Adoption beyond rose-colored glasses
Bethel students and psychology professor Gretchen Wrobel discuss the complexities of adoption through personal experiences and research.
By Angela Gonzalez and Lydia Gessner
[Editor’s note: One source’s name was changed to Rianna in this story so that the source could be more honest about family dynamics. The two reporters and editor trust the source’s story.]
Sophomore Aleia Durston heard her alarm clock buzz and rolled over in her bed in Lissner Hall. It was October of 2021 and the last day she could drop out of the nursing program at Bethel University. For six months she had prayed, journaled and asked mentors for wisdom. Now it came down to staring at the white plaster ceiling and whispering a bold prayer.
“I’m just not gonna get out of bed until You tell me.”
“I am extremely grateful for the family that I was raised in, but…there’s a lot of intensity that comes with being raised in a home that’s missionally-focused, because oftentimes there are crises that are present.” — Aleia Durston, senior social work major at Bethel University
Durston is one of 13 siblings — four adopted, five biological and four long-term foster children. While she is one of her parents’ biological children, she grew up surrounded by the trauma, beauty and ambiguity of her family. Which is why she chose the medical field and ran from social work.
“I am extremely grateful for the family that I was raised in,” Durston said. “But…there’s a lot of intensity that comes with being raised in a home that’s missionally-focused, because oftentimes there are crises that are present.”
Rianna could feel the heat of the familiar blow dryer on her head. Her mother’s hands combed through her hair, just as they did for the past 12 years, making her natural curly hair disappear into something her mother was used to. Something more acceptable.
“My mom didn’t know that raising a child who is adopted is different than raising your own biological child. I feel like, yes, they’re both your children, but every child has different needs. You can’t just ignore that.” — Rianna
“It was almost like she was getting rid of it,” Rianna said. “I don’t know, like making me more white. Not accepting me for me, or not trying to learn about what I needed … that sucked.”
Rianna was adopted at 3 months from Bogota, Columbia, by a Scandinavian Minnesotan couple. Growing up, she felt out of place. She didn’t look like her family with her curly black hair and dealt with racism within her extended family. Even when she met people like her, she still didn’t fit in. Some didn’t see her as a real Latino because she couldn’t speak Spanish. All of this caused her to want to learn more about herself and her culture, but she was not shown or encouraged to do so. This left her relationship between her family, especially with her mother, strained.
“My mom didn’t know that raising a child who is adopted is different than raising your own biological child.” Rianna said. “I feel like, yes, they’re both your children, but every child has different needs. You can’t just ignore that.”
Adoption is interwoven in the stories of students and staff walking down the halls of Bethel each day. For some, like Durston and psychology professor Gretchen Wrobel — who’s mother’s adoption led her into the adoption field of research — their families have influenced their callings. For others, like Rianna, it affects their life, relationships and hopes for the future.
Durston has two sisters who are thirteen and fourteen years older than her who her mom first encountered in her fifth grade class. Her parents became foster parents in order to bring them into their home. Her brother, Traig, who is going to be 20, was fostered as a baby before her family adopted him. Woodson, who is 21, was adopted from Haiti.
Durston first met her four long-term foster siblings at an afterschool program at their church. She formed a special bond with them and eventually they became a part of her family via a legal document called “designation of parental authority.”
All of her family’s adoptions took place before Durston turned 4. This meant her growing up consisted of a family with a mix of chaos and love.
“A lot of mental health crises, a lot of emotional behavioral unwellness, and just, you know, being in a relationship with biological families, sometimes just really intense situations that arise,” Durston said. “But when I first left the home, I kind of needed to process some resentment over how much our home had been centered around crisis growing up.”
But her family has also fashioned her character and her faith.
“The Lord’s brought us all together in a really unique way,” Durston said. “I’m not trying to say that I have been a perfect child. Like, they have also cared for and developed me in all of my woundedness and brokenness.”
They have also shaped her leadership skills which have ultimately led her to her calling.
Looking back, Durston can see herself as an “advocate,” with a strong moral compass toward justice, a love of connecting people and resources and a desire to uplift the voices of others. This was realized when her family fundraised to adopt Woodson from Haiti. Durston more fully grasped for the first time the depth of suffering and injustice in the world, while also discovering her desire to help.
“I want to be somebody who steps into those spaces and advocates for justice,” Durston said. “And elevates the voices of those who maybe don’t have one at this time or not being heard.”
Rianna felt like her adoption was never talked about enough. It was a closed adoption and she only recently learned her father is Brazilian. She found out about her half-sister when she was eleven, but only after asking.
But that was all she was told. This did not sit well with her, she wanted to know more about someone like her. So she dug into files to find what her parents wouldn’t share.
She has a half sister that is 6 years older than her. But there was no name. And no picture.
She recently took a 23andMe test and was able to connect with a distant cousin. He is 43 with a wife and kids. Their shared ancestor moved to the Bronx from Columbia in the early 1900s.
“But it felt so good because I was like, wow, like, I have family,” Rianna said. “So that’s kind of the only connection I really have.”
At the start of her Bethel career, Durston had professors in the nursing department approach her about her potential for a career beyond stethoscopes, IVs and scrubs. Durston realized her passion for social justice was running up against the brick confines of hospital walls.
“I just couldn’t stand the thought of being a nurse and knowing that this individual is experiencing a lot of inequality or injustice or oppression or marginalization,” Durston said, “and not being the person that steps into that space and helps empower them.”
Rianna felt the weight of her ancestral information gap when making family trees, doing Punnett squares or when asked about her health history.
“I have no idea if I’m super prone to breast cancer or anything else,” Rianna said. “So I have to be much more cautious. There’s just so many things you don’t know and I wish someone validated that and was aware. It’s not my parents’ fault…but I don’t think they realize there needs to be more awareness about it.”
When Durston’s feet hit the floor that morning in October of 2021, she emailed the chair of the nursing department. Her email said, in summary, “I am done.”
“[The Lord] actually specifically prepared me for doing this work through my family system and what I have been exposed to,” Durston said. “And really had actually put a passion in my heart for seeing people who need to be seen and creating spaces of belonging for them.”
Now Durston will graduate on May 25 with a bachelor’s degree in social work. She has been accepted into Baylor University in Texas, where she will pursue a clinical specialization with a trauma-informed emphasis. Much of her undergraduate work and research surrounding trauma-informed interventions and care for youth has been informed by her upbringing.
“That was absolutely inspired by my experience and my family,” Durston said. “[And] just my passion for making sure that individuals who have experienced trauma in their lives are receiving care from the correct perspective and lens, so they can really achieve holistic wellness.”
Rianna now attends therapy to help her process issues surrounding her adoption and talked about how it has helped shape her complex view of adoption.
“I didn’t even realize it was trauma because whenever I talked about my adoption it was a thing that was celebrated instead of just grieving my experiences,” Rianna said.
“There’s some very old classic research that talks about acceptance or denial of adoption… So if you say every time you introduce your child, ‘This is my adopted child,’ you’re insistent on the difference that’s not helpful. Or if you just ignore it and say, ‘There’s no difference. Everything is just fine, just like a biological child.’ That’s not good either.” — Gretchen Wrobel, psychology professor at Bethel University
According to the adoption research of Bethel University psychology professor Gretchen Wrobel, it’s common for many adopted children to feel a sense of loss similar to what Rianna feels.
“A parent is relinquishing their child to somebody else,” Wrobel said. “And the child grieves over the birth parents that’s not there. It’s a relationship built on grief and loss.”
“How you communicate about adoption in the adoptive family says a lot…” Wrobel said. “There’s some very old classic research that talks about acceptance or denial of adoption… So if you say every time you introduce your child, ‘This is my adopted child,’ you’re insistent on the difference that’s not helpful. Or if you just ignore it and say, ‘There’s no difference. Everything is just fine, just like a biological child.’ That’s not good either.”
In Wrobel’s research, she was able to see that if parents are willing to dive into their adoptive children’s curiosities, acknowledging the differences and working together around the issues, the relationship between the adoptive parents and their adopted children are usually stronger and better.
Rianna has a better relationship with her dad and said it has helped to have an adopted brother who is from the same children’s home in Columbia, even if it is only a subconscious acknowledgement of their similar origins.
Durston has seen a similar bond between her older adopted siblings and her younger ones.
“My siblings who have come from harder places are now the ones who have walked towards healthiness and wholeness,” Durston said, “and now come around new children that come into our home and, like, also participate in that redemptive process.”
One of Durston’s older sisters has won awards for her leadership roles in organizations and agencies that provide foster children like her, and families like theirs, with resources. She has even adopted a child herself.
“What’s most rewarding about being a part of a family that steps into that ministry is the fact that, yes, we are called into, like, a lot of depth of sorrow and messiness and brokenness,” she said. “But the truth of the Gospel is that as far as we’re willing to go into that messiness and brokenness, like, the Lord will also then reveal to us all of the joy and redemption that comes with it.”
Rianna dreams of having a family of her own someday, where she can see her curly black hair frame the smiling faces of her children.
As for Durston, she can see herself adopting in the future, but only if and when she is ready.
“I do not have rose-colored glasses around adoption,” Durston said. “I understand, like I was saying, the weight of both the sorrow and the joy that comes, like, the brokenness and the redemption.
Angela Gonzalez graduates in May as an English and journalism major at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She likes writing adventure and fantasy fiction, reporting on interesting people and doing photography. During her free time she enjoys rereading Percy Jackson for the 100th time, watching movies until her eyes hurt, chugging Dr. Peppers and spending time with her crazy friends and family. She hopes to one day be a published TA novelist. She seeks a day job while she writes that novel. Hire her.
Lydia Gessner is an English major set to graduate in May 2024 with an emphasis in creative and professional writing from Bethel University She has spent four years at Bethel honing her skills as a writer, editor and photographer working for her local newspapers and with Bethel’s literary magazine, The Coeval. She hopes to publish a compilation of her prose and poetry after graduation.
