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Today I saw that Canada is allowing parents of children born or adopted abroad to pass citizenship to their foreign-born/adopted children if they’ve spent three years in Canada. Previously this wasn’t possible because of a “first generation limit” that meant people couldn’t pass on citizenship. I’m not Canadian so it might seem odd that I care about this law at all. The part that got me was the “adopted” children part.

I’m adopted and there are often gaps or poorly covered processes in the system that don’t cover people who are adopted. For citizenship, particularly in the US, and particularly right now, if children were adopted outside the country sometimes paperwork got lost or not filed. And then when it comes time to renew that paperwork you can’t. And now, you’ve lived your whole life here and are stateless. A missing piece of paper puts a target on your back.

It also includes things like medical coverage. Going to the doctor when I’m sick and trying to be diagnosed can be difficult. I have no family history of anything. That means there’s always a balance of trying to be as minimally invasive as possible while also actually figuring out what’s wrong. No family history means that nothing can be quickly ruled out.

Being adopted is being in an odd state of gaining and losing at the same time. You are gaining a new family while losing an old one. Gaining a new identity while losing another. The loss is sometimes temporary and you find your birth family. But often it is permanent. And I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older this is something I think about a lot. Is there someone out there who looks like me? Who has my smile? My laugh? Do I look like my mother?

And there are a lot of unfair assumptions about adoptees that are normalized in culture. Often, adoptees are not included at all. But when we are, we are the villain, the outcast, or the crazy one (think Thor, The Avengers, and a surprising number of horror movies). My own friend, while trying to get pregnant, told me she didn’t want to adopt because she didn’t want the kid to turn out badly. Which she said to me. Many times. As if that were a normal expectation to have. And it’s not the first time I’ve heard commentary like that about adopted children. We exist as part of the family and also somehow separate from it.

One of the art pieces I’m working on right now is called Nests. And it explores this idea of what family means, specifically to adoptees. A nest is something that’s constructed as a temporary shelter to hold a family. Some nests last many seasons, some must be rebuilt every year. And I want to explore how adoptees create their nests. What does it mean to them? How do they create shelter and find family? What does it mean to be a family?

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