This month, I want to honor the strength, generosity, and dedication of our adoptee community. I am inspired by the ways we continue to show up for one another – through advocacy, support groups, storytelling, education and so much more. As I prepared for Adoption Mosaic’s most recent We The Experts event, Adoptee Storytellers, I particularly reflected on the power of ethical storytelling to help us reclaim our own narratives.
I used to tell people, “I’m an open book, ask me anything about my adoption.” I believe this trait stemmed from experiencing being an interracial adoptee. After all, as a latina child with white adoptive parents my adoption was public knowledge whether I wanted it to be or not. I used to think that my adoption story was for anyone to consume.
I have since learned that my adoption story is my own – and that I get to decide what I share, when I share, and who I share my story with. Finding my mom in Colombia 14 years ago prompted me to do some deep introspection about my own adoption story, what it meant for me to work in adoption education, and how I was supporting other adoptees in sharing their stories. Through this experience I found a healthier way to tell my adoption story and support other adoptees to do the same.
How I Define Ethical Storytelling:
sharing our experiences in community with and for other adoptees, rather than telling our stories to satisfy an audience of non-adoptees;
sharing only the information that we feel prepared to make public – the parts that we’ve already processed for ourselves – rather than oversharing or trauma dumping;
and telling our stories in ways that our future selves can look back on and feel confident about, rather than in ways that leave us feeling anxious, exploited, or overly vulnerable.
At Adoption Mosaic, we see ethical storytelling as vital to our community, and we use this approach throughout our work. If you’ve been a panelist for our We the Experts Speaker Series, for example, then all of this likely sounds very familiar to you. I hope that you felt both empowered and supported by taking this ethical approach to telling your story. If you are an adoptive parent, a partner or sibling of an adoptee, or another non-adopted member of an adoptee’s community, I hope you’ll think carefully about ethical storytelling, and what it means for you to share or not share personal information about the adoptee(s) in your lives.
Adoptee-centered spaces matter. I am encouraged to see so many adoptees in our community working to create and maintain spaces that are by and for us as adoptees. Through ethical storytelling, collaboration, and advocacy, we continue to reclaim our narratives and build a community where we encourage and uplift each other. Thank you to all of you who are doing this work and who are showing up for and supporting our community!
With gratitude,
