"You Should Be Grateful" Quotes

“We can love more than one set of parents. Relationships with our birth parents, foster parents, and our adoptive parents are not mutually exclusive. We have the right to own our original birth certificate. Curiosity about our roots is innate. We need access to our family medical history. The pre-verbal memories you have with your first family are real. Post-natal culture shock exists. It's okay to feel a mixture of gratitude and loss. We are not alone. We have each other.”
― Angela Tucker, "You Should Be Grateful": Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption

“In her book, Pauline Boss asks, “What happens when a family member or a friend who may be still alive is lost to us nonetheless? . . . These losses are always stressful and often tormenting.” Ambiguous losses are the most devastating and traumatizing of losses because sufferers must live with ambiguity that might stay with them throughout their lives.”
― Angela Tucker, "You Should Be Grateful": Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption

“Exulansis is defined as “the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.”4 Just like me, Addy latched onto this word right away, as it describes our ongoing experience of trying to explain our complex internal landscape to people who struggle to understand.”
― Angela Tucker, "You Should Be Grateful": Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption