Shame

A question was posed to adoptees – Have you ever felt shame around the fact that you were adopted? I’m a first mother from the LINK>baby scoop era and had crippling shame around my pregnancy, but was surprised to hear adoptees sometimes have their own feelings of shame about being adopted.

Some responses –

One who was adopted as an infant into a trans-racial situation (adoptive parents and adopted child are different races) said simply – Yes. There are shameful, negative, or insecure feelings that can arise from being adopted.

Then this long response from a domestic infant adoptee – I think environment and language used surrounding adoption can push feelings in either direction. Complicated feelings surrounding it. I didn’t feel anything at first, it was all I knew.

I shared the fact that I was adopted openly when I was very young because I didn’t know it was something other kids didn’t know about. They’d ask me questions like “what’s it like to be adopted?” But I was well liked outside of my home and nobody teased me about it. I think if they had it may have added to what I felt later on.

As I got older and understood what it meant, combined with my adoptive mother’s constant need to express disapproval for women who’d “gotten themselves into that situation” (her words), I began to feel ashamed of it. Her go-to was “shame on you” if I did anything she thought was wrong. Shame was big in our house growing up. Shame of body, shame of what the neighbor’s might think…everything was shameful. (blogger’s comment – I do believe this happened to my adoptee mom. I know she felt body shamed. Interestingly, she ended up pregnant while still in high school. When I discovered there were only 7 months between my parents’ marriage and my birth, I held it against her myself. How dare she lecture me about morality. Some time later she shared how difficult it was for her and I dropped my resentments, understanding she was trying to spare me her own experiences.)

I had a strained relationship with her from early childhood, she lost interest in me once her biological son was born. As I got older I started to think for myself more and began to reject her and her ideals as they didn’t make sense to me. That she’d go out of her way to acquire me just to abuse and neglect me, and ALSO look down on the woman who’s heartache she benefited from, was abhorrent to me. I knew it was wrong, but didn’t quite have the vocabulary yet to express it. As a teen, her constant reminders that “you don’t want to end up like your birth mother” as an admonishment not to have sex before marriage pushed me even further from her.

I also had one grandparent and some aunt/uncles/cousins that did not view me as a “real” family member. Now that the adopters are deceased, I don’t hear from anyone at all, although I’ve made efforts to stay in touch. (blogger’s comment – since learning about my adoptee parents’ origins, I can’t think of my “adoptive” relations as my “real” family either – though I still love and appreciate their presence in my life. What a complicated mess we get thrown into by adoption.)

Then, this person added – I think some feelings are inherent, like loss, confusion, rejection, trauma, sadness etc. These are normal reactions to knowing you were given up/taken away/not knowing the circumstances of your adoption at all. (blogger’s comment – my own parents’ situations as well – they died still not knowing what I know now.) I think others are taught or amplified depending on a number of factors including the ones I experienced. A very good caregiver/parent can help a child process them in a healthy way, and help them develop productive coping mechanisms for them. A very bad caregiver/parent can exacerbate them.

Someone else corrected the word choice – the word wouldn’t be shame surrounding my adoption. It would be unworthy, undeserving, less than. But not as a hang your head feeling down about it like shame feels. More a matter of fact, that this is how it is and must be. I guess I view shame as a feeling like I had a choice. I won’t wear shame but the weight of unworthiness, undeserving and being less than in some circumstances/ relationships is the way it is.

Yet another explains – Everyone knows a perfectly good baby would never be given away, right? There must be something terribly, unspeakably, sickeningly wrong with me that my own mother didn’t want me, right? Spent a lifetime trying to cover up the depth of that shame. (blogger’s comment – I think my dad may have felt this. He didn’t want to search because he was afraid of opening up a “can of worms.”)

Then this from an adoptee in a “mixed” family (meaning the adoptive parents also had biological children of their own) – All of my friends knew I was adopted. My now 16 year old sister, has been taller than me since she was 7. She is my adopted parents’ biological daughter. They also have 4 biological sons, all are least 6ft tall. My biological brother and sister that did get adopted with me, we’re all way shorter than the rest. You could look at us and tell we’re not from the same people. We felt like we didn’t fit in. The “family clan” is all a bunch of giants. We never felt like a part of that. And we were treated differently, we felt as if our adopted parents sensed something was wrong with us, like our biological mother did. If she didn’t have a problem with us, then she would have quit drugs in a heartbeat – knowing that if she didn’t get help, she would lose us.. She lost 5 of the 6 of us. She was able to keep her youngest. Still don’t know why she didn’t love us enough but she switched her ENTIREEEE life around for our youngest brother. I only feel shame in the fact that I know she doesn’t care about the rest of us. She had a favorite and she only tried for him. She fought for him. She couldn’t lose him, like she easily lost the rest of us. Why? I don’t know. We were just kids. And I think we’re all pretty awesome. It’s my biological mom’s loss.

One who was adopted as an infant said – yes, I carried the shame of my biological mother for whom I was the product of her shame. I was adopted in 1951. (blogger’s comment – had I been given up for adoption when my high school teenage mother discovered she was pregnant with me, I would have been like this, had I known – maybe even if I didn’t – these emotions can be passed through to a fetus in the womb.)

She adds – I met her once, years later. I snuck into her hospital room. I happen to be working at the hospital and was told my biological mother was there. I had nurses watching out for the rest of the family because I didn’t want to start any trouble. I knew I was the shameful part of the family. My mother was in her ’80s and had dementia. She was happy to see me, yet she didn’t know who I was. She thanked me several times for coming to visit her. I comfort myself by saying – at some level she knew who I was. (blogger’s note – my sister gave her daughter up for adoption – under no small amount of coercion from our parents. We took her with us to visit my dad’s adoptive father. He was elderly and at the end of his life. We didn’t try to explain her to him but had a distinct feeling that somehow he knew.)

She then added this – I think the trauma comes from the birth and then losing your mother. The baby must feel terrified. Babies have no words and adults have no conscious memory of being born, so as the baby grows she can’t express what she feels, even to herself. YOU can express and process your trauma. WE as adoptees will never be able to do that. We as adoptees un-knowingly pass that to our children in several ways including our DNA. Probably similar to the way birds pass on the fear of fire to their offsprings. I think the mother who gives up her child has an advantage that the child she gave up never gets.

This one describes coming out of the fog (the positive narratives the adoption industry puts out) – Yes, I definitely felt ashamed that I’m adopted. I was told when I was 11, I got the “you were chosen” talk, along with a bit of badmouthing about my biological mom, and that was it. My adoption’s been always a huge taboo within my adoptive family. In retrospect, I think that I internalized my adoptive mother’s shame (of me not being her biological child, due to infertility). Only my adoptive family, my biological family, and 1 or 2 friends of mine knew. Random strangers and acquaintances used to comment “it’s obvious, you guys are mother & daughter”. I always hated it, while my adoptive mother loved it, of course.

Since I came out of the “fog” two years ago, I finally found my voice, and I can’t help to constantly talk about my adoption. Guess it’s some sort of trauma response/coming out of the “fog”/healing thing. I lost a good friend because of this. Guess, she only wants to listen to rainbows & unicorns stories. Anyway. Being ghosted, abandoned, etc. triggers a different kind of shame. The shame most adoptees know all to well: not being good enough, not being worthy of existence, etc.

The mom who posted the question responded – We each have our stories that we tell ourselves. In my case I was convinced my daughter would be happier than I was growing up because she’d been chosen/wanted whereas I was one more unwanted/unplanned kid for parents who didn’t enough patience or resources to do a loving job of it. I thought my daughter would be well-off and have everything she wanted. And she did, as far as material things, but as you and others have taught me, nothing can take the place of your mother. One of my daughters, who I raised, told me she’d say to her half sister, if they ever connect, “That I got you (me, her mom) and you didn’t”. That really hit home. It’s too late now, my first daughter is in her fifties and unable to walk that road. It doesn’t matter how much I want her. (blogger’s comment – this seems to be a common perspective among some adoptees, who know their genetic/biological mother went on to have children that she did keep. It adds to those feelings of somehow being not good enough.)

Then this one – I never did, but my adoptive parents told me from the start the story of my adoption, so it was just something I always knew. I knew it wasn’t because of anything I did or didn’t do and I never really felt “abandoned”. There were a few times growing up where I felt different than my peers, but it was few and far between.

I know there is a lot of pressure on adoptees to be grateful and just fit the happy rainbows and sunshine narrative that a lot of people think adoption is. While I am grateful and love my adoptive parents dearly, and don’t even feel a particularly strong connection to my birth mother, I am just now acknowledging the fact that adoption is inherently traumatic. I am in my 30’s. The agency I was placed with is highly reputable and one of the best in the country. My adoptive parents were told I would have resources. if I ever needed them growing up. That turned out to be untrue.

I know this blog is long but I do think it is important to understand the mental/emotional impact of having been adopted on the adopted person themselves. So one final comment – Not only internalized shame, also we are shamed by others. Children can be particularly cruel, and I can still feel the burning sting of shame when hearing things said by my school mates taunting: calling me ‘second hand’ and “no wonder my family didn’t want me.’. Sadly, both are factually correct.

I’m Not Your Daughter

Expectations. When couples adopt, they have certain expectations of the child. They expect the child to be something that maybe the child is not. It is way too common. Today I read – “Anyone just want to look at their adoptive mom as scream I love you but I’m not your daughter!!” This really touched a nerve as it brought over 100 comments. I’ll share only a few.

The very first comment came from an adoptive mother (no surprise). I would ask myself whether she did any of the things mentioned below… If so, she’s taken on the role of mother and you’ve taken on the role of her daughter.

1. bring up (a child) with care and affection.

2. look after (someone) kindly and protectively, sometimes excessively so.

You mentioned above that you love her and I’m sure you also appreciate her. But what does her not being your birth/first mother have to do with the situation? Is she trying to help you in a difficult situation and you don’t want her help? Is she being nosey into an area that you prefer she stay out of??? I’d say that’s how most moms are. And it’s because they care.

Another adoptive mother responded to the above – I’m horrified that you would invalidate this adoptee’s feelings. It is not her job to make her adoptive mother feel like a mother.

And yet another adoptive mother said – Your comment was tone-deaf and demeaning. It’s unsurprising yet somehow still bizarre that you would try to introduce the perspective of an adoptive parent over the voice of an actual adoptee. It feels like projection and it’s so yuck.

Finally, an adoptee responds – your comment just made me feel gross and burdened just like everyone else does. It’s always about how it’s my job to be gentle on my adoptive mom and all adoptive mother’s feelings. It’s my job to make her feel better about not being my mother. All at the expense of my own feelings. You basically said Oh hush now you mean ol’ adoptee…don’t ever hurt your adoptive mother, she is fearful and she just loves you and cares about losing you. That is why you should never say how you feel as an adoptee. The cardinal rule in my life as an adoptee has been that my (or any) adoptive mothers feelings matter more than mine. Adoptive mothers are the victims and it’s my job to worship them and never ever hurt their feelings by saying being adopted hurts. I feel this damaging belief is what keeps adoptees in the fog and from getting the support they need.

Another adoptee shares her experience – My adoptive dad acted like I was committing a crime against my adoptive mom when I found and initiated a relationship with my birth mother. I was over 30 years old. They’d never offered to help me find or contact her. I did it myself and he spoke to me as if I were a naughty child disregarding her feelings.

From the original commenter – this is not just “I’m upset with her”. I also don’t need advice on what to do. She is NOT my. Mother period. I didn’t choose to be adopted. I will not be gentle. I’m tired of having to cater to others over something I had no choice in. I will not be quiet.

This morning I was reminded of this song by Karen Drucker which I have always loved.

Ownership And Abuse Is Not Love

It all depends on which side you are looking at it from . . . to the fog and to those with the gift of insanity to dwell therein. So let us reverse the imaged poem, shall we ?

My life could be better
I can’t imagine how
This was God’s Plan A
I have no doubt that
My adopted mother’s love
Does not eclipse
The bond with my first mother
Which will never be part of my life
My ancestral heritage
Is a deeper part of me than
My adopted family
Adoption IS inherently traumatic
It is actually harmful to imply
I should always be grateful
Truth is
Lamenting a loss before memory
Is how I grow, not
Focusing on my blessings
I don’t need sympathy
I need to grieve
I can’t honestly claim that
Adoption is beautiful

Choosing To Take That Risk

An adoptee offers a word of warning – to any hopeful adoptive parent who now wants to adopt, even though they already have biological kids:

Biological and adopted kids *should not be mixed*. Period.

Even if *you* believe you can treat your biological and adopted child equally (which is pretty fu****g rare), you cannot control how your biological child will treat their adopted sibling.

As somebody who has been treated absolutely *horrifically* by my adoptive mom’s biological kids, this has actually been the worst trauma of all, when it comes to my adoption.

And if you’re about to say “that isn’t always the case,” just stop for a second and consider these 2 things:

1. I don’t need to hear your “not all” bs, when I’m discussing the outright abuse I have experienced at the hands of my siblings, acquired by having been adopted.

2. If there is even a *miniscule* chance that your adopted child could experience what I have, and you wanna go through with it anyways, then you are selfish and careless. Imagine knowing that there is a possibility that your biological child may abuse or mistreat your adopted child, and you still chose to take that risk with a child’s life ?

And just today, I learned this statistic – even among biological siblings, sibling abuse is 5 times more common than spousal or parental abuse – it is actually the most common form of domestic abuse. And yet, adoptees also have an added layer of mental/emotional trauma due to having been relinquished by their original parents. The obvious difference between having been actually born to and having been brought into a family from different parents and circumstances is real and should not be dismissed.

One of those biological kids admits – Even though I love love love my adopted siblings and dote on them as much as possible, it does not erase the resentment. I resent them for “taking” my parents away and they resent us for being born to the family. They will NEVER know I resent them and even my parents don’t, but mixing adopted kids with biological kids is brutal on both sides. Then, goes on to give some additional context – 1) my siblings are far too young to have any idea & 2) I don’t feel upset that I’m not adopted. I do have a completely normal jealousy, at times, that they take attention away from me, since they’re the center of attention for the whole family. And I recognize that there will be obvious friction between me and the younger siblings, though it is not there at this present moment. In the future? Absolutely. And tries to clarify this – the resentment is towards my parents, the jealousy is towards my adopted siblings. Very different feelings. I never said the suffering on both sides was equal. Mine is typical sibling jealousy. My adopted siblings have a deep rooted trauma and a robbing of their history. I am working through it. I was already 19, when my younger adopted siblings moved in. My work is understanding that my parents don’t love/care about them more. They are simply young and traumatized. They require more care than I do. I am learning to understand the truth that I don’t need my parents as much as I often feel I do. I have an anxious attachment style with rejection sensitivity, a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life, so I am learning how that affects the way I feel about my parents.

So, the honest truth is – a HUGE percentage of adoptive parents WILL show favoritism towards their biological child, over their adopted child, whether they mean to or not. And the extended family treats them differently as well.

This, from experience – I would go as far to say, even if the adoptive parents have grown biological children. I freely tell people that I was adopted from foster care. I don’t normally share that when my adoptive parents died, their will left me in the custody of their eldest son and his family. Truth is, none of their three adult children ever agreed their parents should adopt me. When they died, I was kicked out of their son’s house and was told “nice to know you, you’re on your own now.” Adoption has so many layers that no one thinks about. And every time a hopeful adoptive parent or adoptee still in “the fog” (believing in the feel good narratives about adoption) counters a trauma or negative experience with their own beliefs, it not only insults and minimizes the pain they are responding to, but also minimizes the INFINITE number of situations they couldn’t possibly know about. Please stop pushing back against people with the lived experience who are trying to prevent even more trauma, by sharing your own limited experiences.

Adoptee Birthdays

How one adoptee has described her feelings about these.

I do not celebrate my birthday.

So for every one of my friends I said no thank you, blew off, or straight up just ignored when they asked to take me for a drink on my birthday, sorry.

For everyone that I didn’t text back, no hard feelings.

I do appreciate you being happy that I’m around, and staying around for another year. It was nice to hear from you. Even if I didn’t answer you.

Birthdays are hard on us adopted kids/orphans/foster kids. Adoption is the only type of loss where the victim is expected to feel happy, grateful and indebted to someone about it. To be thankful for it. For adoptees our birthday is a day that we were separated from our entire biological family. It’s the anniversary of an abandonment. It’s the marker of the altering of our birth certificate and totally erasure of all of our family medical history.

It’s not great. Especially for those of us adopted through the INCREDIBLY UNETHICAL private infant adoption industry in the United States.

Many private infant adoptees who are my generation and the one below me are the age where we are coming out of the “adoptee fog” and realizing that the pretty stories and ideas we have been sold our whole lives about adoption are not true. I guess we knew it the whole time, but it’s very hard to pinpoint those feelings, and we are REALLY afraid to express them. Because many of us (myself included) have had really great adoptive families.

I love my family. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t lose my family.

It’s hard for us to express our real feelings about our own stories, and continually be met with opinions how wholly beautiful adoption is, how they just know that our lives would have been hard and terrible if we stayed with our birth families, ignoring and denying the trauma and loss associated with our birth stories and telling us that we should be so thankful.

Because if adoption is always so beautiful…

Why do people lie about it and hide it?

Why doesn’t everyone just give up a baby to a queer couple, or an infertile couple?

Why are records kept from the very people they pertain to?

Why do white babies cost more than black babies?

Why don’t you want to talk about this side of it?

I know that some of the things we feel, and some of the truths about private infant adoption is hard for people to hear. But if you/they actually cared about kids…. Then they’d want to hear it… and fix it.

I am not anti adoption. There will always be truly necessary adoption. But what adoption has become in this country, a multibillion dollar business, needs to be fixed. We can’t continue to treat these kids like a commodity, doing things like trying to re-home them on Facebook like a puppy you can’t potty train. What would happen if you tried to do that with a biological child? Would it be the same? Does it ever happen? These children should have rights. I turned 36 on Friday and I don’t have access to my own birth certificate. The government has it. But I can’t get it. Doesn’t that seem weird? Or wrong?

There’s a reason you can hear your mother’s voice and heartbeat when she is pregnant with you. It’s so when you’re born, you know who mom is. So when you hear it for 9 months and then never hear it again….It hurts your heart and it changes your brain. No matter how good the rest of your life turns out to be. And it can make your birthday a hard day.

It Is True

So an older adoptee wrote this – I can personally attest that “coming out of the fog” is a true concept. (In fact, as the child of two adoptees, I can now admit I was in the fog too !!)

The thing is, as an adoptee, you really don’t know what you’re missing compared to people who have not experienced the kind of life-threatening trauma that being adopted is. Though not all adoptees have similar reactions to life’s rejections and notice that feeling of something that is not there, that something “missing,” whether acknowledged or not, is real.

Many adoptees have attachment issues. Some are not able to form an attachment with the adoptive parents or may attach (cling to) too much and are not able to let go of the caregiver when it is appropriate to do so.

When an adult adoptee experiences the breaking up from a romantic relationship, if they are someone who has difficulty letting go, the situation can be devastating. It may take the person a very long time – if ever – to recover.

These experiences have the ability to take an adoptee right back emotionally to the first time they were deserted, abandoned in their perception, by the original mother and this event happened to them before they even had the words to describe what they were feeling. So, even later in life, within the context of adult relationships, these situations can leave the adoptee feeling that same kind of unexpressed feeling. The pain is often excruciating.

Whereas an adoptee’s close friend experiences the breaking up of a romantic relationship, it may be that only a month or so later, that friend is out dating again. It is relatively easy for them to move on with their life. Yet, if this happens to an adoptee, they are often stuck and don’t really understand why they cannot let go.

This rejection/abandonment wound may account for the higher incidence of suicides that happen among adoptees as young adults and even more mature adults. This is certainly common for those who were infant adoptions. Even for adoptees who were adopted at an older age, though they have a similar experience of separation and abandonment/rejection trauma, at least they have some language with which to express their feelings and a therapist may be able to help them more easily express and understand their feelings.

True, actually “coming out of the fog” (the belief that adoption is unicorns and rainbows, flowers and sunshine) may or may not ever happen for any single adoptee. It takes a lot of work and understanding for the adoptee to realize they have these feelings and the process of getting to that point can be so painful, the adoptee may become paralyzed and not able to move further forward, at some point in that process.

And here is a note from the adoptee who started these thoughts that are my blog today – If you are an adoptive parent, no matter how you try, you can not normalize the experience of having been separated from the person’s original mother for them.

Being A Supportive Spouse To An Adoptee

The person described in today’s story could have been my father. The difference is that he married another adoptee. Both of my parents grew up knowing they were adopted all along. They had this in common but their perspectives on having been adopted were very different. My mom yearned to know the truth of her adoption. My dad acted content with his lot in life. I suppose that these two adoptees found each other, fell in love and had the support of one another until death did part them, kept the loneliness at bay. Still, my mom did communicate to me her feelings about having been adopted because my dad was not able to empathize with her feelings.

Today’s story –

My husband is adopted. He was adopted at birth and has always known he was adopted. That’s about as much communication as he has ever had with his parents about it. His mom told me once “I just let him know he could ask me whatever he wanted to know and that was that.” Since he’s not a very big talker, he’s never really spoke much at all about his adoption with his parents. I’ve always come from the place of it being his life experience and however he wants to go through life with it, is how I will support him.

We have 4 kids. He’s an amazing dad and husband. I often wonder if I’m being a good enough wife in supporting him. I’ve read about how much trauma even the “good” adoptions have and my heart just dies inside for my husband. He has no desire to look for his biological family and says “I have a mom and dad.” I completely support him in that. Is there anything more I can do? Of course it would be easier to just keep going on with my life and not put any thought towards his mental health, since he’s always seems fine. He’s such a people pleaser (especially for his parents, which I’ve now learned is typical with adoptees). I never want him to put on a happy face for us, if he is hurting inside and I could see him doing this.

Is it actually possible to not care at all or to not feel feelings at all about being adopted? To have a happy childhood and feel no trauma and grow up and never have any of it affect your life? Because so much of what I’ve read says otherwise.

The first response was (I get this about men as well) – It’s totally possible he had a great childhood and doesn’t have any trauma, and it’s also possible he is hiding it inside, since men are socially conditioned to be that way. It’s a tough call. I can tell you it’s possible because that’s me. I have no adoption associated trauma. I’m in therapy; my therapist has tried to “get it out of me” and I’m always open to having the discussion but she closed that door once she concluded there wasn’t any trauma to work on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I can see you truly care about and love your husband and want what’s best for him but forcing the issue may make him drive it deeper into the closet. This is a really tough and delicate situation.

And I do agree with this perspective (BTW my parents were about 8 months old and had spent time with their original mothers before they were adopted back in the 1930s) – You can experience trauma as a newborn and not remember it. It’s not always something you feel. It can just be something that affected you and you’re not conscious of it.

This could be true of my dad as well – he could have dealt with it a long time ago and just doesn’t feel the need to bring up the past. He may be in a healthy place and bringing up that trauma back up would retraumatize him because he thought he had come to peace with it. (My dad used to caution my mom against opening up a can of worms with her own yearning.)

From a voice of experience – I am the spouse of a domestic infant adoptee. I don’t think it’s your place to push, just be supportive. My husband was “fine” until he was not. It was a very, very slow process and I saw things a long time before he discovered them on his own, things like how his behaviors, such as people pleasing and his emotional response to perceived abandonment, the way his adoptive parents treated him, etc. He slowly came out of a fog, and it has been a long and painful process. That being said, not everyone has the same experience. Additionally, if he is in a fog, its something he has to process on his own. I think it could be extremely and emotionally damaging for you to spin this into any sort of realizations (if they exist) that he isn’t emotionally or psychologically ready for. Just love him, don’t push, and support him.

Never Belonged There

From an adoptee –

I haven’t been “woke” for very long when it comes to adoption. Things have always felt wrong or at least, at times, on and off, weird about it. But when you’ve always been told getting adopted is a “gift” and a “blessing” and you’re “lucky” but you don’t feel that, it’s complicated isn’t it ?

I started speaking up about how I felt a little bit as I got older, especially to people not in my adoptive family who act like I should be grateful that my parents “saved” me. Well, no, I don’t feel like I was. I’m told I should just basically eat shit politely with a spoon and fork and say thank you (my adoptive family has a narcissistic dynamic like I’m learning so many adoptive families do. Guess who’s the scapegoat?).

Anyway, it wasn’t until the last few years, when I realized there were communities and groups for adoptees like me. Then, I really started to learn just how messed up the whole adoption and foster care thing is. Now, I’m almost 39 and I still haven’t really unpacked any of my trauma. I have so many health issues including anxiety and high blood pressure and these are becoming critical. I know I really need to seek therapy.

I’ve never quite felt like I belonged anywhere, certainly not within my adoptive family, and it’s so hard for me to make friends. It’s hard when you’ve been told your whole life that you are just too much, because your personality is so different than that of your family. It always felt like I was walking a couple feet above everyone else. I’ve always felt like I lived in a different, parallel world. Books like Harry Potter really resonated with me, the ones where the main characters are living life feeling all alone like they don’t fit in, when suddenly they discover the other, secret world in which they actually belong but somehow unknowingly were taken away from, and they actually do belong somewhere! I have probably used books like that to dissociate from my adoptive reality a bit. I have preferred books in a series so that I could live in that other world as long as I could. I would always feel devastated and grieved when the story ended.

I recently found my birth family, only two weeks ago. I have been talking to my birth mother and I’ve talked to my birth father, too. My birth mother has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease and only a very limited amount of time left to live.

I realize now what I never realized before – how angry I am. I put off finding her because when I was a child, my adoptive (narcissistic) mother would sob and make me promise I wouldn’t look for my original mother. And to be honest, these last few years, I didn’t know if I could handle emotionally not fitting in with another family. But now that I’ve found her, she seems wonderful so far and yet now I have only a very limited amount of time left with her. Not only that, I will have to watch her die a horrible death.

Even though I should be and actually am grateful I found her before it’s too late, that is offset by just how devastated and angry I am. And my birth father, During our first conversation, my birth father wanted to know if my adoptive family was wonderful. How am I supposed to respond to that? I think I said something along the lines of “uh, uh, yeah, I guess” and thankfully my kids interrupted. My birth mother hasn’t broached the subject, I think she suspects it was not wonderful for me..

Glad I Was

I almost didn’t know what to write today. It seemed as though I had said it all in the last few days. But then an exchange with my mom, not long before she died, came back into my mind. She gave me editing privileges on her Ancestry account. She had done the family tree thing but it was all based on the ancestral lines of her adoptive parents and my dad’s adoptive parents. She admitted to me she just had to quit working on it. It wasn’t real, she knew that deeply, not in the sense Ancestry is meant to record. But quickly, she added, “you know, because I was adopted. Glad I was.”

What else could she say ? She didn’t know anything but her adopted life. Scarcely knew anything beyond her parents names of Mr and Mrs J C Moore – that doesn’t tell a person very much, though it proved to be accurate. She knew her name at birth was given to her by her mother as Frances Irene. Oh, she tried. Tennessee would not give her her adoption file even though she carried a deep certainly all the way to her death that she had been “inappropriately” adopted. Such a careful way she worded that. She knew Georgia Tann was involved and she knew about the scandal. She actually learned about it when it came out in the newspapers in the 1950s while she was yet a school girl.

She was devastated to learn from the state of Tennessee that her birth mother had died. Closing the door to her ever being able to communicate with that woman who gave her the gift of life through her own body.

It is that “Glad I was.” that haunts me today. I didn’t know about adoptee fog until recently. In fact, when I first entered my all things adoption Facebook group, wow, was I ever in it !! Adoption seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me. It was so natural that both of my sisters ended up giving up children to adoption.

What I want to say clearly this morning is – Adoption is the most UN-natural way for a child to grow up. Having one’s birth certificate altered to make it appear that total strangers actually gave birth to you when they did NOT. Having your name changed to suit the desires of your adoptive parents ? It is a fantasy. A pretend life and adoptees feel it keenly, as my mom clearly did “it just wasn’t real to me”.

The thing my mom could be glad for is that she had a financially comfortable upbringing and some perks such as travel along with her adoptive mother. She also suffered some coldness and harsh judgement because her natural body structure would never be lithe and thin as my adoptive grandmother took such pains to make her own. I know, I suffered a humiliating embarrassment in a public restaurant in London from her over the sin of taking a piece of bread and putting some butter on it.

My maternal adoptive grandmother was an accomplished and phenomenal woman. I grant her that. But I am convinced she bought her children when she found she could not conceive. I am no longer a believer in adoption and until I run out of things to write about – I will continue making an argument for family preservation and an end to separating babies from their natural mothers. I will defend allowing such children who are unfortunate enough to be adopted to keep ALL the ties to their identities – their genuine birth certificate and their name (unless and until, it is their choice to change that).

Birthday Blues

My birthday usually falls near the Memorial Day weekend. Many years, I had a L-O-N-G celebration of existing. It was a happy and self-affirmative occasion.

However, when I began to learn about the trauma associated with adoption, I discovered that the day an adoptee was born is not a happy occasion for many of these persons. It is a reminder of abandonment, rejection or at the least, that the parents from who their life descended are not raising them.

Until an adoptee matures and begins to break through the fog of how wonderful it was that they were adopted narrative, many wonder why they act out or sabotage their own birthday celebrations. What is wrong with them ? Everyone else seems happy to celebrate their birthday.

And now I understand better and can see the difference between my own birthday and an adoptee’s. I remember as well there was some confusion about my own mother’s actual birthdate, though eventually it settled on January 31st and now that I have her adoption file – I see the errors and their eventual correction.

Yesterday, I watched a youtube video the Birthday Episode by My Adoption Story by Lilly Fei and the conflicted feelings, which I remember my own mom having about her adoption are so obvious. Two things stood out for me – when she said she was “found” and how she described the way some international adoptions of transracial children involve the child having birth dates that are estimated based upon physical characteristics because the actual date of birth is unknown.

One adoptee writes – One reason I hate my birthday is because its a celebration of the day I was born and then placed in a nursery just sitting there because my birth mom didn’t want to get attached by holding me. It annoys me that this reason even bothers me, but it definitely does. People who aren’t adopted have great stories about the day they were born and how all these people came to see them and hold them and there are pictures. Yeah that doesn’t really exist if you’re adopted.

Many adoptees feel anger and negative emotions that are understandably directed at their birth family…It is not actually the birthday itself. Yet unavoidably the birthday is a reminder of what happened – back then – so each year, when that birthday rolls around, it all comes back into sharp and painful focus. It is what was done to that baby, for whatever reason at the time of birth, that is the actual problem.

One possible strategy for an adoptee is to change the focus of their birthday. Take a few or even several hours of time out on your birthday. Just you – go somewhere you really like, and reflect, alone, on your current goals and how you hope to achieve them. Keep your thoughts written down. Look at them a few times during the following year. Then when the next birthday rolls around, go over your thoughts again and revise them for the current reality. One adoptee found this kind of birthday event to be helpful in overcoming the birthday blues.

One other suggestion is to deal with all of your negative feelings BEFORE your birthday. Don’t avoid them because then you will feel sad that day. By acknowledging your feelings and seeking to understand what they are trying to tell you, you can then let them go for that day and celebrate the fact that you are resilient, you are a survivor, you are worthy to be loved and celebrated, you rock this life (even though you have that trauma of having been adopted).

For more insight, you may wish to read this Medium essay titled Birthday Blues. Adrian Jones says – “There is one certainty with my birthday: I will find a way to sabotage it. As sure as the sun rises each morning, my birthday will somehow become a fiasco. For most of my life it has been like this. I wish it would stop, but it won’t.” He goes on to write what he has discovered is the source of his pain and the anxiety he feels as his birthday approaches –

“You see, I’m adopted. Born a bastard, I was separated from my biological mother at birth. The woman I spent nine months preparing to meet was gone in an instant. In my most vulnerable state, I was motherless. Without mother. At the time, I was overcome by a high degree of trauma, a trauma that cannot be undone. Worse, this trauma is precognitive. I, like millions of my adoptee crib mates, do not know what life is like without trauma, as we were introduced to life in such a traumatic state. Due to recent scientific studies, we know this to be true. Babies are born expecting to meet their mothers, hear their voices, smell their scents, taste their milk. When their mothers are not available, they become traumatized. If puppies and kittens must stay with their birth mothers for a few weeks before being adopted, why is it okay to separate a newborn from her mother at first breath?”

There is much more to read in that essay. I highly recommend it.