My friend Lisa Marie Rollins of A Birth Project is in the top ten finalists for a $5,000 blogging scholarship. Woo hoo! She needs all the support and votes possible. Please vote for her! It will take two seconds and one click. Do it now! Here’s more about her blog and her great self.
I began “A Birth Project” over a year ago with specific goals. As it reads on my blog, “This blog began with a two-pronged focus: One – my personal search for my birth parents and Two – as a place to consider my experiences as a Black girl adopted by white parents, or ‘my life as a TRA’” (transracial adoptee).
I had no idea that my writing would connect me with a powerful group of transracial adoptees, adoption activists, scholars and performers. This connection became central to how the blog evolved. I post and comment on current news stories, post my own struggles continuing to let the world see my own search and reunion process as I find ‘parts of me’ that I never knew existed.
The most profound impact the blog/blogosphere has had on me is first, I have found support from an online community of transracial adoptees from all races and cultural backgrounds. Women and men from across the globe have written me personal, painful emails, thanking me for being vocal about my experiences and have given me love for saying things they always felt, but either were afraid to speak or could not articulate. Second, I was inspired to create an international non-profit organization “Adult Adoptees of the African Diaspora”. AAAD brings together adult adoptees of African descent across the globe and provide support, research and outreach for this widespread population. We hope our voices add to the strong voices of Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese transracial and international adoptees. Many TRA’s are isolated, the only person of color for miles, forced to struggle against uneducated assumptions about skin color or culture. This organization provides comfort and strength to a TRA who may be alone in her or his town. I hope my blog continues to do the same.
