Be Grateful! Yeah Right...

I don't think there isn't a searching or reunited adoptee out there who hasn't been told at some point or another that they should be grateful for what they have.  I hate that word.  Grateful for what?  Having two parents who decided that they didn't want to raise me?  Or having two parents who chose to raise me?  It was their decision, not mine.  Had they not raised me, someone else would have.  Should I be grateful they were good parents?  Shouldn't everyone be grateful for that?  I didn't have a choice in the matter.  I didn't pick them.  I had no say.  Just like a person raised by their biological parents had no say in the matter of being born.  It just doesn't work that way.  If I should be grateful, then so should they.  But somehow I doubt that someone who was not adopted who didn't have a horribly traumatic childhood would be told to be grateful at any point.  Because why should they be?

I consider myself to be lucky to have ended up with the family that I did.  I love them very much and I am glad that if I had to be adopted, that I was adopted by them.  But I am not grateful for being adopted.  I'm grateful to my parents for putting a roof over my head after I graduated from college so that I could put that money towards my loans (and at the end of the year towards a down-payment on a condo).  They didn't have to do that for me.  My adoption had nothing to do with it.  They would have done that for me if I was their biological daughter.  And I would have been grateful all the same.  See the difference?  It's a nuance that not everyone picks up on, but it's there.  But nothing changes the fact that I will never be grateful for being born and ending up with the family I was placed with.  Those things just happened.  That's just how it goes.

Regardless of adoption, I don't think that children should have to be grateful to their parents for bringing them into this world.  Here's my reasoning.  Most people have children because they want them.  There are people out there who do not want children (my first parents fell into that category when I was born).  Some of those children are adopted, some are raised poorly, and others are raised well.  But for the majority of people, their parents wanted to have children.  I know that out of all my cousins (who are all biologically related), only one of them (that I know of) wasn't planned on and that cousin isn't loved any differently than anybody else.  A few may have been one too many than originally planned on (there are two sets of twins), but my aunts and uncles were all trying to have kids, with the exception of one, possibly two.  So what that means is that they weren't brought into the world because it was what was best for them.  After all, until they were born they didn't really exist anyway (you can replace born with whatever you feel appropriate; I just don't feel like getting into those semantics here).  So should they feel grateful that their parents wanted children?  I don't think that's a fair thing to say.

I also think that for any child who was intentionally added to a family, either through birth or adoption, the stakes are higher.  The parents made a decision to add to their family.  They knew that would mean putting a roof over their child's head.  They knew it would mean feeding and clothing them.  They knew it would mean teaching them right from wrong and everything in between.  They knew it would be a huge responsibility.  So I don't think they should get to whine and complain about it later.  I don't think that they should get to tell their children "After all I've done for you..."  It's just not fair.

I'm not talking about being disrespectful to your parents.  And I'm not talking about not being thankful for what you have if you have a good situation.  I'm all for that.  But that's up to the person.  I can feel thankful but I would never tell someone else that they have to feel that way too.  It's just not how it all works.  So I don't think that any parent should be able to tell their children that they should be grateful for how they were raised.  Especially their adult children.  I just don't think it's right.

I don't think it's fair for my friend's mother's cousin to tell me that I should be grateful for my adoptive parents.  Who they do not know.  Because that's just how adoption is.  I automatically should be grateful.  But here's the thing.  I'm not automatically grateful.  If you want me to be grateful for you, you need to work at it.  You have to do something above and beyond.  My parents did not adopt me for my sake.  They adopted because they wanted a child.  That's the simple truth.  They are fantastic people, but they are not saviors, nor have they ever expected to be treated that way.  I was the solution to their fertility issues.  And to their credit, they've never asked me to be grateful for my adoption.  Not once.  I've been told to be grateful for other things (like the annoying itchy sweaters I was given as a gift as a small child but didn't like), but never for my own adoption.  So I do not appreciate other people telling me to be grateful.  It's unwanted and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop.

And before you assume that this post is because I don't have good adoptive parents, I'm coming to see that I'm very lucky with the parents that I have.  My parents freely gave me things, without strings.  They moved to a suburban town so that my sister and I could get a good education.  They made sacrifices for us.  Later, my mother confessed that looking back, she would do things differently because the town we moved to was a tough town to grow up in at times.  The point is, my parents made a lot of choices for me and my sister and sacrificed.  They drove further to work and worked longer hours so that my sister and I could get the best start and have the best chance to make something of ourselves.  They wanted to open as many doors as they could for us.  And they never once have told me that I "owe" them for any of it.  I'm not expected to pay them back.  I'm not expected to do anything.  I've never been spoken down to because I made a decision my parents didn't like.  And I know people (adoptive and biologically related to the parents who raised them) where this is not the case.  And I'm thankful that I have a good set of parents, but please never tell me to be grateful for them without knowing anything.

I guess my point is, telling another person to be grateful is probably not the best way to make friends.  And it's probably not going to actually make them feel grateful.

The B Word

Scarlet B

When I started to "get in touch" with my adoptee issues, it dawned on me that insults I'd been hearing my whole life (never aimed at me) actually were a slur against me and others who were not born to married parents.  I never considered myself to be illegitimate or a bastard because I never really took the time to think about what those words meant.  I never took the time to realize that those words are not just insults that are thrown around, they imply things about the person, mainly, that their parents were not married and that's a bad thing.  While I can understand that our society thinks all people should be married before having children, our world is not like that today.  Children are born out of wedlock.  Men marry men, women marry women.  There are single mothers, and single fathers.  It happens.  It's something that I learned in school.  There are many ways to have a family and not all families look alike.  So if that's the message we are trying to teach, then why does society hold on to insults like "bastard"?

I've become more aware of this slur ever since I started to hear other adoptees claim the world as their own.  It wasn't until then that I really started to think about how it applied to me and how before I could "take it back" and claim it as my own, I needed to understand what it meant and why I even had the right to claim it.  I started hearing it everywhere.  My family has used it.  My friends have used it.  Rudy even used it.  And it's on TV as one of the worst insults you can hurl at people.  It keeps cropping up.

I've always tried to be careful about what words I use.  Words can hurt.  And you never know who around you could be offended.  I have a cousin who was a bit behind in development when he was a baby.  He's fine now, all caught up, but there was a time when we weren't sure if was a bigger problem.  All of a sudden, "retard" and "retarded" as slurs started to jump out at me.  I started calling my friends on it and asked them not to use that language.  They didn’t get it (they were mostly boys).  I finally flipped out on them after one trying day and told them that my cousins could possibly be "retarded" and it was disrespectful to him, to my family, and therefore to me to make light of the challenges he might face.  They were surprised because they didn't think anyone around them had a connection.  Yet I did.  Rudy did.

I've started calling people out on the word "bastard".  When I hear that word used as a slur, I just say "ouch".  If it's someone that knows about my adoption connection, they immediately apologize because they, like me a year ago, don't understand what the word means and what it implies.  It's just something they picked up from society like "jerk" and "asshole".  If they don't know about my adoption connection, I simply state that my parents were not married when I was born, so therefore I could be considered a bastard and that language is offensive to me.  I haven't run into anyone who hasn’t apologized yet.  I'm sure that day will come though because there are some nasty people out there.

My point is, words can hurt.  I'm not perfect.  I slip up from time to time.  I say things that come out wrong, I do and say things that hurt others, and it's not something that I'm proud of.  I'm working on it.  I consider myself in general to be a work in progress.  My progress today is to educate that words matter.  So think twice please before you use the B word.  You never know who's standing behind you...

Oh and...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!!!

Culture Question

So I've been having a lot of conversations lately about my adoption. The same thing has come up a number of times. People scratch their heads when they find out my ethnicity. I guess I should take a step back for a minute and explain why I bring it up. First, I never knew my ethnicity before. I mean, I guessed, but I didn't know for sure. My boyfriend is 25% Irish and burns in the sun, but looking at him, you'd never know. So my thinking was always "Well, I look Portuguese, come from an area that's dominantly Portuguese, but who really knows?" Now that I know I'm over 80% Portuguese, I'm proud of that. I'm not proud that I don’t know a lot about the culture, the country, or the people, but I'm finally learning about it.

What's interesting to me, is that when I tell people, I've heard the same comment from various ( and unconnected) people. They all scratch their heads because "That's a tight knit community. It's surprising that a 'traditional' Portuguese family would give away a child." My mother's family was always described as being very traditional. Now I always saw that as meaning they were very Catholic (because they are) and couldn't support the whole child out of wedlock thing. But other's see it more as we-keep-our-own kind of thing. I've also heard that Portuguese culture is very dependent on how things will look to the neighbors. Which explains the whole, we-don't-want-an-out-of-wedlock-child thing. So who knows?

I've been trying to do more research online about Portuguese culture. Seeing as NeverTooLate grew up in that environment, maybe I would understand her a little bit better if I knew more about where she comes from (and therefore where I come from in a sense). I've been hitting a bit of a brick wall though. I can't seem to find any good websites that would give me information about this culture, probably because everyone keeps telling me they are a close knit community. So if anyone out there has any suggestions, I would absolutely love to hear them. Thanks!