Connor Howe

Everyone has their feelings about

way things look in open adoptions whether they like quote unquote work out or don't work out but ultimately i feel like if a system is like claiming to be a system of child welfare and it's making promises to the children to the natural families to the adoptive families why don't we why do we have a system with such a high failure rate where there are so many people whether it's the people like me the people like you guys people like the adopters that are unhappy

that are like, this was promised to me and it wasn't what I thought it would be.

You know, even my adoptive parents, like I have a good relationship with them, but I've asked them, like, if you knew what things are the way they are now, like if you could, if you had like a portal into the future and you could see the way things are, like,

would you want everything to be exactly the same?

And my mom's like, no, like I wish you didn't have to be adopted, you know?

And it's like, even, and to me that like it, it, that sounds like something to someone who probably isn't adopted that would just feel like it cuts deep, right?

Like, wow, you didn't want to, like, you don't want to, but to me that was so like refreshing to hear.

Cause like when I was four years old, I remember my mom tells me like that, uh,

I came up to her and I was like, I wish I came out of your tummy because I wish I wasn't adopted.

But a lot of people... I've heard a lot of adopted people say things like that.

It's a... At as young as four, that means there's some kind of... I've known my whole life that there was something... Everyone in my life, well, in my adoptive family, we've all known there was something that just didn't click.

And it's not an insult to them.

It's not an insult to my mom, to my natural mom, to anyone.

It just...

People present adoption as this solution and it just makes you quote unquote normal family.

And maybe for some people it does.

Like, I'm not here to say that the quote unquote happy adopted people who want to shut me up and say, well, you're just one person.

Look, if, if I'm not here to say that a hundred percent of experiences are negative, but if there is a high rate of failure in anything, the goal should be to make that the failure rate lower by whatever, you know, whatever means we have to, to make the failure rate lower.

And really everyone should be happy.