Adoption Blogger Interview Project 2012: Robyn

Dear Blogosphere, Today, as a participant in the Adoption Blogger Interview Project 2012, I am submitting my interview with blogger and professional Robyn from AfrikAdvantage. Robyn and I met through this project a few weeks ago and since then have exchanged many emails and have had a few lengthy phone conversations. Through our conversations and […]

Difference Doesn’t Always Mean Separate

There are a lot of negative adoption stories and experiences “out there”. I have been privileged in many many ways and that privilege carries over into my experiences with adoption. Although it hasn’t all been good, I can confidently say that I am glad I was adopted. I can’t really say I would prefer it […]

My File Part IV: In Lieu of Birth Certificate

“Affidavit of Abandonment In Lieu of Birth Certificate”. It’s not everyday that I read the above title. A few days ago I was cleaning my room and reorganizing my files and I came across a manila mailing envelope that read “Kumar legal documents” in my mother’s handwriting. “How’d this get into my file?” I thought. […]

Family In Flux

A theme that keeps cropping up is this idea that adoptees, although I still don’t really like that title, are not really related to their adoptive families. It seems that underlying this argument is the assumption that family is defined by who is biologically related to each other. Obviously though, as I’m sure everyone acknowledges […]

My File Part II: Bites Away

[This is a continuation from My File Part I: A Baby’s Biography] Sitting on my hardwood bedroom floor I pulled back the manila cover. An old typwritten piece of white stained paper sat in front of me. The top of the page read “Congregation of the Sisters of The Cross of Chavanod” below in bold […]

Life Saving Fantasies

When I was about 10 years old my father was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological disease commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, but introduced to me as ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It took me until the eighth grade when I did a health project on terminal illnesses, about 3 years later, to be able to […]

Unsually Aware

I am an unusually aware person. Or at least I am unusually aware of how people perceive me. As a young adult most people have a strong understanding of how social norms work and thus know how to evoke a desired response in most situations. But as children we are less adept in picking up […]

Family Feud

When most people think of a family, in the US, they imagine two opposite sex parents and two biologic children of those parents. That image is beginning to fade, or at least morph to include many “non-traditional” families. Again, here when we think of non-traditional families we envision a same-sex couple maybe with a child […]