at it’s root, adoption exists because there has been a breaking from family. often, this breaking is manufactured through other violent systems set to dehumanise, oppress, and destroy not just individuals but entire communities. that is traumatic. so is family separation. the prescence of beauty, be it true or the maintenance of a lie, does not erase the trauma.

then you don’t believe in adoption abolition.

i still invite you to learn more about it and consider it as a possible future.

gently. with empathy, grace, curiousity, scincerity, and the discipline to enter into conversations having already started the journey of educating yourself.

let them speak for themsleves and their story— however much or little they want to share. resist the urge to compare their story to what you are learning about the adoption. listen.

understand that we each share our own experiences with adoption that may or may not align with the inherent violence of the overarching industrial-complex.

remember, their story is not yours to share.

it is possible to love the children you adopted while also acknowledging that you are entangled in a harmful system.

Going Unarmed Into the Wail is an invitation. a chance to be honest about how we got here and how we can love each other well moving forward.

in whatever way feels comfortable for you.

i don’t intend to speak for you in this book. or tell you what to think.

remember your humanity. hold onto those you love. stay safe. take what you need from it, leave the rest. remember to breathe.

with grace for yourself.

i wrote this book from my perspective as an adoptee wrestling with familial loss, not as an indictment of biological families. i hope you see the care i took in the retelling of grief.

perhaps you view yourself as the M/other in my writing… perhaps you don’t see yourself at all.

either way, i hope you know i noticed your abscence and you’re missed. you’re child is missing you (in so many ways of the word ‘missed’) and i’m so sorry.

remember that you are not owed a child.

parenting comes in many different forms and i encourage you to keep exploring ways you could raise children that don’t contribute to the ongoing trauma of the adoption industrial-complex.

besides the fact that we have been building families for centuries without adoption, Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez has a great Twitter thread to help us all learn more about thinking of queer families.

my website holds much of my writing.

my website also is home to my most recent art gallery pieces.

Instagram is the social media app i’m most active on.

and i have a free monthly newsletter i adore that is free to sign up for via my webiste. you can find the sign up at the bottom of the page.

article by Daniel Drennan ElAwar

“Adoption is, in and of itself, a violence based in inequality. It is candy-coated, marketed, and packaged to seemingly concern families and children, but it is an economically and politically incentivized crime. It stems culturally and historically from the “peculiar institution” of Anglo-Saxon indentured servitude and not family creation. It is not universal and is not considered valid by most communal cultures. It is a treating of symptoms and not of disease. It is a negation of families and an annihilation of communities not imbued with any notion of humanity due to the adoptive culture’s inscribed bias concerning race, class, and human relevancy.”

article by Dorothy Roberts

“The child welfare system is a powerful state policing apparatus that functions to regulate poor and working-class families.”

book by Dorothy Roberts

“Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. “

Video conversation between Victoria Copeland, Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez & Dorothy Roberts

“How has the adoption of predictive risk modeling tools augmented the surveillance and separation of families in the US child welfare system? What is the connection between the public sector adoption of automated decision systems and the rapid expansion of so-called “prevention services” which function similarly to parole or probation? Why is the abolition of the child welfare system necessary and how is it possible? “

Short video by Dorothy Roberts

“One phrase buried in a footnote in Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion has drawn significant criticism: “domestic supply of infants.” Dorothy Roberts, Director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society, says that phrase—taken from a 2008 CDC report—represents the “system of coercion” inherent in the adoption industry. “It’s treating children to be adopted as if they’re commodities…a supply and demand market,” she tells Maria Teresa Kumar. In that market, white children are most desired by white families, which bleeds into the racist “Great Replacement” theory. “Underlying anti abortion rhetoric and action is the idea that white women should be having more babies to build up the white nation,” Roberts adds. “Anti-abortion is a movement to dominate people.””

Essay by Lee Shevek

“Abolishing the Family is not about destroying kinship relationships outright, but, rather, is about abolishing the institution of the Family, the property relations that sustain it, and about expanding the social relationships of care. When we call for the abolition of the Family, we call for youth liberation (the destruction of adult supremacy and the construction of children as private property). We call for communities of care and accountability. We call for the destruction of the atomization of relationships.“

Twitter Thread by Gretchen Sisson

“As I've said before -- no one relinquishes their infant for adoption because of one advertisement. But in this age, it's easy for one moment of vulnerability to lead to a Google search or a social media click that sets off a bombardment of advertising.”

Article by Tik Root

“ “A civilized society protects children and vulnerable populations. It doesn’t let the free market loose on them,” says Liversidge. Or, as Pertman puts it, “Children should not be treated the same as snow tires.””

Video recorded conversation by pannelists

“we are very interested in what tribes are doing and are firm believers that tribes hold at least some of the ingredients for a hopeful future…. only through fully understanding how the child welfare system fails are we going to be able to meaningfully build a system that is in fact responsive.”

Flash social media campaign (not founded by me) by impacted folks for us.

“This flash media campaign was created to share, expand, and shift narratives about adoption within our own community spaces, work, and conversations. Our goal is shared language, different ways of thinking about adoption and other systems of family separation, and connecting them across other struggles for liberation. This campaign will span across the month of November beginning on Tuesday November 1st and ending on Tuesday November 29th. It will address the following eight ideas, using the format “Adoption is Trama, and ____”: Violence, Colonial, Racial Capitalism, Commodification, Ableist, Cis-hetro Patriarchal, Policing, and Genocide.”

We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (1951)

“Out of the inhuman black ghettos of American cities, out of the cotton plantations of the South, comes this record of mass slayings on the basis of race, of lives deliberately warped and distorted by the willful creation of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease., It is a record that calls aloud for condemnation, for an end to these terrible injustices that constitute a daily and ever-increasing violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”