Tag: ARD2020

What You Can Do to Support Adoptees on Adoptee Remembrance Day – October 30th

Published on by Pamela A. KaranovaLeave a comment

As Adoptee Remembrance Day is approaching, I have felt like it would be essential to share a few things that we need from our friends, family, loved ones, and even those who aren’t close to an adoptee but maybe they know one. If you need a moment to reflect on what Adoptee Remembrance Day is about, please visit this link.

First things first, this day is 100% focused on the adoptee experience, and all it entails regarding adoptee grief, loss, abuse, mental health, deportation, and adoptee suicide.

While each topic carries significant weight, what we need from non-adopted individuals is for them to search deep in their hearts and understand that adoption might not be all it’s cracked up to be. Our society has failed miserably on every level of bypassing and ignoring the TRUTH regarding how adoption impacts adopted individuals. While adoption has been celebrated worldwide, the adoptee suffers in silence significantly.

Adoptee Remembrance Day is a day to step into a new light that there is so much more to the adoptee experience than what our world has lead non-adoptees to believe. It’s a day to seek deep in your heart to find the willingness to listen and learn from adopted individuals that there is much more to the adoptee experience than what the adoption agencies, adoption attorneys, news, and society tell you.

I know you mihgt know an adoptee, and they say they have no issues at all.

Well, I know thousands of adoptees that DO have problems with it, and I have dedicated over ten years of my life to building relationships with them, listening to them, and validating them. We must collectively step out of a space of denial into an area of truth to better understand the trauma in relinquishment and adoption, regardless of all the given love.

While our world is focused on pushing positive culture, this is a day to reflect sorrow and sadness. Please understand that there is nothing wrong with this. Adoptees have never ending things to be sorrow-filled about and sad. Adoptee Deportation and Suicide are significant issues within the adoptee community. Adoptee grief and loss are not acknowledged by the Adoption community. Please save space for the adoptees on this day who need to sit and be sad. All they need from you is for your to listen and have the willingness to try to learn how they feel. If you are close to them, wrap your arms around them while they cry. Allow them the space to cry.

I’ve said it before, and I will repeat it, love isn’t enough or a house full of stuff. Love does not replace our lineage, lost memories, relinquishment trauma, grief and loss process, ethnicity, medical history, answers to our truth, citizenship, knowing who our siblings and biological kin are. Nothing can replace what is lost in adoption for the adopted individual, and until we can start to have these candid and raw conversations, adoptees will continue to die.

Adoptee Remembrance Day is a day for non-adopted individuals to press into this day and do everything they can to listen and learn. There are genuinely countless layers to the adoption experience, and they deserve to be addressed and brought to light. We’re asking for your support as you open your heart to learning that every adoption begins with a loss so significant, it could very well impact an adopted person for the rest of their lives.

We were hoping you would consider showing up in some way by making a public statement acknowledging the sensitive topics of this day. Maybe you will take part in this day by sharing articles and posts about this day. We were hoping you could support us by RSVP’ing to the Facebook event and invite your followers, friends, and family to the event.

Search the hashtags #ard2020, #adopteeremembranceday, and #adopteesweremember and soak in all you can on other adoptee experiences. This is a day to save space for adoptees’ experiences in deep pain, grieving losses they have been denied the right to grieve for an entire lifetime.

There are adoptees out there who consider themselves “saved by adoption,” and they might even be “thankful they were adopted,” however, I encourage them to step into this day with the notion of understanding that not all adoptees feel this way. I challenge you to learn, grow, and expand in your current knowledge and insight on how adoption impacts your fellow adoptees. Step into a space of grace and understanding to try to listen and learn how your fellow adoptees might feel. Please, whatever you do, don’t say, “That’s not how I feel” when another adoptee shares their feelings. We all deserve space without someone else coming behind us, running over our feelings, reminding us we need to be thankful or grateful.

If you don’t know any adopted individuals, you can still get involved on this day, and we need your support. Here’s an article that share’s ways you can help promote this day.  Promoting Adoptee Remembrance Day. Don’t forget to read how you can get involved on this day and the different things you can do to participate. Read here.

Last but not least, Adoptee Remembrance Day is going to be an emotional day for Adoptees everywhere. I am already crying daily just because we finally have the day to recognize the truth in adoption that I get emotional even thinking about it. I’m pretty sure on October 30th, 2020, and I will likely have a box of Kleenex with me all day because I know my emotions will be all over the place. Be easy on your fellow adoptees or any adoptees in your life. It’s not going to be easy for any of us, but so overdue and so very needed for the Adoptee Community.

For those who might not support this day or for whatever reason don’t feel it’s necessary, we respect your right to feel that way, however adoption has stolen enough from us. What we won’t allow is those who don’t support this day for the adoptee community to hijack this day by spinning the adoption is wonderful narrative. Sometimes being frank is the only way I can be because I always have to be true to me and the adoptee community. We invite you to take a seat, close your mouth and make the choice to not participate. Thank you very much.

Please realize that we’ve invited everyone to get involved on this day, and that includes biological parents, adoptive parents, and friends and family of adoptees. We’re saving space for you to share your thoughts on this day. Together, we hope to share our feelings, so healing begins to happen.  

We will be sharing an Adoptee Remembrance Day Agenda in the coming days. Be sure to share it online with your friends, families, and in your adoption circles.

If there ever was a time to share your voice, the time is now for my fellow adoptees. Make sure you tag Adoptee Remembrance Day – October 30th on Facebook and RSVP to our Adoptee Remembrance Day – October 30th Event. Use hashtags we’ve shared above.

Together, we’re collectively going to raise our voices, so the world will be able to listen.

Sending you sunshine, love, and light as this day approaches.

Please know you aren’t alone!

Love, Love

Adoptee Remembrance Day – October 30th – Express Yourself

Published on by Pamela A. KaranovaLeave a comment

As Adoptee Remembrance Day – October 30th approaches, a fundamental component to this day is to encourage all the adoptees to share their feelings on this day. The ways to get involved are limitless, but I have created a comprehensive list of how to participate on this day. You can visit the link by clicking here.

Express Yourself

I’ve suggested that adoptees express themselves by writing and sharing that writing on Adoptee Remembrance Day. You might want to share it with a few co-workers or at a Friday dinner with a few friends. Whatever your plans are, sparking conversations about what this day is all about is the key to opening up the discussion on how you feel about Adoptee Remembrance Day.

For those who don’t know, Adoptee Remembrance Day was created to pause before National Adoption Awareness Month and put a focus on remembrance of all the adoptees who didn’t make it out alive. Maybe the adoptee was murdered at the hands of their adoptive parents, or they took their own life because the pain was just too great. Perhaps they are an international adoptee who’s adoptive parents failed to complete the proper paperwork for citizenship, leaving the adoptee in limbo, a lot of times deported from the only country they have ever known.

Express Yourself

Adoptee Remembrance Day is a day to reflect on adoptee loss. While our world seems to dismiss the side of adoption that doesn’t acknowledge this loss, the adoptee lives with this pain our entire lives. Most of the time, never being able to articulate the words at a young age, so we spend our whole lives trying to process how we feel inside.

Express Yourself

Adoptee Remembrance Day is to share those feelings at your comfort level. It’s a day of acknowledgment. It’s a day for adopted individuals and our allies to come together and raise our voices on areas that we are passionate about and our feelings about this day.  

Express Yourself

You don’t have to be adopted to acknowledge Adoptee Remembrance Day. Maybe you are a friend or family member of an adoptee, and you’ve seen this adoptee experience heartbreak and pain regarding their adoption journey. Perhaps you are a family member of an adoption that was closed. Maybe you are the adult child of an adoptee, and adoption has echoed throughout your life, and loss has been prevalent.  

Express Yourself

Adoptee Remembrance Day is a day for adoptees worldwide to be heard, validated, and acknowledged. Whatever your feelings are about this day, I encourage you to focus and reflect on the places you hold deep inside and consider letting them out. Maybe sharing them is too much for you at this time, but writing about them and letting them out is one of the most critical steps. Start a journal, and keep writing. Consider making a video or a song. Being creative in art, spoken word or poetry would fit right in. Anything you can do to share how adoption has made you feel…

Express Yourself!

  • If you would like to share them publicly, visit the Adoptee Remembrance Day – October 30th Facebook page and learn how to get involved. Invite your friends and family to this page and the event as well.
  • To get involved with the promotion of this day, please visit our promoting Adoptee Remembrance Day page.
  • You can view the Adoptee Remembrance Day Agenda (we will insert the link once it’s ready) to find out a list of events and activities that are going on that day.

The key is to do something!

Express yourself in whatever way feels natural and organic to you.

Share the love and get involved.

A special shout out and THANK YOU to the individuals and organizations who have reached out to me to collaborate to add an activity to this day. Thank you! I couldn’t pull this day off without your willingness to participate.

If you’re an adoptee who wants to share your Adoptee Expressions on Adoptee Remembrance Day, please email me at adopteeremembranceday@gmail.com for guidelines.

Sending Sunshine, Love & Light

It’s Hard to Smile Today – My Tribute to Adoptee Remembrance Day 10/30/2020

Published on by Pamela A. Karanova7 Comments

It’s hard to smile today when so many adoptee smiles have been washed away. If you know an adoptee, let me take you on a ride in an Adoptee’s mind. Please sit down and give me a few minutes of your time.

Imagine being in your mother’s womb, where there is only room for two scared hearts beating as one. The day we are born should be as bright as the luminous stars in the sky.

Her heartbeat warms our hearts like the bright & shiny sun but quickly turns to gloom as soon as you make your grand entrance into the delivery room.

Like a thief in the night, your sacred heartbeat is gone. Disappeared. You are all alone, no longer one. Where is your bright and shiny sun?

She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. Pre-verbal trauma will be carried around like a permanent backpack. We can run, but we can’t hide. Adoptee triggers bring on lifelong thoughts of suicide.

Adoptees are dying, searching for their sun. Carrying so much pain because being separated from your mother is a deep-rooted trauma and inhumane.

“LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED”

That’s a lie. No matter what they say, love isn’t enough or a house full of stuff. Buckle up for the ride called “The Fight of Your Life!”

You are fighting the fight of your life with your very first breath, unattached to anyone because of the broken bond. Most days, the only escape seems like death.

We might not want to die, but we want out of here. We’re sick and tired of the endless emptiness inside, the heartbreak, and never-ending tears.

Every day can seem like an uphill battle, being tormented by things everyday people can’t relate to. They have no idea what it feels like to have your entire history erased or what it feels like to look in the mirror and see “Nobody’s Face.”

There is nothing wrong with your views or how you feel. What’s wrong is relinquishment and adoption trauma being subjects that are considered taboo.

Rooted in relinquishment trauma, dark clouds are everywhere, most days feeling hollow and empty inside. Being born a burden is a tremendous pill to swallow. Mental gymnastics always override and blindside the happiness non-adoptees feel. I wake up most days and can’t believe this life is real.

The world says, “Be Thankful!” for the deck of cards you were dealt. They are clueless about what it means to feel like a piece of property—paid in full for a cash price. Only to make the dreams come true for another person’s life. Meanwhile, our entire lives are rooted in secrecy and lies.

We’re tired of therapying the therapists. No one understands adoptee layers unless they are one of us. When you say, “Screw the world, I no longer want to live, and I have nothing left to give!” I want you to know your adoptee tribe knows your pain. We love you with no ulterior motives, and we have nothing to gain.

Today is Adoptee Remembrance Day, and It’s hard to smile today.

I wish I could wipe your teardrops away. If I had one more chance, I would hug you so tight and tell you wherever you are in life, that everything’s going to be alright. I will always remember you because your heart and smile are as big as the sky, and no one can deny the outcry we feel because you didn’t deserve to die.

Please know we will never let your memories fade away.

I wish I could take your pain away.

It’s hard to smile today.

RIP to Caleb Harris and all the Adoptees who didn’t make it by way of suicide or at the hands of their adoptive parents. 

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