About Khara Niné
Khara Niné is the author of the book "Cries of the Soul", and the blog "Indigo Child Khara". She was adopted to a home in Norway from South Korea in 1970, ten months old.
Recently I’ve started looking back at my life, the struggle of growing up with a pair of abusive adoptive parents, hoping to figure out ways to get to grips with this baggage of insecurity and angst that I carry with me. I wish to share some of this personal journey with others who are, as they say, in the same boat.
I write about childhood memories as part of a healing process, to help myself recover from the wounds of a bad upbringing. This site is my outlet; a place to vent when emotions are crowding in and fighting to make themselves heard. I am a grown-up today, but many of those thoughts and feelings belong to my inner child. She wishes to speak up, and now is her time. Too many things in her young life went wrong, and I have not allowed her to come out; I’ve tried to hide her, and to forget, denied her existence, because the childhood experiences locked up within that Pandora’s Box she carries with her would be overwhelming and create a river of tears from memories of pain and fear.
Now, as a grown-up, I can finally let her out, give her a place in my heart, embrace her and comfort her, and let the world know about the injustice and unfairness that she was submitted to. It is a painful process, but it is slowly helping me and her both heal ourselves. I hope that many will see my blog, and maybe together we can raise awareness for children in dire need of help. It could be your neighbour’s child that needs assistance, or even rescue. You can’t help every single one, but for each one that you do help, it will make a world of difference.
When Khara was adopted she was allegededly an orphan, with no known living family. It has later turned out that her father was very much alive at the time (though he died a few years later), and she had three older sisters, plus at least one uncle who was known to the adoption agency. Other information from the adoption agency has also shown itself to be false. This, coupled with an adoptive childhood of neglect and abuse from her adoptive parents, has caused overwhelming difficulties in her adult life.
About adoption
The subject of adoption is too broad and complicated to address on a simple About page, so this will, for now, be a condensed version, brushing merely the surface of the topic.
In brief, adoption is the act of removing a child from everything familiar and safe, severing all ties to her past and identity, including but not limited to the her original name, knowledge of the her original parents, birth certificate, medical history etc.
International / Interracial Adoption
International and/or interracial adoption, in addition to adoption in general, is the removal of the child from people with the same ethnical looks and traits, making her stand out as different among her peers as an easy target for racism, abuse or exclusion, further complicating the development of identity, and potentially destructive for her self esteem.
Adoption as Human Trafficking
Much of adoption, and especially international / interracial adoption, is practiced by way of forcing or intimidating the natural parents into surrendering their child to the authorities or adoption agency, including but not limited to making the mother sign off her child whilst still under heavy sedation immediately after giving birth. Most natural parents are misled or bullied into surrender without any knowledge of their rights, or fully viable alternatives to giving up their child. Some cases of adoption are no less than downright kidnapping. Children are then sold as merchandise to waiting adoptive parents with no compensation or concern for the natural parents.
Adoptive Parenting
Most adoptive parents adopt to compensate for infertility, or by a misguided sense of charity and generosity. Either way, they are by and large not prepared for the task they take upon theirselves. They expect an adopted child to be a blank slate, ready for them to shape to their liking. What they fail to realize, or realize too late, is that the child is an individual with pre-existing personality, emotional, psychological and biological history, inherited from her original parents, and that are not always compatible with the expectations of the adoptive family.
In the case of infertility, adopting does not cure infertility or compensate for the emotional baggage therefrom, but rather reinforces the sense of "I cannot have a child of my own, so I had to get one that isn't mine", inducing additional stress on the parent-child relationship.
In the case of generously taking in a troubled, suffering child from a life of poverty, abuse and suffering, this is in most cases not true. Children are largely taken from parents who would be perfectly capable of taking good care of them, but are forced into giving them up for social reasons, due to the stigmatization of single mothers, of unmarried couples, or poor parents. Neither single motherhood, being unmarried, or poverty are valid excuses for removing a child from her parents; the material "upgrade" to an adoptive home can not and will not compensate the child for the loss of her mother.
Alternatives to Adoption
There are, of course, situations where it is legitimate and sometimes necessary to find a new home for a child, such as children whose parents have died, or parents who are abusive or grossly neglectful of their child's needs. There is however no reason to sever all ties to the child's past, as is the case with adoption.
Alternative: Legal Guardianship
In the case of legal guardianship, the child is placed in the care of new, qualified individuals who are responsible for her upbringing and well being. These individuals can be, in order of preference, close relatives of the original family, friends of the original family, or individuals in the same local area or similar enough to be near identical (for ethnical / racial concerns). Only in the most extreme cases should the child be removed completely from everything familiar. It is in any case imperative that the child retains her identity, including but not limited to her name, insight into her past, her original family relations, medical history etc.
Alternative: Remote Adoption / Child Sponsorship
In the case of poverty, it is possible to sponsor children who are then allowed to stay with their natural parent or parents, or together with other children with similar origins in the same area, yet receive the means required to provide the medical attention and education they need, without having to remove them from their natural surroundings.