By Sara Easterly 
Dear Adoptive Parent,
When you publicly share my story on social media and tell strangers private details about my adoption trauma, it hurts. I feel pathologized and ashamed. Exposing my personal struggles to others, like how it can be hard for me to trust, reinforces a core belief I already wrestle with—that something must be really wrong with me that explains why I was relinquished in the first place.
When you appeal to the masses for prayers on my behalf, I feel like a problem that needs fixing. It also makes me feel that it’s you, the church, and God versus me. I feel like a perpetual outsider in faith settings with nobody to confide in—not even God.
When I watch you garner hundreds of hearts and comments of sympathy in response to your posts about what I’m going through, which imply how hard it is to parent me, I feel you’re amassing an army against me. I appreciate the underlying intent of your caring, but can your prayers be between you and God, or just a few trusted others, instead of everyone on the internet?
Please stop sharing pictures of me on social media. I feel used for your likes, just as I sometimes feel I was used to create your family or help keep up your appearances. Even if I consent, please know better than to ask. I can’t always speak the truth out of fear of losing you. And please know that placing smiley-face emojis on my head does not absolve you from acting responsibly. Whether or not my face is identifiable, I still know you are sharing my personal story with strangers. Oversharing is oversharing. Shouldn’t my needs come first?
I’m thankful you recognize the pain I’ve been through due to relinquishment. But centering yourself in my story, instead of truly understanding my unique needs as an adoptee, can be just as traumatic, and sometimes even worse, than any trauma that took place before I joined your family.
I am sure parenting me can be challenging at times, especially as I grow older. Adolescence, a season in life where so much development hinges upon identity, can be especially fraught for adoptees without genetic mirrors, origin stories, and ancestral history, and with an accumulation of so many silent, ungrieved losses. I ask you to please seek out private support groups and resources led by adoptee educators. Internet strangers without education and lived experience in adoption trauma aren’t helping you by saying what you want to hear—like how wonderful you are for “saving” me and how you’re doing “God’s work.” This only serves to elevate you, pushing me and my needs further from view and treating me as less-than. Once again, I feel it’s you and the world against me.
When you lament with fellow believers that I haven’t turned to God, do you ever wonder if it’s because I couldn’t first turn to you? If I learn it’s not safe to trust my heart to you, how will I learn it’s safe to trust it to God?
Please understand I can’t always articulate these hurts, even if you ask. It’s uncomfortable talking with you about my deeply personal wounds—some of which will take decades to fully process. You’ve already shown me you won’t treat my hurts with sensitivity. And sometimes I’m pretty good at pretending everything’s just fine. It’s not. Research shows adoptees are four times more likely than nonadoptees to attempt suicide. When I feel so alone in my family and in our church, I think about this exit strategy often—so much so, it scares me.
Please help me. Please do better.
Even though I have a hard time believing God is on my side, I will pray for you, that you do not feel defensive or defeated by what I’m confessing and instead take my words to heart. I pray you find the strength to show up as the parent I need you to be—a parent who is committed to my growth for the long haul and is 100 percent up for the challenge of meeting my attachment needs instead of unconsciously acting to meet their own.
With love and an appeal for mercy,
Your adoptee
by Natalie Brenner 
by Adrian Collins 
by Beth Renner Regrut 
