The twin unicorns: Opportunity and Beauty
Just in time for National Adoption Month (again!)
I got this article off a popular evangelical pro-adoption organization’s website this morning.
HONOLULU – A biological sister of a 6-year-old Hawaii girl reported missing by their adoptive parents told police the parents forced her to keep it a secret that Isabella Kalua was not breathing inside a dog cage in the bathroom, with duct tape on her mouth and nose…
…The sister told police Lehua Kalua bought the dog cage on the internet even though they didn’t have a dog. Kalua said she bought it because Isabella would sneak around at night and want to eat because she was hungry. The sister said Isabella would be hungry because Kalua wouldn’t feed her and the sister tried to sneak food to her sometimes, according to the court documents.
Ariel Sellers–adopted name Isabella Kalua
This site regularly pimps adoption. This site wet-dreams over National Adoption Month. This site celebrates every new adoption story in the press, every infertility solved by adoption, every infant saved from the “abortion mill” through the “adoption option.” This site sighs dreamy with tales of reunion where 30, 40, 50 years or more have been spent in anger, grief, paper trails, official and unofficial lies, and legal wranglings. This site encourages vulnerable women to labor and bring forth children for other more responsible worthy people to take for their own. Because this site tells us:
Adoption creates possibilities
Adoption is beautiful.
And when adopted children are abused or murdered, the site sends thoughts, prayers, and sad emojis. When adoptees demand the restoration of their rights, speak out against social and legal injustice and abuse, go public on social media with their stories, this site tells them it’s sorry they had a bad experience. This site calls them anomalies,THi site tells them heir experience is out of the loop because;
Adoption creates possibilities
Adoption is beautiful.
When I got online 30 years ago I was totally taken aback by all the adoptee horror stories I read on alt.adoption and private discussion lists like AIML and through networking with other adopted people. I knew the struggle for our truth, personal information and history, context, and self-esteem. I knew the frustration and difficulty of search I knew, the psychological impact that adoption has on us, and I knew we could be pathologized. This, though, was something different. Up until then, I guess I thought adoptee abuse in all its forms, was rare, simply because I couldn’t imagine someone spending all that money and wending through the adoptacrat maze to turn around and abuse and even kill the sought-after prize. As someone who was much wanted and adored, I thought my experience was how it usually rolled. Since I didn’t know any other adopted people growing- up–actually until I was out of college– there was no one to mark my experience against. Now there are many. Too many. Because this site tells us:
Adoption creates possibilities
Adoption is beautiful.
Tell that to the thousands of adopted people–child and adult– who have and will continue to be mired in systemic rot; used and abuse, and tossed away. Tell that to Ariel Sellers (I don’t want to call her by the murderers’, re-name) our latest martyr to opportunity and beauty.
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I’m keeping this short today and tomorrow. I have things to do I want to read a book that’s due at the library in three days. I want to work on my new webpage I want to work on the feature story I’m writing for the Columbus Free Press. I want my life. I want every adoptee to have the life they deserve, not one that’s mythologized by opportunity and beauty.
Day 13 of 30–
17 to go
