'Adoption isn't all rainbows and unicorns, adoption is trauma' - Adoptee

Jessenia Parmer is part of a wider community of adult adoptees who are calling for the voices of adoptees to be heard.

It's just another month for most people, but for many adoptees, November is a particularly difficult one.

Across the world, November marks Adoption Awareness Month, but there are growing calls by those who have been adopted to rename it adoptee awareness month - in recognition of the fact, they say, that adoptees experiences and feelings should be put at the centre of conversations about adoption.

Over the past few years, a growing community of adult adoptees on social media have been sharing their lived experience of adoption and calling for their voices be elevated.

Jessenia Parmer is the founder of the website "I Am Adopted", she's has spent the past ten years using her experience as an adoptee to help others, as well as other assisting adoptive parents, first mothers, and adoption professionals.

She joined CapeTalk's Sara-Jayne King, herself an adoptee, to talk about why it's time adoptive parents and the adoption industry come to view adoptees themselves as the experts when it comes to adoption.

Because of shame, a lot of adoptees never really spoke out, but now there's been this huge uprising of adoptees sharing their stories.

Jessinia Parmer, Founder - I Am Adopted

No-one thought to ask adoptees how they feel about being adopted.

Jessenia Parmer, Founder - I Am Adopted

Adoption is always painted as such a beautiful life event and act of love, and also society always telling us that we have to be grateful.

Jessenia Parmer, Founder - I Am Adopted

There are many adoptees struggling with their mental health...

Jessenia Parmer, Founder - I Am Adopted

Society thinks adoption is all rainbows and unicorns... so any time we [adoptees] speak out about us hurting or going against the adoption industry...we're met with a lot of resistance, a lot of hateful comments, a lot of bullying - a lot of time from adoptive parents.

Jessenia Parmer, Founder - I Am Adopted

RELATED: Sara-Jayne King bares all about dark adoption story in memoir, Killing Karoline

“No wonder adoptees have some of the highest mental health issues and suicide rates. We're told to be grateful that we were chosen when deep down, we feel like we were abandoned.”

Read Meggan’s story https://t.co/ynIKWGKUkj #adopteementalhealthstories #NAAM pic.twitter.com/pR0PMtc3rZ

— Jessenia Adriana Parmer (@iamadopted) November 12, 2020

RELATED: [LISTEN] Sara-Jayne King overjoyed at finding her biological father

I just learned of another fellow adoptee who has left us.Each adoptee who suffers at the hands of adoption, who is in pain because of adoption, who finds relief in ending their own life to escape what adoption has caused them is one too many. That’s all I have today. pic.twitter.com/1RYCpCwh9h

— thisadopteelife (@thisadopteelife) December 1, 2020

Click below to listen to the full conversation from Weekend Breakfast with Sara-Jayne King:

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