How an Adoption-Focused Instagram Account Helped Me Feel Seen

Notes from a Chinese adoptee

In the spring of 2020, when I was in my mid-twenties and quarantining quietly in my childhood bedroom as the pandemic raged on, I created an adoption-specific Instagram account for the first time.

Some context: I’m a Chinese American adoptee from Jiangxi province, adopted in 1995 to loving American parents. I’m an only child, and I never really had an adoption-focused identity crisis until I left the house at age 18. (Sure, there were some signs of adoption trauma, but I’m not going to delve into them here.) Flash forward to today: After nearly three decades since I was left in a cemetery, adopted abroad, and my life changed forever, I have never been back to China.

Creating this account was my little secret. I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, and definitely not my family. Of course, with technology being as invasive as it is, my account was still connected to my phone number, so those friends and acquaintances I never would have wanted to share it with ended up being recommended to follow me by the algorithm. I suppose if I’d really been trying to grow the account and become an InfluencerTM, that could have been a positive. But I wasn’t trying to do that. I didn’t even know what I was trying to do. Why would I subject myself to this public scrutiny? Posting my face for the world to see on such a public-facing account for anyone to comment on? (My personal account is private.) I didn’t feel exactly comfortable doing this, but at the same time, I was in desperate need of some outlet to a world outside of my own.

The internet is good at providing this outlet. The internet knows how to cater to a niche audience, and my audience was definitely niche.

In the United States, the Chinese adoptee population is estimated to be around eighty thousand. Divide that by the U.S. population of approximately three hundred and thirty-five million people, and that makes Chinese adoptees about 0.02% of the population! Talk about being a minority, and a very young minority at that. (Most of the adoptees I’ve met in real life are my age or younger.) The term “unprecedented” has been used many times over the past few years, and I’ll use it again here: Being a transnational adoptee is a historically unprecedented experience, since at no other time in history could an abandoned baby be flown halfway across the world. The resources simply wouldn’t have been available.

Each time I posted to my account, I saw more clicks, engagement, likes. Reactions about my speaking up and voicing what I had been silent about for so long—my lifelong, confusing grief over a family that lived somewhere across the globe whom I’d probably never find in my lifetime; a tirade against the White Savior mentality, even while I loved my parents, who are white; a deep sadness at the profound isolation that comes with being the only person in your family to look like you—were mostly positive.

Before creating this account, I had never seen any content that wasn’t the adoption-is-all-sunshine-and-rainbows narrative, and the plethora of other adoptee experiences suddenly at my fingertips wowed me. In short, I felt seen, and I wanted to help other adoptees feel seen too as they came out of the fog. I opened up about how the experience of being adopted is a complex, nuanced reality that few outside the experience can ever truly understand.

In the past I have jokingly referred to the one-hundred-sixty-thousand-strong of us Chinese adopted abroad as the “guinea pig generation.” Americans first opened their arms to Chinese adoptions in 1992, and my parents followed only three years after its inception. That’s pretty crazy to think about now!

China officially (and abruptly) ended their international adoption program last summer. In what appeared to be a nationalistic reversal of population restrictions via women’s bodies, it echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s decision in 2015 to end the One Child Policy, a policy which made it near-impossible for anyone but the rich or privileged to have more than one child. Going against the policy was virtually impossible. There were some exceptions, of course: Some poor families decided to keep their children, but they had to do so in secret. Those children have since grown up into “ghost” adults whose existence continues today without any valid government identification. Simply put: To the government, they don’t exist.

When this news broke in August of 2024, a flurry of activity stampeded through my newsfeeds. All the Chinese adoptee groups I was involved in—not just on Instagram but across Facebook, TikTok, in other social media circles and in group chats, too—were abuzz with the news. How is everyone doing? What does everyone think? Some adoptees expressed triumph over the news; others were horrified, saddened. Many responses were mixed; hearts went out to the families who were still in the process of adopting a child, who would suddenly be cut off. Over and over again, I saw a theme to these posts, an overall anxiety and existential malaise about how we, as Chinese paper orphans adopted abroad, were now this strange, solitary blip in history. We must preserve our stories, one poster pointed out. We have to write our stories down, to prove we existed. It reminded me of that quote from Zora Neale Hurston: “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

When I told all this to my boyfriend, he responded with the familiar phrase, “That means you’re special.” Others have told me some sentiment of this over the years, all in good nature. The problem with being put on this pedestal of difference? Oftentimes it means being alone. Turns out, being the “only” of anything can be pretty isolating.

After August passed, I felt that instant-gratification urge from social media, urging me to share my thoughts on this breaking news topic. I should say something, right? Yet at the same time, another part of me felt…exhausted. My mother had been diagnosed with cancer during Covid, and my outlook on our family began to change as our situation did. I began to post less and less. And of course, last fall saw a barrage of plenty of big non-adoption-related news stories. Scrolling through the conservative push for adoption over abortion left me staggering—but instead of harnessing this energy for good, change, something, I kept it inside, where it simmered and seethed.

I don’t believe the word adoption should ever be coupled with the word desperation, by anyone involved. Not by the birth mother or biological family, and not by the adoptive family. Adopting a child should come from a place of joy, and also from a deep capacity for grace, curiosity, and compassion as the adopted child grows. As I and countless other adoptee advocates have said, adoption isn’t over once the paperwork is signed, it’s just beginning. Raising an adopted child comes with its own set of unique challenges that adoptive parents must be ready for.

I started my Instagram account because I believed more adoptee stories needed to be told, and not just the heartwarming, positive ones. Especially given the tragic statistic that adoptees are four times as likely as non-adoptees to attempt suicide. Even when it’s painful, we must seek to learn. Otherwise, history will just repeat itself. I’m reminded of a quote from the documentary filmmaker Nanfu Wang, who directed the 2019 film One Child Nation: “I’m struck by the irony that I left a country where the government forced women to abort, and I moved to another country where governments restrict abortions…they seem like opposites, but both are about taking away women’s control of their own bodies.”

That’s why, as an adult, I have become committed to seeking joy as an act of self-preservation. Online, sure, but mostly offline these days. I must surround myself with the things and the people that bring me joy; otherwise, the world becomes an isolated, arduous, scary place. I carry a deep, childlike fear as I face my aging parents’ mortality. I secretly fear that after their deaths, I will never be known in quite the same way again.

In January 2025, I permanently paused my adoptee Instagram account and set it to private. Something about the clichés of the new year and my upcoming birthday made me think about the purpose of each social media account I run, and why I do it. For five years, my adoption account helped me connect with other adoptees, expanded my worldview, and let me know that I’m not alone. It was invaluable, and I’m so happy I created it when I did.

But now it’s five years later, and I’m not the same person anymore. None of us are. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to slog through issues that are complex but fit easily into a social graphic during my lunch breaks. More and more, I’m looking forward to joy as a necessity, not a privilege, for survival. This means prioritizing the people in my real, offline life, who have shown me miraculous love.

I’m still interested in visiting China and searching for my birth family, maybe even in the near future. In the meantime, I can enjoy connecting with other adoptees and allowing close family and friends to see glimpses into my thought processes. Talking about it helps. Writing does, too.

For now, all I can do is write some of my story down and continue writing as life happens. And maybe one day, my story can help others, too.

L.A. Montana’s work has been previously published in various online magazines. She is based in Boston.