A Path to Us
Narratives Parents Tell Their Adopted Children
This is my origin story.
I was born in China to a family I don’t know. I was raised in an orphanage and had foster parents who cared for me at night. I was adopted by a loving single mother when I was seven months old. I was told all of this since I can remember. These pieces of my origin story were put together through books. The creation of our family was not the “norm.” Unlike biologically related families, adoption brings question and confusion. Why didn’t I have a father or a second parent like so many of my peers did? Why don’t my mom and I look alike? My mom decided to gently transfer this knowledge by reading picture books to me as soon as we arrived home from China.
Non-adopted children are told origin stories that shape their understanding of entering the world and joining their family, such as what hospital they were brought to or what a sibling thought of it all. Adopted children are also told origin stories, but can only be told what is known. Sometimes, an adoptee will have equal information such as who their birth parents are and the exact time and place they were born. While other times, like mine, little is known about their birth. Stories are essential tools in shaping identity and perceptions of our past.
Our earliest memories start around three or four years old; the time before is often filled in by family or loved ones. The stories people tell us about ourselves before we have memory recall impact our perception of who we are and how we got here. Nelson & Fivush (2004) coined the term autobiographical memory, meaning an explicit memory of an event that occurs at a specific time and place in one’s personal past and emerges gradually over preschool years. This sentiment is essential when significant changes happen to an infant, such as adoption.
The way my mom presented stories about my past shaped how I perceived myself and our relationship. She told me that people would come up to me when I was younger and speculate who my birth parents were. Some would say, “Oh, I bet they are a prince and a princess in China.” My mom would immediately shut this down,
“I didn’t like people giving you false ideas of where you came from.”
Of course I was curious about who my birth parents were and what my alternate life may have been like if I was not put up for adoption like many other adoptees wonder. Naturally, wonderings emerge from the child to the parent about their past, creating conversations and discourse around adoption. Conversations and stories foster a newly emerging sense of the distinctiveness of self and others and are an important part of creating autobiographical memory. My mom’s stories of my birth parents stayed general, reassuring me they loved me and explaining that putting me up for adoption was probably a very challenging decision for them. Instead, much of my origin stories focused on what we did know: when my mom adopted me.
Some of my fondest memories as a child involved cuddling into my moms shoulder and watching the vivid images dance across the page as she read me a picture book. I remember specifically loving the book I Love You Like Crazy Cakes by Rose Lewis. This picture book depicts a single woman longing to become a mother and going to China to adopt a baby girl. Through the book’s words and illustrations, I could feel the mother’s desire, love, and joy in getting her baby from China, and I related it to my own mom’s experience.
As my mom and I read this book together, she would insert her own memories of seeing me for the first time, how I acted with her and others, and the journey back home. Seeing a visual representation of a story close to mine and the addition of my mom’s reminiscence, built a story of my own that I could return to time and time again.
The representation I felt reading this book was formative in creating a personal narrative. Storybooks allow children to see their story reflected through a different lens. Having a representation of adoption in storybooks gives children the opportunity to connect with themselves and their history at a young age. Accurate representation in books helps people understand how they see the world and why they see the world the way they do. Many of my autobiographical memories intertwine with this book’s narrative. This is primarily due to the strong overlap in similarities but may also be caused by a blur between what I read as a young child and reality. Mostly, the book gave me visuals to the stories my mom told. At the time, we had no pictures or videos of our own from my mom’s journey to get me. So I would assign the memories to the pictures in the book.
For example, below is an illustration from the book I Love You Like Crazy Cakes where the mother is introducing her new daughter to all her new relatives. My mom told me about the first time she brought me to her church which had become such a large part of her community and life,
“People would come up to you and ooh and ahh, and you would be shy and turn back towards me.”
The details of the book and my life are slightly different, yet I attached my story to this one. Even now, looking at the image reminds me so deeply of the piece of my origin story that my mom shared with me.
Parents play an essential role in helping their children create autobiographical memories. Mothers who reminisce with their young children in elaborated and evaluative ways have children who develop more detailed, coherent, and evaluative autobiographical memories (Fivush, 2011). Using books like I Love You Like Crazy Cakes can be helpful in creating this discourse. This repetition allows for further growth and the ability to deepen personal history.
Storybooks with accurate representations of children’s unique lives are a helpful tool in the creation of autobiographical memory. I Love You Like Crazy Cakes will always hold a special place in my heart. Being close to my mom at a young age brought me all the joy and sense of comfort in the world and reading this book together encapsulated all of that. It also became one of the strongest tools I used in forming my origin story.
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