I wore mehendi on my wedding day.
That doesn’t feel like it should be a powerful statement, or even one that carries much emotional weight. Anyone looking at me would probably assume it was nothing out of the ordinary. If they were familiar with South Asian wedding traditions, they might even assume there had been a whole pre-wedding celebration - surrounded by family members, mothers, bridesmaids, and aunties - where intricate designs were applied to our skin while everyone celebrated together.
Except I didn’t have that.
I’m adopted from Nepal. My family are white, British, spread out across the world, and some of them are no longer here.
And that’s okay. If there’s anything I’ve learnt through my counselling journey, both as a client and as a therapist, it’s that everyone has a different story.
This is a small snapshot of mine, which I hope to share because I believe honest conversations about adoption are important.
For those unfamiliar, mehendi (or mehndi) is a traditional form of body art used across many South Asian, Middle Eastern, and North and East African cultures. The paste made from the henna plant is applied to the skin in intricate designs and is often used during weddings and celebrations.
In many South Asian weddings, mehendi is part of a larger cultural ritual - a joyful gathering where family and friends celebrate together before the wedding day.
For many brides, it’s simply part of the process. For me, it was an intentional decision that carried considerable emotional weight.
While my body carries a South Asian origin, culturally, I often feel far removed from it. I don’t speak the language. I didn’t grow up immersed in South Asian traditions. I wasn’t raised celebrating the cultural practices that might have connected me to that part of the world.
For much of my life, I have felt, culturally at least, more white-British than anything else, from the culture I was adopted into rather than the one I was born into.
There’s a particular kind of uncertainty that can come with transracial and intercountry adoption.
You can look like you belong to a culture while simultaneously feeling like an outsider to it. Your appearance suggests one story, while your lived experience tells another.
And the truth is, even if I don’t feel culturally South Asian in many ways, that part of my story still exists.
My story didn’t start at the point of my adoption. My body carries a history that began somewhere else; genealogy from another place, a different family, someone who carried and birthed me, ancestors both alive and returned to the ground.
I questioned whether I had the right to include something that I hadn’t grown up with. I wondered how it might be perceived by others, particularly by people who are culturally South Asian and for whom these traditions are deeply rooted in family, community, and history.
But I also wondered how it might be perceived by my white family, both adoptive and in-laws.
I worried there might be confusion or judgment in displaying a traditionally South Asian practice within a wedding that was otherwise largely Western.
But I desperately didn’t want to give it up either.
Throughout my life, my relationship to myself, my body, my ethnicity and my culture - or even South Asian culture more broadly - has evolved. I went from feeling and wanting to be completely disconnected, to slowly incorporating small but meaningful symbols: the flag, the kukri, the momos, and wanting to learn more about where I come from.
While there might be criticism that these are surface-level connections, I would argue that adoptees have to start somewhere. The way adoptees connect with culture - particularly if we were relinquished very young - will always be different from those born into it.
And again, different is okay.
Regardless, I was ready to incorporate this piece of tradition into my wedding day.
And I’m so glad I did.
In counselling, questions of identity often arise in similar ways.
People navigating adoption, migration, or cross-cultural lives frequently find themselves holding multiple identities that don’t always fit together easily. There can be grief for what was lost, questions about where one belongs, and pressure to explain a story that doesn’t have simple answers.
It can also become especially complex when approaching major life events like weddings.
What traditions will you include?
What parts of yourself will you honour?
What does your wedding say about who you are?
And if you are in an intercultural relationship, other questions are often part of the process:
Where will we have the wedding?
Which cultures do we honour?
Do we have two weddings?
While I’m not a wedding planner or a wedding expert, I do understand that weddings, birthdays, holidays, and other significant life events can have a powerful emotional impact. Therapy can provide a space where these questions don’t have to be resolved immediately. Issues can have the space to be explored.
Identity is rarely a fixed destination, and more often than not, it continues to evolve as we learn more about ourselves and grow.
For many people, healing begins not by finding perfect clarity, but by allowing space for complexity.
For some, that might look like reconnecting with culture.
For others, it might mean redefining what belonging looks like.
For me, it meant wearing mehendi on my wedding day.
I am adopted, and last week it was my birthday.
For a long time, I didn’t talk to people about the negative parts of being adopted, of being relinquished through abandonment and growing up with no information about my first, or biological, family.
The reality is though, that I am both a transracial and intercountry adoptee, and this has had and continues to have a huge emotional impact on my life and my identity.
However, even a fairly neutral statement like above is often in direct conflict with the commonly accepted and superficial narrative that society and the general population have of adoption. Many consider adoption a ‘cut and paste’ exercise into making a family; a beautiful opportunity to ‘save a child’ from poor or difficult circumstances. A happy ending, not to be spoken about further.
Historically, there has been little consideration given to the birth or first family, or to the ongoing difficulties adoptees face after their adoption. In fact, it was not uncommon for adoptees who spoke out about their struggles to be ostracized and shamed, a common reply being that 'they were ungrateful to their adoptive parents' and should consider themselves 'lucky to have a family'.
However, the reality of adoption is that it is nuanced, complex, lifelong, and always has loss at its core. For a new family to be created, there is always a loss of an original one.
For me, birthdays now bring up conflicting and bittersweet emotions.
As a child, I happily celebrated and looked forward to my birthdays. I have very loving parents who always put the utmost effort into giving me wonderful memories. It is true that when I think about my early birthdays, I recall happily choosing cakes, excitedly opening presents, playing party games and being surrounded by my friends and my family. In some ways, I could not have wished for happier memories.
Growing up I tried not to think about my adoption, desperately trying to reject the ‘thing’ that made me different to my family and my peers and really, pretty much everyone that I knew.
However, after many years of personal therapy, I no longer try to escape from the fact I was adopted, and I feel a lot more connected to my first mother. I see her as an integral part of my story and myself. I understand that I came from somewhere - specifically - someone. Someone that I was completely dependent on for 9 months or so... I listened to their heartbeat day after day, they were all I felt and were my entire world, and then suddenly they were gone forever.
So now, each year, I spend a portion of my birthday wondering about the well-being of that person, who they were or are, and if they think about me. It’s a strange type of painful longing. Nancy Varrier in her 1993 book calls the separation of mother and child shortly after childbirth a ‘primal wound’.
Like many adoptees, especially those who are internationally adopted, I will likely never know details about my life and my story that others take for granted: When and where was I born? Do I look like my birth mother? Do I have other siblings? Do my birth parents miss me? What is my medical history? Am I from a big family? What is my ancestry? Where does my family fit in my birth culture?
On my birthdays, or around the time I was born (because my birthday is estimated) I find it hard to imagine that there isn’t someone, somewhere out there thinking of me and what became of my life. Out of any time during the year, it is, after all, the most likely.
Every adoptee will have different feelings about their adoption, their first family, themselves, and their birthdays. We all have different personal histories, different experiences, and different upbringings. Some will be able to celebrate their birthdays happily while others will struggle.
A Google Search with the terms ‘adoptees and birthdays’ will show top results from adoptees blogging about their emotional difficulties. From the website Reddit, the top suggestion is ‘Do most adoptees hate their birthdays too?’. Facebook groups I am a part of comprised of transracial adoptees from all over the world often have posts by adoptees about their difficulties with birthdays and not meeting the societal expectations of wanting a celebration.
The difficulty can then come if people around them, such as work colleagues, friends or adoptive family insist there should be a celebration and the adoptee should be grateful, smiling and happy for the duration. For a lot of adoptees, birthdays can represent a day of loss and trying to force someone to repress and ignore their feelings generally leads to mental harm.
Already adoptees have a higher risk of suicide, depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders than those who are not adopted. A 2021 survey by Adoption UK revealed there are double the number of adoptees between the ages of 16 and 25 involved in the mental health system than those who are not adopted.
Keeping the above in mind, it is therefore incredibly important that adoptees find safe spaces where they can acknowledge and process their grief, pain or trauma instead of having it dismissed or denied.
These are just a few coping strategies that may prove helpful:
Ultimately, I hope that every adoptee can find the space they need to be with their feelings, on their birthdays and every other day of the year.
Of course, some adoptees may not struggle through their birthdays at all, and find their birthdays a completely happy experience of celebrating their history and life. This is, of course, also completely valid and absolutely nothing to feel guilty about either.
Adoptees may struggle with birthdays or any other significant milestones or family gatherings. Please be accepting of this and understanding of adoptees who may need time and space to process the complexity and trauma of adoption.
Perhaps if you have adoptees in your life, have adopted children, adopted friends, or work with adoptees in a professional setting – please take a moment to ensure you are not invalidating the grief of adoptees or oversimplifying their story.
Like most aspects of life, things are not black and white but comprised of many shades. I can personally be simultaneously grieving the loss of my first mother, while also very happy to speak to my adoptive mother. I can feel longing and sadness for my lost name, language, culture, and ancestry, while also being grateful for the privileges associated with my adopted nationality.
Adoption is not simple, and for some of us neither are our birthdays.
