KayelaWrites
@kwrights.bsky.social
I write #kidlit stories about finding hope and strength during times of darkness. Nonfiction Enthusiast. Story Collector. Library Lover. Adult ELL teacher. Gardening is my therapy #Adoptee for family preservation
THE MINIMALIST is a USA Today Bestseller! Thank you so much to everyone who supported this gruesome novel about classical music & the Asian adoptee experience. I'm immensely grateful for my readers, the #adoptee community, my agent @canonizer.bsky.social & my team at @stmartinspress.bsky.social 🎶🩸
I started reading "The Girls Who Went Away." The role of men (and their apparent lack of responsibility) relative to relinquishment of infants carried to term by girls and women is pointedly referenced (and further connected to other f*cked up societal norms) early in the book. 🥚
E.B. White's Stuart Little turned me inside out, and it took me decades to understand why. It was because the idea of a child utterly unlike his parents embarking on a quest for reunion brought out feelings about my #adoption that I had no other way to articulate, and no one in whom to confide them.
Preeti Chhibber@runwithskizzers.bsky.social · 2d agoIn honor of Dolly and her commitment to getting books to kids, tell me about a book you read as a child that changed your life. I’ll start: so many, but tonight maybe I’ll say A WRINKLE IN TIME, a book that taught me anger wasn’t wrong.
"For Ms. Geltink, finding her sister felt as if a puzzle piece had fallen into place. But she said she also felt a profound loss. “'A sister is something really wonderful to have,' she said. But all that time, she said, they could have been there for each other." 🥚 www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/w...
‘Everything Looked Like Me’: Adopted Childhood Friends Discover They’re Sisters (Gift Article)
Meena Geltink and Minal Tijssen were adopted from India by families in the Netherlands and grew up less than 100 miles apart.
nytimes.com
Oh boy. Do I have thoughts about this article! What say you, my fellow #adoptees 🥚 www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/o...
Opinion | Should the Opportunity to Have a Child Be a Human Right? (Gift Article)
What if starting a family was thought of not as a privilege, but as a fundamental right?
nytimes.com
NEW! For our FIRST EVER Adoptee Reading book review, Karen Pickell shares her thoughts on newly published #horror #fiction by Chinese #adoptee Kailee Pedersen -- "a fascinatingly complex psychological exploration" centered on two #AsianAmerican adoptee characters along with an adoptive father.
The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen
The Minimalist is the second novel by Chinese adoptee Kailee Pedersen. Her first, Sacrificial Animals, was named a Best Horror Book of 2024 by the New York Times, and her new book is billed as a “gruesome and unsettling psychological drama.”
adopteereading.com
Matilda knew what she needed, & the film let her act on it. Children have voices. Believing in their autonomy means more than listening. This Friday: Matilda, children’s autonomy + family policing. Co-hosted with J (@itsjway.bsky.social), a survivor of the system + editor. #adopteesky
as a transracial adoptee, I think much greater effort should be expended in maintaining families as opposed to destroying existing families and then "creating" new families 🥚
Kentucky Lantern@kentuckylantern.com · last wk.Commentary: Kentucky says these children need families. So why is the state preventing it? kentuckylantern.com/2026/08/18/k...
It's pub day for THE MINIMALIST! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported my weird, gruesome psychological horror novel of classical music & Asian #adoptee identity on its journey to publication. Order here: us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
SB 381 didn't advance. It's infuriating to have our rights & health reduced to $$$. "...any bill that’s estimated to cost taxpayers at least $50,000 gets placed on the suspense file. Twice a year...committees announce which bills move off of 'suspense' & can advance through the Legislature...." 🥚
Peacebird@peacebird.bsky.social · 2w agoLink that CAAR posted to facebook explaining why (hint: it’s mostly due to $$$) many bills fail to pass
🥚 An Australian adoptee was spirited out of Vietnam as a newborn during the U.S.-led Operation Baby Lift in 1974. She just found out, via DNA testing, she has a twin brother. “I’m angry that no one has taken responsibility for our separation from our parents.” www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
Experience: I found my long-lost twin aged 49
The joy, disbelief and shock of discovering I had a brother the same age as me came with a million questions. How were we separated and why?
theguardian.com
Nearly 50% fewer newborns were reported to child welfare after one hospital stopped automatically reporting positive opioid tests. The difference wasn’t less care. It was less surveillance. A drug test is not a safety assessment. Source: buff.ly/VWlxJ3R #adopteesky
Without strict reporting requirements, fewer babies are reported to DCF after positive drug screen
Boston Medical Center no longer automatically reports newborn babies who test positive for opioids to child welfare authorities. The hospital found that when they evaluated each family's situation…
wbur.org
ooh what a feeling be filling in an estate-planning form and be asked “Are either of your parents still living?” and knowing that even though both are alive i am legally obligated to write “no” 🥚
California sometimes seems like it will forever remain the Big One That Got Away. 🥚
Loather@loather.bsky.social · 2w agoSB 381 made it through the CA senate, made it through assembly judiciary committee, died right before full assembly vote. We fight on another day. Grateful to Senator Wahab (hopefully soon Congressmember Wahab) for championing this bill to give adoptees equal rights.
Anyone know who these alleged orgs are: • Adoptee Advisory Committee • Adoptees for Children • Adoptees Supporting Adoptee Citizenship Because they are listed as supporting the terrible “adoptee citizenship” bill just introduced in Congress . 🥚
South Korea says its protected-birth system has reduced infant abandonment. Adoptees are asking what it costs children who may lose access to their origin. Why are safety & identity treated like competing needs? Children shouldn't have to lose one to have the other. buff.ly/CntJA4L #adopteesky
South Korea's Protected Birth System Sparks Rights Debate
South Koreas Protected Birth System Sparks Rights Debate System reduces abandonment but critics argue it erases parental identity without child consent
chosun.com
HOLT and Mike Lee (R-UT) want a different adoptee citizenship bill. Non-bipartisan, racist, punitive...the Citizenship for International Adoptees (CIA) Act. This needn't see the light of day. Protect Adoptees and American Familes #PAAFAct2026 🥚 adopteerightslaw.com/citizenship-...
Call It the "Adoptee Deportation Act of 2026" | ARLC
The Citizenship for International Adoptees Act is a dangerous and newly introduced bill. Adoptees and their allies should not support it.
adopteerightslaw.com
🥚 For context, state senator Wahab is the author of SB 381, the bill to allow California adoptees access to our original birth certificiates. She is also the leading candidate (by 20%) to replace Eric Swalwell in Congress in a district not far from me. I would vote for her if I could! 🌁
Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer.bsky.social · 3w agowww.theguardian.com/us-news/2026... "Super Pacs are pouring money into the race, dropping more than $5m in recent weeks and supporting pro-Hernandez ads and Wahab attack ads, Politico reported on Thursday." I have seen these ads on television. They are ugly, distortions of Senator Wahab's beliefs.
www.sacbee.com/news/politic... 🎉 In the Sacramento Bee! "California adoptees can’t get their original birth certificates. That may change" By Stephen Hobbs August 7, 2026 🥚
California adoptees can’t get their original birth certificates. That may change
A bill pending in the state Legislature would allow people adopted in the state to get the unmodified birth record.
sacbee.com
This is a bill that we must defeat. Read on, and stay engaged. 🥚 We'll need your help. adopteerightslaw.com/citizenship-...
Call It the "Adoptee Deportation Act of 2026" | ARLC
The Citizenship for International Adoptees Act is a dangerous and newly introduced bill. Adoptees and their allies should not support it.
adopteerightslaw.com
🥚 International adoptions by Colorado (and all US states) have plunged “overwhelmingly due to bans and restrictions in several countries, including the handful of nations that were once the top countries for international adoptions by US families.” Because fraud. coloradosun.com/2026/07/28/i...
International adoptions by Colorado families have dropped to lowest on record
The dropoff is happening nationwide, with Colorado families adopting just 18 children last year from other countries
coloradosun.com
Chiming in today to say that I hate the phrase gotcha day. My adoptive parents never called it that, but they still romanticize the importance of the day as it falls (purposely) on their anniversary. Any mention of the day strikes differntly since coming to terms with the trauma of my #adoption.
Before we ask who should be allowed to adopt, we have to ask why children become available for adoption in the first place. My newest essay: buff.ly/M1T1Z3i #adopteesky
The Wrong Question
Why queer liberation requires us to rethink where the story begins.
open.substack.com
🥚 A story as old as the adoption industry itself: Brazilian adoptee discovers she wasn’t abandoned in basket after all. She was stolen from her mother, assigned a new birthday, and spirited out of the country with forged documents. Adoption = corruption swedenherald.com/article/adop...
Adopted as a baby, Gabriela finds her biological family after DNA test reveals illegal adoption | Sweden Herald
Gabriela was adopted from Brazil and grew up believing she had been found abandoned in a basket
swedenherald.com
There is no excuse for giving someone’s child to strangers instead of providing their family with the support & resources to care for that child.
The adoption industry needs a supply of product to satisfy the prospective adopters who are its *actual* beneficiaries, which is why every new revelation of domestic or intercountry child trafficking through coercion and fraud is merely more evidence of the industry’s imperatives at work.
another myth is that #adoption heroically rescues defenseless children from imminent peril (as manifested in the way we’re told that our alternative fate would have been to be thrown in a dumpster). in fact, the adoption industry is deeply *complicit* in separating children from their families.
one of the biggest myths about #adoption is that most or even many adopted people are orphans. Almost none of us is a true orphan. We were orphaned by a sociolegal system, not by death or fate.
Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️🌈@ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 4w ago🥚 A story as old as the adoption industry itself: Brazilian adoptee discovers she wasn’t abandoned in basket after all. She was stolen from her mother, assigned a new birthday, and spirited out of the country with forged documents. Adoption = corruption swedenherald.com/article/adop...
I'm currently not recommending U.S. domestic air travel for intercountry adoptees unless it is 1) necessary and 2) they have a U.S. passport. More details. Please read carefully. 🥚 adopteerightslaw.com/advisory-do-...
ADVISORY: Do Not Fly | ARLC
Intercountry adoptees should use caution and possess a US passport book or card when flying within the United States.
adopteerightslaw.com
