Adoption as the new fad.

This makes me angry. I hate hate hate HATE that adoption is becoming just a new "cool" thing for stupid, trashy American celebrities to make themselves look like saintly beings. I hate Angelina Jolie and her wanting a "colourful" family. I hate that she thinks she's doing the world some wonderful service by adopting all these "needy" children. And I hate that she receives so much publicity and accolade for what she's doing.

It seems to me that in the western world, adoption is looked at as a good deed - people helping "needy", otherwise unwanted children. Now, don't get me wrong - I don't think I'm 100% against adoption, but I think the way it's done and looked at is often wrong. I feel like a lot of people adopt, without thinking really about the type of upbringing the kid/s are ultimately going to have. On one hand, we have the people who think of it as a good deed - something to make themselves feel a bit better about themselves. And on the other hand, we have the people (like many adoptive parents out there, my parents included) who simply "wanted a family". Ultimately, all these people seem to have the assumption that as long as they give their child/ren all the love in the world and a more "privileged" upbringing than what they may have otherwise had, that that's enough - their child should be happy and grateful for what they've been given.

Now, I'm sure many people would say: would you prefer to not have been adopted? Do you think it's better that children simply live out their lives in orphanages, or worse... die?

As an adoptee, I don't know how to answer that. How do you answer something like that? But I can say that it's these questions that, I feel, cause many adoptee's voices and feelings to go unheard - we feel like we should be grateful for the fact that we have been "saved" from a life much worse, so we should simply shut up and get on with things.

However, I have learnt through the past couple of years and other life ordeals, that things aren't always so black and white. Yes, we adoptees may have been given a chance at a "better" life to the one we may have had in our birth cultures. We may have been given lives that would seem "privileged" to many. But our feelings, emotions and thoughts go unheard because it's all internal - they're the things people don't want to see and don't want to accept. People seem perfectly content to go through life in ignorance of what and how adoptees feel about their circumstances. But being a "healthy" person isn't all about the physical.

The other week, I tried to explain to my husband that being adopted often feels like I have a festering wound. A wound that has been simply covered up by bandage after bandage throughout my 25 years. However simply covering a wound up with mediocre bandages and bandaids, ultimately doesn't fix or change anything. It simply covers it up, so one can continue on, pretending like it's not really there. But given time, the pain begins to worsen. And the wound's presence can't be ignored. The skin begins to tear little by little, and blood and other bodily fluids begin to seep through the bandages. And you have two options: 1) To pile on another bandage - to add to the pile and cover up what's really underneath, or 2) You can do the opposite - begin to uncover the wound in order to get to the crux of it and actually mend it for good, despite how ugly and painful it's become.

I feel like everyone around me (including myself) has taken the bandage option. And I think that's what a lot of adoptive families do. But I'm beginning to see and feel that that's the wrong way of doing things. In the end, nothing gets fixed. Things just get worse, and it gets to a point where you can't hide that wound forever - eventually it's going to take over your whole self. You don't want to have to chop a limb off for it, so the only thing that can be done is to face up to it and fix it for good.

I feel that everytime I see some stupid Hollywood celebrity doing their "good deed", they're ultimately piling on the bandages. And encouraging the rest of the world to follow their lead. But as public figures, they need further knowledge about what exactly they're getting themselves into. People, like it or not, look up to people like them. And it frustrates me that people support them in what they do, refusing to see the wound for what it really is...