Context is everything

[7rin]

Love is not a pie
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2012

Tweaked

Context is everything

"Adoption is the right choice for some people. It isn't all evil."

Taken by itself, the above statement is one with which I do not disagree. I understand that each adoptive situation has its own unique set of circumstances, and in some of those circumstances adoption may be the best available option, though not necessarily a painless one.

So why was I triggered when I read the statement earlier this morning? Why did feelings ranging from anger to despondency flush through my body?

I was tweaked because the statement appeared as an anonymous comment at the end of a long blog post in which a mother who relinquished wrote of her person experience of pain and trauma resulting from adoption. In that context, it was hard for me to interpret the statement as anything but a dismissal—as one more case of a message falling on deaf ears. "Did he/she even read the post?" I thought.

Sadly, such dismissal is depressingly familiar to me. I am weary—oh so weary—of people telling adoptees and original parents what our feeling about adoption should be, shutting their ears to our descriptions of our actual experiences.

Read the rest of the post over at Love is not a pie.