Identity

My daughter is only six and has not started to talk extensively about her identity yet, but sometimes I wonder how much she thinks about it. For most adopted children, at one point in their lives they will start searching for their identity – wondering about their origin, their genetic background, why they are not with their biological parents. I wonder sometimes when I see my daughter lying in her bed in the morning after she wakes up – clearly in deep thought – if she is thinking about her identity. I am preparing myself for more questions and my husband and I have started to talk more about her background with her.

One of my family’s advantages is that we know the identity of our daughter’s birth mom. We actually saw her almost every time we visited our daughter in Haiti while waiting for her adoption to be completed. During that time from 2011 – 2013, our daughter’s birth mom lived at a group home run by our orphanage director called the Earthquake Relief House – a refuge for teenage girls. Unfortunately, we lost contact with our daughter’s birth mom shortly before we finalized our daughter’s adoption. Her birth mom left the Earthquake Relief House without our knowledge and without letting anyone know where she was going. My husband was able to track her down a couple of times over the last four years with the help of a young Haitian man, but we did not have a way to connect with her directly. Having met her and having pictures, as well as a name and a birthdate, will help us greatly once we want to reconnect with her or our daughter wants to see her.

Not everyone is as fortunate to have that level of information. Recently, I have come across the story of Judith Craig Morency,  a Canadian social worker who was adopted from Haiti as an infant in the early 1980s by a couple who lives in a Toronto suburb. Judith talks about her experience of being raised by white parents in a Huffington Post Article. Approximately 10 years ago, she traveled to Haiti with the hope of finding her birth family. This trip was documented in AdoptedID. The documentary provides an intimate insight surrounding the complexities of transracial adoption.