Junior Kirby Browning sees faces when she comes home.  They are the faces of people who love and protect her.  They are the faces that take care of her and provide for her.  They are behind her to catch her if she falls and push her back up on her feet.  These very same faces are the ones that make up her family.  They are faces that look nothing like hers.

Kirby Browning is adopted.

The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry said that “approximately 120,000 children are adopted each year in the US.”  The AACAP states that if open communications and a trusting relationship are not established between the adoptive parents and the adopted child, the child is prone to grow up with thoughts that they were abandoned by their first parents, or that they were given away for misbehavior, or even kidnapped by the adoptive parents.  “Some parents won’t tell their children they’re adopted, but I don’t like that.  I can understand, but I think it’s like thinking more about themselves than their child.  My parents always brought adoption positively to me.” said Browning.

There are a handful of adoptees currently attending JC.  Senior Svetlana Holt is adopted from Russia, Browning is adopted from Korea, and her younger sister, Jordan, is adopted from Vietnam.  Two adoptees from within the US are junior Sarah Bentman and sophomore Erin Cullinan.  With the exception of Holt, who was 8 when she was adopted, the others were adopted as infants.  Their parents made the decision to adopt for various reasons, such as giving back to the world community or because they could not have children themselves.

Each of these students were given up for adoption for different reasons as well.  Holt lost her mother, and her father went missing, while Kirby’s mother was a teenage mother who was not married and could not keep her because of the extreme social stigma attached with premarital pregnancy in Korea.  Cullinan says, “I know my biological mother didn’t have much money, and since she was already supporting two children she didn’t think she could afford a third.”

Adoption has shaped the lives of these individuals.  Holt has devoted her Senior Project to her experience with adoption.  She is writing a children’s book that she hopes will be able to help children who might be in the adoption process, which she says can be “scary and uncertain.”  “Even everyday people need to be made aware of what happens to children and what they go through, you know? It’s basically my way of making people aware,” Holt said.

These adopted students feel that in general, people are very open to their adoption, and they enjoy the way JC treats their situation.  Junior Sydney Comitz said, “I have a friend who is adopted, so I think that family is family.  It doesn’t depend on blood.  It’s just people that love you.”  Most people know what adoption is, but sometimes it’s hard for them to picture being adopted.  Cullinan said, “It kind of gets me when I hear someone say to someone else, ‘Nobody loves you I bet you were adopted at birth’ or something to someone who wasn’t adopted.”

For Browning and Holt, they still feel very connected to their places of origin.  They make active efforts to connecting back to their cultures with the support of their parents.  Most of the adoptees expressed an interest to meet their original parents. Bentman says, “If they want to get to know me, I’m open to a continued relationship.”  For some of them, this is not very possible, but they voiced that they were content with their adoptive families.

At JC, none of the adoptees feel that they have to hide the fact that they’re adopted, and it is not big deal.  “John Carroll does not keep records of [the number of] adopted students,” says Admissions Assistant Dee Mountain.  As for JC’s overall attitude of adopted students, Kirby says, “I like that they treat everyone the same.  The reason I’m being noticed is not for my looks or for my situation.”  Freshman Briant Simons also said, “I think adoption is a good thing.  It gives [those] children hope and support to succeed in life.”

For these young ladies, they’ve come to love those different looking faces.  For them, family cannot be defined, but rather, it can come to mean much more to them.  It is something that goes beyond borders of race or genetics, bloodlines or countries.  It is to love and be loved in return, and to embrace everyone as family.

Grace Kim can be reached for comments at [email protected]