Call for Submissions: Adoptee Chronicles
For the whimsical, amusing, and outright weird stories of being adopted. A project of adoptēre.
If you’ve read my other work, you know that (a) I’m an adoptee and (b) I’ve seen some shit.
Writing about my trauma in adoption is both personally therapeutic and valuable community work as I continually find people who have shared similar journeys.
We commiserate. We share tips and advice for processing, healing, and moving past trauma. And any healing journey just isn’t complete without laughter. Laughter heals a host of wounds. It may not make the pain disappear, but it can be a pressure release.
In that spirit, I’ve decided to highlight the stories of the weird, amusing, comical, ironic, odd, and just shake-your-head-worthy. I’ll go first!
Early on in elementary school, we had a project for a family tree. I was new to adoption; I believe this was second grade so I’d only been an adoptee for a few months.
I stared at the blank tree, pondering what to call my adopted parents as I still didn’t feel quite right just calling them “Mom” and “Dad”. After much contemplation, I carefully and in my best handwriting labeled each and every relative, on my adoptive mom and dad’s side of the family tree, with each of their family roles preceded by “step”.
“Stepmom” and “stepdad”. Four step-grandparents. Eight step-aunts and uncles. Lots of step-cousins. Because I was looking for a word that meant “I’m not related to these people”, I used what I’d overheard in conversation: “step.”
The look on my teacher’s face as she reviewed my family tree was priceless. Perplexed is an understatement. She first asked who was divorced so she could help me clear it up. I was confused.
“No one, I don’t think.”
No one is divorced and yet you have all of these… step-family?
I was beginning to get nervous, aware that somehow I had messed up but also not quite sure my teacher knew what adoption was (I didn’t know what it was before I was adopted so I assumed it wasn’t common knowledge) and I definitely didn’t want to explain it to her… but as she kept staring at my tree, probably trying to make sense of exactly how many divorces would go into a situation where each and every relative was a ‘step’, I realized I was not going to get a great grade, and if I didn’t get a great grade, I wouldn’t get the pizza party.
I wanted that pizza party.
So I finally spoke up.
“I’m… adopted? I didn’t know what to call them.”
Bless this sweet teacher, because her face instantly changed, softened, and she sat down with me.
You can call them whatever you want, then. You get an A! Good job!
Non-adoptees reading that story may think, “OMG, that’s not funny, that’s kind of sad!” but at the time, and looking back on it as an adult, it was funny. Our humor may strike us differently, and that’s the point of the Adoptee Chronicles: for us to come share those stories that we can laugh at, even if others don’t quite get it.
In order to submit, you must be a writer for adoptēre (comment on this piece if you’d like to be a writer and I’ll add you!), you must be an adoptee, and you must use the tag “Adoptee Chronicles”.
I look forward to reading your stories and laughing along at the stuff only we may truly understand.
“Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.” — Bob Newhart
