She wonders – “Who explained adoption to my peers ?”

Her adoptive parents always told her she was chosen and special.

Yet her peers thought of her as something that someone bad had discarded.

What had their parents taught them about adoption ?

It could have been not their parents but messages about adoption
and pregnancy in the world surrounding them all.

Really great adoptive parents are NOT all an adoptee needs.

A great deal of the grief an adoptee experiences is the result of
the societal shame associated with being adopted.

It is painful to be seen as unwanted, almost aborted, and needing
to be grateful just because one has been adopted.

~ from The Declassified Adoptee

I know my mom’s adoptive parents felt likewise.  They were over the moon happy with their two children – thought them brilliant and attractive.  They were selected by gender and “supposed” traits (though Georgia Tann played them on that one).

Later in life, my mom had a tense relationship with her mother.  She never felt as though she lived up to her mother’s expectations regarding her life and it was probably actually true.  My mom got pregnant out of wedlock, therefore, she was never the debutante my grandmother probably hoped for.

Societies perspectives on women and chastity and who’s responsible (hint, it’s never the men who impregnate them) all add up to an adoptee’s whose origin story is founded in rape or incest being automatically impure.  What did that baby ever do to deserve such a judgement ?