Found a great article about KT Tunstall on the Living.scotsman.website: Go and read all of it but I thought it was interesting what she said about adoption....she's one of those millions of happy adoptees you don't hear much about except she's famous and someone asked her about it.
Her ease in her own skin is all the more remarkable given her background. Born in 1975, she was adopted at just 18 days old by a primary-schoolteacher and her physics- lecturer husband. Quite often, people who are adopted describe insecurity about their identity, confusion about exactly where they belong. But Tunstall has a very close relationship with her adoptive parents and never felt different from her two brothers, with whom she grew up in St Andrews. "I could only have felt different if they had treated me differently - and they didn't."
As a young adult, and long before she became famous, Tunstall had tracked down her birth mother and discovered she was half-Chinese and living in Edinburgh. If anything, she seems almost more reluctant to talk now than when we first met, and I can't help wondering if tracing her roots actually complicated life more than she bargained for. (She has made no further effort in the last few years to find her father, an Irish barman.) She was not driven to find the truth, she admits, just curious. "I know much more than most people in my situation. I have a huge amount of information. I certainly don't feel right now that there's more I need to know for my peace of mind."
I loved that she said she would have only felt different if her parents had treated her as if she were different.....
"She is fiercely loyal to the mother and father who raised her and believes you are a product of nurture rather than nature."
7 comments:
Ah, but surely you must agree that "nurture" can only INFLUENCE what "nature" has provided. (ie: talents, IQ, personality traits...)
I think there is a little of both actually. We are genetically programmed in some ways. Having this taste disorder has made me realize not everyone tastes things the same way - some things do taste better to them than others and not everyone likes the taste of chocolate (i really couldn't get that before).
I think I got many of my tastes preferences from my genetics as well as my allergies and bad eyesight...arg. My artistic talents come from my maternal grandmother and I have no idea where I got my boobs! None of my biosibs have them!
Thanks for posting this. I love her music and it's nice knowing a little more about her.
I agree w/ you. Just responding to the following sentence you quoted from the interview. How she can totally disregard nature is beyond me.
"She is fiercely loyal to the mother and father who raised her and believes you are a product of nurture rather than nature."
I know, I think she's trying to say we don'y turn out just like our bios but are more like our aparents and in many ways that's true. But there are still those things that make us who we are genetically. She loves her aparents deeply and if I were giving an interview the world would read I would probably say that to...don't want to hurt any one's feelings - it's such a complicated thing.
"She loves her aparents deeply and if I were giving an interview the world would read I would probably say that to...don't want to hurt any one's feelings - it's such a complicated thing."
Here is the common ground that you have with the "unhappy" camp, but it makes so much sense... and, at the same time, it is so sad to me.
Adoptees feeling bad about hurting their aparents' feelings in such a way is like, to me, an adoptee feeling bad because, say, they have red hair and their aparents both have brown. It just is.
If anything can be said positive (by me) about the anti-adoption, "unhappy" camp, it is that they are helping to break down these walls of extreme difficulty for adoptees.
For me, I just wonder what I can do or say to make sure that our son won't feel that he needs to say certain things just for our benefit.
Then again, we ALL do this to some extent, whether we are adopted or biological. It is called basic "tact," (and love and respect) and it might be one of the reasons why I have problems understanding "unhappy" adoptees who are proud to shout out, for example, that they are "ungrateful" as if it is some kind of badge of honor.
Thanks for the post.
I should have said it more like this:
I don't want anyone to read it and get the wrong impression that I think I got this or that from my bioparents. I love my parents and don't have many feeling for my bios - I don't want people to ever get the impression that I hate them but they are strangers. I want to honor my aparents, i'm not really "afraid" or hurting their feelings I just won't (or at least do everything I can to let them know how much I love them).
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