1. Where are you from? No, I mean, where are you really from?

 

What we wish we could say:  Your MOM.

 

What we would actually say:  If you’re still asking this question to someone, I would encourage you to Google why this is problematic. For me, I would answer where I call home (ie. where I grew up, where I live now, where I feel most at home). Reiterating the question as if the adoptee didn’t hear you or understand what you meant can be interpreted as condescending and disrespectful. Take whatever answer you get at face value, or better yet, refrain from asking in the first place unless the adoptee offers the information or feels comfortable talking about their background.

 

 

2. Do you wish you could ever go back

 

What we wish we could say:  Go back where? The place we all come from before birth?

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What we would actually say:  This question presumes that the adoptee considers their country-of-origin somewhere to go back to. For some adoptees, this can be the case; yet for others, the country in which they were born can feel as distant and foreign as any other country you’ve never been. Please don’t assume that an adoptee is constantly yearning to return to their “roots,” since this implies they are living an incomplete life where they are.

 

 

3. Do you ever think about how different your life might have Been if you weren’t adopted?

   

What we wish we could say:  All the time. Do you ever think about how different your life might have been if you weren’t born in the circumstances you are in now?

 

What we would actually say:  Everyone thinks about circumstances that could have changed their lives drastically. For adoptees, this circumstance was something that truly altered our entire identity/existence, and it was a choice that was not our own. What this question sounds like to an adoptee is, “Do you ever consider how lucky you are that you were adopted into the wealthiest country in the world when you could have been a poor, oppressed girl in a communist country?”

 

 

4.    Who are your ‘real’ parents?

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What we wish we could say:  Duh. I mean, they’re the ones who raised me, protected me, taught me...Define ‘real’. Because they’re real in every definition of the word ‘parent’; but if you’re asking me if they’re my biological parents, then I think you need to get glasses or crack open a book about race.   

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What we would actually say:  Using the term “real” serves to invalidate the efforts our adoptive families have made to raise us and take care of us. While adoption is a story of loss as much as it is of gain, it’s not fair or appropriate to force an adoptee to evaluate which set of parents is their “real” ones and which set is their “fake” ones. Our adoptive parents are not stand-ins, substitutes, or temporary.

 

 

5.  Do you eat rice at home?  

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What we  wish we could say:  Not often, but yes.

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What we would actually say: Probably not more often than you do.

 

 

6. Do you celebrate Chinese New Year?  

 

What we would actually say:  Depends on the year.

 

 

7. Is she your ‘real’ sister?  

 

See Question 4.

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8. Do you remember any of it? Oh, I mean the adoption?  

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What we wish we could: I was a baby. Do you remember anything from before you were 2 years old?

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What we would actually say:  It’s safe to assume that what the adoptee remembers about their adoption is limited or nonexistent, or it is at least some ways traumatic and difficult to think about. Don’t put an adoptee in the position of feeling obligated to share the most intimate details about their identity and their lives with you if they are not ready to do so.