For adoptees, an ocean of questions
Many reach out to biological parents while searching for answers on identity
“T his past year was the first time I have ever gotten in contact with my birth dad, and for my whole life I thought that he didn’t want me in his life and that he wasn’t interested in talking to me,” said Marika Sayers, a junior at New Mexico School for the Arts.
Sayers found her birth father on Facebook. She sent him a friend request via the social media site and he immediately sent her a message of introduction. “He and I became pretty close. We don’t talk that much, but we have a chill relationship where we can talk to each other when we have to,” she said.
Sayers, who was adopted as a baby, has a story that is not unique. About 135,000 children are adopted per year in the United States, according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway. Of those 135,000, 40 percent are adopted from foster care systems. While there are more than 105,000 foster care children that are eligible and waiting for adoption, the United States still adopts more children than any other country.
Sayers has a completely different relationship with her birth mother than her birth father.
“She was unhealthy, on drugs [and] making choices that were not good for her,” she said. Because of this, Sayers is grateful that her birth mother put her up for adoption. Otherwise, she would not have met her adoptive parents.
Jenn Love, a writer and instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts, was not able to find or reach out to her birth parents until later in her life. “In my mind, I created someone who really wanted me but had such a demanding life that she didn’t have time, and as I get older I realize that’s probably not the case and that’s fine,” she said.
When Love was in her early 20s, she was able to retrieve a photo of her birth mother from an investigator. The image she had in her head was very different than the real one.
“She’s not a bad looking lady, but she’s kind of scary looking,” Love said. “There’s something in her eyes that’s very sad, and she’s not smiling in the photo, either.”
Joy Farkas, an adopted teen from China who is a sophomore at Santa Fe High, said, “There will always be a connection with a child who has grown up with an adult, but I’m always going to wonder who my mother was and why she didn’t want me. I think, to the families, it can be a struggle because the kid obviously is going to want to know why.”
“When you are a teenager, you’re discovering who you are — how you’re the same and how you’re different from your parents and from your friends. … When you’re adopted, you don’t know your biological parents. If you have a closed adoption, you might not even have a picture of them or know what they look like, so it does make it hard to figure out how you are like and not like the biological parents,” said Nichoe Lichen, president of Adoption and Foster Care Alliance of New Mexico.
A large part of being a teenager is finding one’s own identity. In a world full of societal pressures, it only seems to get more difficult when navigating life and friendships as an adopted child.
“I’ll never forget that I had a good friend when I was 8, and one day she said, ‘I’m not going to be friends with you anymore,’ ” Love said. “And I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘You’re always talking about the fact that you’re adopted.’ For the record, I don’t think I always did it, but because I was a very unhappy child due to circumstances at home, it was something I felt was important to mention. When you’re a kid, you feel it and you just want to scream it to the world.”
After that experience, Love refrained from talking about her adoption. However, as she grew older, she got more comfortable with sharing her story.
Sayers remembers many times she had to deal with shocked peers and close friends when bringing up her adoption. Sayers said that many of her longtime friends are often surprised because she has the same blue eyes and fair skin as her adoptive parents.
“I don’t know why, but a lot of my friends, even though I’ve told them multiple times that I’m from Nevada, always think I’m adopted from Russia, and I have never once said that I’m adopted from Russia,” Sayers said.
Miriam Jensen, a senior at Central High School in Arkansas, was adopted from China at an early age. When discussing a recent trip she took to her hometown, Jensen said, “I would get stared at as I would walk in between my parents [who are] white. I could tell the locals were talking about me … so that was kind of uncomfortable.”
When talking about race, Farkas, who also was adopted by a primarily white family, can relate to Jensen’s experiences.
“I have always thought of myself as American first and Chinese second, but I definitely do feel like I am Chinese. This is my culture, and even if I don’t have people teaching it to me, I can still understand it,” she said, “I am American. I was raised that way, this is where I’ve lived for most of my life and this is my home now.”
Along with the process of finding one’s complete identity, Lichen said, “Every person is so different and we all have our personal issues, but the three core issues of being adopted are grief, loss and identity.”
When it comes to unraveling these complicated aspects of one’s life, Love encourages everyone to embrace the culture of talking, rather than suppressing certain issues.
She said, “Usually we keep things inside because we fear that we’re going to be rejected for it or like it doesn’t matter. But everything matters.”
Sayers similarly reached out to other kids and said, “As cliché as it sounds, just know that you’re not alone and that there are people that are going through the same thing.”