Hold the Mirror. Let Them See.

You want to talk about adoptee mental health?

Let’s talk about the mirror you keep turning away from.

Because when an adoptee dies by suicide, you mourn quietly – but never loudly enough to indict the systems that engineered their isolation.

You pathologize the individual.

You don’t interrogate the institution.

You light candles for the tragedy, but you extinguish every attempt they made to tell you the truth while they were alive.

You were there.

When we said we were hurting, you told us we were confused.

When we asked about our mothers, you redirected the conversation.

When we questioned the narrative, you said we were ungrateful.

When we grieved, you called it disorder.

You normalized our erasure. Then punished us for reacting to it.

And now you stand back, hands clean, because the autopsy will say “mental illness” – not “systemic betrayal.”

Because the obituary won’t mention the sealed records, the forced silences, the gaslit grief.

But this mirror doesn’t lie.

You were there.

You didn’t speak.

You didn’t act.

You didn’t listen.

You blamed the adoptee for drowning in a river they were thrown into at birth.

That is complicity.

So when we say “listen to adoptees,” we’re not asking for sympathy.

We’re demanding accountability.

Because our pain isn’t a flaw – it’s forensic.

And every time you ignore it, you become part of the crime scene.