229 Tiffany Henness
/Haley: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today I get to introduce you to my friend Tiffany Henness. Tiffany shares her story of growing up in an open adoption and how it isn't the panacea that many hold it up to be. We discuss how she came to explore race, adoption and faith, and what shifted her perspectives on all of those topics.
Now, Tiffany is an adoption and racial literacy expert who writes, speaks, and leads others. To unpack the complexities of these experiences, we wrap up with some recommended resources, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adoptee design.com. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on AdopteesOn.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.
We are gonna be talking about some faith things and Christianity today, though, if that's a hard topic for you. I just wanted to give you the heads up. Let's listen in.
(Upbeat Music)
Haley: I'm so pleased to welcome to adoptees on Tiffany Henness. Welcome Tiffany.
Tiffany: Woohoo. Thank you for having me. This is very exciting.
Haley: You're already celebrating. Me too. Me too. I'd love it if you would start and share a little of your story with us.
Tiffany: Well, we go back to the beginning. I was born on a Tuesday. Yeah, I, I am an infant domestic adoptee, a multiracial Asian and white.
My first mom is white American and western European American. And I was immediately adopted into a white family in Oregon. So if anyone has heard of Tillamook cheese Tillamook, Oregon or Tillamook Ice Cream, Tillamook, Oregon is where I was born. And this was in the eighties when there were more cows than people.
So, yeah, I, I also like to say that there were more different colors of cheeses than there were people in this town.
Haley: Okay.
Tiffany: So if that paints a picture. Okay. Okay. Yeah. . But yeah, I, you know, I had no contact or really information about my biological father, who I have since found out is Chinese Canadian.
But I grew up in this Christian home, evangelical Christian home. We did Sunday school. My, I think my adoptive mom was actually the Sunday school teacher. We did church every Sunday, youth group every Wednesday growing up. And we also played in the woods and in the forest of Oregon, which is beautiful.
If I can plug for, for Oregon's natural environment. It's very beautiful. But I had no Asian friends. I had... the only other Chinese Americans that I think I ever saw was like the one family who owned the Chinese food restaurant in town. You know, like there's, there's like a Chinese food restaurant in every town, right?
And there's this Chinese family that runs it, but you never see them unless you go to their restaurant. So they weren't even family friends necessarily. But we would go there and I would always order the cheeseburger because I did not know what Chinese American food was. I was not sure about this. So I'd order the cheeseburger on the kids menu.
But yeah, growing up I had two older siblings. They were the biological children of my adoptive parents. They were 10 and 12 years older too. So they were kind of more like built-in babysitters than they were siblings, you know what I mean? Like yeah, they're just their whole generation ahead of me. And so I was like the baby of the family.
And I would say that I was about 10 or 11 when I met my first mom for the first time. So this was an open adoption. My adoptive mother communicated with my first mother via letters. She, you know, they'd send photos of me to her. And then I think I was about four when we had that conversation, right?
Like, why, why do I look different? And my adoptive mother told me this story about how a mama cat adopted a puppy because the puppy's mom died. And so, of course, cats can't give birth to dogs. But the mama cat became like the mom to the puppy, and that's what adoption meant. So that's how I was told what it, what it meant.
But your mom didn't die. Right? Like she's alive.
But that was, that was the explanation I got for why I looked different and what adoption really meant. They always told me I was adopted, I just didn't actually know what it meant. And it was one of those things where a friend was like, you're not adopted. And so I went home and I was like, so what does that actually mean?
Cause I've been saying this to everybody, but I don't know what it means. I'm only four. Yeah. So that's when I was told, and at that point, my adoptive mother told my first mother, she knows now exactly what it means to be adopted and that you're out there. So pretty much from my fifth birthday forward, I got a letter in the mail, a birthday card from my first mom, and it had a picture of her when she was the same age that I was.
And that was an interesting thing because it gave me the sense for who she was, but it, it, it wasn't a picture of her as an adult. It was a picture of her as a child. And I think that the idea was that then I wouldn't see this picture of this other adult woman and be like, oh, she's my mom and you're not my mom or something.
I'm not really sure. But as a kid it was interesting to receive those birthday cards. My adoptive mother would keep the envelope from me so I wouldn't see the address, which is interesting because I wasn't even thinking about, you know, trying to like contact her myself. Like that wasn't even a thought in my mind.
But I do remember her being careful to remove the, the envelope and just give me the card with the photo in it. I remember being a little weirded out about seeing a photo of my first mom as a kid who had blonde curly hair and bright blue eyes, and I was like, how is. How is this someone I'm related to? I have black hair, brown eyes, Asian features...
so yeah, that was, that was my growing up. That was my, my version of what the spectrum of open adoptions can look like. And when I did finally meet her around 10 or 11, that was a very odd moment. In walks this tall blonde woman, who is just so different from me as a kid. All I could see is our differences.
And I think it's funny looking back at that now because when my first son was born, so this was like seven years ago, she came to visit and, and stayed for like a week. And now we're both adults. I'm a grown adult now. I know who I am a little bit better. I'm, I've grown into my adult features. My nose, my ears.
And that's the most time I've ever spent with her. She visited me for like 10 days and, and I could not stop seeing all of our similarities. Even though we have different hair color and eye color, but like the way we walk and the sound of our voice and, and the, and it was so weird to be in my thirties and finally seeing myself in my mother, who I had technically known for 20 years. And so yeah.
Haley: Well it, it's interesting to me that you were, were talking about the different, the mannerisms and things that were similar. And as you were talking, I was trying to picture you like, what would you look like if you had blonde hair and? Like, yeah, I don't know. I, I've never heard of someone getting pictures of their parent as a child in the birthday cards.
Tiffany: Mm.
Haley: I want Did you ever ask, like, was that your idea? Whose idea was that?
Tiffany: I didn't ask. My impression was that it was my adoptive mom's idea. So I do have some letters that my first mom had sent to my adoptive mom within the year after I was born. I have a few things like that that was given to me in like a keepsake from my adoptive mom.
And I didn't read those letters until probably four years ago. I didn't know they existed. I knew that they had communicated, but I didn't know how, and it was actually really crazy. Now, as a mom in my thirties, you know, to be reading this letter of my first mom, not long after she had given birth and left me and drove off and went home.
And then she went into the Marines, actually, she got married there met, met a Marine and they, the two of 'em got married and they had three kids, my, my half siblings. But to read her letters of her just asking how I was doing and, and trying to share about her life and what was going on, and... trying to put myself in that position of like, gosh, you know, all they communicated it seemed was through these letters.
And she's writing to ask and inquire about me. And as a mom now, I just can't imagine like how much emotions go into putting that letter together and sending it off. You know, but my, my impression from those letters, is that she's very much trying to follow the lead of my adoptive mom, that who was her senior by probably at least 15 years.
Right? So I can't do the math right now. It'll take too long. But yeah, she was quite a bit older and and my first mom was just barely 19, I think, when she had me. So I think that the idea for those photos was, you know, Tiffany knows now and we want to facilitate a connection between the two of you. But I think that there was some concern, you know, a lot of folks at the time, I remember my adoptive mom telling me, a lot of people told her, are you, aren't you worried that the first your, you know, her first mom's gonna come and, and try to get her back?
You know, like, so in the eighties, like there were these, these were some of the things she heard from the people in her community. And so I think she was trying to be cautious to not set me up to have that, oh, here's my mom. You're not my mom. I'm identifying with this adult woman who is my real mom. And I think she was trying to avoid some of that confusion or area of tension. But I, I'm not sure that that's how I would've responded, because looking back, thinking about myself, when I would get those letters, I felt very disconnected from this person and it felt like a, whatever emotions or feelings or reactions I was having, I, I couldn't even really access them. I think I kind of went numb and it was like an out of body experience to read this birthday card from somebody who, like, logically I knew that she was the one who had given birth to me, but I didn't know what to do with that information.
And so I just kind of read it and was like, huh. And that's interesting. And I looked at the photo and I was like, huh, that's interesting. And then I literally just went on with my birthday because I didn't know what to do with it. So I did nothing with it. I didn't ask further questions. I didn't stare at it and look at it all the time.
I wonder if it would've been different if my mom had been Asian and my dad had been white and I was seeing a picture of someone who looked like me. I don't know. Maybe I would've responded differently, but since she didn't look like me, or I didn't think she did, I just, I didn't feel a connection through a little kid wallet sized school photo from the, you know, sixties. Yeah. Sort of that brown sepia tone. Right.
Haley: Yeah. Yeah. That feels such, like, such a disconnect. I mean, in, in adulthood when any of us who are fortunate to have a reunion of some kind... getting those pictures of your parents as a kid, it's kind of like, oh, wow. Like, it's so interesting and fascinating and then you have this, but you're not really sure what to do with it.
Tiffany: Hmm.
Haley: And the other thing I think is so interesting is, I mean, I, I feel like I've almost exclusively, there's a few exceptions, but almost exclusively talked with adoptees who are from closed adoptions.
Tiffany: Oh.
Haley: Whether it's domestic or international, or transracial, some kind, but closed adoptions who don't have access to that. And do you think, I mean, and that's what's touted as like, well this is the like high, highest form of option is open adoption. And so I know you talked to tons of adoptees and you're very connected in adopteeland, but what do you think about that? Like, did it make a difference for you?
Like you don't know the other, you don't have the other experience of closed adoption, but
Tiffany: Right.
Haley: It sounds like it was perplexing as well.
Tiffany: Yeah. So I'm gonna say something that might be a little bit unpopular, but I don't think open adoption solves that many problems. It just makes the problems different. And, and that's just the truth of the matter. Here's something I, I'll often try to express or explain about open adoption is just because you have access to someone in some form or some capacity or knowledge about them, right? It doesn't make it make any more sense why you are given away. It doesn't make it make any more sense, you know, why they didn't want you.
Even, you know, when you get to hear their story from them firsthand, which to be honest with you, I have not yet heard that story firsthand from my first mom for all of the times we've talked and the fact that she visited me, that doesn't mean that we actually had open and honest conversations about any of this stuff. okay?
And, and I think that the thing that I experienced with open adoption was the assumption that, well, if she wants to know, she'll ask because we're right here and, right, and so that's what the adults are thinking. But I'm a, as a kid thinking, well, if they want me to know, they'll tell me cuz we're right here together.
And if they don't want me to know, they won't tell me and I shouldn't ask. And so there's this assumption too, that I had growing up, that I could always get the answers if I wanted to because I knew how to contact my first mom. And yet my experience has been that's not the case. Just, you know, just because your family, adoptive family, they told me, well, if you ever wanna search for your first father, like we will help you do that.
They would tell me that like, someday if you wanna do that. But as a kid someday meant, well, not today. So that means there's a point in the future when it's gonna be okay. And I don't know when that is and, but it's not, must not be today cuz that's not what someday means. And then the reality is that by the time I did kind of ask or expressed curiosity, it was so long ago and, oh, I don't really remember.
So like my first mom had said like, well it was just so long ago. And you know, I don't remember some of those details. And then you feel that pressure of not wanting to press them and pepper them with more questions. You know, it takes a lot of courage. It took a lot of courage to just ask the initial, can you tell me what happened?
And when the response is, well I don't remember all the details. You know, and they give you just a little bit and you're like, okay, then what do you remember? You know, that's what you wanna say, but then you're like, gosh, you know, we've had this whole history and pattern of not talking directly about it, of assuming that, you know, if they wanted to share, they would've told me and they didn't.
And there's a lot to overcome there. So, no, I, I think that being where I'm at today as an adult who is estranged from her adoptive family, who has actually reconnected with both sides of my biological family not fully with my, my father, although I've reached out to him, we'll just leave it at that.
But like, I do have a lot of the answers that I had of the questions I had had because of the people I've reconnected with and the things they've been able to share with me. But on the whole, I don't feel like I have had this lifelong experience of more confidence and resolution that I hear people talk about or peace about being adopted that I, I hear people say when they talk about the benefits of open adoption and, you know, everyone's experience is very different.
But I'm 38 today and I've gone through enough of my journey to, to be able to reflect more deeply about my adoption than I could 10 years ago. And as I do that, I think, yeah, no, it was open. It wasn't easy. It was, it didn't make sense to me. And on the whole, I, I don't think it, it was a very healthy experience.
And so I hate to say that and burst some people's bubbles, but I do know that there are other adoptees I've talked to who their version of an open adoption was, more candid, they got more intentional conversations to head- on address some things, and I could see how that could help them process stuff in a, in a better or healthier way.
But I feel like I have been clawing for answers, paying thousands of dollars, doing DNA tests, doing genealogy research, scouring Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and, you know, yellow page online listings for people, connected with people to find parts of my family, just like closed adoptees have had to, you know, has have had to do, on my father's side.
And on on my mother's side, who we had connection with, I have felt a lifelong experience of a strained reunion that there was a lot that wasn't said, a lot of opportunities that weren't taken, maybe fear on both sides. And so we don't have, I don't have like full peace or resolution there either.
I still have questions and I'm still hoping they'll be answered someday, and I'm still daily accepting the fact they may never be.
Haley: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Tiffany: Oh, and I, I still can't, I still am trying to get my own adoption records. Oregon's adoption records became open the first state that opened their records to adoptees in 2005.
Right. Because of the activism of Bastard Nation adoptee, adoptees. And so that's where I was born. I'm born in this state who opened adoption case records to adoptees, and I've been having this big mental and emotional hurdle over the fact that when you apply to get those records, they ask you on the form what your reason is for asking for these records. And I can't, I can't.
Haley: No.
Tiffany: Like they ask you for a good reason and I'm like, I want to write something explicit and mean, but then if I do that on a government forum, I'm afraid that I'm gonna be put on a watch list or something. Like, these are my records. I don't need to give you a reason. They're just mine. Like, if I requested, like if I divorce my husband and later I wanted to request a record of that, you know, divorce, like court proceeding or whatever, cuz I, whatever.
Would I, is that on the form to request those records? Give me a good reason why you want these records of your, of your life. I don't think so. I don't think it is. I think you just fill out your information, you pay the fee and then it comes to you in the mail. But I have to get, I have to come up with the reason why, a good reason why they should give me these records.
And I just have sat there and stared at that and been angry as opposed to just filling in something and sending it off.
You know what I mean? Oh.
Haley: Absolutely. It is the perpetual infantilization of adopted people asking for permission with, to what should rightly be ours. Un friggin believable I mean, it is totally believable.
Tiffany: And they give you like two, like a line and a half to like enter your answer. And I'm like, if you wanna know my reason, I'm gonna give you like a 2000 word essay.
Haley: Okay. What would we pay to just see from the database what people have written in that space? Like I wanna see everybody's answers. Show me all of them.
Tiffany: Yes. Show me them all. Mm-hmm. . . Okay. I might need to get a job at the Oregon Health Department, like records, we can have access to see what people have said.
Haley: Right?
Tiffany: Oh, that is fascinating.
Haley: Like, I, I wonder what's the ex quote, unquote acceptable reasons. I imagine illness of some kind. So we need our medical, right? Yeah. I don't know. I dunno. Wow.
Tiffany: But that's the assumption in, in the way that they, they put that is that there is, there's a bad reason and therefore your application or request could be denied because what you wrote here wasn't an approvable answer.
I did reach out to an attorney who was involved in changing Oregon's laws on records, and I, I expressed my frustration with this question on this form, and, you know, she's an adoptive mom too. She's not an adoptee, but she just said, well, just, just write in there that you want them because they're yours.
And I'm like, yeah. But, the question shouldn't be there. Yeah. Because if that's the answer that's acceptable, why ask it, you know? Yeah. Anyway, so that's a, that's another interesting thing.
I've had this open adoption, I've lived this ideal scenario where I, I think some people think the ideal scenario is there was a young woman who wasn't ready to parent. And so there were parents who were happy to take in a child, and it was all arranged and set up for everybody's benefit. The win-win- win we hear about. And that was kind of like the life I lived, right? Like she was, my first mom was young. You know, I was told she loved me and that's why she gave me up and wasn't ready to parent.
And then I got to live with this family who was able to, you know, give me both a mom and a dad and a house and amenities and all these things and love me. And it was open. So I had contact and all of that stuff. And in the state that has open record laws, you know, so all of these things that are going for me on, from this one perspective.
And from this other perspective, I'm like, then why am I still paying so much for therapy? Like, why do I still struggle with all of this lifetime of, of, of trauma? And it feels like even more of a disenfranchised grief because when people hear I had an open adoption, or when they hear that it wasn't because, you know, of my first mom, like it wasn't out of living in bad conditions and being taken away by Child Protective Services or I didn't have those adverse childhood experiences that people think of when they think of like child, child welfare or CPS getting involved, right?
It's like, well, you were fresh, you were a newborn baby. You got handed over and you got the the good start, and, and I'm like, yeah. So if that is the case, and I'm still struggling so much, the older I get the more the, the weight of it feels heavier and heavier because the experience of adoption, you collect more and more experiences as you get older and older that show you how heavy it can be to carry.
I was like, so if I'm the best case scenario and I'm still struggling with this much , then that doesn't bode well.
Haley: There's something wrong in the system.
Tiffany: Yeah. There's, there's something that, that we're not acknowledging here. Yeah. I'm not crazy for feeling like, I don't think any of this was really Okay.
Haley: Mm-hmm.
Tiffany: You know?
Haley: Mm-hmm. Well, one of the things I know that we have in common is that you were raised in a family that was evangelical and you church attendance. Mm-hmm. was a big part of your life and I don't think my experience in that way was identical, but I definitely, church was a big part of our life and I went to youth group and, you know, was all in, we were all in Tiffany.
Tiffany: Oh yeah.
Haley: We were sold out for Jesus. Yeah.
Tiffany: Did you do mission trips to Mexico too?
Haley: No. We,
Tiffany: Or did you do mission trips to the U.S.? Are we your Southern neighbors? You, you came to evanglize?
Haley: No, actually the only mission trip I went on was within my province. We went to a city in southern Alberta, Calgary. Ever heard of the Calgary Stampede. And then we did work for some of the homeless shelters. And that was sort of the, so I grew up in a really tiny Mennonite community, so a lot of those kids had never been to a city before, so that was plenty to be exposed to.
Tiffany: Ooh, nice.
Haley: Yep. Anyway. So I'll speak for myself now. I remember feeling in, you know, all the way along, like, I need to adopt, I gotta pay this back. This is part of God's plan for my life. You know, there was a reason for me to be placed where I was and, and all of those kind of tropes. And as I got older, I mean, and, and I was complicit in that whole, I, I would tell anybody that asked me, like, I'm thankful to be adopted and like, going into the system to like adopt myself and, and all of those things.
And then when things, when I started, like, I know not everybody likes outta the fog terminology, but that resonates for me. But as I started like processing all of these things, and then looking at church stuff, for myself, I really started deconstructing both adoption stuff and then later all the church stuff.
Because when I saw how complicit the Evangelical church was in separating children from their biological families and connections and calling it good and calling it God's plan, when I see the pain that people experience ... could, does not compute.
Tiffany: Does not compute. Yes, that's right.
Haley: So how was that experience for you and d do you, does any of, was any of that from well, what I shared similar to your journey. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that.
Tiffany: Oh, sure. Yeah. I was actually, sorry if you hear my clicking. I was trying to find, that paper that was, I think it's called out of the fog and a model of adoptee awareness that JaeRan, Kim and Susan Branco and other adoptee scholars put out this year because I've been trying to read through that because it helps to give a framework or a model for understanding how we experience that coming outta the fog or coming into a consciousness of adoption, right.
A as a system and as a matter of social justice issues with social injustice.
Haley: It's called adoptee Critical Consciousness.
Tiffany: Mm, yes.
Haley: And I definitely wanna have some of them on at some point to talk us through that. So we'll, we'll link to that in the show notes, so
Tiffany: oh, great.
Haley: You can good find that. Okay.
Tiffany: Yeah, they self-published it online, so it would be available for anybody to get it and not put behind a scholarly journal, you know, paywall. And I appreciate that so very much. And it's great to see adoptees like rethinking how, how we experience this, especially for trans racial adoptees, because our experience of adoption and injustice and racial injustice go hand in hand.
And so, so yeah, let, that kind of ties back to my experience growing up. I definitely did not think critically about my adoption at all. In fact, I saw it as something that happened the day I was born, and then the rest of my life just went on without being impacted by it. That's how little aware I was about my own reality that I was experiencing.
And it's the same for my racial identity. I had didn't have one. I, you know, would joke about being a banana, you know, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. And I had the same racial ignorance and like white, white cultural perspective of my family. So because of that I also grew up thinking that I was totally gonna adopt someday because that is just like the best thing to do.
Cuz my parents did it, my parents are so great, and what a great way to show God's love. And I went to a Christian liberal arts university, like I was on track for staying in the Christian bubble for the rest of my life because that was where it was at, right? The world, we are not of it. We're gonna do our own little Christian thing over here and just be so holy and pure.
So there was this, there were cracks that were beginning to form, right? And usually that happens when you leave the home of the adoptive parents. So it didn't all happen at once. For me. There was like the time period in college where I was actually now engaging with the world who didn't know me as being a, a kid adopted by white parents, right?
So I was engaging in the world as this multiracial Asian. Some people think I'm ethnically ambiguous, you know, some people are like, no, you're definitely Chinese. And others are like, what are you like are you like like Alaskan or...? It's so funny. I get the what are you question a lot. Multiracial people get a lot.
But I realized that that was something I had to answer for more regularly out in the world where people didn't know, oh, you're Tiffany, the one who was adopted by, you know, so and so.
And then I studied abroad in China. So that was actually a big eye-opener for me. Looking back, I realized I studied abroad in China because I was trying to connect to my Chinese roots. I, it's a form of searching and I, at the time, I, I recognized that I wanted to know a more about Chinese culture because I was part Chinese, but I didn't recognize that I had this bias against Chinese Americans as if they weren't the real Chinese people. So I didn't wanna go to like LA Chinatown because they're not like real Chinese. They live in America. I wanted to go to the motherland, to the source. China, cuz that's where the real Chinese people are. Oh my gosh. I was, I was so blind.
Anyways, but I had that experience. I studied abroad there for a, a semester and after college I even went back there to teach English. And I lived in China for seven months.
And all I found out was that number one, I am not, I'm American, I'm American. And that my Chinese friends that I made while I was there, they all wanted to know where my hometown was. I found out that that's really important, knowing your, where, what village your ancestors came from, that places you in the story of being Chinese.
And so I couldn't say that. I had no idea. And that's when I began wanting to find that out. And that was a safer thing for me to say, I wanna know where my Chinese ancestors came from in China. It was safer for me to say that than to say I wanna find my dad. That was too scary. But they were the same thing really, to be honest.
I just couldn't say it that way. So starting in college, I became obsessed with this idea of finding my ancestral hometown in China so that I could tell my kids someday so that I could know how to locate my, my lineage in history. And never curious about my, you know, ancestral hometown in western Europe from my mom's side, of course, because, she was the side I had access to and assumed I knew I, I was connected to and knew about. But my Chinese side I didn't.
I also, that's began my, like deconstruction of Western Christianity was when I went to China in college. I met friends there who were Christian. And they went to the Chinese Christian, the three self Chinese Christian Church. It's like the, the PRC's approved Christian religion . And I grew up hearing about the underground, the underground church in China that has to meet, in my head, literally underground, which is not true, but like in my head, I imagine people like in caves with candles and stuff. Cuz you know, I was like 12 when I first heard about it.
And, and that was the real church and those, you know. And, but then I went there and I went to Sunday service in this beautiful church building in the open. People are pouring off the streets in there. And I sat down with the Bible that's printed there and my friend who attended this church and I was looking at my English Bible and I'm looking at their Chinese Bible. And I'm struggling to find where they have hidden the real message of Christ in that Bible. That they're allowed to have. I'm like okay, my Chinese isn't great, but from what my friend is reading to me and what I'm, what I'm piecing together here, they, they do have access to the gospel. So, so they're not, they're not all underground everywhere in China?
Like these, it's a bright Sunday morning, everyone can see hundreds of people pouring into this church. And that made me start questioning what I was told about God and the church and the world. And I came back after that study abroad experience, pretty aware that America had a version of Christianity that put America first as if we were the superior type of people.
I didn't recognize it as whiteness or, or white supremacy. I recognized it as American exceptionalism. And from that point forward, I had a strong inclination to think that our American worldview, wasn't "it". It was one worldview, but there is other ways other cultures have access to God and Christ in ways that we don't understand. And that's okay and that's good. And, but I still totally about adoption and my racial didn't have a racial identity, hadn't developed a critical consciousness of adoption that happened when I had my first kid. And it was about that time, you know, I, I had, I had went off to college, I got a job, I moved out.
I wasn't around my adoptive family a whole lot. And, and things changed, you know. Their path went one way, my path went another way. And by the time my first kid came, I was pregnant with my first kid. That's when I realized that I was grieving my own in initial separation. That's when I first discovered stuff about the primal wound and was like, okay, that is explaining what's going on in a way that I never would've thought.
And then my, 18 months later, after my son was born, I donated part of my liver to my adopted second cousin. And because of that, I had to actually live with my adopted aunt and my adopted mom for like a full month in recovery and like be in their life daily.
And this is the time when Colin Kaepernick is kneeling. Donald Trump is running for president. And I saw them in a light I never really realized before. And Colin Kaepernick is an interesting one for me because to me, even though he's black, right? He was raised by a white family, right? And so when they would yell at the TV screen because he was kneeling or because they were talking about him, and they would say things like, you're not really black, or you don't really know what, you know what black people think? Cuz you were raised by a white family. It was as if they were saying it to me and it it made me realize, oh, they don't, they don't see me as Asian. And that was a huge eye-opener for me and it sent me on this journey to find a way to make sense of how my racial identity fit into this, how my adoption fit into this.
And it really actually sent me into a dark place. Let's not describe the journey as if it was like this fun, personal exploration, you know. This was a this was a spiraling, descent into chaos and madness and my desire to literally just wanna burn it all down. And so let's, let's describe it accurately.
I was angry. I was, you know, ready to give up God. I was ready to give up, like, literally, but I, I, I didn't know. I still didn't know how to make sense of it, cuz I still hadn't learned a lot about social injustice, racism, adoption. I just know that this was not right. This didn't feel right and I was mad.
I, I think the, the one thing that helped me the most was finding this organization called Be the Bridge. So Be the Bridge was started by Latasha Morrison, a black Christian leader who was in Texas at the time and had, had started uh, a group of, of her friends from her church, multiracial group to sit down and to start having discussions about, about race and racism and what was going on. And over the years, developed a small group curriculum. Got on Facebook so that people could interact and, and it just ballooned, you know, into a lot of resources being curated. A lot of volunteers coming together to develop more curriculum for these small groups that were starting to pop up all over the U.S. following her discussion format, you know. And now it's a full blown nonprofit with staff. And I'm a, I'm a contractor who works for them for discussing race and adoption stuff. And and it's great.
But at the time when I first found them, it was the only space that was Christian and was being honest about race. And it was the only person, the only group of people, the only Facebook group where when someone shared their experience they were treated like, a person of color, they were treated like an expert in their own experience. They were honored. To say, okay, they're telling us what they experienced with this person and how, how it went down. And they're naming it as racism. And we honor that and we hear you.
And if a white person would jump on that comment thread and try to gaslight, they would get lovingly shut down. And say, no, you need to sit with the uncomfortable thing that this person of color is telling you and understand that they are an expert of their own experience. And so I saw that first with race before I saw it with adoption.
But very quickly I realized that there was people in this group who were in the world of transracial adoption. And to, to be honest, that's when I first heard the word transracial adoption. I didn't even know , that there was a name for what my experience of adoption was until I went into that group, and then I just, I just like I read every single post that that group has ever had in there since like 2015.
Every single conversation, every single, they had resources that they would link to NPR articles, podcasts, books. I spent three months just like a drinking from a fire hose. And I really think it saved me and it saved my faith to say, wait a minute, the American exceptionalism, the Christian nationalism, the white supremacy, and even the adoption injustice that's all crashing down on you and it's exposing all of the lies that you believed that you didn't realize were not true...
That doesn't mean you have to throw everything away and burn it down. I mean, some of it you can definitely burn down, but, it doesn't mean that there is no truth. You know? And that doesn't mean that you just throw up your hands and give up. There is another way to look at this. There's another way to understand God in all of this chaos that does honor the truth of your experience and your pain and that that is real.
And that was huge for me. So I started a group, a Be The Bridge group in my area, and I just tried to educate myself as much as possible. And so then that's when I realized I need to develop my Chinese American racial/ ethnic identity. I need to have a healthier perspective of myself because you have internalized whiteness and you have hated your Asian and Chinese self and you didn't realize that's what you were doing.
So give yourself grace, but let's, let's fix this cuz this is not healthy. And so, you know, that was like 7, 6, 7 years ago. So the racial awareness and the adoption awareness, a critical consciousness on both really happened at the same time for me. And it was dove tailing off of my spiritual Christian deconstruction that was a process had already started, but didn't really get going until the three of those things combined, like, three powerful forces exploding together at once. Religion, race, adoption (exploding noise). And I feel like , you know, I've been living in that combustion of of awareness and learning and educating, and it's been like a five, six year journey I think, at this point.
So, yeah. Long answer, but there you go. There you have it.
Haley: Well it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it? Nope. And you can't hide from it anymore. Yeah. Oh, well I actually first like really personally connected with you last year when you put out the we're gonna talk a little bit about this soon, but journeying home.
Tiffany: Mm-hmm.
Haley: The advent readings for adoptees, deconstructing their faith, and I was like right in the midst of deconstructing, because I'm sure I've shared here before, but I'll just very briefly. At one point, a number of years ago, I started an adoptee support group in my city. I asked my church if I could host it there, where they host other meetings.
Tiffany: Mm-hmm.
Haley: Like recovery meetings and other, they have other community groups there. And we had just finished building, being a big construction project. And, you know, one of the main things they were saying is like, we wanna be welcoming to the community and like community functions and da da, da. Right. The, you know, you, you know exactly what I'm saying.
Tiffany: Mm-hmm.
Haley: And so I, I, you know, emailed and was like, oh yeah, can I host my adoptee support group here? Cuz I was hosting it in my home and you know, that's fine until it's not , so.
Tiffany: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah.
Haley: Yeah. And I had to have a series of meetings with a couple of pa different pastors. They had printed off some of my Facebook posts that were critical of adoption, showed them to me, and in the end they declined to host my adoptee support group.
And one of the reasons I was given was because of my Facebook posts and because there's so many adoptive parents that go to our church that we wouldn't wanna offend them. And so my personal journey on that front was, this is a church I had been going to for almost 20 years. I had worked at that church, I have volunteered a lifetime at that church,
Tiffany: Right.
Haley: And to have my experience shut down so profoundly was now I'm coming to recognize it as a spiritual.
Tiffany: Mm-hmm.
Haley: And so that's what has led me...
Tiffany: Yes. Say that again.
Haley: Yeah. That's what's led me to deconstruction. So when I was reading these devotionals from fellow adoptees, you and, and several others, I was like, oh, this is it. right?
Tiffany: Yes.
Haley: It's so painful when it, you know I know not all of my listeners are people that have identified with any faith tradition. But if you, if you have like, it can just be like this intrinsic part of yourself to, so to have that as something that is injuring you , is just a real mind F.
Tiffany: Mm.
Haley: And it's so hard. And when you were talking about that chaos, that downward, like spiral, like Yes, I relate to that part of it.
Tiffany: Mm-hmm.
Haley: So, yeah, it's so deeply personal and to know there's other adoptees that are walking that and unpacking those things together is like really helpful for me, you know? So...
Tiffany: Thank you for sharing that. I'm, I'm so what is the right word? It's hard to say that like, I'm glad that we're all experiencing this hard thing so that we can help each other. Cause that's not, that's not the reality. I'm like, I'm glad to have connected with you and I'm, I'm glad to be along this journey with you, to connect with you, to be on this journey with you.
I was speaking with Mark Anthony (correction: matthew anthony) who contributed to this wonderful poems, to this advent reading that you're talking about, Journeying Home, I was on the phone with him the other day and I said the same thing. I was like, you know, I'm really glad I've connected with you for as awful as adoption has been for us, you know, I'm just really honored to know you and. And I hope he's okay with me sharing this, but he was like, yeah. But that being said, like if I could choose between like having not been adopted or like knowing you, I would totally choose having not been adopted. I was like, I, yes, no, I get you.
Haley: Agreed.
Tiffany: And I, no offense taken, no offense taken. But, but yeah, I experienced the same thing with my church that I had been attend. I was gonna start that Be the Bridge group where we were gonna talk about race and we had to meet with the church elders, my co-facilitator and I. They brought up my Facebook post. They said that they didn't think I would be capable of leading such a group and that, you know, it, it wasn't just the group that we wanted to do and host it at the church and they denied us the use of the church.
It was also, I was trying to tell them our church needs to have this conversation because there are people in this church who are not acting right. They're acting white. And we need to talk about it. And they were like, I just, you know, I don't really think we know enough about this. And, and you know, they don't actually like, have women in leadership anyway, so there's a whole other thing going on there too.
But I walked away from that meeting and my co-facilitator was like, are you okay? Like they really just totally discredited you as being someone like capable of doing this work. And I was like, I mean, I'm not surprised, but it took a long time to like recover from taking that step, being vulnerable with your faith leaders, your spiritual leaders, the one who are supposed to be guiding you in your faith journey.
Like they see themselves as ordained by God to be guiding other people in their faith journeys. And when you come to them with something that is so raw and it's, and you're just, you're trying to create a space for a conversation, you're not trying to, you know, and they react to you that way. I mean, that, that to me, it took me a few months, but that to me was what made me realize church is not safe.
At least not these churches led by white men. But like, I, I need, I need for my own healing journey to not continue exposing myself to this type of treatment and, and posture. And I need to spend more time finding people who can help. And people I, who are, are going to listen and offer some Christian Biblical like wisdom not from the perspective of, of like white American Christianity, but from the perspective of, you know, people who understand historical oppression, marginalization, historical you know, social injustice, economic injustice.
And so that was one of the things where this advent reading, I was struggling for a few years. Advent would come around, my friends would be doing their devotionals, sharing their verses, or this website or this blog, or this podcast. and Advent wasn't a huge practice for my family growing up. Like we didn't have a lot of traditions necessarily around it, but I always felt like it was a special time to be reflective and meditative.
And, and I remember my dad reading the nativity story, my adoptive dad reading it one Christmas Eve. He, we rarely did that, but the one time he did like, I remember it cuz it felt special. And here I was going through this deconstruction journey, which, you know, deconstructing means different things to different people.
So for me, I just wanna share, like, I used to have this really tight hold on what my core beliefs were. They were clearly defined. I was fully committed to them. And deconstructing has just been the process of letting go of that tight grip, holding my beliefs with an open palm, so that can get a better look at them, and being being okay with letting go of them, with questioning them, taking them apart, seeing if they go back together or not. If they don't, then maybe they, they aren't something I should put so much faith and hope in. And, and being okay if the, the questions I have about my beliefs don't have immediate or satisfying answers.
And that's, that's just what it means to me. And so Christmas would come around and it, it felt really hard to engage in this season that used to contain hope and joy. And it used to contain a sense of connectedness in my spirit. And every devotion I would read was so tone deaf to, you know, about race and about adoption, you know. Lord forbid, a Christian author says that God adopted us. I close the book right away and, and I like freak out. Right. I can't, I can't.
Haley: Let me just link in the show now. It's the episode I did with Dr. Erin Heim. Yeah. Aaron Heim Yes. About adoption in the bible because Yeah.
Tiffany: So if you, if you listening and you haven't wa listened to Dr. Erin Heim's, just pause this one. Go listen to that one and come back and finish this one. Yeah. so yes, like I, there was a part of me that was like, no, like they can't take this from me. That is, that's not fair that because of the racial stuff, because of the adoption injustice stuff, that it's already taken so much from me. And and I know that there are many Christians of color who are great, like they do a good job of articulating how Christ is for the oppressed and not for the power structures, you know, and, and I've found so much like healing from reading their work. And so I thought it's, I wanna write an advent themed prayers or reflections or something that takes into consideration my viewpoint as a transracial adoptee and my experience as a transracial adoptee.
And so for a couple years I would just post those things on my Instagram and they were just little carousel posts. I would make them in Canva like we do, and we just post them up and people swipe through and, and they got really good responses from other adoptees and even a few adoptive parents who wanted to find a better way to talk about their faith with their, with their adopted kids than the, the typical message that is harmful, you know?
And so after doing that for a couple years, I was like, I'm not the only one though. I know. Bonita and I know Anthony and Matthew, Matthew Anthony, who also are right, great writers who also have thought deeply about their faith, their racial identity, their adoption experience. So I got us all together last year and I said, here's some of the things I've already written.
But what if we all wrote on this theme and made a booklet, like, I don't wanna call it a devotional, cuz that word comes with contextual associations. We just called it a, you know, reading. Advent readings, it's a booklet. And I said like, what do you think? And they were, they were game, you know, they, they were excited about the project.
We got it together and we self-published this digital advent booklet and I could not be, you know, more proud of it. A year later, reading it again, advents coming up again and I was like, guys, we're gonna, we're gonna make it for sale again online. I had taken it down cuz it costs money to keep things up and for sale on a site in using, you know, the, I used like a, an online e-commerce thing and it had a high monthly, monthly like fee to just keep it available.
And I was like, I can't actually afford to just have this up indefinitely. So we'll just have it up for advent season and then we'll take it down and see how we feel about it. And I, I realize now like, okay, it's time to put it back up again and, and if we can keep it up so that people can continue to access it, we, we will try to do that this year.
But last year I wasn't ready to make that commitment. So and this year Matthew Anthony's written another poem to be added, so there will be an additional entry that is new and I'm excited about that. But it really just talks about a way to look at advent and a way to look at the stories that, and themes that go along with advent like from the lens of, of adoptees.
And so I've enjoyed reading through it again as we get ready to republish it. It's, it's been, you know how sometimes you, you read something you wrote a while ago and you're like, oh no. This is one of those times where I'm like, yeah, no. Like I, I am still really, I'm still, I still get a lot out of reading what I wrote last year and I'm, I'm glad that this is something we, we've preserved , and it's not just gonna fall into the Instagram hole and never be seen again. Like, like my original posts all have.
Haley: I scrolled way back on your Instagram today in preparation for our talk.
Tiffany: Oh, no. Like how far back? Like if you go, oh no. If you go all the way back to you, you'll see my CrossFit days.
Haley: You're a very fit, fit person.
Tiffany: I was. Okay. But you know, you're, you're raised in sort of a cultish religion....
Haley: Discipline. Discipline is next to godliness. Is that a verse? Right?
Tiffany: I thought that was cleanliness. No, I...
Haley: oh sorry. No discipline. Mm-hmm. Okay. , I'm a bad Christian. I don't know.
Tiffany: I'm just making stuff up.
Haley: I'm a bad Christian too. Okay. So we, we are really, we've transitioned already, but we're talking about what I'm gonna recommend as our resources today and I, there's a little section here that you write in the introduction.
This advent theme booklet is by adoptees and for adoptees, dear Souls who have wrestled with decolonizing and deconstructing our faith and the role adoption is played in our lives. Disclosure. We are still very much on that journey. We share our hearts in this moment while anticipating our perspectives will continue to evolve. And I really appreciated that thought. And you know, I was rereading some of it today as well, and it's sort of like, it doesn't really matter where you are on your faith journey. It's a call to just processing things and thinking about things and, and some things we... that are painful and we kind of set to the side. So if it's something that you are like, oh, maybe I could process a few of those things this year. You know, it's like an invitation in to thinking about those things.
And so I really appreciate that. And the, the wisdom that your writers have brought is so profound. Some of the observations, they feel really insightful and also familiar. And it's like this beautiful kind of meshing together of that for me. So I really appreciated it and it brought me to you so....
Tiffany: That's right. Yeah.
Haley: Yeah. And tiffany and I actually worked through, I don't know, spiritual direction together this year. And that was really powerful for me to like, sit in like, what does it look like? Do I go to church anymore? Do I go to that church anymore? Is the apology I received enough?
Spoiler alert, it's not enough to overcome spiritual trauma, just to have someone say to you, oh yeah, we did the wrong thing. Sorry about that. Like, it's, it's not enough.
Tiffany: Right? Nope.
Haley: So, unpacking those things and unpacking, if you were raised in a Christian home and hearing about how this experience of ripping you away from your original family, this was God's plan.
Tiffany: Mm-hmm.
Haley: Unpacking that with fellow adoptees who've heard the same is really powerful. So thank you and thank you to your other writers and contributors. And the artwork is just beautiful. Beautiful.
Tiffany: Yeah. Artwork by Natalie Boone, also an adoptee. And I, I am hopeful that they'll be recording just a little bit of their thoughts and sending those along. But no, I just, I wanna speak to what you said about the apology. With Be The Bridge, it helped because they have this framework for what reconciliation really does look like. And a confession saying what we did was wrong. And an apology, I'm sorry, do you forgive me? Forgiveness and confession is like halfway through the journey of reconciliation.
It's not the end. And so we do need to go through those steps, but that doesn't repair the relationship. Confession and forgiveness does not repair what's been broken. It doesn't restore to what formerly was or reconcile what has been divided. And that was a helpful framework I got from Be the Bridge was to recognize that while confession and forgiveness might be a place that I've come to in certain situations or relationships with people with, with the church or certain church people, you know, I was raised to see forgiveness as, confession and forgiveness as being the end result, like the end goal, and then automatically things would be repaired.
But , it's, it's the initial step in the reparation process and what they do after that to decide to change how they interact and what they say and what they do to repair- that is a process that those who have caused harm have to go through and prove that they're trustworthy again, prove that they're able to be in community with you again.
And if they just stop at confession and asking for forgiveness and they don't go further, then I don't think it's actually genuine. Cuz true reconciliation means that someone is gonna work through that ongoing process of repairing the harm or, or restoring what you know, what they broke. And if they don't do that, then it's not enough.
And you don't need to stay in relationship or stay at that church or, or pretend that just the confession and forgiveness part was all that needed to happen. It's not. That's huge.
Haley: And when the injured party is the one that is coming to you saying you should apologize, it's like Okay. And there's nothing after that. Yeah. I mean we could talk about that a whole nother thing, but I appreciate so much you saying that cuz I, I mean it applies to so many situations for sure.
It does. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're so wise, Tiffany. Okay. Now you briefly mentioned it, but what do you wanna recommend to us today
Tiffany: When it comes to like racial literacy and education, whether it's faith-based or values-based, Be The Bridge has really great resources that have done a great job helping me as a transracial adoptee, like unpack the internalized whiteness that I have struggled with. And it's also one of the only communities where there's the, Be the Bridge BIPOC community has a, a separate Facebook group for Be the Bridge BIPOC Care Group, was is what they call it.
And it's really hard as a transracial adoptee to go into a space with other people of color and not feel like an in total fraud and imposter. Right. And feel like my experiences are totally invalidated cuz I was raised by a white family. And yet the, the Be The Bridge because of the way they do ra, racial reconciliation and the way that they posture themselves in these conversation, it's been the most welcoming place and the most, like I've been given the most space and the most honor to say this has been my experience.
And even though it's wildly different from most other people, because I was transracially adopted, I'm not like shut down or gaslighted, I'm not, you know, I'm seen as an expert in my own experience of transracial adoption and, and it's been very healing because of that. And so I recommend, they have resources for, white people have resources for BIPOC.
They have resources for just general like learning about racial literacy. They have professional development trainings for organizations. And one of the things that I've been able to do with them, and we're still working on it, it's gonna come out next year, but it's called Bridge Building and Transracial Adoption.
It's an online e-course and it's different because it's not written to tell adoptive parents how to parent children of color. Most, most courses you find about transracial adoption are oriented toward adoptive parents and trying to teach them how to cause as little harm as possible, and be as as helpful as possible.
This is more of a course, we're sort of orienting it more as racial literacy education and how to understand trans racial adoption in systems of injustice so that all people, whether you are an adoptee, an adoptive parent, a counselor, a teacher can, can get a handle on, on some of these dynamics of transracial adoption, from the perspective of understanding systemic racism, understanding how whiteness works in our systems of child welfare and then how that does impact kids on the individual level and helps us see what it is they need on an individual level in, in a clearer way.
But the goal is to, is to really help all racial bridge builders understand where transracial adoption fits in our pursuit of justice and our pursuit of equity in our pursuit, and how we go about being bridge builders. So that's something I'm really, really excited about because it's a conversation that I'm dying to have with anybody who will listen. It's a more bigger picture look at things. And when that does come out, I'm hopeful that we will get a lot of different people around the adoption constellation to, to go through that and, and to, to see how it helps them better understand where adoption fits into this bigger systems of like race and, and things like that.
And, and I, I think that that's a piece that has been missing. Let me put it this way. It's the piece of information I was looking for when I started putting the pieces together about race and adoption and faith. And all I could find was stuff written for adoptive parents, and how to raise a kid.
And I was like, but nobody's telling me how adoption fits into these bigger systems. And, and now I know a lot of adoptees are talking about this, but it's, it's still something, I think that it's still a conversation that gets dismissed as a niche topic, niche topic that you know, you only really need to know about it if, if it directly impacts you.
And I'm trying to be over here being like, no, our collective liberation is tied up with each other. We all need to learn about each other's forms of oppression and marginalization and historical exclusion. And that includes adoption. So.
Haley: As you were talking about it, I was like, oh yeah. , I could bring this to the teachers at my school and you know, there's lots of, you know, kids in the class that are adopted and to have teachers know like, okay, maybe we shouldn't do the family tree project because it Right. Excludes the kids that, or makes them be imposters, you know? Like pretending your adoptive parents are like your direct line and uh. Yeah. Just one little example of how it all continues to perpetuate everywhere.
Tiffany: It does. Yeah, it does. Yes.
Haley: Tiffany, that work is amazing and I know how much work behind the scenes that you've put into that course and I know it's gonna be fantastic. So tell us a couple things. Where can we get Journeying Home, the advent readings for adoptees deconstructing their faith, and where can we follow you and make sure we are keeping up with all those updates?
Tiffany: Awesome. Okay, so Journeying Home is available on, there's links to it on either of my websites. I have two websites; CallingInTheWilderness.com that's more of my personal blog. And then AdoptionLiteracy.com is more the website for my professional side where I do some speaking, where I, where I talk about other ways that I can collaborate with people and they can hire me.
And then social media. I'm on Facebook as Tiffany Henness and then on Instagram as Coach Henness, because back in the day I used to be a personal trainer and running coach, and that's when I created my Instagram. So I'm Coach Henness on Instagram.
Haley: And now you're an adoption literacy coach. So you're just like,
Tiffany: Oh yeah, yeah, good spin. Good spin. I like that. I like that.
So yeah, so those are the places where I will post about personal thoughts and or where I'm speaking next or what I've participated in, or even this advent booklet and reading will be posting it about it there. So come find me.
Haley: Wonderful. Thank you so much. I so appreciate being connected with you and I really, I learned a lot more about you today.
Tiffany: Yeah. Well, thank you. It's, it's awesome to get to be on a podcast that I've listened to and enjoyed and benefited from so much. The work that you've done with this is, and the impact is just immeasurable.
Haley: Thank you.
[ (Upbeat Music)
If you'd like to hear some samples of Journeying Home and from one of the artists who worked on the project, I'd encourage you to listen all the way to the end of the show where we'll share some clips with you from matthew anthony, Natalie Boone, and Bonita Croyle in that order.
I feel really thankful that at this time Tiffany is one of the fabulous folks working behind the scenes on this very podcast, so if things are running smoothly and show notes are in the right place, you know, she's been in there keeping me on track.
It's only because of people like my Patreon supporters that this show can keep going and is sustained to hire and pay folks to work on it. So thank you so, so much to those of you who do and you are making the show free and available to everyone, and especially those people that aren't able to support it financially.
So I appreciate you so much. If you are able to and you wanna join us, you can go to AdopteesOn.com/community to see all the benefits and extras you get for supporting the show. Which also includes another weekly podcast, book club adoptees, off-script parties, and Facebook group for different levels of support.
So you can check that out, AdopteesOn.com/community. Okay. Thanks so much for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
(Excerpts from JourneyingHome)
Haley: (Voice of matthew anthony) Psalm of the Aware adoptee. My adopted body bears the brunt of abandonment and dispossession. This means that home has been cleaved from my imagination, like a toy from the hand of a misbehaving child. And I have not believed I am worthy of having one. I have called my body and being problem and reason for rejection repeatedly, God of family.
Remind me that before I was a daughter or son, brother or sister, or to any earthly kin, I was first and most gloriously a direct descendant of divinity. My lineage is love, and though my birth certificate may misname my sire, I have seen that this body is god's because I look just like my father. I both siren and sailor upon your living waters, calling to myself, falling so precariously in love with myself, that I would shipwreck and be marooned with the self.
I despise the self. I blame long enough to know I am worthy of being at home and whole and held in myself. And if there is room for me, then there is also room for love. Love. Remind me that you are always at home within me, and there is nothing I can do to evict you. Ours is not a reunion because you have never left.
I have only ever become more aware of your presence. matthew anthony.
(Voice of Natalie Boone) Hi, I'm Natalie Boone. I'm an adoptee and artist. I created the artwork for Journeying Home. I loved being a part of this collaboration because I feel like this advent book fills a need that hasn't been met for the adoptee community.
As adoptees, we deal with a lot of complex issues and emotions. Sometimes reconciling those with our faith can be hard or confusing. I hope that our book helps other adoptees feel like they are not alone, that their questions are valid, and that through it all, God cares about them. I hope that my artwork brings a sense of calm and peace as they read through the book, and most of all, I hope they feel loved.
(Voice of Bonita Rockingham) Our liberating God. The scripture is from Isaiah chapter nine, verses two and six and seven. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them, light has shined. For a child has been born for us, a son given to us. Authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, prince of peace. Great will be his authority and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish an uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
For reflection.
As we approach the birth of Christ, we are reminded of a liberating God that calls us by name, stands with us in solidarity, and speaks peace into our future. As adoptees, we sometimes carry experiences with advent that are complicated and nuanced. Some of us might even carry experiences with Advent and the institutional church that have been violent and deeply painful and have necessitated boundaries, which include leaving and or reevaluating our relationship with the church.
What does it mean to hold space for advent as adoptees carrying pain? What does it look like to engage in Advent with our trauma and our deconstruction? What if it's holy? Advent is the story of liberation and justice embodied. Pay attention to what your body is saying in this holy night. Your questions do not denote your worth.
Your trauma does not denote your worth. Your pain does not denote your worth. You and your body are worthy and named. We are promised this and for closing a breath prayer. Inhale in this holy waiting and exhale. I am enough.
