3 Truths About Transracial Adoption That Will Change Everything You Thought You Knew

When Dr. Abigail Hasberry speaks about adoption; her voice carries the weight of lived experience from every angle imaginable. As an adoptee who was raised as a Black child in a white family, a birth mother who placed her son for adoption at 16, and now a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in adoption trauma, Dr. Hasberry offers a perspective that few can match. In a recent episode of Voices of Adoption with hosts Donna Pope and Nathan Gwilliam, she shared her lived truths and clinical wisdom that are reshaping how we understand transracial adoption.

Dr. Hasberry's credentials extend beyond her experiences. She holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction, serves as a board-certified executive leadership coach, and has dedicated her professional life to helping others navigate the complex emotions and identity questions that adoption creates. Her recently released memoir, "Adopting Privilege: Learning to Reflect, Release & Reinvent," challenges the comfortable narratives that have long surrounded adoption, particularly transracial adoption. Her unique triple perspective allows her to see adoption not through rose-colored glasses but through the lens of truth, trauma, and ultimately, healing.

The central message of Dr. Hasberry's work centers on a fundamental shift in how we approach transracial adoption. Rather than adopting a colorblind mentality that ignores racial and cultural differences, she advocates for what she calls "cultural embrace" - the idea that adoptive families must not only acknowledge but actively celebrate and incorporate their child's racial and cultural identity into their daily lives. This approach challenges decades of well-intentioned but misguided advice given to transracial adoptive families, and the conversation with Pope and Gwilliam reveals just how urgently this shift is needed.

Truth #1: Cultural Disconnection Creates Lifelong Identity Struggles  

Dr. Hasberry's childhood was marked by constant movement as her professor father relocated the family every few years. This nomadic lifestyle created an additional layer of complexity to her identity formation. While living in Egypt during her elementary years, she developed primarily an American expatriate identity rather than connecting with her racial heritage. It wasn't until the family moved to Miami and she attended a predominantly white, affluent school where her mother taught that she began grappling with questions about her Black identity.

The sense of disconnection from Black culture became increasingly apparent as she grew older. She described feeling as though Black community and culture existed behind a television screen that she could observe but never truly enter. This isolation wasn't simply about physical proximity to other Black people; it represented a fundamental gap in cultural understanding and connection that her adoptive family, despite their good intentions, had not prepared her to navigate.

The turning point came during her teenage years when BET began broadcasting, providing her first real window into Black culture through music and videos. She actively sought out Black friendships and began the challenging work of connecting with a heritage that felt simultaneously hers and foreign. This experience highlights a common struggle for transracial adoptees: the need to independently discover and claim cultural connections that their adoptive families cannot provide, often leading to feelings of isolation and confusion about where they truly belong.

Truth #2: Love Without Cultural Understanding Creates More Harm Than Good  

One of Dr. Hasberry's most significant insights challenges adoptive parents to fundamentally reframe their approach to transracial adoption. She advocates that parents must develop genuine love and appreciation for their child's cultural background before, not after, bringing the child into their family. This isn't simply about learning a few cultural traditions or celebrating heritage months; it requires deep immersion and authentic engagement with the culture that will be part of their child's identity.

The comparison she draws is telling: when her Irish and Polish parents married, they naturally celebrated and incorporated both cultural traditions into their family life. However, when they adopted her, the approach was different. Rather than the entire family becoming multicultural, the focus remained on her as the "different" member who needed to adapt to their existing family culture. This dynamic, while unintentional, can create feelings of otherness and the sense that one's racial identity is something to be managed rather than celebrated.

Dr. Hasberry recommends that prospective adoptive parents engage with their future child's culture the same way they might immerse themselves in any culture they love. This means actively seeking out cultural experiences, building relationships within that community, learning about the history and contemporary issues, and ensuring that the child will see their racial identity reflected not just in their own face but in their family's daily life and values. The goal is to create an environment where the child's full identity is not just accepted but actively nurtured and celebrated.

Truth #3: Every Adoptee Faces Universal Attachment Challenges That Get Misdiagnosed  

Working as a therapist specializing in adoption trauma has given Dr. Hasberry unique insights into the near-universal attachment challenges that adoptees face. She observes that virtually every adoptee she works with struggles with some form of attachment difference, whether that manifests as being overly attached and anxious about abandonment or becoming avoidant and reluctant to form deep connections. These patterns aren't personality flaws or disorders; they're logical responses to the fundamental experience of being separated from one's birth family.

The therapy work often focuses on helping adoptees understand that they deserve to take up space in the world and in their relationships. Many adoptees develop patterns of people-pleasing, making themselves smaller, and expressing excessive gratitude as survival mechanisms. These behaviors, which Dr. Hasberry sees across all types of adoptees regardless of race, stem from an internalized belief that their place in their family is conditional and must be earned through perfect behavior.

One of the most damaging aspects of the current approach to adoptee behavior is the tendency to pathologize normal responses to adoption experiences. Dr. Hasberry argues that many behaviors labeled as oppositional, defiant, or disruptive in educational and therapeutic settings are actually completely appropriate responses to the adoptee experience. Just as we recognize that certain behaviors are age-appropriate for toddlers, we need to understand that there are adoption-appropriate behaviors that reflect the complex emotions and experiences of being adopted.

Processing Trauma and Redefining Normal  

The process of healing requires what Dr. Hasberry calls "processing" - making sense of experiences that have been stored in the body without proper understanding or integration. When traumatic or confusing experiences happen and are not discussed or understood, they remain unprocessed, creating ongoing emotional and psychological challenges. Processing involves getting answers to questions, understanding the full context of experiences, and working through the emotions that have been stored around those experiences.

Traditional therapeutic approaches often fail transracial adoptees because they don't account for the specific complexities of racial identity development within white families. Dr. Hasberry found that techniques like EMDR, which use eye movement to process trauma, allowed her to dissociate and avoid truly processing her experiences. Brain spotting, which holds the eyes in specific positions to access stored emotions, proved more effective because it prevented the intellectual avoidance that had protected her for years but also prevented healing.

Her approach to helping adoptees process their experiences focuses on several key principles:

• Reflecting on experiences without judgment to understand their impact

• Releasing aspects of their story that no longer serve their growth

• Reinventing their narrative to center their own agency and worth

• Recognizing that they deserve to take up space and be fully themselves

• Understanding that attachment challenges are normal responses to their experiences

The concept of grace plays a central role in this healing process. Dr. Hasberry learned to extend grace both to herself and to her adoptive parents, understanding that people can cause harm without malicious intent and that healing requires releasing anger while still acknowledging the impact of those experiences.

Creating Real Change for Future Transracial Adoptees  

The conversation about transracial adoption must move beyond simply celebrating diversity to honestly examining the specific challenges and developing concrete strategies for addressing them. Dr. Hasberry's work demonstrates that with proper preparation, ongoing support, and willingness to engage authentically with difficult topics, transracial adoption can be successful for all parties involved.

For adoptive parents, this means doing the deep work before adoption to truly understand and love their child's culture. It means creating space for their children to express difficult emotions about their adoption experience without taking those feelings personally. It also means recognizing when professional help is needed and finding therapists who understand the specific complexities of transracial adoption.

The adoption community as a whole must commit to more honest conversations about the realities of transracial adoption. This includes acknowledging that love alone isn't sufficient and that good intentions don't prevent harm. By creating space for these difficult discussions and supporting families throughout their journeys, we can work toward better outcomes for the children at the center of these decisions.

If you're interested in learning more about Dr. Hasberry's work or accessing resources for adoptive families, visit adoptingprivilege.com. For those in Maryland and Texas, she offers remote counseling services specifically designed for adoptees and adoption-affected families.