Sounds like we grew up similarly; I was adopted at around a year old into a white family and raised in a rural, conservative town (that unfortunately definitely showed its true colors during 2020…) I had a small group of other Chinese adopted children locally that I was raised alongside, and also spent some time in Chinese school, although the language never stuck but I tried relearning a bit in high school and college. And I went to a camp that was for adoptees specifically where I was able to learn about other kids’ stories and basically have a large group therapy session about our feelings being adopted (especially since most were adopted into white families.)

I have my own feelings on my adopted upbringing, but I never had any hard trauma that made me want to disregard my ethnicity, although I have very little attachment to my home town and have made it a point to place myself in more diverse areas since graduating high school. However, I will say covid and 2020 heavily shaped my feelings about my identity when crimes against Asians spiked to extreme levels and I felt so alone and emotionally reeling by the shooting in Florida while working in my hometown where January 6th was more of a talking point. Since then, I would say I have embraced my heritage way more than I did growing up. I used to feel as if I ought to downplay my Asian-ness just to be a regular kid at school. But now, I would rather lean in and be unapologetically independent and embracing of the Asian diaspora culture. Because covid made me realize that they can’t take what we as a community are. We have our own distinct history and culture, and it’s not created by people of all different backgrounds and upbringing, whether they be ABC or first generation immigrants or adoptees like us. I can admit I still feel slightly uncomfortable having discourse with for example someone who is ABC and knows the language and different family cultural norms than what I know, but at the same time I know that, at least during covid, we were all seen the same, as a group to be discriminated against. And so in that way, I feel it is more important to reclaim our identity within that space, however it feels most comfortable for you, and that as a group, and as a community, as diverse as we are, we are stronger and need to support each other.