Adoption is not about love. Adoption is about power.

Particularly, in the midst of the holiday season, there is a heavy focus on love and gratitude, which can be loaded concepts for Adoption Survivors. In this fifth episode of Everything You Think You Know About Adoption is a lie, we confront the lie that "love is enough."

If Adoption was truly about Love, then it would use Power to strengthen and empower families to stay together. Instead, Adoption leverages Power and weaponizes Love to surveil, destabilize, coerce, and exploit families for the commodification and procurement of children to benefit and profit the privileged.

The dominant adoption narrative purports that adoption provides children with "better lives." In this third episode, I present a counter narrative that questions the idea of adoption as a "better life."

In this fourth episode, we confront the myth that adoption is "God's plan." This episode includes personal anecdotes from my experiences of growing up and working as a staff member in the Church. I also challenge common narratives that position adoption survivors as a "gift from God" or an "answer to prayer."

The first episode provided an introduction to Everything You Think You Know About Adoption is a Lie. In this second episode, we begin to deconstruct the Orphan Myth. I start with a decolonial definition of Transracial Adoption followed by truths, facts, and personal anecdotes that deconstruct the Orphan Myth. The episode concludes with a poem titled, Side by Side. (Content Warning: mention of genocide)