My Real Adoption Story

My name is Corey. I was born in Henry Ford Hospital in 1983 and was taken away at birth to be passed around about four or five Detroit foster homes. According to my adoptive parents, I had seizures, was malnourished and barely had the strength to lift my arms. I was then fostered by my current adoptive family along with other black and white children. Though they hired black workers but had no black friends, my adoptive family began the process of adopting me into their Irish Catholic home. My adoptive parents have three natural children and two adopted white children who are so in the fog that they can’t see sunlight. I am the youngest addition to the family.

My adoptive mother gave me various medications to help me combat my previous illnesses. After becoming healthier, I was taken away from the current home because of “race” which I consider the real reasons to be still unknown. My adoptive parents sued the state and won which brought me back, landing an invitation to be on an Oprah Winfrey adoption episode in 1985.

I grew up with white adoptive siblings, friends, cousins and was a token novelty at an all white private Catholic school. At that point of my life, color was not an issue because I was, well frankly…completely out of my mind. My adoptive family paid for dance, piano lessons, family trips to Florida..different restaurants…karate etc. We also had some of the largest and most obnoxious sized Christmas presents you could ever fit under a tree. I also grew up with a swimming pool, jacuzzi and a life that would seem perfect to anybody else. While I felt like a little star being adopted by white people with a big house, the sad truth is there were different types of abuse that I had experienced…..sexual and psychological. Whiteness became all I knew so any racism or other abuse I experienced, was buried to avoid the shame of mentioning it. I never had to worry about food or shelter but everything felt surreal like it didn’t have any roots. I always felt too ashamed to ask questions about my biological family or any other deep life subjects. The process was experience..bury then play the piano to heal.

During the buzz and false stardom of my young adoptee life….brainwashing but no real education or wisdom was being passed down other than to stay out of jail and avoid hell. Sad to say, I absorbed a completely irrational fear and ignorance of my own people. Only later in my teens…when leaving the sunken place, at church, did it bother me that there were no black people on the stain glass walls…or in the pews for that matter. I was given the standard Catholic dogma education. I was never told about the pope and the Church’s role in slavery. I was never taught about the Haitian revolution or about any black revolutionary icons. My adoptive mother told me I would grow up to be the president or the pope. I was given material things but not until I was an adult would I realize that no real growing and connection was happening. No real friendship foundations were being set because all of my relationships were on a surface level. As a teen, I started to drift away from my neighborhood friends, cousins and adoptive siblings. I studied black culture which was inspired and prompted by Bob Marley CDs given to me by my brother-in-law, which also prompted me to start leaving the fog.

In my twenties and beyond, I started to realize just how much I didn’t know about myself and my life. I started to see just how shallow my relationships were and how my white adoptive siblings truly felt about black people…though they would never outright admit it. There has always been a certain underlying resentment towards me that I just accepted as normal human behavior. It wasn’t until I started finding my biological siblings, maturing and mixing more with black people that I realized just how robbed of deep connections I really was.

Basically, I was numb and in the sunken place for many white washed years. I was as crazy and damaged as a human being could be and didn’t even realize it! The perfect joy of my reality was an illusion and I spent so much time trying to play the role of the “good adoptee”…despite the occasional subconscious acting out liking starting fires in the dining room and fighting. As I talk to you now, I realize one can ignore their true emotions all one wants while growing up in a situation such as this, but true feeling ALWAYS manifest in someway.

In my mid to late twenties, my adoptive mother passed away. While completely burying emotions and avoiding the grieving process, I started sexually experimenting with women and men. I could get physically intimate but had to push people away that I felt had gotten too close to me. This action is the result of that immense fear of rejection that adoption is so lovely to impart upon adoptees. With my musical talent, I joined different bands but got rejected by Western and Wayne State schools of music for a lack of sight reading ability. I wrote many songs in different styles and recorded a few unsold albums. I tried many gay and straight bars, groups, festivals and new places on my own. I learned different languages, been to different countries and have met a lot of non-adoptees. Most of my life feels and has felt like aimless wandering…something that helps to spark my depression. I’ve had many jobs and have been hospitalized a few times for suicidal ideation.

I feel my transracial adoption experience was a psych job that left me with even more trauma scars, no real lasting relationships or wealth built. I am also unsure as to why I was truly adopted and to why I was taken away from my biological family in the first place. My biological siblings never attempted to find my biological parents and feel I am too afraid to. Possibly because of culture, I don’t really connect with my biological siblings like I would like. They are adoptees themselves but were adopted into black families and could possibly have resentment towards me for my perfect life. I don’t now focus much on my biological siblings but meeting other adoptees lessens the trauma of isolation, gas-lighting and non-validation that I experience. I finally found human beings who don’t automatically get defensive or dismiss the things I try to get off my chest, meaning that I can start the true process of healing. I feel that meeting other adoptees who can relate to me and my pain, has saved my life.

The narrative of adoption has showed itself to be much more important to those around me than my actual emotional well-being. You are in this fantasy world as a young adoptee and then adult life smacks you in the face…like a wall…leaving you gasping for breath…needing warm embrace and someone to tell you what the hell just happened. I was given money rather than taught how to become a financially independent black man in a white supremacist world. Even today I feel like I learned more in the past few years listening to people like Jason Black than all my years in college. I still have the habit of self isolating and taking on many fake personas to keep up an image rather than deal with my true pain.

A lot of therapists, family members and even strangers, continue to see my adoptive parents as saints. Through my years, I realized that my adoptive family, cousins and all, made a mental pact to never take my side against another white adoptee family member. To put it into context, it was a lesser version of the “black codes” because part of it is policy to never apologize concerning when I feel wronged by another white adoptive family member. Paraphrasing the black code..something like…no white man can be held responsible for the complaints of a black man? Instead they would gaslight and try to convince me I was crazy, which I am to a certain degree; too sensitive or don’t really feel the way I think I do. I was never invited to my cousins weddings who I grew up with because I later, spoke out against my adoption experience on Facebook. All those years before…why wouldn’t I bury all my emotions if it was this hopeless to get relating. I kept burying my issues while hoping to control my subconscious fallout the best way I can. I truly felt I had no real allies until I met other adoptees.

Currently, I attend online adoptee meetings on Sunday and try to meditate to calm my worsening anxiety attacks. Any adoption therapists I can afford through my low end insurance, are more suited for adoptive parents than adoptees. Through life, I never connected to a true therapist that can relate to me so music became my only spiritual and emotional release. Now I focus on healing, the psychology of my current situation, do performing arts and reach out to other adoptees when I’m feeling suicidal. I emotionally cut myself off from my adoptive family and psychologically forced myself away from the need of their validation because it was like poison. Adoptive family events left me exhausted and depressed because it took so much energy to keep up my avatar.

Now, I am trying my best to figure out who I truly am because I hope to one day meet my soulmate. First, I know I must get my financial life in order. I must completely or to the best of my ability, reverse the damage of my white washing by healing the train wreck that is my mind. I will try to keep pushing forward past the depression, suicidal days and the mental torture of “what if”. My goal? Live my true and authentic life while being that annoying person that gives public displays of affection to his lover. Whom ever that may be. Ashe.