Where do you come from?

Displaced heritage?

Have you ever wondered what it is like to be raised by someone other than your biological parents? I would always complain about my parents being too hard on me, and I would always wish I could run away and some rich family would find me and raise me as one of their own.

There is one thing I am grateful for, it is being raised by my mother, through the hard times she never once said I wish you were never born. She never abandoned me and she sacrificed a lot for me to be where I’m at now.

Let’s get back to being raised by people who are not your biological parents. It’s a very complicated topic because the children are the ones that are affected the most.

I have a friend who was adopted by a white family and he is black. He told me his story and now I’m telling you. His parents abandoned him when he was at a tender age and they left him alone in the house for three days. He went to the neighbours and told them what had happened. The neighbours let him stay at their house for a few days, until eventually they took him to an orphanage. He lived there for months and he did not enjoy living at the orphanage at all. He was bullied and picked on by the other kids and he desperately wanted to leave and find his own parents. Every day he hoped that they would come for him, but every day he was met with disappointment. One day his old neighbours came to visit and as you can imagine he was overwhelmed with joy and on that day, the neighbours took him in as one of their own.

Later in life the effects of not being raised by his own parents put strain on him, he knew nothing about his culture and he could barely speak his mother tongue the way it was meant to be spoken. This of course is not his fault. He had no option but to survive and move on. His adopted parents are white and they did a good job raising him. He is a driven and ambitious young man who is focused on becoming the best that he can be.

It’s not easy growing up not knowing your history, and from what I can gather the grass is never greener on the other side of the fence.