The decision to adopt has a huge impact on your life and your family. It’s natural to want to share your story with everyone who will listen. But how do you go about doing this? Is it okay to post about your adopted child on social media, for example? What about writing your adoption story for other people to read?
Adoption is a complicated subject and it can be challenging to capture on paper. Regardless of how you choose to tell your story, it is important to remember that it’s not just about you and your journey. It’s about your adopted child, the birth parents and all of the other people involved in the adoption process. It’s also important to remember that your adoption story is not just about the good times.
In our research, many of the parents we interviewed described a difficult time in their adoption experience, especially when it came to navigating relationships with birth family members. While a few mothers and one father reported positive turning points in their lives, most of the other parents had experienced a wide range of emotional trauma and had to work through lingering problems that were linked to their adoption.
This complexity is often reflected in fiction and nonfiction adoption stories. Whether it’s a memoir like All You Can Ever Know or an episode of a television show, many stories present adoption through the traditional narrative tropes of good versus evil and hero versus villain. This is problematic because it ignores the complexities of the adoption process and the real struggles that come with being an adoptee.