Searching

Last week Zara Phillips and DMC released a music video for their song “I’m Legit”

They released this song last spring, to bring awareness to closed birth records in the US. Both Zara and DMC are adoptees who have done a lot to promote adoptee rights and adoption awareness. Only eight states, within the U.S., give adoptees rights to original birth certificates.

When DMC was 35 years old, he found out that he was adopted. Trying to come to terms with his beginnings, he filmed a documentary called “DMC: My Adoption Journey” which won a news and documentary Emmy for Outstanding Arts and Cultural Programming. In addition, he wrote his song “Just Like Me” about adoption.

He said this about his song, “I wrote this song for all members of the adoption triad. I want people to get rid of the shame, and secrets. Adoption is about love.”

Zara is an author, singer and songwriter from the UK. She wrote a book “Mother Me” written about her view of motherhood from an adoptee’s point of view. In this book, she explores relationships between adoptees and birthmothers. She is quoted “It seems that birthing my children was also a birth for my whole self”. She is also just finished directing and producing an adoption documentary that discusses the lifelong impact of adoption, “ROOTS: UNKNOWN”. This is currently being screened in both the US and England.

How wonderful it is that adoption can be main stream and discussed so openly. With the joy that adoption brings, there is also pain. I give both of these artists a lot of credit for sharing their personal stories.

I will leave you with one of the questions that Zara hopes that her documentary will try to answer, “What does someone touched by adoption need in order to feel emotionally whole?” I think that both DMC and Zara are showing us the way they are doing this. What do you think this might mean to you and your family?

Karen