I wish you weren’t mine
By Alice Audrain, Parent and Chair, Adopt4Life African-Canadian Committee, Board of Directors
Last week, my daughter was having one of those insecure days, the kind of day where she fears we might suddenly stop loving her for no reason and with no warning. She thinks that in order to prevent this from happening she must destroy her siblings and claim that space for herself. So, she decided to make their lives a living hell.
I lost my temper. I yelled that her behavior was hurtful and unacceptable, and I went to sit on the couch to calm myself down. Wrong move. She came in crying and said that she was sorry and so grateful that I adopted her (she’s 5, BTW), but I wasn’t ready to hear her so I told her we would talk later. Later that evening, when I was putting her to bed, I was ready to tell her how I felt. How I really felt.
I told her, in a very calm and loving voice, that I didn’t think she really was grateful that she had been adopted. She told me I was right.
I told her that I believe she wishes she could’ve stayed with her bio mom. She told me I was right.
I told her that I believe she is very sad sometimes because she is adopted, unlike many of the other kids at school. She told me I was right.
I told her I believe that she thinks our love is limited because she was abandoned once, so it could happen again, and she needs to make sure she had all the love to feel safe. She told me I was right.
So, I told her what I should have told her a long time ago: I wish she wasn’t mine.
I wish her bio mom had been able to keep her and that she didn’t have to be separated from her. I wish society was kinder and fairer to everybody regardless of their differences. I wish her life wasn’t so unfair that she couldn’t choose what’s best for herself and that adults had all the power to make those decisions for her. I wish she didn’t have to struggle in every part of her life because of the in-utero trauma that impacted her brain. I wish she didn’t feel so overwhelmed and powerless so often. I wish I could do more, be more for her, whenever she needs me. I wish things were completely different.
I want her to know I’m grieving with her because I hope she can tell me when she feels overwhelmed and sad. I want her to know we both think her situation is unfair and we are angry and sad about it. Her, way more than me, but I share her pain and I’ll acknowledge it whenever she needs me to. Adoption isn’t a great fix, it’s a necessity that should be the very last resort. Adoption is trauma. But resilience is finding joy through pain. And there’s joy in adoption because it means she will never have to face all this alone.
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If you knew exactly what you were getting into when you adopted a child and you’ve faced and conquered every challenge that’s stood in your way while parenting a child with trauma, I’m not sure this post is for you. If you also feel you are well aware of the extent of racial inequalities in Canada, you can save yourself some time and stop reading now.
Alright, let’s talk a little.
I’ve had an incredibly hectic life. I was born in France to a black Caribbean mother who lived on the streets through part of her adolescence, and to a very white, blond and blue-eyed farm boy from a quasi-secluded rural part of France. My sweet dad started to show symptoms of Bipolar disorder type 1 when I was still a baby, and he took his own life when I was 12. I have no memories of having a quiet, stable and “normal” life, ever. I grew up half an adult and half a child. I started activism at 12, came out as queer at 16, was a student leader at 18, and met my wife at 21—she lived in Canada and had 3 young kids at the time, and she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer a couple of days after we confessed our love to each other. And so much more. But none of it compared to becoming an adoptive parent. None of it.
Whatever you call it (adoption, kinship, Kafala, customary care, etc.), welcoming a child or children into your family to form long lasting bonds is as wonderful as it is painfully complicated. Welcoming my younger children flipped my world upside down.
I grew up thinking adoption was a very organic way to become a family. My biological aunt was adopted by her own aunt and uncle. In fact, she was adopted from my biological grandparents—their last-born child. Sound weird to you? Not to me, and not in my Caribbean culture. In North America it is known as “Black Adoption” and it is part of what descendants of slaves kept from their African heritage. Every culture sees and does adoption in specific ways. But I always knew who everyone in my family was, and my aunt’s adoptive parents became my bonus grandparents. My aunt told me that she was very grateful for her family and always thanked her biological mother (my grandmother) for giving her such wonderful parents. This is what I aspire to, and I remember deciding at a young age that I, too, wanted to adopt. To me, adoption was openness, connection, and joy.
So, imagine my disbelief when I realized what a closed adoption was. Imagine how difficult it was to accept that my own kids needed (even if only temporarily) to be in a closed adoption. I discovered that there might not be a lot of joy in my adoption after all.
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My wife and I did not apply to become adoptive parents. We’re in a kinship adoption, which means we were our kids’ best choice of placement when they became “adoptable” because we were already in their lives (we were doing respite care for their foster family since the kids were babies). We already had three children at the time, and we had to all sit-down together to decide if we wanted to move forward with the adoption. The kids were over-the-moon with the idea of having two new sisters they already loved. My wife later told me that she had secretly wanted this all along (thanks, honey!), but I was very cautious and uncertain, which I always am, to be honest. I had to think deeply about what it meant for me as a person. I had an idea of what their needs were, even if they ended up being far greater in the end, but I had this lingering guilt that would not go away. I realize now that it’s because I felt so many emotions toward my children’s birth mother (I really don’t like or endorse the term “birth mother,” but use it for common understanding). I knew more than I should have about her, but also extraordinarily little at the same time. I still know a lot of facts, but honestly, I don’t know who she is beyond her mistakes. What I am sure of is that she wished she could have kept my children with her, but reached a point where it was impossible.
My daughters and son are her sixth, seventh and ninth children placed for adoption through the system. My own feelings about closed adoption bear no comparison to her heartbreaks. Yet I had a lot of mixed feelings. I’m a compassionate person, but her actions kept hurting my children and I couldn’t help being resentful towards her. She took drugs and drank alcohol while pregnant, she missed more visits than we could count, she lied repeatedly, she begged us to take-in our son when he was born and then lied to try to get him back, and then disappeared. The list is long, and we’re tired for all the reasons you know. I wanted to hate her.
But one day, my children’s former foster mom shared a piece of their bio mom’s history that I hadn’t known. She was the “troubled child” of very religious mom, a migrant from a different country who had brought her daughter to Canada to give her a better life, only to discover that Canada wasn’t as welcoming as she thought (and so, so cold!). She was thrown out of her mother’s house at 16 and then was pretty much on her own. Something clicked. I recognized it as my own mother’s story.
***
My mother is one of the best human beings I’ve ever met. She’s funny, she’s smart, she’s kind, she’s generous, she’s compassionate, and she’s everything to me. She’s my source for hope and inspiration. But for years, it has been a source of deep pain in my life that I can see clear as day what my mom could have become if she wasn’t born a black woman in a racist society. She’s faced more challenges and barriers than most people. She’s underemployed and underappreciated. She has always had to deal with negative stereotypes and low expectations. People always expect her to fail and she constantly has to prove her worth.
I believe the same is true for my kids’ bio mom. The day I learned her story, I was shaken to my core—I had living proof in my own house of an ugly truth: being a black woman who struggles with no support is a social death sentence. She was condemned before she even had a chance. She was never seen has worth the effort. How was she supposed to overcome all the barriers that stood in her way?
I’ve experienced Canada as a biracial black woman and things are not different here. I have more privileges, support and opportunities than her and yet some days I feel the barriers I face are insurmountable. Like many immigrants, I thought Canada was this safe haven for queer people of colour where we could be free from oppression and discrimination. In some ways it is. But I still experience racism and discrimination here and so do my children. In daycare, a little boy told the daycare provider that my one-year old should always be the bad wolf in the game they play because he’s black. I thought kids were not supposed to see colour?! I have other stories, but I don’t think I need to list them in order to acknowledge that racism is a problem everywhere.
As adoptive parents, we know how hard it is to raise our kids because of their developmental issues, their traumas, their pains, the crushed dreams, and so on. Imagine them being black on top of it all. I’ve been petrified knowing that I have to support my children not only through their individual realities but, in the context of a society, plagued with structural and institutionalized racism. How can I possibly do this? How can I keep their hope for the future alive? How do I preserve the joy and the pleasure of life while teaching them about racial inequalities? I’ve had to take many deep breaths since I adopted all of them.
But things are what they are, and as we witness what has been unfolding these past weeks with black communities in North America and beyond, I have found myself hopeful enough to think that we could transform this society so that it’s better and fairer for everybody. As adoptive parents, some of us black or racialized, we are the perfect allies. Who knows better than us that unless you walk in our shoes you have no idea what it is to be us? To live it every day? To know the struggles we face? Well it’s the same for people who are facing racism every day and it has been crushing our lives for far too long. It’s time to start the serious work of putting an end to it and transforming our society for the better. It’s time to demand justice for Black and Indigenous families who are disproportionately targeted by the child welfare system. It’s time to develop more tools to support family reunification and open adoptions. It’s time for more and better recruitment within children’s own communities of adoptive and foster parents. It’s time to demand adequate racial justice training for social workers. It’s time to invest in our communities. And it’s time to change our society so that black women like my kids’ birth mother—and my mom—have a chance to succeed and thrive.
I hope we can count you as an ally on our way to justice. Who’s ready to be even stronger together?!
Get in touch with me at african-canadianchair@adopt4life.com if:
You are a parent who identifies as Afro-Canadian or parent of an Afro-Canadian child or children who’s considering joining A4L Afro-Canadian Committee.
You are a White or a POC ally who wishes to start or continue your anti-Black racism journey.
You want to share personal experiences that could help improve the adoption process or the Child Welfare System for BIPOC.
You have read Adopt4Life’s Statement and you have questions.