jr’s name was changed when he was five, his birth certificate wasn’t amended until he was 28!

Note: If you have the TRJ Conversations cards, they can guide you in these discussions about names. Stay tuned for a new and improved edition of June in April conversation cards coming soon!

See April's Conversation Cards

Book Corner – April 2023

What does it mean to be an ally? Seventeen YA authors share their thoughts and experiences in this encouraging and empowering book. Yes, mistakes will be made, but readers are encouraged to learn and try again. Each author has a different story to tell. Eric Smith writes about his life as a transracial adoptee, Kayla Whaley talks about her experiences growing up with muscular dystrophy, and Cam Montgomery writes about coming to terms with being Black and queer. Other writers talk about racism, transphobia, misogyny, and more. There’s lots of advice on how to be an ally throughout. Also included are lists of organizations, books, and digital media to check out. Highly recommended for teens - and adults, too! This book would be a great discussion-starter and teaching tool.

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.

Also Known As…

by Avril McInally

While preparing to write this month’s feature for our newsletter, I was reading April’s card entitled “Beginnings: What’s in a Name?” when I received an email from an old friend. My friend had just sent me an article called “Living in Adoption’s Emotional Aftermath: Adoptees reckon with corruption in orphanages, hidden birth certificates and the urge to search for their birth parents” by Larissa MacFarquahar. The article is a deep dive into the experiences of three women who were adopted and who also had their names changed by their adoptive parents. The article discusses other worlds, other narratives, other journeys and other names as well as families, cultures and countries of origin of three adopted women.

Do you have your child’s original birth certificate? Do you share the information on the birth certificate with your child? If there was a name given at birth, do you know it and do they?

Deanna Doss Shrodes aka Melanie Lynn Alley
As an adult knowing little about her own birth family Deanna Doss Shrodes states that she and other adoptees look for, “pieces of their lives or their selves that were missing, or had been falsified or renamed, trying to fit them to the pieces they had.” Shrodes discovered her own original birth certificate while playing a game of hide-and-go-seek with her sister. She found a box while hiding beneath her parent’s bed, and that box held her original name!

Joy Lieberthal aka Kim Young-ja aka Eun-hee aka
Joy Lieberthal was adopted as a young girl from Korea and grew up in a mostly-white populated community outside of New York. When searching for her biological family she came to discover that her original name was changed by the orphanage she was adopted from. The orphanage changed her name purposefully in order to fit the identity of another child who was supposed to have been adopted by the Lieberthals.

Joy grew up bullied and isolated from other Korean Americans. When she attended college, she began to have friendships with other Asians who then asked her to help start an Asian Student Union. She felt like a fraud until, “the international students accepted her as such and thought it was fun to fill in the gaps in her knowledge.”

After graduating from college, Joy went back to volunteer in the orphanage she was adopted from in Korea. There, she began to learn more about her origin story and eventually connected with her birth mother, but “When Joy came back from her time in Korea in the summer of 1994, she was angry—angry at the Korean government for giving so many children away, and angry at the ignorance of the Americans who had told her that she had been rescued, that Korea was poor and backward, that Korean men were abusive.”

Later, after having had returned to the U.S., she joined an organization called Also-Known-As which was started by her friend, Hollee McGinnis. “The mission of Also-Known-As is to build a community that empowers the voices of adult international adoptees, while providing resources and space to acknowledge the loss of birth country, culture, language and biological family.”

Angela Tucker aka Angela Burt aka Jocelyn Kate
The third adoptee featured in MacFarquhar’s article is transracial adoptee, Angela Tucker. You may know Ms. Tucker from her documentary “Closure” which portrays her reunification with her biological family. Angela was raised by white parents in a mostly community near Seattle, Washington.

After graduating from college, Angela became an adoption caseworker and thought that might give her access to her adoption paperwork. She didn’t gain that access at the agency. However, when she was younger, her parents did give her some adoption paperwork that had some important information about Angela’s birth parents and birthplace. Her birth mother’s surname was redacted on that paperwork but years later, Angela’s husband prompted her to look at and re-orient her search around her birth father’s unique name which was Oterious. After this change in search strategy, Angela located her birth parents.

April’s card reads:

“Your name is central and significant to who you are and, in essence, can be the keystone of your identity. When your child is adopted, there’s another world, another narrative, and perhaps another name that accompanies them along with their “who am I?” journey.”

“One thing almost everyone agrees on is that adult adoptees should have the unrestricted right to see their original birth certificates, rather than only the “amended” ones with the names of their adoptive parents (but this is the law in only a dozen states).” An original birth certificate doesn’t only contain one’s first name, but the names of biological parents too. Information on the original birth certificate can divulge one’s roots not just physically, but geographically and ancestrally too.

Had these three women grown up with free access to their original birth certificates, how would it have shaped their “who am I” journeys?

- Avril McInally no aka

April Beginnings: What’s in a Name?

April 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, presented to parents at Family Camp 2021. The card deck contains three cards for each month, designed for the children to ask their parents. Below are the questions for April. Before letting your child get started, prepare by reading the parent pro-tip, from the Parent Guide, each month.

April Pro-Tip for Parents: : Becoming more fully aware of the deeper elements of adoption related to names will prepare you to authentically hold the realities of identity formation experiences. Diving into these delicate topics may evoke strong emotions. Have confidence in yourself to take steps on this journey. As part of the TRJ community, you have the support, love, and guidance of this community to commit to moving toward complexities in service of a healthier, fuller experience of adoption for your child/children, your family, and for YOU!

This post is from our April, 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.

Black Excellence: Daryl “DMC” McDaniels

contributed by Jennie Rosenstiel

Hip Hop turns 50 this year and when it comes to hip-hop’s influence on American music and culture, there are few names as celebrated as Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. Frontman to pioneering new-school hip-hop trio Run-DMC from 1983 until 2002, DMC is beloved to music fans worldwide. But when it comes to DMC, being a musical icon is only part of the story. He’s also a writer, activist, and advocate for adoptees and foster (and former foster) youth.

Born and raised in Hollis, Queens, NY, DMC grew up in a middle-class family and spent his days in Catholic schools. He was still in high school when he taught himself to DJ, a developing passion that would lead him to 3 platinum albums. Though he was bullied at school, DMC reflected that at home it “felt like Christmas every day.” That picture of the past became unimaginably complicated when DMC was researching his early life for his autobiography, King of Rock: Respect, Responsibility, and My Life with Run-DMC. It was then–at 35–that DMC learned of his own experience in foster care and ultimate adoption. As a late discovery adoptee, he has spent the better part of two decades grappling with the truth of his past and all of the many emotions and questions it brought up for him. But through therapy, building community with other adopted persons, and his art, DMC has worked hard to integrate his previously hidden truth.

In the years since learning of his adoption, DMC has joined with fellow adoptee and casting agent, Sheila Jaffe to form The Felix Organization, providing mentorship and summer camp experiences to foster youth. He’s become a voice for the rights of adoptees to access original birth certificates. He’s collaborated with fellow adoptee Sarah McLachlan on “Just Like Me.” And he’s authored even more books–a memoir entitled Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide, children’s books including Darryl’s Dream, and multiple comic books.

Today, DMC is still making music, but his work as an advocate for adoptees and foster youth is arguably just as important. While no adoptee is obligated to disclose their trauma, DMC’s sensitive handling of his own past and present have turned an unknown history into an opportunity to help and inspire others. Through his art and activism, DMC has become one of the most important voices for adoptees and foster youth in America. DMC is a prolific and accomplished musician, writer, producer, and now comic book publisher. It’s difficult to imagine a better representative of the complexities inherent in the “lucky adoptee” narrative nor a more accomplished example of Black Excellence.

Darryl and his wife Zuri joined us (virtually) for camp in 2020.

For more, you can listen to a beautifully honest and nuanced conversation between DMC and our own April Dinwoodie from her podcast here.

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.