Identity

When I was a baby, strangers assumed that my mother was my nanny or babysitter. When walking down the street, there was a high chance that people passing by would assume that I was both born and raised in China. In fact, just last week, a customer at work asked me how long I had been in Canada because my accent was so good. As an intercountry adoptee from China, I came to Canada and became a Canadian citizen when I was 11 months old. I didn’t consider myself Chinese for a long time, and I wasn’t interested in exploring that aspect of my heritage until very recently.

Focus on Adoption and AFABC have always sought to centre adoptee voices and perspectives, but the #FlipTheScript campaign (launched during Adoption Awareness Month in 2014) inspired us to launch a regular column called "Adopted Voice." The series ran from 2015 to 2016.

In ongoing this series, we interview experts about your key questions about adoption.

Are you an expert wanting to lend your knowledge to our families? Email us at editor@bcadoption.com.

Here are some of the articles from our long-running Diary of an Adoptive Mom series. This adoptive mother shares her experiences and secret thoughts of raising three children. This series ran from 2006 to 2010.

Note: Diary entries #1 to #7 are unavailable 

In our Living Openness series, adoptive mother Charlotte Taylor shares her experience navigating the world of open adoption. This series originally ran from 2013 to 2015.

Adoptees are four times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adoptees. There’s no easy way to talk about this topic, but talk about it we must.

In recognition of BC Youth in Care Week, we asked a young adult adoptee to write about her journey to understand her identity.

Dear Self,

I know it’s been a while, and you’ve had a hard time lately. There’s a certain time every year when you feel the expanse of emptiness in your body a little more. That slow ache.

Janet was abandoned at birth outside a hospital in northern BC. In 2017, she found four half-siblings who were also abandoned as babies by the same mother. Through DNA testing, she learned the identity of her deceased biological mother and her biological father, Emil Weinreich. Janet met Emil for the first time just over a year ago. In this article, Janet reflects on how their shared love for her led her biological and adoptive fathers to become family to each other, too.

An interview with adult ally and youth in care advocate Violet-Rose Pharoah.

What inspires you to make art and be a part of art projects that focus on the experiences of foster care?

As someone who is naturally quiet and introverted, I find that art provides the opportunity for me to explore and express my feelings. My involvement with art projects focused on foster care stems from my own personal lived experience, as well as the belief that art is a powerful transformational tool in creating change.