An open letter to my adopted daughter

You're too young to read this right now, and by the time you're old enough to understand what I'm writing, it's possible I'll have changed my mind. Over the years, I've learned not to judge the younger me for disagreeing with the older me, and I hope you'll learn the same. Our younger selves had their reasons, and even if they didn't get everything right, those reasons and the views they supported deserve to be taken seriously.

Amongst adoptees, there's a growing movement to protest the common practice of issuing children new birth certificates upon their adoptions, ones on which the birth parents' names are replaced with the adoptive parents'. One major reason for this is that sometimes the adopted child has no connection at all with her birth parents, and even their names are a mystery. Of course, we know very well who your birth parents are, and in the miraculous age of the interwebs it would likely take little effort to track them down. Practically speaking, for families like ours, the birth certificate is purely an identity signifier.

I get how personal identity is an enigma to each person, and how the adoptee cannot help but feel her identity contains elements unshared by the rest of her family. She is doubly unique: a unique individual, as is every person, but also unique within her family. The birth certificate is a marker of her identity, and one with her adoptive parents' names can seem a counterfeit, a denial of her obvious uniqueness.

But identity goes both ways. I understand that you have to work out what it means that two sets of parents can legitimately claim you as their daughter. At the same time, you need to understand what it means for me to claim you as my daughter when the world is poised to reject that claim. It's not just that our skins and hair are so obviously different: it's that your mother and I were told, for over three years, that we weren't your real parents and had to defer to the whims of two people whose immaturity deeply wounded you.

I didn't just fight for you, although God knows I did. I didn't just fight to be your father. I also fought to be recognized as your father, and I deeply suspect the world around us refuses me that identity. I fear being thought of as the counterfeit.

This will be hard for you to read, and it's difficult for me to write because the solipsism is so obvious, but your birth certificate is not only about your identity. I don't know how to describe what it felt like to open up that envelope from the county and read your name, your real name at last, with your mother and me listed as your parents. Everything suddenly slotted into place. Here, after over three years, was proof, proof the world must recognize and acknowledge, proof of what I had known since we carried you out of the hospital that Good Friday: I am your father.

Your sense of identity matters to you, and it matters to me. As far as you and I are concerned, though, your identity is inextricably tied up in mine. You are my daughter, I am your father, and your birth certificate testifies to the truth.