ROUND TABLE: What Are the Rules of an Adoptee-Centric Space? (part one)

At Lost Daughters, we struggle to re-contextualize our content within an "adoptee-centric" space. This becomes necessary when our voices reach beyond fellow adult adoptees--our intended audience. Our conversations are halted to explain to guests what for many adoptees goes without saying, for example, that companioning each other through adoption-related grief does not mean we had "unhappy childhoods." Unaccustomed to adoption-related content designed to serve an adoptee audience, some commenters have even critiqued us for not writing from the perspective of other adoption constellation members.

Granted, we are doing something new by existing and co-existing alongside of other adoptee-centric spaces. We are balancing the discourse by providing dialogue that values adoptee voices. We are providing universality to fellow adoptees who may feel underserved in mainstream adoption spaces. We are respecting the adoptees who went before us whose silence was demanded by a culture of adoption that favored secrecy. We are carving a path for the adopted youth who will walk in our shoes to be welcomed warmly into public discourse. And maybe it is time, at least at Lost Daughters, to discuss what an adoptee-centric space is and what it means for a space to center on the idea that adoptees are important.