Who am I? A Filipina adoptee’s journey

By Pippa Hollington

Adopted from the Philippines, Pippa grew up in Hong Kong, London and then Oxford, later going to university in Manchester. With the majority of her inner circle being white British people, this article explores her desire to expand her knowledge of her Filipina heritage, be an ally and support the ESEA community.

My parents with my sister (R) and me (L) in our home in Hong Kong in the early 90s.

I wanted to write this article in case my experiences are of value to someone, or to provide comfort to anyone who has, or is currently going through something similar. I wish to support and advocate for the East and South East Asian (ESEA) community, and bring an additional viewpoint of someone who doesn’t necessarily sit neatly in one box. First, I’d like to say that I am not claiming to be an expert, and what I have written is purely from my experience, and from my perspective alone. But, I believe that it is through sharing our own unique stories that we can learn and grow together. 

A reawakening

Surprisingly, the relationship that I have had with who I am and who I think I am, is quite honestly somewhat beautifully dysfunctional. I am a Filipina adoptee of a loving white British couple. I was raised with rose coloured glasses, naively living my life through the eyes of a westernised and privileged woman. I am not ashamed of that. I am proud of who I have grown up to be, but it does feel like whole parts of my identity have been left undisturbed and possibly even neglected.

My parents with my sister (L) and me (R) on holiday in Phuket, Thailand.

Some might say I'm a late bloomer, but since the Atlanta shootings I have experienced an exponential growth in yearning to delve into my heritage. As a transracial adoptee, a term I only recently heard, I didn’t realise how I had somehow compartmentalised the meaning of my skin colour from my middle class upbringing, for the majority of my life. 

I have realised that I haven’t fully faced a part of myself which the world sees first and foremost - my Asianness, my skin tone.

Don’t get me wrong. Obviously, I know that I am both Asian and brown-skinned, but for some odd reason, I hadn’t fully acknowledged the weight of this until the Atlanta shootings: a racially motivated attack, based on the victims’ ethnicity.

I have experienced several microaggressions throughout my life, which I had penned down as normalised, having been brought up in a majority white, middle class environment. I was lucky enough to go to a private boarding school, where the majority of my friendship circle was white British. However, looking back, I was completely naive and I’m ashamed to say until recently, I used to call myself a bad Asian. 

Who am I?

The thing is, I’ve been grappling with who I am for the past few months. I don’t want to go as far as to say that I had an emotional breakdown, but what I felt was something that I had never experienced. The peak was when I went onto Instagram and the first video was of a Filipina woman walking to church in broad daylight, getting kicked to the ground and beaten. However, what really set me off was not only the fact that all she was doing was walking down the street, but it was that no one stepped in to help. Bystanders just watched - and it was at that point that it really hit home for me. It created a real and palpable fear within me, that I could be walking down the street and this racially motivated attack could happen to me. It doesn’t matter that my parents are white, that my passport says I am British - no other factors are taken into consideration by an attacker. The attacker carried out their hate crime purely based on the colour of her skin and the way she looked. I just couldn’t digest it. I was in shock.

From then on, I was really anxious about leaving my home alone. I genuinely refused to go out without my white boyfriend, just in case something happened. Maybe I'm being slightly irrational as that attack happened in America, but I was and am still nervous that it could happen to me. 

After many sleepless nights, I’ve managed to come out the other end. I realised that I needed to be stronger if I wanted to help make a change. So the question I posed to myself wasn’t ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Who do I want to be?’.

I recently reached out to other transracial adoptees and found that this guilt and confusion wasn’t something that I alone was feeling. I read content that reassured me that what I have been experiencing isn’t unusual. I recently read a Chapter by Susan Leonard ‘A Different Kind of Asian Persuasion’, where she mentioned that she sometimes felt like a white woman trapped in an Asian body and I have never resonated with something more. 

It’s a complex mix of emotions where there is a noticeable difference between who I identify as, versus my heritage and hereditary ethnicity. 

I admit that I have a serious lack of knowledge of my heritage, ethnic background, and Filipina culture. My only tangible link to my ethnicity was my childhood Filipina nanny and the crazy thing is that I didn’t see a connection. I wasn’t fully aware that genetically I was closer to our nanny than I was to my parents.  

My parents with me (L) and my sister (R) on her wedding day in London.

What’s next?

So, what to do next and how do I make a difference? Well, if I want to evolve as a person and close the identity-ethnicity gap, I need to take ownership and continue to educate myself. Similar to my white peers, I have a lot to learn about racial discrimination and I acknowledge this isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s an ongoing process. 

This unprecedented feeling to stand by my heritage that is simultaneously foreign and familiar is something that I hope to tackle. 

This complex paradoxical emotion is something that I know other transracial adoptees must be feeling and I hope that in writing this article it will give some comfort that they are not alone in thinking this.

If you’re anything like me, the confusion, hurt, disbelief and realisation will be an ongoing learning curve and what I have experienced so far has been incredibly cathartic, even in the darkest of times.

Through this emotional rollercoaster, I have faced feelings which I would have typically closed off but nope, not today, Satan. Today and every day moving forwards, I will challenge myself and stand up for what I believe in.

The East and South East Asian community has come together stronger than ever and this is a movement that I want and need to be a part of. 

If one voice can make a difference, a collective can be powerful. Together, let’s stand in solidarity and not be afraid to make the world a better place #StopAsianHate #StopESEAhate

Pippa Hollington is a Filipina transracial adoptee and currently works as a Digital Project Manager in Leeds,Yorkshire, volunteering her spare time for besea.n.