I am a Lost Daughter and a Split Feather - an adoptee with Native ancestry.
I’m thankful to be among the remarkable women on this blog who share the experience of adoption and write so beautifully about it. We are all related as sacred human beings and as adoptees.
I’m thankful to be among the remarkable women on this blog who share the experience of adoption and write so beautifully about it. We are all related as sacred human beings and as adoptees.
Like so many other adoptees, I want to read about someone who:
· successfully opened her adoption,
· made a connection with relatives (or not),
· balanced two or more sets of parents,
· found ways to heal, and
· learned how to navigate all the in-between stuff. (Lots about this is complicated, messy and oh so human.)
There are no real guidebooks on being an adoptee. Many books on Amazon were for those who adopt or plan to adopt. Over the past ten years, adoptee blogs have sprung up like wildflowers. I started my own in 2009: www.splitfeathers.blogspot.com. I was ready to share my research and my own adoptee experience.
Always curious, in the past several years, I published a few articles on the subject of Split Feathers and my life as an adoptee, and I gave an interview to a newspaper in Wisconsin. The subject was so interesting to my Academic friends, they questioned me intensely, since little was known or compiled about Native adoptees.
The most significant catalyst happened right after I attended the first Wiping the Tears in Wisconsin. I attended this ceremony for Native adoptees and families ready to begin the healing process. It was the first of its kind, held back in 2001 on the Menominee reservation.
Even then I was surprised at how many adoptees there were - shocked, actually. Many I spoke with at the ceremonies were shocked, too. We assumed we were the only ones. Now I understand there could be thousands of us.
Burning questions and my own journey compelled me to get my thoughts together and do research for a memoir. After five years, I published “One Small Sacrifice: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects” in 2010. I tried to include as much history as I could find. I believe if you read it, you will never look at adoption or this history in the same way ever again.
On this Lost Daughters blog, I will share stories of my experiences.
It’s a great honor to be here.
P.S. You can also follow me on Twitter: Trace15
