“How Can I Know Who I Am If I Do Not Know Where I Have Been?”: Cultural Identity and Mental Health in Interracial Adoption

The Search for Authentic Belonging

During a training on identity I conducted recently, I asked the audience to ponder an age-old question: “How can I know who I am if I do not know where I have been?”

The search for belonging for all of us, whether adopted or not, involves the process of seeking to understand where we fit in our worlds, whether they be our family worlds, our peer worlds, our community worlds, or our societal world at large. Our search for belonging asks us where we have traveled to arrive at our current destination, at our current idea of self.

One of the common misconceptions about interracial adoptees is that we struggle with our racial identities. The more accurate statement is that we often struggle with our sense of racial authenticity.

For so long, many of us have been told that we do not have the right to claim all of who we are. When we look in the mirror, we understand that the face we hold bears the characteristics that the outside world has defined for us. The connection we feel to others who share our ethnic characteristics is sometimes left in doubt; we contemplate whether we have the right to claim the same heritage and culture

The Journey of Finding Connections and Disconnections

How can I know who I am if I do not know where I have been?

The question applies to our collective journeys as people not simply attached to our immediate families, but to the lands and stories and histories that brought us here, that connect us to our ancestors, and to the shared knowledge and ways of being they have passed down. Interracial adoptees, who grow up in a higher concentration of predominantly white spaces than white non-adopted children, frequently find themselves in environments where the cultures of their birth families are not infused in their being.

When I was conducting research centering Black interracial adoptees as part of my PhD program, one of the participants in my study spoke about how her =white adoptive parents’ Christian identity did not endear her to Black children at a church camp. “The Black kids sung different songs, gospel songs, that I did not know. They made fun of me for not knowing things that were different from how we did things in my white, different denomination church than theirs. I did not meet any Blacks kids who were not adopted that were of the same denomination as my family.”

Her experience highlights the sense of isolation interracial adoptees often feel from a cultural standpoint, even when some level of adjacency exists in their experiences with peers of the same race. This is because our cultural traditions shape the way we do things like church, what we eat for dinner, the music we know, the language we use, or even what time of day we choose to eat.

Many adoptive parents are aware that they need to live in more diverse environments, and some do. What often gets lost is that even in more diverse spaces, interracial adoptees can feel a sense of cultural isolation, even when they are not living lives that might be described as racially isolated. The mental toll it takes for an interracial adoptee to see themselves reflected, but still feel at a loss for how to connect culturally, is another weight to carry.

Beyond Diversity: Supporting Cultural Connection in Adoptive Families

How can I know who I am if I do not know where I have been?

Adoptive families are uniquely positioned to help interrupt that cycle. Parents can help their children understand that adoption itself, as a system, often plays a role in separating children from their cultures of origin, and that this separation is not the child’s fault nor evidence that they are disconnected from who they are. In acknowledging this reality, adoptive families can commit to learning about and practicing traditions connected to their children’s cultural backgrounds, celebrating and honoring birth/first families rather than treating them as invisible, and creating homes where adoptees are not asked to choose between parts of themselves. This also requires parents to know when to step back and listen, and when to step up and advocate, as adoptees navigate the layered complexities of identity, grief, belonging, and self-discovery that adoption can bring across a lifetime.

For interracial adoptees, the answer to the question of identity cannot simply rest on proximity to diversity alone. Being separated from one’s culture of origin does not mean an adoptee is no longer of that culture. A child does not lose their connection to their people, histories, or traditions because adoption interrupted access to them. Yet many adoptees grow up feeling as though they must earn the right to claim parts of themselves that should have always belonged to them.

Adoptive parents play an important role in helping their children bridge this gap. That work begins not with pretending differences do not exist, but with embracing the reality that culture matters. Parents can help their children access their cultural identities by speaking openly about their own cultural backgrounds, by building authentic relationships with people connected to their children’s cultures, and by approaching those relationships with humility and a willingness to learn. This means asking questions, listening without defensiveness, and creating opportunities for adoptees to engage with communities where their identities are understood rather than explained away.

It also requires separating racism and prejudice from lessons about culture itself. Too often conversations about race in adoptive families become centered only on discrimination and survival. While interracial adoptees do need preparation for racism, they also deserve access to the beauty, joy, spirituality, humor, creativity, language, and traditions embedded within their cultures. Culture cannot only be introduced through trauma. It must also be experienced through connection, celebration, and belonging.

Supporting Adoptees in the Identity & Healing Journey

How can I know who I am if I do not know where I have been?

Adoptive families must also recognize that for many adoptees, the journey toward cultural identity and mental wellness may at times require distance from the family itself. As adoptees seek to better understand themselves, reconnect with communities of origin, process grief, or work through the emotional complexities of adoption, they may need space to explore who they are outside of the expectations or dynamics of their family systems.

This stepping back should not automatically be interpreted as rejection, disloyalty, or lack of love. In many cases, it is an act of healing. When adoptive families give adoptees permission to take that space without guilt, defensiveness, or punishment, they create the conditions for healthier attachment and deeper trust.

The freedom to explore one’s identity honestly often strengthens relationships in the long term, because adoptees no longer feel forced to choose between connection to themselves and connection to their families.

When adoptive families intentionally nurture cultural connection in these ways, they help interracial adoptees build identities rooted not in uncertainty or exclusion, but in the understanding that they have always had the right to belong to all of who they are.