St Patrick's Day Thoughts from an Adoptee Perspective

Growing up as an adoptee, St Patrick's Day always brought up feelings around my own lack of specific ethnicity information.

While everyone was running around with garish green hats and eating green pancakes - declaring that they had Irish ancestry from a grandparent or great-grandparent, I was left wondering, even as a small child, was the ethnicity information I had true? Should I embrace it? How do I embrace it? Would embracing it be genuine since I wasn't with my family of origin?

I wondered not just if I were Irish, but I was left wondering just what it meant to be something, anything, because your DNA made you that something. I remember trying to grasp what lineage meant. The entire concept was mystifying and foreign to me.

So, while it isn't Mother's Day or a birthday - the more recognized adoptee triggers - for me St Patrick's Day was deeper and more problematic. An entire day dedicated to and celebration of family heritage...how could it not be problematic? For each adoptee, these cultural events land differently but don't assume they aren't landing, and landing early. Keep the lines of communication open and, after encouraging conversation, take the time to listen to adoptees, no matter their age.

-Marci Purcell, Adult Domestic Adoptee