It feels surreal to read from a fellow Kept sibling, as I've never talked to one in my life. I knew I want to trust the narrative within the first pages, when the parents in the story are referred to by their first names - only us - only us who pondered what really makes parents parents, and reconciled that they have to be just other humans with names, not the labels that the non-adoptive world attributes so much of their meaning and connotation to, to understand our parents and our relationships with them.

Before that, though, I hesitated on my copy of the book for a while, wondering if it was ok for the author, a white person, and a Kept person, to speak on the circumstances of adoption? Or maybe really, I might have been wondering, what purpose would my narrative ever serve, as a Kept person and someone who immigrated by choice?

We are too adoptive to ever feel comfortable with the dominant narrative of adoption, not even the adoptive parents' ones, yet never will, and never should be the authoritative voices on the topic of adoption - that should always be adoptees. Just like what was covered in the book, there were things we saw differently as children, there were things we sought after fiercely as adults, yet there are parts we fail to see, that were the experiences of our adoptee counterparts. I have been silent for most of my life, because much of it wasn't mine to share, nor should my voice be out there to overpower those of the adoptees. (Yet adoptive parents and non adoptive people often feel so entitled to speak and comment on our issues.) But maybe we should say something, about ourselves, and with our limitations.

If you only take away one thing from this though: listen to adoptees, and listen to the children.