Therapy is hard. Finding a good fit with a therapist is hard too. It takes emotional effort and money but when it fits it’s great. Best thing ever. An adoptee from 1963 who spent 1 month in isolation before adoption, writes (including summing it up with the sentences above )-
As I was starting to unpack and really look at what adoption did to me – to us – a kept therapist told me, “But I know adoptees who are fine”. So I searched out one who was a former foster care youth and adopted at age 3. I thought she’d be a good fit, but she sacked me after 3 or 4 sessions because she couldn’t go to those places with me. I freaked her out. She couldn’t look at her own adoption wounds and didn’t want to.
Then my girlfriend was talking to a friend who had lost a baby (stillborn) and was seeing a therapist to help her cope. The therapist was a midwife for 10 years with hundreds of births behind her. She focuses her clinic on mother baby bond traumas. She sees women who have lost children and children who’ve lost mothers – and now me. I wrote to her and laid out where I was at in my journey out of the fog and, nearly 4 years ago, she agreed to make a space for me.
Even in the reality of so much, unexpected regrets can hit due to grief and no good way to have made it all come out better. Today’s story – a kinship adoptee writes “my biological mother was always in and out of my life. My WHOLE life she struggled with addiction. I always took her in, always took care of her, always tried to help her stay sober. July of last year my biological brother un-alived himself and that same day my biological mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
I took my mom in to try to fight her battle with cancer but she kept testing positive for drug use, so they wouldn’t do her chemo. That lead me having to deny her staying with me because I couldn’t risk someone in active addiction in my house with my children. The last time she left the nursing home (because at this point the cancer was getting bad) to go be with her dealer, after me begging her to just stay clean and be my mom and a grandma, I had to cut off contact.
About a week and a half before she passed, she sent me a video telling me she was dying and she only had a few months left. She had signed a DNR and was going into hospice. I honestly didn’t really believe her as she was a compulsive liar and did things like this in the past for attention. However, I opened back up contact, just in case. She kept telling me her dying wish was to come be with me. live with me and my children, until she passed. I had just bought my first home a week before. I didn’t want the trauma connected to her passing in my home.
By the time I went to see her at the hospital, a few days later, she was delusional – thought I was a caseworker and my kids were actually her kids. She became so violent I had to take the kids home but did come back. She couldn’t have a real conversation but would randomly say my name or tell me she loved me. A few days later, she died two minutes before I got off work. This happened in April. My mother, who had a treatable cancer, died in less than a year due to not being strong enough to fight her addiction.
No matter how bad or crappy of a mother my mom was – I still want my mom to this day. The loss of her has destroyed me inside. On top of ALL of this because I WAS ADOPTED AND SHE WASNT ON MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE, I NO LONGER WAS THE NEXT OF KIN!!!!!’ This part KILLED me. I was the next of kin until someone told them “you know she was adopted and she isn’t her legal mom anymore”. This took any chance I had to grieve in the way I wanted. They had her cremated immediately.
I get shamed because I didn’t take her in during her dying days. I get shamed for missing her now because I wouldn’t let her live with me, when she was alive but addicted. Sometimes I feel guilty for not doing more.
Too often I have read about Open Adoptions that don’t stay that way very long. Today a mother of loss (gave a child up for adoption) writes – I’d really like to hear from Adoptees who had or have a very open adoption. In what ways is the open adoption helpful and in what ways does it suck? What can the natural mama do over the years? All I do is obsess over adoption now – it’s always in the back or front of my mind having all this deep regret that what we did isn’t serving her or me. So what can I do, what plan can I formulate, to give my mind even the slightest bit of peace.
Another woman responds – it appears that my experience is very different from most here. My daughter is 20, and I don’t regret placing her. Yes, it was hard early on, but it truly was for the best. Her adoptive parents are truly wonderful people who have always been open to communication, etc. As she’s an adult now, I reach out to her more in a direct manner, but continue to leave the ball in her corner so to speak. I don’t want to pressure her into something. She has had a wonderful life, and I’m thankful for that. I know I wouldn’t have been happy if it was a closed adoption, so open was the best for me. I cherish her adoptive parents for being open and wonderful, and giving her the support she needed and needs. But I’ve done a bit of therapy and self reflection over the years, which has been incredibly helpful in healing who I am.
For more information on improving open adoptions, I also found this – LINK>Three Shifts to Bridge the Gap Between Birth Families and Adoptive Families for the Adoptees We Love by Lori Holden. “Adoption creates a split between a person’s biology and biography, and openness is an essential way to help adoptees heal this split.”
3 Benefits of Openness are described –
Openness strengthens an adoptee’s sense of identity.
Openness encourages an adoptee’s attachment to adoptive parent(s).
Openness can decrease an adoptee’s sense of abandonment.
My emotionally abusive adoptive mother never wanted me to have a relationship with my birth mother.
I wrote her a letter in 4th grade that my mother never mailed. She swore up and down she sent it. Then my birth mom never wrote back…
I finally asked her if she had it and she admitted she just never sent it.
I asked for it back and she said didn’t have it and couldn’t find it…that she “lost” it.
Until today when she called me and said “oh…I found this from 2006 in a box under my desk while I was cleaning it out.”
This sparked a conversation with me and my birth mom, where I discovered that she had been sending letters for years and my adoptive mom just kept them from me…my adoptive mom admitted to my birth mom that she kept them in a box, so I would never find them.
Why tell me I’m adopted, if you didn’t want me to have questions? Why adopt in the first place if you were just going to hate me and abuse me emotionally? Why?
I’ll never know, but a childhood wound, I worked so hard on healing, was reopened today and I’m so not okay.
Today’s story – In 2003, we gave birth to a baby girl that we ultimately gave up for adoption. We were just beginning our relationship (not even really a couple at the time) and in the middle of a hardcore party stage (drugs & alcohol). Adoption was somewhat forced; I could’ve gotten help, but I knew deep down in my heart that we could not give the child a healthy/better life, so adoption was the final decision.
It was a closed adoption, but communication was able to be done through the Attorney. That went well for the first few years…and then nothing. Even the Attorney lost contact with the Adoptive parents and my heart was crushed – did something happen to them? Would I ever have contact again? Would I get another picture to be able to at least see her grow up? I’ve always kept my social media wide open, with my maiden name, in the event she ever wanted to find us. I would go down the proverbial rabbit hole and try to find them – I knew her first/middle name, her mom’s name and the state they lived in.
Fast forward to September 10th 2024: ND and I are married and have been together for 26 years now. The morning of the 10th, I got a text: “Hey xxxx, my name is xxxx. I messaged you on Messenger last week, but I don’t know if you have messenger or not. I was reaching out because I am trying to find my birthparents and I didn’t know if it was you or not, but if it’s you I am hoping to maybe reconnect” MY HEART DROPPED and I bawled my eyes out! She is now married and has a SON!
She (baby girl) texts me, my husband and our kids pretty much every day. She answers any of my questions and I answer hers, honestly. She is coming to our state to visit us next month (with her mom)!! I am nervous/scared and happy/excited all at once! So, here’s where I need help: what advice do you have for the reunification meeting? Do I avoid asking the mom what happened, why communication stopped, or do I avoid that? I don’t know how I feel about the mom coming along with her; it makes her more comfortable, which is absolutely fine, but idk how to feel about the mom coming to the outings and such. I am so excited and feel incredibly blessed that she had the courage to reach out!!
Jill Chaifetz (b 1964-d 2006) Children’s Rights Advocate
I stumbled on this today – Jill Chaifetz once remarked, “The American foster care system has developed a remarkable immunity to reform.” In 1992, Chaifetz founded the Legal Services Center at The Door, a New York youth development agency. Through the center, she provided legal advice to young people, including many who were in foster care or homeless.
I had hoped to find information on reforming the nation’s child welfare system into one that equitably supports children and families in their communities as a means to prevent foster care placements. Such perspectives are hard to come by. The pro-adoption narratives are strong and pervasive.
The scientific evidence is conclusive. Parent-child separations lead to a host of long-term psychological, social, and health problems that are not necessarily resolved upon reunification. In particular, the disruption of biological stress regulation mechanisms in the body are further taxed by the absence of parental support. The science is clear: policies that separate families have devastating and long-term developmental consequences for children and their families.
The Annie E Casey Foundation has a series of three 60 minute episodes at this LINK>The Unlearning of Child Welfare: Webinar Series Explores How to Rebuild the Child Welfare System. Creating a Child and Family Well-Being System. The third video explores – What Can An Equitable Foster Care Experience Look Like Going Forward ?
A woman writes – Sitting in some unpleasant, sad, gross feelings lately. Both my mothers, biological and a non-bio/fictive kinship guardian, are deceased. Neither family is…there. I have one elderly family member from my biological mom’s side that I am -not- blood related to, due to my biological mom being adopted herself. The fictive kin family cut contact with me immediately after that second mom passed away (no explanation, nothing). I feel like I am drifting in a void, and untethered. I feel isolated from my peers and I can’t relate. Christmases, birthdays, going through hardships, even celebrating the big, joyous things, the milestones! It all feels quite lonely. And I don’t have it in me to find more eloquent words to describe how sad this makes me feel, but I can only hope someone out here gets it and we can sit in this together. Thanks for reading me.
One shared her own approach – I formed a family with my pets & then also with my best friend.
One person notes – It’s hard being alone with no connections.
Someone says – I wish I could hug you right now and be there for all your good moments to celebrate and moments like this, so you don’t feel alone.
An adoptee shares – I was there too. I’ve taken the last 24 years and built a new family for myself full of non-blood people who care deeply about me and I about them.
From another adoptee – orphaned at 10, I very much relate & sit in it every day, and so I am with you now in these feelings.
An adoptive mother shares – My adopted daughter recently found her biological mom and 3 half and kept biological siblings. The mom and my daughter are overjoyed, the siblings not so much. They saw their mom at her worst addicted stages, yet were not taken because they were over and or just at age 18 when new baby (my daughter) was taken by Child Protective Services. They are now in their 30s, my daughter is 16. Bio mom is recovered and is loving and thrilled my daughter is in contact. The siblings who live with or near bio mom are not happy my daughter is now in their life. They are sad she has traveled and been to Disney, is licensed and has a car to use (they have none of that), and they can’t believe she is looking at college. Mine is upset that they got to live with their mom, have pictures all over the walls, etc. They reply their lives resembled Shameless and now my daughter has the mom who is involved, loving and sober. Her biological mom and my daughter want lots of contact but the rift with the siblings seems to grow. There is a birthday party for the biological grandma next weekend and I’m starting to wonder if she should attend, though there is no question both her mom and she want to be there. I don’t want to cause anyone more hurt or problems, though I am very happy my daughter and her biological mom have found each other. Thoughts?
One person writes – I understand that the siblings are in enormous amount of pain because of their lost childhood and trauma, so maybe they need time to process it. The siblings probably don’t hate their sibling but are bitter about their own situation and things they had to go through. But also, they should understand that the daughter is also a part of the family, and the daughter has every right to choose whether she wants to attend the birthday party or not, independent from anyone else’s opinions. And that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side either. I couldn’t imagine being bitter at my siblings because they got fostered to safety.
An adoptee suggests – Her siblings and biological mom need their own therapy together to work through their issues. Your daughter didn’t ask for any of this, so she should not be taking any blame or punishment for her siblings feelings. That is between them and the biological mom. Your daughter should take the lead and go to the party, if she wants to!
A Mother of Loss says – You let her take the lead. This is her family. She gets to make the decisions. Be there for her. The siblings will adjust, and if they don’t – so what.
Another adoptive mother advises – I completely understand where you are coming from and you can discuss your worries but kindly, these aren’t your relationships. You aren’t causing hurts nor navigating these situations and you need to not micromanage what is going on. Your daughter needs to figure out how to make these work or not – you be a shoulder and a sounding board.
From another adoptee – about kept sibling resentment – her siblings will either get over it or they won’t. There’s enough of an age gap there that it probably won’t make much of a difference to your daughter at all to be honest. The main relationship is going to be with her mother anyway. If she wants to go to the party, she should go. If she feels uncomfortable or if she is concerned for her safety should she attend, maybe she can go with her mother and see her grandmother for her birthday at another time. Note that I stressed HER concerns. She’s 16. By all means, be friendly with her mother. But this is her relationship, not yours. She gets to decide how it goes.
Here it is in a nutshell. All I ever really wanted was to feel clean on the inside and I tried a lot of things to make that happen.
And it all boils down to not being able to untwist the core lie my whole existence on this planet this time around is based in and on.
Confusion is not a safe feeling. If you don’t feel safe your thinking processes are affected. You do things you wouldn’t do or not do things you would if you felt safe. The worst part is that you never knew why you never felt safe. It wasn’t a thought you could think through because the consequence of my honesty may mean abandonment.
I was stuck in a web of lies. Caught up in someone’s fantasy. A brain pickled in cortisol and oxytocin deprived. Being told this is gods will and how much I was loved yet no one would answer my questions.
And here we are today. After the truth set me free by opening the door to the demons I knew were lurking there. These were some hard core demons and then there were the encouragers and then there were none.
And here I am standing here loving me. I will be 72 in September, and I have learned to love me because I can love others better that way.
Now WTF do I need to do to get this adhd under control.
An adoptee writes – I’m feeling really disheartened about finding my birth mother. I know her full name and her birth date. I also know the name of her husband but not his last name and I know the name of their first daughter together. So I’ve tirelessly searched the internet over and over and over again and cannot find anything. I asked a relative of mine who is an ex-police officer and a current private investigator to use his search system to find her and it came up with zero results. This basically never happens because there are always birth records, death records, wedding records, house records, etc. Which means that she must have scrubbed herself off the internet or she’s in something like witness protection and they scrubbed it for her.
This comes on top of me being read a letter that she wrote to me listing her favorite things, though I’ve never met her and I am 33 now. We have the same favorite author and the same favorite artist and the same taste in music. I breaks my heart that not only did I lose out on time with her but now I know I probably will never find her. I know there is DNA testing but it’s not really an option for me at this time, and if she has gone through so much effort to wipe herself off of the internet and not locatable in the world – I am going to go ahead and guess that she probably would not have done Ancestry testing.
blogger’s note – I know how sad it was for my adoptee mom the learn her birth mother had died some years before Tennessee refused to give her any of her adoption file (which they did have). I have that file now. It would have brought my mom so much comfort had they just given it to her.
Missing Mom 