For those that know me, it is a well-known fact that I am an adoptee. Due to the One Child Policy, which was enforced in China from 1979 to 2015, my birth family abandoned me. I was placed with a foster family and eventual adoption in 2000 by an American family. In just the first few years of my life, I was abandoned by my birth family and separated from my foster family. Then, still in my formative years of life, my adoptive parents divorced and my adoptive father passed away.
As an immigrant and a child who was separated from her family at a young age, I find it impossible to ignore everything that has been going on in my country lately regarding the forced separation of children of illegal and asylum-seeking immigrants. While my circumstances are different, I feel must speak up about my lived experiences, and how an early separation from my families has affected me.
Overall, and I believe almost anyone who was separated from their families under questionable circumstances would agree, there is always a part of you that blames yourself. If we could've just been better or done something more, maybe our birth families wouldn't have given us up. Maybe we wouldn't have been separated.
These are thoughts that I remember having as a child. As a kid, being told that your family isn't really yours because none of them look like you or having your peers ask you why your mommy and daddy didn't want you is a terrible thing to hear.
Some personal experiences that I remember having as a child are problems with physical contact, an inability to express my feelings, and an overall stiffness or tenseness that never seemed to go away.
I remember my family calling my problem with stiffness, "t-rex" or "dinosaur" arms. When I was younger, when I walked, I held my arms close to my body with my elbows bent, hence the nickname. I couldn't get myself to relax my body enough to swing my arms by my sides. I was constantly tense, and it was only after a period where my family would physically swing my arms for me or remind me to loosen up that I eventually got into the habit of swinging my arms when I walked.
Along with my inability to swing my arms came problems with physical contact. I remember throwing full-on tantrums as a child when my parents tried to hug me. I was never able to give a full hug, I would always either go in with one arm or limply put both arms around with no pressure.
This reluctance toward embraces also extended toward genuine verbalizations of affection as well. Telling the people in my life that I love them has always been hard for me, and at some points in my life, it even bordered on causing me discomfort. Now that I have grown up, it's easier for me to express my feelings, but I still struggle with it to this day.
All in all, I have written this to urge you, please, don't tell me that the forced separation that is going on in our country isn't going to cause any negative impact on the young children who are being taken away from their families.
I know for a fact that those who are old enough to know what is going on will be blaming themselves for not doing enough to keep their families together. And for all of those kids, they will be confused, lost, scared, and hurt. Their first decade of life should be dedicated to forming strong bonds with their families.
Do not tell me that these children and infants will be free of trauma. When I was a baby, I was technically too young to understand what was going on around me. And yet even as an adult, I am still dealing with the effect that being separated from my family had on me.
Have some compassion and empathy. Most importantly, speak up. Do not speak up because you feel obligated to do so. Speak up because you feel a connection with those who are being oppressed.
Speak up because you still believe in the words that are inscribed at Ellis Island to inspire every immigrant that came through to start a new life, and speak up because you want to fight to preserve a country that still stands by its foundations as a nation of immigrants who just want to be free.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door (New Colossus, Emma Lazarus)!"
