Betrayal Trauma and Attachment

Two of my friends have recently drawn my attention to issues of attachment and betrayal. One wrote in response to a self-betrayal graphic – The thought to comes to mind is that from a young age children are likely to experience examples of this when parents are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as not acting in their best interest. The possibility of this type of ‘betrayal’ is then opened in their minds and then acted out.

The other provided a LINK> to a Neurobiology of Attachment pdf and specifically pg 4 re:the infant’s brain. Families can recover from childhood emotional wounds when all members discuss openly the mental conditions of the parents as a regular family health routine… growth & compassion for all. We learned that ‘communication’ could actually happen through the placenta, in which the adrenaline and cortisol that’s coursing through the mom’s veins wind up crossing the placenta and affecting the development of the brain. “Our connections with other people are critical for being able to tolerate and regulate our own emotional responses.” “This sense of connection occurs through nonverbal communication.”

This caused me to reflect this morning on my two adoptee parents who were relinquished in infancy by their mothers into closed adoptions. They both died without knowing much of anything about their origins – which fortunately, I now know quite a lot about the people and circumstances, though clearly with the passage of time and the deaths of all 4 of my genetic grandparents, I can never fully know.

In trying to put myself into my parents hearts/minds and inner beliefs related to their adoptions, how could they not feel betrayed by their first/original parents ? They had no way of knowing their mother’s stories or challenges or reasons including being coerced (and yes, I will always believe that BOTH of my grandmothers were coerced in the 1930s into giving up their firstborn children) that resulted in my parents being adopted. I sincerely believe that no adoptive parent can truly undo this sense of betrayal by the parent in the child they conceived and birthed. In the case of my grandfathers, it is more complicated. Definitely, one never knew he fathered a son and it turns out he never had any other children (it was the same for my mom’s mother who never had any more children).

I’ll never be able to know exactly why my mom’s father abandoned her and her mother (when my grandmother was 4 mos pregnant, nor why he did not come back to rescue her, infant in tow and financially destitute). So, the line above about communication through the placenta could definitely been my maternal grandmother’s mental/emotional struggles without her husband (they were married, in the case of my dad’s parents, they were not – his father was a married man having an affair with a much younger woman).

No matter the reasons, being relinquished for adoption and never knowing why, is betrayal trauma for the adoptee. I do believe modern trends that keep birth parents in the loop or the effects of reunions instigated by adoptee searches are some mitigating factors to the sense of betrayal that, whether they acknowledge it precisely as that or not, exits within the adoptee.

Besides the pdf linked above, I found two articles via google search that may be useful to some of my readers. [1] LINK>The Effects of Attachment and Developmental Trauma and Ways to Heal the Adoptee from the Adoptions from the Heart’s WordPress blog. (Basically, they are an adoption agency). [2] LINK>From Abandonment & Betrayal to Acceptance & Forgiveness: The Gifts of Memoir by Julie Ryan McGue and Judith Ruskay Rabinor at Adoption & Beyond (a 501c3 non-profit child placement agency licensed in both Kansas and Missouri). The reader is welcomed to consider the source when reading either of these.

Figuring Out Our Story

Shannon Gibney

Today’s blog is courtesy of LINK>an essay at Today.com. Shannon Gibney is the author of The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be. Her book is described as A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption. It was published by Dutton just last month, January 2023. Her book details her search and reunion with her birth families, as well as the ongoing ripple effects of adoption intergenerationally. She notes – “For adoptees, figuring out our story requires work — scouring fragments of documents, stories and phone conversations. And sometimes, we still come up short.” As the child of two adoptees that basically had to do the same thing – I can relate and so, I share.

Shannon is a mixed-Black woman who was adopted by a white family. This is commonly referred to as trans-racial adoption. She writes, “In a culture that deeply values personal and family histories that appear to be seamless — at least on the surface — those of us who have little or nothing to go on can feel alienated and alone. Which is why so many adoptees search.” Certainly, for my mom and for my own self, we quickly became aware of the priority of genetic relationship in working with the DNA matching sites – 23 and Me and with Ancestry.

Shannon compares her own search to the more difficult efforts of international adoptees from countries outside of the US. Therefore, she says – As a domestic, mixed-Black transracial adoptee, my search for my birth family and my beginnings was far easier to navigate, although I didn’t know it at the time I began searching. I could say as much myself. My own search turned out to be surprisingly easy and relatively quick (within a year I knew who all 4 of my original grandparents were, something of their stories and had connected with living genetic relatives that I had not known about before).

Her birth mother had given the adoption agency permission to share her identity with Shannon, if she should ever reach out and ask for it. She goes on to describe what happened next – Thus began a long, complicated, on-again and off-again relationship with my birth mother, which ended with her death from a rare cancer in 2014. While initially getting to know her, she told me that she had had a very brief relationship with my birth father and couldn’t give me any real information about him beyond his name. She also warned me that he was “dangerous,” that she didn’t trust him, and that they “were both lost souls” at the time they got together. And, as it turned out, I did not have any biological siblings.

A therapist who specializes in adoption issues helped her to track down information about her birth father, though sad – In 1981, he had died from injuries he had sustained from a high speed police chase in Palo Alto, California. She was 6 years old at the time. She notes his family – “held the blackness that set me a country apart from both my white adoptive and biological families. This was a kind of racial and cultural damage I hadn’t anticipated.”

Yet, also a happy outcome – I eventually tracked down my paternal grandfather, and was even able to talk to him some years before his death. Likewise, conversations and meetings with my biological aunt and uncle on my father’s side have filled in many gaps in my story, and have given me the great gift of a fuller picture of my father. I may have never met him, but I can surmise so many things about him from the little information I do have.

Similarly to Shannon, I have had to accept – Adoptees will never have fully fleshed out stories of our origins, but we do have the conviction that we deserve far more truths than we ever receive, and we have a dogged determination to seek them out. All of this can make us feel frustrated. And yet, I too have discovered “talking to other adoptees we realize that we are actually not alone in our struggles, and that there are strategies and communities we can build to help mitigate the difficulty and disappointment. We also have imaginations that we can use to explore the people and possibilities that brought us into existence and with whom we co-create our identities.”

Closing The Door

From a domestic infant adoptee, now 35, who has been contemplating changing her name to her real last name. Also possibly changing her first name too. The more she’s worked through her life experiences and struggles, the more she wants to close the door on who raised her. She goes on to admit that – they were probably decent parents. But I don’t recall any feelings of love, attachment, safety or comfort. I’ve harbored resentment for them both and as I try to work on myself, it only gets worse. She says, I’ve gone through all the phases of trying to be ok with my story. But I’m not ok with it. I can’t forgive them. I realize that I actually do hate these people. My first name is nothing special. She heard it back in high school and liked it. Her biological child has full family “heirloom” name. When I hear her say my name, it makes me grind my teeth.

Another adoptee notes – a name change is a very personal decision, one you have every right to make for yourself !! If you connect more to your birth name, then I say go for it. It’s probably a very empowering feeling to go do this for yourself.

Another said – If you know your true name and you want to claim it, CLAIM IT!!!!

One shared – I’m in the process of socially changing my name right now while I wait for the funds to legally change it. I’m changing it back to my birth name because it’s a name I’ve always loved and it’s a bit more androgynous and I don’t like my feminine name. I really knew I had to change my name when I couldn’t bear to tell my son what my name was.

It’s hard to get used to hearing a new one but it sounds better in my brain than my old name. Lots of friends/family are resistant to calling me my new name and that’s been pretty hard. My adoptive mom threw a fit basically. Trying to explain why I’m changing my name and why they should respect that and call me my chosen name has been very difficult because they just don’t understand and think I’m being ridiculous.

I feel a sense of euphoria when I meet someone new and I tell them my (new) name and then they call me that. I started trying my new name out online or for take out orders and stuff before I took the plunge, just to see how I’d feel, and once I realized I liked it I started going more mainstream with it.

Yet another adoptee admitted – My adoptive parents translated my name, then shortened it. I grew to really dislike that name. I have “reclaimed” my actual name and everyone calls me that. I truly wish my adoptive parents had never altered it. My name was really the only thing that I had that truly was my own.

It is easy to see why a lot of adoption reformers are suggesting NOT to change your adopted child’s name. Better yet, chose guardianship rather than adoption if at all possible.

Not A “New” Life

This comment came up in a discussion about how adoptive parents change the name of their adoptee when the adoption is finalized. One woman commented – “Nothing wrong with that, we started using his new name too to get him used to it. New life, new name.” She was quickly corrected – “I need you to fucking not. Adoption isn’t a “new life”, it’s a continuation of the life they are already living. This comment is insensitive at best.” This one had started new childcare job. She is a domestic infant adoptee. One child in her class is in the process of being adopted and that X is their legal name and Y is the name the adoptive parents have chosen to change it to. This child isn’t an infant, so the childcare workers are basically having to train the child to respond to a new name.

I will admit, I did a little sleuthing into the one who made the insensitive comment but could find nothing definite except that she is relatively new in the all things adoption group. There are some interesting photos but nothing certain as to her status in adoptionland but her comment seems to indicate an adoption there.

Lacking that, I looked for some context and found this recent (Oct 2022) article in The Atlantic LINK>Adoption Is Not a Fairy-Tale Ending, with the subtitle – It’s a complicated beginning. While maybe not perfectly what I was looking for, I did see how it begins – In America, popular narratives about adoption tend to focus on happy endings. Poor mothers who were predestined to give their children away for a “better life”; unwanted kids turned into chosen ones; made-for-television reunions years later. Since childhood, these story lines about the industry of infant adoptions had gradually seeped into my subconscious from movies, books, and the news.

The author, Erika Hayasaki, notes – researching a book on identical twins raised in radically different circumstances, the reality of adoption is far more complicated than some might think—and, as many adoptees and scholars have argued, deserving of a more clear-eyed appraisal across American culture. Her book, Somewhere Sisters, chronicles identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam in 1998, and their mother struggled to care for them. Isabella (born Loan) was adopted by a wealthy, white American family that gave her a new name and raised her in the suburbs of Chicago. Hà was adopted by a biological aunt and her partner, and grew up in a rural village in Vietnam with sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons.

Twins have always fascinated me. I was born a Gemini and have always wondered what happened to my twin. When I was a child, my 13 month younger sister and I were often dressed alike and sometimes people thought we were twins. When my daughter was preschool age, she used to claim we were twins. I suppose I’ve had at least two surrogate twins in my life. I digress.

The author discovered that when reunions with birth families do happen, they aren’t always happy; they can be painful, confusing, or traumatic. Adoptees who are parents, lawyers, educators, or activists are challenging the rosy image of adoption that stubbornly persists in our culture. Children are not offered up for adoption in a vacuum. Many of them “are available because of certain, very strategic political policies.” Often the reasons for removing children from their parents comes under the heading of “neglect.” Throughout adoption history, this broad category has encompassed homelessness, poor hygiene, absent parents, and drug abuse in some instances, or simply leaving a child with caregivers outside the nuclear family.

A happily ever story after adoption often comes at the cost of forsaking everything that came before. The process, known in the adoptee community as coming out of the fog, refers to when an adoptee starts to see beyond the narrative about fate and question their true feelings about the adoption system, and how it has impacted their relationships, personalities, and identity formation. As the child of two adoptees, I also had my moment of coming out of the fog because adoption had seemed like the most natural thing to me until I was over 50, both of my parents had died and I began to discover my families true origins.

For me, coming out of the fog was, and continues to be, a process that involves simultaneously holding my adoptive grandparent’s love and good intentions in my heart’s memories alongside all the ways that adoption robbed me of what, for most people, is almost an unconsidered common reality. There are all of these contradictory realities within one’s experience of belonging to a family created by adoptions. The duality of that space can be hard for those without such a background to reasonably understand.

Aaron Judge Adoptee

As a youth and today with mom, Patty

I don’t really follow sports but I do read Time Magazine. Aaron Judge has been named their 2022 Athlete of the Year. He made his 62nd home-run this year. He is biracial and was adopted by white parents. Being a good athlete allowed him to feel accepted, even though his hometown of Linden California, which is rural was very predominantly white – only 0.06% African American. His genetic father is Black and his birth mother is white. He was told that both himself and his older brother who is of Korean descent were adopted when he was 10 years old and began asking questions. Even though he knows some about his original parents, he says that he never had the need to go looking for them, he simply felt at home with his life. He says that he tries not to be like anyone else, “I just try to be who I am.”

At a Major League Baseball website, Aaron says he would not be a New York Yankee today without his mom’s encouragement. He credits her with influencing every decision that he has ever made and has described her as an incredibly caring individual. He says, “The guidance she gave me as a kid growing up, knowing the difference from right and wrong, how to treat people and how to go the extra mile and put in extra work, all that kind of stuff. She’s molded me into the person that I am today.”

Being “the best Aaron Judge” he can be started about 100 miles northeast of San Francisco. His adoptive parents, Patty and Wayne Judge, were recently retired schoolteachers. His older brother, John, also became a teacher. His adoptive parents emphasized education as a priority in their sons lives. Aaron says, “They wanted me to always make sure I put education first and make sure I prioritized everything. If I was going to make plans, stick to them. Make sure I’m on a tight schedule and make sure I don’t miss anything.”

Patty and Wayne adopted Aaron Judge the day after he was born in April 1992. When he was a child, he says he realized “I don’t look like you, Mom. I don’t look like you, Dad. Like, what’s going on here?” that is when they told him that he was adopted. His response was “OK, that’s fine with me. You’re still my mom, the only mom I know. You’re still my dad, the only dad I know.” His reaction to being adopted really reminds me of how my adoptee dad was. He never was curious about his origins and was a good son and very loyal to his adopted parents. Judge often tells his adoptive mother that if it wasn’t for her love and guidance, he wouldn’t be in the position he is now. He gave his 61st home-run baseball to his mom, Patty.

A Tragedy Averted

Today’s happy ending –

I placed my baby for adoption at birth. Thanks to adoptee advocates against surrendering my baby, I was able to get him back without issue, at 4 days old. The hospital I delivered at, would not allow me to name him, only the hopeful adoptive parents could *because he was their baby* So, he now has since had a name change.

I still do not have his social security information, nor did the hospital tell me how to get it, only saying it would be sent to the hopeful adoptive parents. So there are questions – How do I go about getting this? What documents are needed?

*when I had his birth certificate changed to the name I had chosen for him, they took and kept my court order granting the name change.

*his birth certificate still shows at the bottom his original “birth name.” Is there a way to have that removed? His name is now as it should have been from birth. I would really like to try and forget about the mistake I made placing him and not be asked about it by him, when he is older. I never want him to feel that he was ever unwanted.

Added for clarification later – I did not revoke consent until a few days later. The agency contacted the hopeful adoptive parents and had them bring my baby back. I left the hospital when baby was roughly 6 hours old. I think I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go through with it, but I don’t think the hospital did. The nurse had mentioned that she felt it was necessary the hopeful adoptive parents name him, when I asked why the form was already filled out with their chosen name. I was emotional and don’t do well with confrontation, so I just signed off.

The agency had told the hopeful adoptive parents that the baby had been born and they should come to the hospital. This was in spite of me asking for more time with my baby. I do have to add that my leaving the hospital was approved but advised against by the doctor. At my 6 week follow up, I had the same doctor. Not my usual doctor, who later cried happy tears when I walked in with my baby.

There is always time to change your mind and decide to keep and parent your baby. There are limits on that amount of time but there is a revocation period. This varies by state and once the adoption is finalized is irrevocable. More information here LINK> Can I Get My Baby Back After Adoption? – What to Know About Adoption Consent Revocation.

The Social Security Administration has a blog about LINK> getting a baby’s social security number. In answer to one question – Your newborn does not have to accompany you to apply for a Social Security card. If you did not use the Enumeration at Birth (EAB) program, there is information here – LINK> Social Security Numbers for Children. This early in a baby’s life, almost everything can be corrected.

Ethics In Adoption

From an adoption community post –

There is an economy at work in adoption.

Let’s begin with adoption agencies –

An adoption agency connects hopeful adoptive parents with expectant mothers in crisis who may wish to relinquish their child for adoption. In the process of negotiating, the adoption agency receives money from the hopeful adoptive parents (in most cases), and sometimes (rarely) from expectant mothers. The money is used to pay for the associated legal fees, the matching service, and sometimes for care for the expectant mother. This money also pays the salaries of the agency employees. This is true even if the agency is listed as a “not for profit” agency. The employees, social workers, and directors are not working for free.

Hopeful adoptive parents reach out to agencies for help in finding an available child (usually an infant) to adopt. There are 40 hopeful adoptive parents (couples/families) for every infant available for adoption. That is an estimate, some say it may be as high as 1,000 hopeful adoptive parents for every infant who becomes available for adoption.

If you look on websites and in social media, an expectant mother who indicates anywhere that she is considering adoption, will receive hundreds, often thousands, of responses from people who would like to adopt her baby. The demand far exceeds the supply of infants available for adoption. In the leaked Supreme Court draft written by Alito he makes a note of that lack of supply.

So, let’s apply the law of supply and demand –

In order for an agency (which, whether for profit or not for profit, stands to make money from the transaction) to keep itself in business, the agency must provide a certain percentage of infants for the demand. When supply is low and demand is high, coercion enters into these transactions. Agencies must obtain children for their market and are willing to do whatever it takes to supply that market. Social workers and agency contacts do whatever it takes to convince an expectant mother that one of their adoptive couples is better for her child, than she could ever be.

If she receives any money from the agency to cover her expenses but then decides she wants to parent, they will call her a “scammer” or a “fraud.” In many states there is no revocation period during which a woman who has given birth but indicated she is willing to give up her baby can change her mind. Those are considered “adoption-friendly” states Some have short revocation periods. In many cases, social workers pressure expectant mothers to hand their babies over and sign their termination of parental rights, while the new mother is still within the first 48 hours after birth.

Coercive tactics are part and parcel of domestic infant adoption. International infant adoption is even more coercive and heinous because some parents are not even told that their legal rights to their child are being severed.

So, what about the children in foster care ? They’ve already had their parental rights severed. Some hopeful adoptive parents believe they are only motivated to help these unfortunate children. But there’s an economy at work there too. You can be forgiven for not knowing that, thanks to the many promotions of this method of adoption by various states. A federal stipend is paid to foster parents for children of all ages, from under a year old until they age out of the foster care system at 18.

In 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) went into effect. Its purpose was to achieve permanency for children who had been in foster care for a long period of time by having them adopted. The intent of the law was good: permanent placements for children who had been abused, neglected, or abandoned. Its implementation, however, has proven faulty. It has amplified the corruption that has always been endemic within the Child Protective Services system.

The ASFA provides federal stipends to state agencies for each adoption they process out of foster care. Because the states receive money for having children adopted out of foster care, they now have a financial incentive to take children from actually SAFE families and place them into foster homes, so that they can be adopted. The more recent Family First Prevention Services Act includes federal funds to pay for services aimed at preventing the use of foster care by providing better support to parents at risk of losing custody of their children.

Regarding the current concept of “Foster to Adopt” –

Foster parents already receive a generous stipend from the state for caring for the state’s ward. Often, a foster parent will even receive an infant fresh from the hospital due to “risk of future harm” from their parents. These infants are placed with foster parents whose aim is to adopt. Both the foster parents (who wanted to adopt an infant) and the state child protection agency (which receives federal monies for every adoption from foster care) stand to gain from the adoption of this infant “out of foster care.”

The economic implications of adoption are the most straightforward and fact-based way to address whether ethical adoption is even possible. To whatever degree this all matters to you personally – consider the social impact of adoption and the reasons why adoption is considered unethical based upon social reasons.

Include in your considerations why children are removed by protective agencies simply due to perceived neglect caused only by poverty. Consider how it is possible that stipend money paid to them somehow makes foster caregivers more fit to parent than the biological parents. Look into the statistics for suicide and mental health issues among adoptees. Contemplate why laws promote adoption rather than legal guardianship.

Adoption is a contract made between two people – in which a third person is subjected to its ramifications – without their consent. Thank you for contemplating the ethical ramifications of adoption and the use by the state of foster care to increase adoptions.

Forced Behaviors

Pro Lifer: Well the mother should just give the baby up for adoption if she doesn’t want the baby

Me: So who will adopt the baby?

PL: I don’t know there’s lots of couples who want to adopt

Me: Do you know any couple who is waiting to adopt?

PL: Um well not personally but like I know there’s lots of people waiting to adopt.

Me: Do you know what a domestic adoption costs?

PL: I don’t know. $15,000 maybe?

Me: The average cost of domestic adoption in the United States is $70,000 if you go through a private agency.

PL: Oh I didn’t realize it was that much

Me: Yep it’s really expensive. It can be more if you want a newborn straight from the hospital. Up to $120,000.

PL: We’ll all life is precious.

Me: it really is. I’ve adopted through foster care and am currently a licensed foster parent. Would you be interested in becoming a foster parent yourself?

PL: Oh no I couldn’t do it.

Me: Why not?

PL: It would just be too much for me right now.

Me: Why is that?

PL: It would be too hard to handle all the issues that came with it. I’ve heard horror stories.

Me: Yep it can be extremely difficult. But what if I told you that you were required by law to become a foster parent?

PL: what?

Me: what if you had to become a foster parent by law?

PL: they would never do that. That would never happen.

Me: Well, if a woman is forced to bear a child she doesn’t want, and she goes ahead and has that child, someone has to care for the child either through adoption or foster care. You have to do one of those two things.

PL: But I don’t want any more kids.

Me: So you don’t want someone forcing you to have a child in your home that you don’t want or aren’t able to care for?

PL: no, that’s not my job to raise someone else’s child.

There it is, folks.

Have the baby, but we don’t want anything to do with it afterwards.

(Copied and reposted, thanks to a friend for sharing this herself)

Surprising Reunions

Benjamin’s birth mother, Holly, was only 15 when she gave birth to him. When she was 6 months into her pregnancy, she began to search for adoptive parents for her baby. She feared that she would not be able to provide adequately for him.

Benjamin was given up to Angela and Brian Hulleberg on the day he was born, which just happened to be Thanksgiving Day in 2001. His adoption was never hidden from him and his adoptive parents talked to him about his biological mother.

Like many adoptees, including my own adoptee mom, Benjamin had always had a deep desire to meet his birth mother. He searched for her for many years. He’d written letters to adoption agencies of Utah, had his DNA tested and registered with the adoption registry. Nothing came of his efforts.

Like many birth mothers, Holly cared deeply about the baby she had given up for adoption and did a google search which found him on Facebook. 2 days before his 20th birthday, she took a risk to message him on Facebook – “You don’t know me but 20 years ago I made the hardest decision of my life and placed my beautiful little baby up for adoption with a beautiful family.”

Like many birth mothers, she was concerned about disrupting her son’s life, yet she simply wanted him to know that she had thought about him every day of his life. So she admitted that she finally found the courage to send him a message. She simply wanted to wish him a happy birthday.

When Benjamin saw the message, of course he wanted to meet her right away. So, they planned to have dinner and agreed that both of their families should be there to support them. On National Adoption Day, his wish became a reality. He discovered he had 2 half-siblings and that he was actually working at the same hospital that his birth mother worked at.

His mother is a medical assistant at the heart center at HCA Healthcare’s St. Mark’s Hospital. Hulleberg volunteered at the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. She notes that “Every morning, I would come in through the women’s pavilion to come into work. So, I passed right by the NICU every single day. We parked in the same garage, could have been on the same floor, had no idea that we were so close.”

After their reunion, Benjamin moved in with his mother, Holly. He also shares a coffee break with her each day before his shift in the NICU. He will leave soon to attend school in another Utah town.

~ today’s story courtesy of The Huffington Post.

To Stop Transgenerational Trauma?

Another adoptee shared – a former therapist of mine was adopted (her and a twin brother went to the same family in a domestic infant adoption). She’s also a pastor’s wife. She threw ALL my adoption trauma out the window and basically gave me both this same speech about me getting to skip generational trauma from my biological dad’s family and also that it was all God’s plan. I saw her twice and ghosted her. She also told me I didn’t have Bi-Polar Disorder after I was diagnosed in an actual hospital setting, and after only speaking to me twice for about 40 minutes each time. I swear Christian therapists are insane.

Another one admitted about the therapist that she just said the quiet part out loud inappropriately. The kids that are removed for abuse and similar are adopted out because they’re trying to save the kid and stop the cycle. Honestly a lot of kids DO end up better off, BUT of course there’s the trauma. I feel like an orphan no matter my adoptive or biological connections in adulthood. But that pain had me vowing to give my son a better life. And while I wouldn’t say I’ve succeeded at that (married an abuser, we also had to escape) the hope is because I’ve tried to stop and break the generational cycle that he’ll do better than I ever was or could be able to.

Another one said – Separation trauma from adoption IS generational. We can pass to our kids and screw them up and all they did was have a parent that got adopted. So adoption continues generational trauma. Tell that idiot therapist to research epigenetics and then find a new one.

I do believe it IS passed down. Both of my parents were adopted. Myself and my sisters certainly had issues within our own parenting that I do believe is directly related. Thankfully, our children do seem to be breaking those trauma cycles in their own lives.