I can’t even begin to express my excitement about Tracy Hammond making this beautiful pendant for adoptees.
I was blessed to say that I was one of the first to purchase this as a 20 limited edition collection. Since making these Tracy has had an overwhelming amount of responses of adoptees and birth mothers requesting for her to make more.
This pendant symbolizes so much. Finally. I have seen “Adoption” pendants so many times over the years. Adoption symbols, and none of them fit my feelings about my journey. I believe there is a triangle with a heart in it, symbolizing that adoption is based on the “Triad” where there are 3 equal sides. That’s the birth family, the adoptive family and the adoptee. This symbol doesn’t not fit me or my experience. Nothing about the adoptee’s loss is EQUAL to the adoptive parents. We loose an entire family, and for me (and many other adoptees) that leaves us feeling broken in many ways. Tracy mentioned being “Beautiful inside and out BUT broken”. This describes it perfectly. This is reality, and the truth about what my adoption experience has brought me.
Some people have mentioned us focusing on the negative, but let me just say. The REALITY is, it is a negative experience for so many of us. Why should we have to continue to hide our true feelings about how we feel? If someone lost their entire family in a tragic car wreck and they wore this necklace as a symbol of the family they lost, and their heart being broken because of it, I believe no one would give them any static about wearing this necklace. It’s the same for adoptees. This doesn’t mean we are pondering or focused on the “Negative”. For me it means that I have stepped out of denial, and the guilt that my adoptive parents have made me feel for having any feelings about my first family. I have come to terms that my adoption TRUTH is this very damaged tainted, broken heart. That is the TRUTH.
It’s important to know that you can’t heal a wound by denying it’s there. When we have been told our whole lives to be grateful and our right to express love for our first families has been taken from us. How do you think we will feel? BROKEN. I am feeling an extreme sense of loss today more than ever. Why? Because I’m finally grown up, and an adult who has developed my own feelings, and it’s clear to me that I’m just now grieving my loss because my adoptors denied me that right. I have forgiven them. But I hope for future adoptive parents they can learn by reading books, blogs, adoptee journeys that the way adoption has been handled in the past is just that, a thing of the past. You will destroy your adoptive children if you deny them the right to grieve their losses of their first families. You will destroy them if you keep secrets from them. You will destroy them if you speak negatively of their first family. There is so much more, but TODAY I’m totally ecstatic that I finally have something that represents an outward expression of how my adoption has impacted me.
Tracy Hammond, I will always be grateful for you and your creativity in this pendant. Thank you from the bottom of my broken heart for sharing this with adoptees. It means so much.
Pamela Karanova 