Adoptee Remembrance Day was created to remember the adoptees who are no longer here, including those we have lost to suicide. But remembrance cannot begin and end on October 30th.
There are adoptees still here who know what it feels like to stand frighteningly close to that edge. Adoptees who have lived with suicidal ideation. Adoptees who have survived suicide attempts. Adoptees who have fought their way through some of the darkest places imaginable and are still here to tell their stories.
We want to hear from you.
A new Adoptee Remembrance Day publication that will launch in the coming weeks has been created as a year-round home for these stories. We want to center the voices of adoptees who can speak about these experiences from the inside, in their own words, because statistics can tell us that adoptees are struggling, but statistics cannot tell us what it feels like to actually live it.
Your story can.
Sharing these stories is also an extension of remembrance. We remember the adoptees who can no longer tell us what they were carrying, while creating space for those who survived to tell us what they carried, what brought them to that place, what they needed, what they wish others had understood, and what being adopted had to do with it.
Those of us who are still here have an opportunity to step into the gap for those who are not.
This will not be a collection of inspirational stories designed to make adoption more comfortable for other people. These stories can be complicated, painful, angry, hopeful, unfinished, or all of those things at once. You do not have to package your survival into a happy ending. You only need to tell the truth about your own experience.
Contributors must be adopted and will have the option to share under their real identity or anonymously. Clear submission guidelines, including a word limit and safety guidelines around discussing suicide, will be provided before your story is submitted for publication. All submissions must be from adoptees who are 18+, must be your own original work, and submission does not guarantee publication.
Adoptee Remembrance Day is an independent initiative, not a nonprofit organization. Paid subscriptions to the publication will help support the ongoing work required to research, write, edit, maintain, and grow this project throughout the year. Our goal is also to compensate adoptee contributors for their labor and vulnerability as the publication becomes financially sustainable. As funding allows, contributors will be offered a financial honorarium for published stories, with the option to accept it or donate it back to support the continued work of Adoptee Remembrance Day.
For now, we are beginning by gathering the voices.
If you are an adoptee who has experienced suicidal ideation or survived a suicide attempt and you believe you are ready to share your story, please leave your information below to claim your place on the waiting list for the new Adoptee Remembrance Day publication launching in the coming weeks. We will reach out soon.
October 30th gives us a day to remember.
These stories give us a way to keep remembering all year long.
We remember those we lost.
We listen to those who survived.
And we make space for the truths that deserve to be heard.
Adoptee Remembrance Day 