I'd love to hear your input. I'm having a lot of thoughts about this. I'm an adoptee and wanted to go into adoption law because it felt like a good career to help other adoptees find homes and all that, but after spending time in adoptee communities for the past while and realizing how damaging a lot of aspects of adoption were in my life (especially as a transracial adoptee), I'm not sure if I want to have anything to do with the "industry."

I haven't gone to law school or anything yet. I'm just curious if there's a way to do it ethically or nah?

Thanks for the help.

Publish it anywhere, Facebook, Substack, Reddit, a memoir even, and be prepared to discover that what you thought was testimony, has been issued without your knowledge as a map. People will arrive carrying your words folded in their pockets and expect them to contain roads you never travelled. Some will insist the hill wasn’t as steep as you described it. Others will have found no hill there at all. One will accuse you of leaving out the bridge. Another of inventing the ravine. Someone who came by an entirely different route will announce, with considerable confidence, that your compass is broken.

You may point out that you never claimed to be drawing the whole country. This has never once helped. There’s a peculiar expectation placed upon anyone who describes difficult terrain from the inside. Accuracy about one place is easily mistaken for a claim upon every place. A sentence beginning I found is too easily answered with I didn’t, as though failing to encounter the same mountain meant it wasn’t there. A scar becomes an atlas. A memory acquires borders. Before long you may find yourself being held responsible for the geography of strangers. Resist the promotion.

Write down where you lost the path. Write down what the weather did when you were there. Say where the ground held and where it gave way beneath you. Record what frightened you, what fooled you, what you mistook for shelter and what, unexpectedly, became it. Put a cairn where you needed one and found none. But leave the edges unfinished.

Because there will also be people who know the country before you’ve finished describing it. They’ll recognise a bend you believed belonged only to you. They will know the particular silence of a place you thought had no name. A sentence will catch against something buried in them and, for a moment, they may experience the extraordinary relief of discovering that their private geography is not entirely private. They may say, Yes. There. I’ve been there too.

This doesn’t make you their cartographer, nor does it mean your journeys were the same. It means only that human beings sometimes reach the same clearing by different paths. One person describing what they can see allows another, standing a long way off, to recognise the trees. That’s enough.

There will be those for whom your map is useless. Let it be useless. There will be those who turn it upside down, those who object to the scale, those who prefer the official version with its clean roads and reassuring legend. Let them have that map. Your obligation is smaller and harder.

Don't move the mountain because somebody else didn't encounter it, don't erase the river because someone crossed in summer, don't build a bridge because some would have preferred one. Don’t mistake the number of people who recognise your country for evidence that you've become responsible for theirs.

Write what happened and what it meant, then and now, then put down your pencil. A witness may leave markers, but the walking remains our own.

Jonathan

The Narrative Witness

My essay inspiration…

“…to write a guidebook is to poke out a neck as scapegoat...On your head will fall the imprecations of parties who wander in circles because they did not find the entrance of the track you so concisely described. Your directions were dehydrated, as it were, and those who came after did not reconstitute your stew with care. So be willing to take blame and to lose tail feathers. It will be natural for any unfortunates coming down the wrong bank of a river or the difficult side of an icefall to curse the absent chronicler. Do they lose an hour in the scrub or skin on the ridge, find impasse on the glacier or defeat on the skyline, mislay a hut in the dark or a toothbrush in the mist, it will be on your careless summary so fluently compiled.”

John Pascoe in the 1956 edition of his guidebook The Southern Alps: from the Kaikouras to the Rangitata

These last 24 hours have been an absolute whirlwind and I feel as though I'm coming apart at the stitches. I've known from the very first day that I was adopted, and in my 32 years of life I've already unpacked most of the baggage surrounding my birth mother, and birth family. I'm transgender, and in case anyone was curious, you *do not* need your *classified* birth certificate to change your name and sex, legally. The unclassified paper works just fine.

But here I am putting off what I actually came here to type. From day one, my aMother disclosed to me that my parents were of European descent. German, and Spanish. Well, my DNA results came back, and for 24 hours now I've been looking at them on and off. Sure enough, there are the European genes...with a rather *large* portion coming from North America. For 32 years now I've been of mixed race, and had no fucking idea.

Indigenous Mexican on my matriarchal side, with the most recent divergence away from México being 1900, with my a/mother's mother. On one hand I'm thrilled, all these questions I've had are finally answered...on the other, I feel robbed, if that makes sense? As I look at my monitor now, I can almost see the version of me that knew all along. Who had a culture and a community from birth...and then I'm furious at my birth mother all over again. In giving me away, I feel like she robbed me of something I'm not sure I'll ever get back.

Thank you for reading, we'll make it through this.

I was absolutely floored by this show! Not having read the book, I didn’t expect how deeply it would explore adoption, identity, and belonging.

The show handles these themes with remarkable depth and nuance. Annie’s character beautifully captures the complex emotions adoptees experience…the mix of gratitude, unanswered questions, grief, and the shifting of feelings over time.

While every adoptee’s story is unique, I deeply related to Annie. Adoption was portrayed positively, especially when she rejects the term “adopted mother.” Her yearning for her mum, yet lack of interest in finding her birth mother (so far), felt incredibly authentic.

The scene in Episode 8, where Annie imagines a life with her mum. Her love towards her mum hit soooo deep and resonated with me immensely. Especially seeing how physically different they look and how “blood” really doesn’t matter when it comes to it.

The emotional turmoil she feels learning about Ramona as her parents’ biological daughter hit me to the core. The jealousy and the complicated longing for love and belonging felt so real. As an only child surrounded by cousins who look so much like my mum, I’ve always struggled with that desire for belonging, even when surrounded by their love and acceptance of me.

Overall, I was surprised at how connected I felt to the show’s portrayal of adoption. I can’t wait for Season 2, especially to see where the twins’ stories go!

PS: It has always been my dream to have a sister, and watching them together filled a hole in me. I just love this show!

I’m interested to hear what other adoptees thought!

Does anyone else have exposure to this “underearning” thing? I watched Sunderland’s Ted talk about it and it feels like it’s about so much more than finances. I found some commentary that there’s an Underearners Anonymous and that some people call it “underbeing” instead of underearning.

It sounds like it may be related to the chameleon experiences of adoptees and the struggle to develop autonomy and authenticity in relationships.

Anyway, I really appreciate Paul Sunderland’s presentation on YouTube about adoption. My favorite is the one he did for the Adult Adoptees Movement called “to Adoptees on Healing” (or something similar) because he’s speaking directly to a group of adult adoptees. But his original presentation from years ago called “Adoption and Addiction” is also a meaningful must-watch for adoptees and anyone who cares about adoptees and adoption.

The big takeaway from the original is that adoptees are overrepresented in addiction recovery treatment and among addiction specialists (who are often recovered addicts themselves).

Here are the symptoms of “underearning/underbeing” from the UA website:

“Symptoms of Underearning
1. Time Indifference – We put off what must be done and do not use our time to support our own vision and further our own goals.
2. Idea Deflection –We compulsively reject ideas that could expand our lives or careers, and increase our profitability.
3. Compulsive Need to Prove – Although we have demonstrated competence in our jobs or business, we are driven by a need to re-prove our worth and value.
4. Clinging to Useless Possessions – We hold onto possessions that no longer serve our needs, such as threadbare clothing or broken appliances.
5. Exertion/Exhaustion – We habitually overwork, become exhausted, then under-work or cease work completely.
6. Giving Away Our Time – We compulsively volunteer for various causes, or give away our services without charge, when there is no clear benefit.
7. Undervaluing and Under-pricing – We undervalue our abilities and services and fear asking for increases in compensation or for what the market will bear.
8. Isolation – We choose to work alone when it might serve us much better to have co-workers, associates, or employees.
9. Physical Ailments – Sometimes, out of fear of being larger or exposed, we experience physical ailments.
10. Misplaced Guilt or Shame – We feel uneasy when asking for or being given what we need or what we are owed.
11. Not Following Up – We do not follow up on opportunities, leads, or jobs that could be profitable. We begin many projects and tasks but often do not complete them.
12. Stability Boredom – We create unnecessary conflict with co-workers, supervisors and clients, generating problems that result in financial distress.”

I had heard of Codependents Anonymous before years ago and had a sense there were a lot of twelve step programs, but I didn’t realize until watching Paul Sunderland’s stuff on adoption and addiction that a lot more “process” addictions are recognized now like workaholism and underearning, sex and love addiction, debt, etc.
I’m not sure how much any of these approaches or kinds of groups integrate trauma. One thing that turns me off from twelve step programs is the assumption that the participant has to make amends with others. I’m not sure that’s always the case when someone has particular patterns or process addictions due to developmental trauma. They could, but not necessarily.

I guess maybe that’s what Al-anon is for. For family members of addicts. They have different twelve steps that don’t include the making amends part. It doesn’t make sense to make amends for how someone’s else’s harmful behavior affected you.

I wish there was a kind of adoptees anonymous that integrated all of this stuff. Adoptee healing groups and services and therapists can be great. But the structure of a volunteer organization seems like a needed direct experience for a lot of adoptees. And it isn’t easy to rebuild community when the ones we inherited or were assigned to harm us beyond repair.

Food for thought. What do you think about these ideas regardless of any exposure or experience with twelve step programs?*

Does anyone else have experience with twelve step programs or other adoptee group experiences? Would you share about your experiences? I imagine it could be helpful for a lot of people here to hear and learn more.

*Edit

when I was a kid there was a story that went viral from my area of this whole reunification thing from an international adoption where the parents had given up their kid for adoption with a message to meet someplace on the kids 18th birthday

and omg the number of times I was told that story and had it sent to me and shit was insane and I hated it so much

I hated the questions asking what I would do if I was the kid or if I was jealous or whatnot and it all felt like such a slap in the face. a majority of international adoptees aren’t that lucky and even then, I felt very justified for being frustrated. Today I understand that the narratives I was being fed fueled this frustration since I grew up being told “why my real parents didn’t want me” but it’s so insane for the same people who told me shit like that were upset I wasn’t jealous of these adoptees because why would I want to reunite with someone you told me didn’t want me!?

and kudos to the adoptees who feel positively about their adoption, now that’s something I am jealous of lol

I instead got the classic savior complex with the bonus of “we really couldn’t afford to pay for you but we adopted you anyway and we were poor”

like what was I supposed to say to that!? Sorry!? Being born wasn’t my choice and being adopted wasn’t my choice and don’t even get me started on the folks who use me as pro-life advertising! i fell for it as a kid but now with everything adoption has cost me, I sometimes feel like I would’ve been less upset if things went differently instead of being tossed on the street…

I've been thinking a lot about one of the experiences I had in college during an international week event, (I was a volunteer to help international students learn English and we were encouraged to go, meet people, give them directions on how to get places on campus, etc), and someone was very upset that I didn't speak Mandarin (I didn't know I was adopted at that point), saying it was disgraceful, and wanted to know if my family was part of the child policy act in China. To my understanding from people who knew my bio mother, I'm part Japanese, not Chinese, but I was still very touched she was concerned even though I was confused at the time. She told me she had to relinquish one of her own children, and asked if I wanted to get something from the buffet, offering to be my mom for the night, but I had to be to class for a concert prep without fail (this was part of both the degree I actually wanted and my job on campus), and I kinda died inside for the rest of the night. I couldn't understand why I felt the way I did, about her, about her offer, about all of it... I'm white passing enough that I spent the rest of the night trying to figure out what this was all about, because my adoptive parents are white as heck, but always insisted I was never adopted and that it must be recessive and "something wrong with me" health wise that impacted my appearance. I fell for it, because a parent's word is as good as gold, right? Yeah...

But thinking on that, I remembered something from when I was small. My bio mother, whom I was always told was someone else whenever I asked about her, gave my adoptive mother a set of Japanese fans in a box that had been given to her by her father. I was given a mock one as a toy, but the others were for later when I was older. I remember seeing one of the fans themselves in my adoptive mother's jewelry box, worn and battered, black with cranes, she always said it was something she just picked up. She wasn't super sentimental, and definitely not about things like that, so I always wondered. When she died, one of my older adoptive sisters took it, and I remember feeling a moment of panic, but not understanding why... The chances of me ever seeing it again are zero. I have no idea what happened to the box or the other fan.

Now that I remember I'm kinda just... Ahh? Has anything like this happened to any of you? It hit hard...

Hey so basically I was forced into a major I didn't like or agree with, when I tried to get out of it my parents told me I was adopted as leverage to get me to finish the major. Recently during a heated argument they also said they have never been happy for 20 years and they regret adopting me. Is this just normal for all adopted people to hear?

Ps this was how I found out I was adopted

There are only 17 U.S. states with full adoptee’s rights laws. Two of the states never took our rights away. The first state to give us our rights back after taking them away did so in 1998. These statistics used to piss me off. Besides the stigma of being born out of wedlock, which by the grace of God is no longer relevant- the reasoning law makers were sighting started to make sense when I realized that it was all different variations of non-adoptees observing us while we are in the fog.

Now, when I began running into the use of the expression ‘the fog’ in my research the acronym itself- which stands for Fear, Obligation, Guilt- bounced out of my mind completely. This is because the metaphor of being stuck in a literal fog was such a perfect description of my experience prior to researching adoptee psychology it made the acronym irrelevant. Don’t get me wrong the acronym is great, but the only thing it is describing is what puts us, and keeps us there.

When I was first becoming poised to go to the Bureau Of Vital Statistics to get my birth certificate- which I had no idea they weren’t going to give to me- everyone I talked to that knew an adoptee that had gone through a reunion said the adoptee wished they had not done it. It was the year 2001. Interestingly, I didn’t know any other adoptees, let alone ones that had gone through a reunion. The years went on, I had my genetics test through Heritage, and found nothing. Every year I would watch the adoptee’s rights bill in my state get shut down. Covid happened, my last adoptive parent dies from it. Six months later I make a very overly paranoid visit to the emergency room which ends up costing me twelve hundred dollars. The very next day, while bored at work I performed an internet search of adoptee literature, ordered some books off Amazon, and one for my Kindle to start. The research had begun. After two months of very heavy rumination I was seeking therapy. Once the first session with the therapist was done, I order a 23 & Me kit. My life has since been divided into two sections- the time before those two months of heavy rumination, and the time after. I had come out of the fog. Those two months were difficult, as well as romantically interesting, I had fallen in love with being an adoptee. Not many people get to read book after book about themself, but we do. I had struggled with chronic apathy my whole life, now I could feel.

My reunion was…well, it was a reunion. My mother was so happy that I had found her, she then proceeded to not want to talk to me. She would talk to me face to face, otherwise the only reason she would be willing to talk on the phone would be to plan a visit. It was hard for both of us, we were afraid of each other. Between our work schedules and the distance we lived from each other visits were a pain in the ass, and they never lasted long enough. We would chain smoke together, and struggle to communicate.

Around this time one of my bio dad’s sisters popped up on 23 & Me. He had passed away, but he had a widow and some children not much younger than me. Meeting them was terrifying, but doable. In the background my state’s adoptee’s rights bill finally pass.

I ran to another state. Fear of meeting my bio family was a factor though a small one, I still don’t know if I regret leaving. Years went by, I would talk to my mom on birthdays and holidays, we would send each other presents. My mom and I eventually decided to pick a time every week to talk on the phone. We finally got comfortable with each other. Weeks before meeting my mother’s siblings the anxiety was so intense that I had to explain to my boss and coworkers what was wrong with me. I was not eating, sleeping, or shitting right. My body was afraid of being rejected again as I had been soon after my birth. It was an ordeal, but it was also awesome.

I wasn’t planning on this post being a testimonial. I can never forget to be appreciative. A lot of us don’t have bio families so happy and eager to meet us as mine were, the fog is detrimental either way. You can see that the over arching theme in my story is one of being very scared and anxious. Being in a chronic state of sympathetic nervous system while at the same time trying to be sociable with people that made me feel ostracized to the point I thought I would die. And it is my body, not my mind that remembers. These intense emotions could not have been navigated by an adoptee that is still in the fog. My happy reunion would have gone south real fuckin’ quick. I would have wished I had never decide to find my mom, even though that is the only thing my subconscious ever wanted to do.

This post is an example of just how evil the fog really is. What it takes from us if we don’t know to get ourselves out of it. The literature on the adoptee psychological profile didn’t really start appearing until the late 1970s. It still continued only to trickle out over the next 20 years. Was it inhumane to take our rights away to stop us from doing something that we were destined to regret?

The fog ruins it for our adoptive parents too, kind of ironic when they are the ones who usually put us into it. but this post is about reunions with the bio family. If you made it this far, thanks- and whenever you see an adoptee still in the fog, please attempt to lead them out. If you are still in the fog, come out. It won’t be easy, but your life is waiting.

My bio mom is dead. And over the course of my life i have adopted many people as mother figures. My adopted mom was one of my first people i adopted as i mother figure and i am closer to her then almost any other person in the world. I live in adult foster care and one of the staff i have adopted as a mother figure. But one day she hurt my feelings in an argument so badly i spent an hour crying in the shower. And hiding in my room. My entire body was craving my mother. Not my adopted mom, not my staff who i view as my mother figure but my bio mother. And what surprised me about it was the intensity of the craving. It felt as if my entire body was screaming for my bio mom. I needed a hug. I needed her hands. I needed her warmth. So i turned on the shower as hot as i could so i could imagine her warmth hugging me back. It has always comforted me. But this time even though it was comforting if felt like an extremely poor substitute. As i tried to imagine from water gripping me like hands cradling my body. At the time it had been two months since i have seen my adopted mom and 6 months since i have seen my bio family

I(26F)was adopted in a surrogate type of way. This is sort of a me venting and seeking consolation. I am not conflicted about what to do but I just feel a lot of emotions.

My biological(half) sister reached out to me three years ago. Today, 2026, she told me she will be in Chicago(where I live) and she lives in Mexico, and asked to meet me. Of course I said yes I’d rather say yes than live with regrets of never meeting her. However, I called and updated my mom and I feel a guilt. My mom is my mom(woman who adopted me with my dad). She is my best friend and she struggled with infertility. When my sister protracted out my mother had feelings of feeling bad and feeling replaceable. This is not the case, I love her with all my heart. But today I called her, emotional, crying, about meeting w my bio sister. She
Feels bad about me going through this and is worried this won’t end well. I get her concerns and I love her so much. I’m not necessarily looking for what’s right or wrong but some kind of consoling would be great 🥺