On the latest episode of Conversation Piece with Patrick Armstong, adoptee influencer and educator Taylor Shennett joins the podcast. Adopted from Hunan, China at nine months old, Shennet began creating adoption related content in 2012.
Hear what Shennett has to say about having more empathy in the adoptee community and how empathy offered her a different perspective on birth parents.
Listen with empathy
For more than a decade, Shennett has been sharing adoption content to help educate adoptive parents and adoptees feel seen and heard. Her adoption story garnered more than 11 million views on TikTok alone. Shennett began sharing more personal videos about her adoption experience after people began asking more questions.
When asked about what she feels is still missing from the conversations she has had around adoption and the adoptee experience, Shennett says it is empathy from listeners. “ I think a lot of adoptees could relate as they’re sharing their personal experience… the amount of hate comments and lack of respect… and the fact that we can’t fit that one mold of that one happy adoptee drives people crazy.”
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Having empathy from listeners is not restricted to those outside the adoptee community. Rather, Shennett hopes that “as an adoptee community, [we] need to be okay that someone else is okay with something we’re not… I’m going to support you even if I personally don’t agree. That’s personally not my lived experience, but that’s okay. Everyone has a different experience.”
Unintentionally putting other people who are different from what you or expect can be very harmful. A judgemental or negative reaction could cause the person being vulnerable to then refuse to explore their own identity, to go through rejection, and be more isolated.
See also: Kira Omans on being an actress and storytelling as an Asian adoptee
A shift in perspective
When Shennett went to China for her own birthparent search, she also interviewed birth mothers and other Chinese people about their experience with the adoption process and creating adoption plans for a child. During the experience in China, her perspective on birth parents changed.
“It wasn’t until I did my birth parent search and went to China. I had prospective parents step forward and the thing that was shocking to me, it wasn’t the birthmothers stepping forward, it was birth fathers,” Shennett recalls.
Shennett held an anger towards her birth mother, whereas her birth father was just a fantasy figure that she wasn’t really holding that anger towards.
“It was an older gentleman who he’s looking for his adoptee… It was a girl, they couldn’t afford her… He was absolutely heartbroken. That totally changed my perspective on my birth parents, and especially how I kind of viewed my birth father. It really humanized what a birth father is.”
Having an empathetic outlook
Shennett harkens back to the one-child policy in China where many birth parents did not have a choice. She tells another story about how a birth mother commented on one of her videos and thanked her for giving the birth parents empathy and a voice. “A lot of people were like, oh, ‘well, the birth parent, your birth parent was, they were probably young and stupid…’ They try to create this one narrative and that’s not always the case,” says Shennett. “It was just realizing they had no choice.”
We can better build community by being a mindful listener. Showing empathy can look like listening intently and respectfully asking questions. Ultimately, empathy is about being willing to understand other folks who have a different lived experience, even if they may not align with yours.
Cold Tea Collective is partnering with Conversation Piece with Patrick Armstrong, a podcast exploring the missing pieces of the Asian diasporic conversations. From topics about the Asian adoptee experience, imposter syndrome, and more, discover the latest episodes today.
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