Reflection Of Moving Across The World In A Global Pandemic For An Adoptee

As I’m sitting at a small table in my hotel room in government managed isolation back in New Zealand as I have arrived back home to visit family and friends, before heading back to Germany for work in late February.

I’m spending some time to reflect on what has the past year, 2021 been like from supporting I’m Adopted in Germany and my professional work, and the unique personal challenges each and everyone of us faces as a direct consequence of COVID-19.

A highlight has been to collaborate on behalf of I’m Adopted with  “Adoptierte aus aller Welt” that belongs to the consortium of “Inter Country Adoptee Voices” (ICAV).

In early 2021 I joined a discussion session hosted by “Adoptierte aus aller Welt” that was moderated by, Melanie Adela Vega that has been running and managing this group for some time now. Thank you Lynelle Long from ICAV in Australia for making this introduction happen.

After speaking with Melanie we decided to collaborate on the following event: 

We hosted a screening with questions that was prepared by Lynelle Long and ICAV that was about a documentary on Nancy Verrier famous book “The Primal Wound” where we went from very surface level questions to the very personal questions that the main idea of the book was built around, that abandonment has and or will affect all of us adoptees to some degree.

As we were coming to an end, I noticed a shift in atmosphere as we all had become more vulnerable and I could see and even feel myself that this session was very transformative for the 15 participants but had also been emotionally draining for all of us.

We also had planned to host multiple times a physical get together for us adoptees in Germany but COVID-19 had different plans, hopefully this year we might be more luckier!

Also on a personal note, I read The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing by Bessel van der Kolk who is global psychology expert on trauma, I highly recommend this book to be read by every adoptee.

Professionally I got to experience of what it was like to work in Germany in contrast to New Zealand and one of the key differences were, people are more direct and concise. I really enjoyed that and I’m excited to be moving back to Germany but this time to Berlin to work for the German public sector.

I hope you all had or are taking some time to relax and process the last year, and we all from I’m Adopted wish you all a wonderful start to the new year.