There is a growing community of adoptees who are using TikTok to shed light on the trauma and economic pressures that have shaped their adoption experience.
When Alé Cardinalle first met her biological mother and siblings, she was surprised by how familiar their love felt. Born in Brazil, Cardinalle was adopted by a New Jersey couple when she was an infant. On the eve of her 28th birthday, Cardinalle found and contacted her birth mother on Facebook, and the two women arranged a reunion in Brazil.
“It broke my heart wide open,” Cardinalle says, recalling her birth mother begging her for forgiveness.Cardinalle’s adoption, the country she had to leave behind, the shape of her life: All of it could be traced back to poverty. A few years after Cardinalle's birth, her mother fell in love with and married a man and left her housekeeping job. The couple raised two children in a home of their own.
Today, Cardinalle shares her story on TikTok under the handle @wildheartcollective_. She is part of a growing community of adoptees who use the social media platform to shed light on the trauma and economic pressures that have shaped their adoption experience. The hashtag #adopteesoftiktok has garnered tens of millions of views.
“I had trauma that they weren’t prepared for,” Huijskens says. “I had seemingly random temper tantrums and outbursts and would cry myself to sleep. It took years to finally get an adoption trauma-informed therapist who sat me down and told me, ‘Adoption is trauma.’”It was hard for her to digest. Huijskens, like Cardinalle, loves her adoptive family and is grateful for the resources and protection they’ve provided.
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