The Reality Of Not Knowing

Blogger’s note – Though I grew up believing my parents must have been orphans because they were adopted, I never thought their origin stories were fairytales. The image came from the International Association of Adopted People (IAAP) who noted that – Every time you asked about your biological family and received dismissive remarks, it was a trauma. Every time someone corrects you on who your “real parents are” It is another micro trauma.

One adoptee agrees – adoption is one of the most devastating things that can happen to someone. It’s unnatural and from the adoptee’s perspective, it can be extremely scary. I was terrified. And my fears were always realized. It truly is more like a horror story than a fairy tale.

One woman noted the effects on her life – Answering security questions for data access: Where was your father born? What’s your father’s middle name? What’s the middle name of your oldest sibling? Where were your parents married? As soon as I see these are the first options for security question my anxiety ratchets up and my hands shake. I’d say this is a trauma response. I found out at the age of 52 that my entire existence has been a lie. My colleagues suggested I just lie or make up an answer as who’s gonna know ? Me. I’ll know. I won’t lie.

For me, it’s always been the medical history. Sorry that you were lied to, I always knew I was adopted. That’s supposed to be less traumatic to know, even if you don’t know who, when, where or why. (Blogger’s note – it was a mysterious health problem that got my adoptee mom wanting to connect with her birth mother.)

Someone else noted – we are all aware that adoption entities encouraged and fabricated falsehoods in order to make their product for sale maximally appealing. (Blogger’s note – In fact, Georgia Tann absolutely did this regarding my mom – changing her birth parents ages and educational status to match what my mom’s adoptive mother had specified.)

Another noted – The worst thing about adoption is closed adoptions. The second worst thing is you cannot get your original birth certificate in some states. Secrecy, shame and religious politics rule. (Blogger’s note – both of my adoptee parents adoptions were “closed” because it was the 1930s. I also found it impossible to acquire original birth certificates from Virginia or California.) Though someone noted – for many adoptees there are things FAR WORSE than not having access to their original birth certificate ! (Blogger’s note – sadly I do know there are, I’ve read far too many accounts of such in an all things adoption group.)

Then someone else notes – A lot of these adoptive parent marriages are not fairytales either. (Blogger’s note – my dad’s first adoptive father was an abusive, raging alcoholic. His adoptive mother eventually threw the man out. I learned via Ancestry.com that he died young of cirrhosis of the liver.) I don’t know why they call an even possibly good marriage a fairytale anyway? I think that whole “you were chosen thing” is a joke too. Yeah, you actually have to pick who you have a relationship with but if you’re adopted as a baby, you’re not really chosen except for maybe basic things you don’t have any control over anyway.

And from my own experience of learning my actual biological, genetic roots I can appreciate what this woman shares – I recently identified my family and met my father months before he died. Knowing my origins has had an enormously positive impact on my mental health. I don’t have the constant questions going around my mind. I have brain space. This is what the kept must experience from day 1. The trauma continues because I can never be fully integrated into either family. However, now that all 4 “parents” are dead, the only word to express what I feel now is I am “free”. No more obligations to other people’s agendas.

It Is Hard To Do

From an adoptee – Coming out of the fog is hard. It’s a bit like jumping out of a building but instead of dying before you can even hit the ground, you hit it, hard, and break every bone in your body.

This is to say that coming out of the fog (losing the cognitive dissonance you’ve been living with your entire life) is first of all very painful and second of all takes a long time to heal. Then, even when it heals, it never feels quite right again.

This is only the effect of coming out of the fog and not a lifetime of adoption trauma.

Anger is part of the grieving process. We talk about grief in adoption in a relatable way: We grieve the loss of our first parents. That’s true, but it’s also true that as we come out of the fog, we begin to grieve the things we believed to be true.

Loving adoption, supporting it, and verbally confirming the societal bias that adoption is a loving way to support children who can’t live with their families for some reason, and then leaving that behind when the fog lifts is a huge change, and when huge changes occur in our lives, we do often grieve.

We grieve the person we are leaving behind, the assumptions that we once carried, and the comfort of the lies we told ourselves. (Blogger’s note – while not an adoptee myself, I’ve been greatly impacted by adoption – both of my parents were 1930s era adoptees. Learning who my original grandparents were, who who all deceased by then, had an unexpected but profound effect on me. I would assume I am still processing my feelings 6 years later.)

Anger is part of that grieving process, and each grieving process is different. Some people will always be angry. Some will spend their lives in denial (the fog).

If we are angry, there are a number of reasons but grief is an important part of it.

We are not (always) mad at you, as a person. We may be angry with adoptive parents, but more often than not this is not personal and not personally directed at you. When it is personal, it’s because you have triggered one of our privileged voices, often by gaslighting, demonstrating fragile behavior (cognitive dissonance), or you have challenged someone by calling their lived experience their opinion and justified your behavior by saying you’re allowed to have your opinion [on their experience].

Some people are angry with adoptive parents in general. You might not understand it, but there are points that I could make which would indicate this anger is justifiable. Most of us are angry with the adoption industry and an extension of that anger is that we are angry with the people who feed the demand that drives this industry. Without demand, there is no industry (and we already know there aren’t hundreds of babies waiting in an orphanage to be adopted).

Anger with people who participated in the system of oppression is natural. I’m not a professional therapist, just a life coach. Whether or not this anger is healthy or if it is merely a coping tool for trauma that masks other big emotions, I can’t say. Either way, anger is part of processing what has happened to us that we had no control over. When you see our anger, it is because we are hurt and we are healing.

Adoption is a multi-billion dollar per year industry in which people (infants, children) are exchanged for as much as $60k each. It’s really easy to overlook facts that don’t agree with your personal cognitive bias, especially when you benefited from this industry. If you paid an adoption fee, regardless of who received that fee or what they did with it, you exchanged money for another human being.

It might be hard to see yourself as having participated in human trafficking but you did. Even if money were not involved, we are still talking about the redistribution of human children.

You can see, no doubt, that the objects of that trafficking (adoptees) would be angry to have been trafficked. Or, if you cannot cognitively comprehend the word “trafficking” in this situation, you can understand that adopted people are goods that were exchanged from one bearer to another.

Being adopted is a lifetime of ongoing trauma and chronic stress. It doesn’t go away when we turn 18. It doesn’t stop when we meet our biological families. It doesn’t end because we are in therapy.

When you accuse adopted people of inappropriate anger, you are contributing to the ongoing chronic stress and trauma we experience as adoptees because you are asking us to perform for you. In order to feel “safe”, many adoptees will, and, this is SUPER important, so please listen! You’ll never know they’re performing for you, you’ll just think they’re better people for not “attacking” you. You should know, then, that we are, at all times, under a high-pressure situation. You might step on a landmine without knowing you were stepping on a landmine but it’s a landmine nonetheless.

Therapy doesn’t always help. Sometimes it harms. We promote therapy as though it is the panacea for all trauma. And many people, when facing opposition to their cognitive dissonance use therapy as a way to gaslight and abuse. “You need therapy!” as a response to someone’s heartfelt outpouring of emotion is arguably always abusive. (This leaves aside that it is always dismissive and used as a way to silence the person expressing themselves due to the need to protect themselves from further trauma/abuse.)

Most adoptees who have seen therapists have, at some point, encountered a therapist who didn’t have good training in adoption trauma (even if they thought themselves to have been trained). These therapists often follow the larger social narrative of adoption as “rescue” and further silence us by correcting our emotions (due to their own natural defensiveness and cognitive distortions) or they avoid the subject altogether, leaving the adopted client confused and gaslit.

Adopted people aren’t to blame for our trauma — adoptive parents are. Some of you are already thinking “Trauma happened because of the birth parents and I had nothing to do with their decisions!” First of all, if you adopted an infant privately (not through foster care), you did have something to do with their decision, even if indirectly (through a lawyer or agency). This is a matter of fact, regardless of any coercion you participated in directly — but a lot of you — especially the ones accusing adopted people of being “hateful” did participate in coercion directly.

The trauma of adoption is not a single event but a series of events that are ongoing throughout our lives. Those events are often facilitated by, or at least not prevented by, the adoptive parents. You can never protect your child entirely, but you can learn to support them better by increasing your emotional awareness and maturity. When you accuse adopted people of being angry, hateful, or blaming adoptive parents for their problems, you are in fact deflecting your own culpability onto the object of a contract to which you are the subject and therefore the beneficiary.

To put it simply, you accuse us of shifting our own blame onto adoptive parents because something in you has been confronted and you may be experiencing some form of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Shifting the blame you hold for participating in an oppressive system onto adoptees and expecting us to solve the problems created by our adoptions — on our own! — is not the way you want to present yourself to the world.

Only Wanting Confirmation

This adoptee’s experience is not unusual.

Today I’m feeling more riled up than “normal” about the way I’m feeling pulled to keep my mouth shut about adoption trauma and the fact that you can have a “good” adoption and still be traumatized — because I have MANY friends and family members who are adoptive parents who hate for me to stir the pot.

I know this is pretty typical behavior for me – “don’t stir the pot, don’t make anyone else uncomfortable, stick with the narrative they want to hear….” And yet, I have pulled away from all these people since they adopted their children because “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” and I don’t think they want to have a constructive dialogue.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here – how do you deal with those in your circles who have adopted children and only ask your (adoptee) perspective to hear what they want to hear?

One international adoptee had this to say – I literally don’t care and I’m really honest. I can’t fake it. I try to phrase it in a respectful way but I just speak my truth and they can think what they want.

Another admits – I’m at the point where I say what I think and let the chips fall where they may. The truth is too important to hide.

An adoptee from a domestic infant adoption uses avoidance when possible – I try to avoid the conversation because it is still so triggering for me – if someone tries to pull me in, I speak my mind. I try to be concise but honest. I try not to overextend myself emotionally, but not saying anything feels worse sometimes.

It is slightly different from a birth mother’s perspective – I had family before I placed my son that had adopted and some now that are looking to adopt. I get told that every time that I need to respect the practice of adoption. WELL, I still say how traumatic it is and how they need to stop talking for their adopted children. I’ve been banned from gatherings and everyone just says I picked the wrong adopters and all kinds of other dismissive stuff. I will always hate adoption -period – and will always listen to what the adoptees in the family have to say for themselves.

From a trans-racial adoptee – I walk a fine line, personally and professionally. If people ask for my opinion or experience, I answer honestly while keeping my audience in mind. I have resources to suggest in case they ask.

Finally . . .

Here’s the thing – we (as a society) KNOW that the biological mother is crucial to proper human development. Humans start bonding in utero. We aren’t born blank slates. Human infants don’t begin to see themselves as a separate entity until starting around 6 months. Before that time, the baby sees themselves as part of her still. She* (and ONLY HER) is the baby’s nervous system. Her repeated comforting gestures makes the infant feel safe in a way a stranger can’t. She’s that baby’s EVERYTHING. The world is scary, big and loud to babies. Turning to the only familiar person for comfort is the way infants learn what is truly scary, and more importantly, what’s not. It’s how humans learn to control our emotions and self soothe. There has been enough research on human development to know that the biological mother (most importantly), biological father and extended biological family are vital to the child’s healthy development and developing a good self image for themselves. Modern science can tell us exactly what is needed for healthy infant development, and why – despite the lack of research done directly related to adoptees – we adoptees and many other people already know adoption flies in the face of everything necessary for proper child development. Humans aren’t interchangeable. Everyone knows that. It’s crazy how there is such a disconnect, when it comes to adoptees. Like science has PROVEN that humans need certain things in infancy and childhood to grow into healthy adults. Do people glorifying adoption think “except adoptees”?? Why don’t adoptees need those things? Many seem to want to believe that adoptees will be just fine without them. Better than fine, in fact, LUCKY! It makes NO logical sense to an adoptee.

Where does this disconnect happen? Do they really think we’re not human beings, so we don’t need what every human being needs?? Or do they all just have an image in their head that our biological families are always drug addled, wretched abusers who abandoned us without a second thought? The more likely is that second explanation. And if that’s true, why do they have to hard press so hard, exploiting vulnerable mothers, and make it impossible for them to change their minds? Literally that is the way the laws are. Adoptees are treated like they are in the witness protection program from their own natural families. Adoptees are supposed to believe they were super unwanted and no one could “force” their natural parents to actually parent them. NONE of that makes logical sense. They get furious if asked to realize the scope of the damage they’ve done.