Let’s “make more space for the adoptee voice, so they can be brought up and witnessed in the light, and be met compassionately with the resources they deserve.” That’s one powerful line of many that were shared by Cam Lee Small, MS, LPC, at his recent TedX Talk, Why Adoptees Need A New Kind of Village.
Cam is multi-faceted: an author (The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment), a licensed clinician, a transnational transracial adoptee from South Korea, and an advocate for adoptees and for adoption literacy.
His TedX Talk was powerful for me as an adoptive parent, and I believe that may also be true for adoptees and birth/first parents. He is compassionate and insightful, balancing his lived experience with years of professional training and expertise.
In the TedX Talk, he uses anecdotes from adoptee summer camps (sometimes the only places that adoptees see others who look like them and who are all adopted as well) along with powerful recommendations to create that vital village to raise a child.
While noting the variety of adoptee stories and experiences, Cam contends that “adoptees need tools that destigmatize mental health support and honestly address how history, loss, early adversity, and adoption can have an impact on nervous system development, brain and body functioning, racial and ethnic socialization, identity, search and reunion.” He calls for “ethical DNA testing” in the U.S. and around the globe so that people who have been relinquished can find their families. Also needed are “quality language interpretation skills” for when adoptees and those who relinquished them find each other.
All adoptees need access to their own health records and to “targeted health screenings, especially when records are kept from them or are falsified,” as happens so often.
It’s a brilliant talk. Please listen, learn, and share.