Tina Fletcher
Title
Tina Fletcher
Text
My name is Tina Fletcher. I am an adoptee. My family is full of adopted people. Each unique, we hang together on our cord, a mismatched necklace, clearly not born to the clan that took us in.
My husband is clearly not an adoptee; one of many Italian-Irish children who all share a nose, or hairline, or maybe even a way of looking at the world. Together we made a daughter, who like her dad, shares a nose with one cousin, hair texture with another, and passionate temperament with a third. But my husband and I decided we weren’t done, and added another unique gem to our family cord, the tie that binds; our daughter from Asia.
Adopting Lily from China was both a move to confront social injustice and to extend my family culture of adoption. We knew a lot of the factors around adoption; the middle school years of being curious about the biological roots, the pregnant years of wondering what gene pool lies within, and even the stranger than strange times of meeting up with unsuspecting birth family. So we thought we were all set. But not really. Nothing follows a pattern that closely.
My husband is clearly not an adoptee; one of many Italian-Irish children who all share a nose, or hairline, or maybe even a way of looking at the world. Together we made a daughter, who like her dad, shares a nose with one cousin, hair texture with another, and passionate temperament with a third. But my husband and I decided we weren’t done, and added another unique gem to our family cord, the tie that binds; our daughter from Asia.
Adopting Lily from China was both a move to confront social injustice and to extend my family culture of adoption. We knew a lot of the factors around adoption; the middle school years of being curious about the biological roots, the pregnant years of wondering what gene pool lies within, and even the stranger than strange times of meeting up with unsuspecting birth family. So we thought we were all set. But not really. Nothing follows a pattern that closely.
Relation
Adoptive mom. Tina is also an adoptee.
Collection
Citation
“Tina Fletcher,” Our China Stories, accessed April 30, 2025, https://archives.stedwards.edu/china-stories/items/show/96.
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