Nature and Nurture

We published an interview last week with Kelley Nikondeha, where she shared her story and thoughts about adoption. After our interview, Kelley sent an audio file with some additional thoughts about the role of nature and nurture in her life. We thought that hearing her speak directly was important, so we’ve posted the audio for you to listen to and transcribed her comments below.  

One of the things I was thinking about yesterday morning, part of the journey that started to happen after the book was published three years ago, was that I started to really think about the difference between nurture and nature.

I had grown up with my adoptive mother always putting the emphasis on nurture, and this makes sense. Because as an adoptive parent, she believed that she and my father had the formative weight on their side, that they were shaping me to be the person I would become. Nature wasn’t that important, nurture was the more important dynamic.

I would say that I started to question that a couple years ago. I don’t know how to say it other than that my own body, my own psyche, started to feel the presence of “nature.” My birth mother is Mexican. Fifty percent of me is Mexican, is Latina. I started to feel that in some of the things I was drawn to, in some of the ways I would express myself in the world, that they were deeply congruent with Mexican people. I would read Mexican American or Mexican theologians and feel like there was some connection there.  

I started to recognize that the presence of nature, meaning my biological makeup, was just as important to who I am. But it is a part that I was not encouraged to explore or talk about growing up. In the last few years I’ve been more intentional in trying to understand that part of myself, to savor that part of who I am. I’m Mexican.  

That has been a little bit tender for my parents, to see that part of my journey. I think initially there was a lot of “side eye” when I would say anything, they would roll their eyes or almost kind of make fun of me. Oh yeah, that’s right, you just discovered you’re Mexican. No, I’ve always known that I was.  It was in my adoption paperwork, it’s not like it was ever invisible. But it was framed in such a way that that’s not an important part of who you are, what’s important is that you’re part of the Johnson family. There again, that narrative that nurture being more important than nature. And I would say that nature is equally important.  

Most people get nurture and nature in the same family system, because their biological parents also nurture them.  For you and I that’s not our story. We can parse it out and say these are my biological parents who give me my nature, and here are my adoptive parents who have given me nurture. But the older I get the more I think they are both equally formative forces in our life as adult adoptees. And it’s ok to recognize that, and there again to have that journey to reclaim or at least embrace that part of ourselves. And I think that it’s hard for our parents.  

One of the ways I was talking about it with a friend of mine last year is that in a sense, you become assimilated. As a Mexican baby I was assimilated into whiteness as a byproduct of my adoption. And it may have been unintentional, I don’t think my parents said we’re going to take this Mexican baby and make her white. I just think it’s a byproduct – I was assimilated into whiteness and we never talked about what it meant that I was also Mexican. Maybe some of this is similar to your own story. It seems harsh to use the word assimilation because often that word is used when we talk about being colonized, but I would say that even in the set of years part of my own personal journey is decolonizing some of the white messaging I grew up with in order to be able to reclaim and more fully move into my Mexican heritage as well.  

One of the things as adoptees is that we get to embrace both. I get to embrace both how I was nurtured and my nature. But often I have to decolonize one to more fully embrace the other.

Kelley Nikondeha