A Piece of My Writing: A Letter to My Adoptive Country

November 22, 2020

This is the second in a series of four letters. The first one was a letter to my first country, please, find and read it HERE.

This is a letter to my adoptive country.

While I realized recently that I felt betrayed by my first country for not advocating for me, for letting me get brought far away, and for not making sure I have full access to my story, I feel equally betrayed by my adoptive country.

They should have deemed my paper work insufficient. They should have dug deeper and they should not have taken me out of my original country, to alter my story, on such vague and faulty information.

The difference is that I can shed my Swedish identity because I am not Swedish by the way I look, I am not Swedish by the way I act, and unless I mention it myself, no one will mistake me for Swedish.

I share with you, my letter to my adoptive country.

Dear Adoptive Country,

How much did you know?

You can tell yourself that you took me in, that you did a good thing.

You can pat yourself on the back for saving me.

But did you save me?

And from what?

We can speculate and it will lead to nowhere.

But what we do know is that my papers should have been deemed insufficient.

Red flags should have been raised.

The vague and generic information should have caused you not to accept to adopt me.

A newspaper article…

ONE article.

How is that enough of an effort to try and locate family?

MY FAMILY.

Before altering a person’s life, for all time.

What questions did you ask to ASSURE that the grounds on which you were accepting me where not just legally, mot also morally sane?

You do not get to claim that you did any of it to help me.

Helping me would have been asking more questions, digging deeper, making sure…and even then…

What right did you have to come in and decide to alter my life?

What level of audacity lead you to think that by default my life would be better with you?

I have wanted away from you for as long as I can remember.

Since I was a child.

Leaving you was one of the most liberating things I have ever done or felt in my entire life.

I want no part of you in my life.

I am shedding you day by day.

You removed me from my home.

You played God with the course of my life.

Did you consider ME at all?

You do not get to claim me.

I allow myself not to forgive you.

But, I do not care enough about you to hate you.

Written by Amanda Medina, November 2020

As always, I thank you for being here, for taking the time to show up for yourself, and others.

All my love to all of you

Amanda

To all my fellow adoptees,

PS. We are all in this together

Amanda Medina

I was adopted from Medellin, Colombia to Sweden in 1985. I was about a year and a half when I started my life as an adoptee, and it would take 32 years until I was ready to face what that means, what that has always meant, and what that will always mean.