The A-Word

This came up after a training at work on microaggressions. I’m not a person of color. I am, however, female, adopted, an only child and divorced. I have weathered my share of micro- (and macro-) aggressions on each of those fronts. 
 
 
 

It took me five-and-a-half decades to realize that I’m supposed to be ashamed that I was adopted at birth. That the A word is a bad thing. Randall* and I missed the memo for so long. 
 
Sure, there were hints circa 1970. The look of empathy and/or pity on the stranger’s face when I would say proudly, before I knew what it meant, that I was adopted, after she had said something unsolicited along the lines of “You look just like your mom! You have her eyes!” 
 
Her line of inquiry would eventually get around to whether I had siblings. 
 
“Nope!” I would declaim, again with unwarranted confidence. 
 
Poor me, her expression would say. Not only adopted but an only. 

It happened a lot. 
 
I was chosen, special and loved, I wanted to yell when it happened in my teen years because that is what I was told by my amazing, two-in-a-million parents, and what I knew (and know) to be true. 
 
Others? Not so much. 
 
Take BlowoutGate, for example. My hair was only one-third dry when my new stylist, we'll call her Savannah, revealed her true colors. 
 
We'd been making small talk as first-time clients and stylists do. Stylists are admittedly like therapists or bartenders, yes? You have 40 – 60 minutes in the chair to not be that self-important person on your phone. You strive to be present, relaxed, connected during your sliver of self-care. Thus, the instant rapport and manufactured, unearned intimacy. 
 
Situated squarely in a purple county, we talked jobs, kids and politics-lite, carefully avoiding the subject of Trump.
 
We had established common ground as moms in second marriages when she allowed, “My daughter is a freshman in high school; she’s with her dad half-time. She’s a great kid, but lately she has been hanging around this adopted girl. They always cause problems. I’m definitely discouraging that friendship.” 
 
“Huh,” was my trenchant riposte. 

Her logorrhea had driven us directly into a conversational cul-de-sac. 
 
Call me naïve, but the Adopted Kids Are Bad Apples trope was in fact a news flash to me. It was like she was letting me in on something I should have known all along: this is how bio-fams really see adopted people. This is their lens. 
 
I regret not getting up and walking out of the salon in the fetching black nylon smock with Bride of Frankenstein hair. 
 
Instead, because I was blindsided, unprepared and evidently lacked agency, my only recourse (to my mind) was to not tip. 
 
I considered a subsequent call to the manager then thought better of it. 
 
After all, I now have Savannah to thank for reigniting my interest in an implicit bias that I had not consciously registered.

I started listening for the spoken or unspoken A-word. It didn't take long to hear it. 
 
A few days later I'm tuned into the Unblocking Us podcast while on my road bike and Brene Brown is laughing too loudly at her guest’s jokes. Chris Heuertz is an author whose book is ironically called “The Enneagram of Belonging.” (Emphasis mine.) My husband refers to his currency as psycho-babble — the kind that categorizes you by number, 1 through 9, based on personality traits. People pay a lot of money to be pigeonholed, pegged and yes, seen, understood and accepted for who they are, flaws and all. 
 
The 7s are popular and extroverted, for example, but the 8s, he guffawed (I'm paraphrasing and might be off on the numbers because I could not downplay the episode when I went back to find it), are like the adopted kids in the family! Hilarity!
 
Brene didn’t miss a beat. I imagined her throwing her head back as she laughed in attunement and agreement before effortlessly segueing into her next question about the 9s. 
 
She apparently didn’t hear his not-so-veiled slight. His words behind the words. So UN-Brene of her! I thought, making a mental note to email her to point out her missed opportunity to stand up for adopted people everywhere. 
 
Sure enough, it happened again a week later. We were taking a tour of my office building when a coworker said to our incoming executive director, with apology, “We are like the adopted children over here!” She meant we are not physically part of the main office. We are more like an annex, separate in proximity, but still an integral and equal part of the team. Instead she went with adopted children. Everyone nodded by way of echo: Understood!
 
Some slights are more subtle, like when someone from my husband's past wrote in a sympathy card (after his sister died): “We are both from big families – we appreciate the importance of family,” or some such sentiment to remind him of their long-lost connection. She might have been more direct with the undermining wedge. Something along the lines of: “She’s an only, adopted child so can’t possibly get it, or us in times like this!”  
 
I remember watching with keen interest Colin Kaepernick’s mother's smackdown of an insensitive reporter who made the mistake of distinguishing Colin, whom she and her husband adopted, from their bio-children. “He is our child, exactly like our other children,” she said. She packed a punch, did not equivocate and extracted an apology from the chastened reporter. I wanted to reach through the screen to hug her. And Colin. To date, Colin has rebuffed efforts by his birth mother to meet him. His choice. 
 
I found mine. My choice. My parents — the ones who raised me — instilled in me the true-ism that there is always plenty of love to go around, with or without my bio-parents in the picture. And that finding them would answer my questions but in no way diminish my parents’ love for me or mine for them.

It didn't — it strengthened my love for them, God rest their sweet souls. 
 
Turns out that every child, bio B-word or adopted A-word, has a story. Let us start by not assuming one is more or less worthy than the other. 
 
In the meantime, choose your words wisely, especially if you are Brene Brown’s podcast guest. She can move mountains and reveal biases like no other. Maybe I will email her after all. The nation's CVO (Chief Vulnerability Officer) will hopefully empathize with my need to put this out there. 
 
 
 
*This is Us ref. You get it.