Why It Is So Hard

It is often, almost always, difficult for an adoptee to have a conversation with their adoptive parents about how hard it has been for them to be an adopted person. I believe most adoptees are highly sensitive to their adoptive parents feelings and emotions – whether the adoptee tries very hard to be perfect in order to please their adoptive parents or is sullen and defiant or passive and withdrawn.

There is a genuine fear of rejection and abandonment. Most adoptive parents feel passionate about doing a good deed and don’t really want to hear that it may be problematic. At times, it even borders on a savior like delusion. Just as it was with my mom’s adoption through Georgia Tann, even today, adoptive parents don’t want to know that the system that allowed them to buy a child is in any way a corrupt one.

Even in situations where the adoption is as ethical as any can ever be, an adoptee may find it impossible to ask about their original mother, father and other related biological family members. Can not even begin to discuss feelings of abandonment. Many simply sense it would be an absolute nightmare to even try.

The prevailing feeling is that people devoted to the idea of adoption don’t want to understand anything perceived as “negative” towards adoption.

And more often than I care to admit – I read stories like this one.

My adoptive sister and I don’t even say that our adoptive mom was abusive. Since she was a narcissist, everyone else thinks she was so nice and loving but that was her public facade. In private, she was mean. But I doubt anyone who knew her when she was alive would believe us if we tried to tell the truth. It ends up making me feel like I have these big parts of my life that I have to keep secret.

Or this one on trying to talk honestly with their adoptive parents –

They’re convinced I’m hyper-sensitive, over emotional and ungrateful to them. They absolutely have a savior complex. They live as though my biological family doesn’t exist, and I don’t exist outside of the box they tried to keep me in.

And even sadder still –

My adoptive mom is deceased (and told me before she died that she wished she hadn’t adopted at all). It would just be too hard to get my adoptive dad to understand my feelings regarding my adoption. We just don’t really talk about it.

The only discussion I know of my mom having with her adoptive mother was when my mom was in high school and the story about Georgia Tann’s baby stealing and selling scandal broke. My mom always knew she and her brother (not biological but also adopted from the Tennessee Children’s Home) were adopted and from where. She asked her adoptive mother about it. Her adoptive mother said something like, yes you came from there but you were NOT one of “those” children. That was the end of it.

Emotional Detachment in Surrenders

It is completely understandable to me that when a woman in the midst of pregnancy has already decided to surrender her baby to adoption, that she would also choose to wall off her heart from the child growing in her womb. Here is one such story . . .

It took me almost 10 years to come out of the fog. The biggest reason is that I had emotionally detached from the situation even during pregnancy.

Last year I had a complete mental breakdown because I suddenly started having flashbacks from being raped at 6 years old and I didn’t even know it happened until I began reliving it. This sudden onset of PTSD was a catalyst for turning my emotions back on and finally feeling grief about the adoption. I’d forgotten most of the events of my life, and the things I remembered were pretty numb.

I’m insanely lucky to have chosen adoptive parents who have actually kept the adoption open. With all of these personal changes, I’ve been trying to open myself up to my first daughter and actually connect with her.

A lot of people suppress their trauma. The hurt from adoption cuts both ways – mother and child. Unless you have no emotions, and it is the emotional pain of separation that causes detachment, you could not let a child you brought into this world be raised by someone else without suffering from guilt, shame or self-blame.

Here is another story –

I gave birth 2 weeks ago. And I had made an adoption plan, with a good friend. Baby is currently with her and I have 2 more weeks to change my mind. But when I had the baby I felt no emotional attachment to her. I didn’t feel like she was mine. I haven’t had any regrets yet. She is with an amazing family that I know without a doubt I will have contact with for her entire life.

She asks other women who have experienced this if they later had regrets.

One replied – I felt the same way when my daughter was born. Like when the doctor gave her to me, I thought, “why are you handing me her baby?”

Another response was this – It’s emotional numbing/detachment. It’s a trauma response to try and protect yourself from the pain of losing her forever. It will catch up to you, HARD, and it can cause a lifetime of trauma for you if it’s not dealt with quickly. Your daughter only wants you, and being given up will traumatize her for life. I beg you to reconsider. And this suggestion – try parenting her, with no contact with the hopeful adoptive parents for the next two weeks.

And there is this very sad story – I had some severe anger issues and no support which would have made it dangerous for him to stay with me. I begged my mom to adopt him until I was older but she refused. In my case, the adoptive parents weren’t total strangers, they were long time friends of the family. It’s my truth though, and I hate that that whole part of my life ever happened. I hate that I was convinced not to get an abortion. I hate who I was and everyone that had abandoned me back then. And if my son hates me too, then I deserve it.

Bottom line – You don’t just give your child away and not regret it. It may take years or decades. Emotional detachment often catches up to you with the painful truth.

Difficult Relationships In The Moment Of Dying

Even when an adoptee is able to find and attempt a reunion with their biological mother, it doesn’t always go well. Case in point, a woman who tried to create a relationship about 11 years ago. The woman and her mother talked on the phone for months almost every single day. During that time period, they were supposed to meet multiple times. The mother always ended up backing out – every single time. The adoptee tried to give her mother the benefit of the doubt, but it hurt more and more every single time this happened.

She found out 2 days ago that her biological mother had been put into a medically induced coma and a decision was made to pull the plug and her mother died. This woman goes on to say – I didn’t really think I would have any feelings in regards to her passing as I didn’t have a relationship with her. Yet, last night I didn’t get much sleep and I’ve been in this fog since I found out. I haven’t cried, but I have been feeling a little bit of regret.”

Then comes the kicker for her – she finds out that her mother put her and a younger sister (age 19 and was raised by her biological dad, a step mom and somewhat their mutual biological mother) down as her next of kin, which is technically true but can have unintended consequences. She has learned that they will both have to sign the paperwork for the funeral home to cremate their mother and will be required to make all of the decisions about her services.

She goes on to say – I know nothing about this woman. I’ve hated her for so long that I literally blocked her in every way possible. Why would she put this responsibility on me? It has made me so mad. And I don’t even know if everything has already been paid for or if my little sister and I have to pay for it. I literally can’t afford to pay for anything else right now except my bills. I am seriously at a loss.

And yet, there comes another woman in similar circumstances with a different experience. Her biological mother is dying but recently blocked her on Facebook. She is distressed because she won’t even get to say goodbye to her mother. But sympathetically, she acknowledges that she would also be mad if someone tried to make her responsible for her deceased mother’s expenses, especially since her mother won’t even speak to her.

And she goes on to acknowledge – Either way, it’s tough – especially when we are told all our lives that we aren’t rejected – we are loved and wanted and then you grow up and get rejected all over again.

The experience of yet another woman reminds me of my own mom . . .

I spent years hating my birth mom. She died the month I decided to start looking. Then my siblings found me to let me know she’d died before I even started. I was not involved in anything and I really didn’t know her. Sometimes I wish I could have been there, or been acknowledged some way. I don’t know what’s worse.

One biological mother who gave up her child to adoption wrote – if I died, I would put my daughter down as a person on the list. I would want it to be her choice for once. She could choose to be a part or just drop her biological mother for good. I just feel like it would be rude not to include her, even though our relationship is bad, I would still want her to have the choice. I know, kinda crap after the fact but I’m trying not to make any more decisions for her.

Being an adoptee is complicated business, even once the adoptee is grown and a mature adult. First of all – no one can make you financially responsible in this situation. Do not sign anything and make the case that you are NOT legally related to this person.

However, this is always true – grief simply is complicated terrain for most people to navigate. There is nothing you might feel that can be labeled “wrong” … it just is how you feel. Anger is OK. Rage is OK. Sad is OK. Indifferent is OK. Relief is OK. Feeling nothing is OK. And most importantly, remember, none of this is going to be a permanent heartache in your life going forward, though it may always remain a painful memory.

Systemic Constraints

Foster care is a system full of constraints. There are the legal ones and the social ones and the physical ones. Regardless of good intentions, anyone choosing to be a foster parent will have to recognize, acknowledge, work within, make the system fit their actual circumstances and do the best they can without ever being able to end the constraints. It is fraught with problems.

The foster care system is simply corrupt. As a foster parent, you can’t change it from the inside. There are those that would love to just burn it all down but it is too overwhelming and entrenched to make any difference. Better to acknowledge as a foster parent that you are not special nor are you are privileged enough to change anything.

No matter what you do, if you have a corrupt social worker, they can and will do whatever they want to. A parent should not have to fight Child Protective Services or the Department of Human Services to regain custody of their own kids. Foster caregivers should not have to fight these same large bureaucratic agencies. Those seeking a kinship solution for their young family members should not have to fight the system. But all of these do and often fail to achieve success.

One foster parent recently shared her own perspective informed by direct experience – These agencies had an premeditated, well executed plan in place, before they even let her know what was happening. They made it where she, the agency she works through and the kids’ parents have no way to stop the forward trajectory of that plan expected to culminate in adoption. And she has tried and pulled out all the stops in defense of this family.

She now has a plan to show up at the court house with these 4 kids and their parents in order to try to beg and plead with the judge to intervene. She acknowledges that at this point, the judge is the only one that can stop the removal of these children from their parents and the permanent termination of those parents’ rights to their own offspring.

She explains the damage she saw when she took the children to visit their parents. The expectation was for a long afternoon filled with swimming, music, cooking and fun. Yet the devastation in the parents overwhelmed the prospect of a joyful occasion. All she saw in the parents’ eyes were tears, sadness, worry, defeat, anger, hopelessness and confusion. These emotions infected the children. The mom, dad and brothers spent most of their time together crying off and on. These children face that permanent end to their natural familial relationships in only a couple of days. It weighed heavily on every one in the family.

It is a helpless, angry, sad, worried, and defeated feeling. This foster mom had to drive by the local Department of Human Services in her way back out of town after this visit. She admits to having felt so distraught that if she had had a lighter and some gasoline, she would have been tempted to burned the place to the ground.

She judges that none of this okay but that this is the foster care system – corruption, an abuse of power and the application of a kind of oppression that traumatizes the children and their parents. As a foster parent, she experiences a lack of support and compassion from the system. It is her feeling that they don’t care about families. She believes monetary issues based on a for profit adoption model are what matters in this case.

Admittedly, this is the story of a poor family with 10 children. The issue here is with the 4 youngest who are babies or toddlers. This age group of children is easy to place for adoption because there is more demand to adopt babies than a supply of such children.

Her feelings are such that she warns people thinking about becoming foster parents to just don’t. Do not be part of the problem. She warns that if you are, then you are participating in a corrupt system that intentionally tears families apart. Not to be deluded into thinking you will be one of the “good ones” who is going to change anything. The system doesn’t care about the foster parent and they have no power within it. The system will trample on a foster parent, just like it tramples on everyone else.

If there were no foster homes and child welfare agencies, then there would be billions of $$ available to create family supports for everything from abuse to addiction and everything in between. There would be no harm and resources would be plentifully available for struggling parents.

Need convincing monetary issues are involved in people becoming foster parents ?

Let’s suggest a realistic figure of $77/day/child for foster parents. $77 times 30 days = $2,121/month/kid. If there are 3 kids being fostered that is $6,363/month total. If the foster care lasts for a year then that is $76,356. And it isn’t unusual for a foster home to house as many as 6 kids for a year, netting these people $152,712 for that year. It is easy to see that providing foster care can be considered a good way to make one’s living. And this calculation doesn’t even begin to factor in the money the whole adoption industry makes providing children to hopeful adoptive parents.

The number of child welfare workers known to lie to kids and their parents, or withhold information from them, in the effort to prevent a reunification within the natural family, is appalling to those with direct knowledge. This is a system that needs to change but for which any change seems impossible to achieve.

An Inability to Relate

Actually . . . it isn’t that simple or easy in reality. Today, I read this –

I adopted my daughter at birth. She’s now 3. I wanted an open adoption, but I find it hard to connect with her mom. I had visions of a close relationship and it’s just not happening that way. It feels awkward and uncomfortable. I know she feels it too. She is about 10 years younger than me and we have nothing in common. By now I feel we should be in a better place. To be honest, it’s become something that I find myself avoiding more and more because it’s uncomfortable. I hate that I do that. I push off calling or texting. I am not sure what I’m feeling. I think a lot is guilt. I see how when they are together how perfectly they interact. My daughter loves her. I have been reading in here and trying to self reflect to make sure it’s not my fragility. I do genuinely love that they have a close connection, so I don’t think it’s jealousy.

What it is, is reality. What is happening is that real maternal bond that deep inside is never severed. As an adoptive mother, you will never have that same kind of connection. Yes, you can love a child. Yes, you can be grateful that your child is able to know the mother who gave birth to them.

You had a fantasy about having this “close relationship” and that is the reason it is “just not happening”. It was you fantasy and not an achievable reality. Your presence reminds this child’s mother that you and not she is with the child most of the time. Your deepest self is acknowledging the guilt you feel at having separated them by seeing how perfectly they naturally interact with one another.

So get real with why this feels so uncomfortable to you. Get over your own feelings. The well-being of this little girl should be the only deciding factor in your behavior going forward.

Post Adoption Depression

Yes, it is a thing. I believe it is partly caused by unrealistic expectations. Fantasy and reality have collided. The difference between those expectations and reality create a very real stress and may even lead to depression.

It is a crash in the “high” of adopting (basically the excitement is over), the dopamine is no longer being released. The sad fact is that the adoptive parent finds they still have the same emptiness troubling them that drove them to adopt to begin with.

Life had been a flurry of emotions during the adoption journey: hope, relief, frustration, waiting, excitement, and not to mention adding another person to one’s family. Not having the hormone fluctuations related to birth does not mean that the adoptive parent won’t have their own share of emotional fluctuation.

Of course, new parents of both genders have emotional reactions to 1) sleep deprivation 2) new roles and 3) reconfiguration of daily life, but having this is not the same as hormone induced postpartum depression that a delivering mother experiences.

So, with a newborn, sleep deprivation can certainly be a factor. If an older child was adopted, then the reality of a traumatized child may be very different than the idealistic vision hopeful adoptive parents expected.

An adoptive parent may even grieve for the child who is now in their own home, who they may love desperately, only to find that child dreams of his original mother coming back to reclaim him. An adoptive mother can never replace the original one.

So a couple does CHOOSE to adopt. If those circumstances turn out to be hard to live, like any biological parent, they need to deal directly with it. If it’s all NOT what the adoptive parents expected, they should seek help and learn to deal with the reality. That’s parenting and adoptive parents have signed up for it voluntarily.

Depression sucks regardless of what it’s caused by. Affected parents need to seek help, see a trauma informed therapist, seek out specific resources, get on anti depressants if necessary – but NEVER just throw away a child.

Reactive Attachment Disorder

I read this today –

So I have a story that those in adoption fantasy land will call an unpopular opinion.

Story time

So about 2 years ago, my adoptive mother handed me all the paperwork she had on my and my older sister’s adoption. This turned out to be the record of how I ended up with my adoptive family.

I found out that I had been in and out of foster care from 3 months old. I was placed with my adoptive family at 3 yrs and adopted at 5.

This led me to do some digging and sort through the trauma. I came across Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). After being in groups and researching for myself I found that it is primarily foster and adoptive children that have it (that was even pointed out in some articles).

So here is my unpopular opinion, children with RAD are really just hurting because you took their whole life away and now you think these should be happy with you. News flash, you’d have RAD too if your whole entire life was tossed aside like trash and you were told to be grateful. These kids don’t know how to process what is happening, teach them how to process these big emotions in a healthy way, don’t assume they think you saved them (sorry – they will never see it that way).

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

NOTE – Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) is a condition in which an infant or young child does not form a secure, healthy emotional bond with his or her primary caretakers (parental figures). Children with RAD often have trouble managing their emotions. They struggle to form meaningful connections with other people.

Grief That Never Ends

Ferera Swan goes on to say –

Adoptees are often challenged to defend our perspectives on adoption, our very lived experiences invalidated by those who have never lived a day of adoption in their life. This very interaction is a reinforcement of our trauma, yet people wonder why so many adoptees come across as “angry”. Not only have we lost our mother, we’re now being challenged to explain all the mechanics of how it can possibly still affect us just as profoundly as adults—even when the research on maternal separation is crystal clear.

In general, the public tends to reduce this experience to mere “emotions or feelings” adoptees have about adoption, when a significant part of our trauma also involves what happens on a biological, neurological, and developmental level as a result of maternal separation. Just because most people can’t authentically fathom this kind of loss doesn’t mean our trauma isn’t real or valid.

Instead of attempting to compare our loss with other things—nothing compares to losing your mother—or listing all the reasons why you think we should be grateful (that’s not what grief has ever been about), please have the courage to listen to what we have to say.

She says in a comment –

You are absolutely welcome to share any of my public posts. I’m so sorry that your relatives have approached your trauma in such dismissive, harmful and hurtful ways. I can relate to severing ties with those who prefer our silence—we learn a lot about our relationships when we begin speaking our truths.

A commentor had said –

It will be interesting to see how many of my relatives respond with memes about gratitude and the importance of growing up and getting over things. Sometimes the responses are about unconditional love (which has been weaponized in my family). at least a few will pass it by without any comment, because pretending unpleasant things don’t exist is another favorite tactic. Maybe someone will pause to think. I have broken with a number of people in the last couple of years. I finally stopped being so afraid of rejection that I remained silent.

Finally, one commentor noted –

The laws of secrecy and lies that punish a child for the benefit of the adults is ridiculous when we become of age.

Adoptees are treated like second class citizens who have less human rights that most people take for granted. Time for a total change in how we care for vulnerable and at risk children. And mothers should receive full support to remain with their babies whenever possible.

You can keep up with Ferera Swan at her website – fereraswan.com/swanproject/heartbroken-infants

Questionable Motives

The problem with adoption agencies is their motive to promote their business. It is always about the money though they will market their services in emotional, heart wrenching ways.

Adoption IS giving your baby away and it is about the agency SELLING your baby to someone who has the financial resources to pay for that baby.

Instead of posting on social media that you are praying to God for this desperate young mother to CALL you and give HER baby to you, it would be more altruistic to pray for support so that this mom could successfully parent her child. People who work for adoption agencies think it is okay to pray to God for a mom’s downfall so that she will ultimately chose to relinquish her baby to THEM.

Sadly, both the people working for an adoption agency and prospective adoptive parents all too often USE religion to coerce vulnerable people into doing what is to the benefit of these motivated people.

If you are a believer, then here is the truth – God did choose parents for that baby which is fully within the Christian viewpoint. Here’s a relevant example for you – wasn’t Mary only 13 years old and unmarried when she conceived Jesus ? And possibly homeless ? I don’t remember the part where God sent an adoption agency over to make things “right” for her.

And if anyone ever wonders why an adoptee would turn away from Christianity, here are your examples. Adoption agency workers and prospective adoptive parents literally praying for the trauma and separation in a genetic family to fulfill their own selfish desires.

So Much To Worry About

We are ALL being forced to live through perhaps one of the most extraordinary times in our collective generations history. It will certainly be long remembered and remarked upon. We can not see clearly where all of this disruption will leave our country and the world, much less our families and our selves.

It is crucial that we learn to manage the anxiety. I had to recently make a point to my own husband that his anxiety was not healthy for me. That if I had a heart attack I could end up in the place where I really don’t want to be at this time (though truth be told, I never want to end up there for that reason).

It is a moral and social responsibility incumbent upon each of us to do our best to minimize our own role in and help to curtail the spread of this contagion. We are all having to make adjustments and modifications to the way we would prefer to be living. We are having to give up those things we like to do best in favor of not doing much of anything that we can’t do in our very own homes.

This can be a challenge for anyone with children in their home. It is best to be truthful in an age appropriate manner. I heard a young child at the grocery store yesterday ask their mother, “why can’t I touch things ?” It is definitely a teaching moment and where day care is necessary for those who must continue to work – good hygiene and distancing can even be taught to young children.

So, I want to say to you today – It’s OK to be worried. It’s normal and it isn’t an overreaction. If that is how you feel, it’s your feelings. Feelings can’t be wrong.

It has helped in our family to have a plan. I am the most likely to become infected because I am the supply officer for my family. We are fortunate that we have always lived this way (though there are a few more inconveniences and necessary actions that weren’t necessary before). We have a home-based business and our children have always been educated at home. We have less to adapt to and we also live in sparsely populated rural wilderness. Not always an advantage but at the moment, one we are grateful for.