A Look at Identity: A Conversation Between Adoptees from Different Generations
A Look at Identity: A Conversation Between Adoptees from Different Generations
Published on:
Jun 08, 2026
Category
International Adoption
I often attend C.A.S.E. events spending much of my time observing. I’m an adult adoptee in my early 40’s who has spent the last decade untangling my own adoption story utilizing resources that were not available to me as a child growing up. I watch adoptive parents learn adoption “education” that my parents never knew and I get to watch kids, teens and young adults navigate adoption in an open way that was never a part of my story throughout adolescence or early adulthood.
Year after year, one individual popped out to me during C.A.S.E.’s Annual Kids’ Adoption Network (KAN) Conference: John Reardon – who was adopted from Lithuania when he was 5 years old.
“My only memory of my time there is looking out the window at the orphanage,” he told me when I sat down to talk with him via zoom on a Thursday evening in April.
I had connected with John at the C.A.S.E. Annual Gala just a few weeks prior.
He was a 2026 C.A.S.E. Star Awardee that night.
I explained to John that I wanted to talk to him about identity. As an international adoptee myself, who feels a deep pull toward my genetic identity, I wanted to know what identity meant to him.
I wanted to know how he has navigated identity as one of our defined “stuck spots” in adoption.
John defined identity as “the back story of who I am.” He spoke about coming to the United States at age 5, speaking no English.
“I spent two years in Kindergarten. Mostly because of the language thing,” he said.
A language that now, at age 20, seems foreign to him.
“Can you still speak your native language?!” I asked excitedly.
He giggled, looking down, “Nope. I mean a few words but no,” he answered.
John said he never felt too confused by his identity, explaining his adoption story was something that was spoken about in his home very openly, and that he had been receiving C.A.S.E. services for well over a decade.
“Uhhh, 13”, he replied when I asked how many KAN Conferences he had attended.
I was curious what the annual conferences meant to him, what C.A.S.E. meant to him as a whole, and he genuinely explained,
“I couldn’t imagine not having support. The tools I have learned, like W.I.S.E. Up!, have made me resilient,” he shared.
I asked him how he’d advise a teen struggling with identity issues and their adoption, and he quickly responded, “You don’t joke about identity. You can guide your own support and once you get some support, it provides some answers.”
John was powerful, guiding his own adoption journey and even our interview in a way that felt comfortable to him.
As we closed our conversation, I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to share with me. He told me that adoption really is a “lifelong process,” something that’s always changing because there is new information coming out and each story is unique.
“There’s no norm or standard and that’s the joy — there’s usually something new to discover and always something to share,” he said.
I have to agree.
After four decades of being adopted, there are still things I discover about my own personal story, and each day I get to decide what I want to share. One thing I always seem to share though is a connection, a bond of some sort, with other adopted people. That never seems to go away. It’s a bond that transcends other differences, like gender, race, and even generational gaps.
Twenty years sit between John and I, our adoption stories extremely different. Yet year after year, we share space at these events that recognize the uniqueness of our experiences while embracing the community we are both part of. We are internationally adopted people, navigating roads of our identity.
As John said, “it’s the backstory of who we are.”
