I Almost Conformed When Telling My Adoption Story

Isn’t better to stay true to who you are and to your story?

As most of you know, I’m an independent contractor for a website called Adoption.com. I write various articles about adoption, and all 2,000 words have to have some tone of positivity and had to be uplifting. When I got the opportunity to write about my own adoption story, well let’s just say that I didn’t have such a great upbringing when my twin and I were adopted.

Living with 14 siblings, you’re bound to get lost in the shuffle, and less favored. I won’t go into much detail about my private life, but if you’d like to read my article, here’s my personal adoption story.

As much as I wanted my article to be rainbows and butterflies, I knew I had to write down what was true and how i really felt. I was very hesitant to even share my story because I didn’t want my editor to hate how harsh it was. But to my surprise, it ended up getting published.

I have to still write great articles highlighting the greatness of adoption, and it does get heavily tedious. I am thankful for this opportunity, but giving the people of the adoption community what they want to read has become like nails scraping against the chalkboard. Maybe I’m tired of constantly conforming to myself as this hopeful advocate for adoption. Yes, there are many great adoption stories, and most have become “inspiration porn”. Shouldn’t I a be able to also point out the negatives of adoption too? What about the kids who get adopted into bad homes? What about the adoptions that go wrong? How about the adoption stigmas?

I’m not saying I should fully focus on the bad things in adoption, but have a balance between good and bad. Maybe then I won’t have to keep feeling like banging my head against the wall as I type about the fantasies of what adoption should be. One thing for sure is I’m damn glad I didn’t conform my heartwrenching story into fluff.

I Almost Conformed When Telling My Adoption Story was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.