DNA Matters

DNA Matters. If it didn’t non-adopted people wouldn’t do genealogy. We can’t pretend that it isn’t important. My adoptee mom had to quit working on a family tree at Ancestry based on the adoptive families of my two parents (both adoptees) because she couldn’t get over the knowledge that it wasn’t “real”. I am still committed to eventually getting the actual family trees for each of my parents into Ancestry and maybe on 23 and Me as well. I just haven’t found the time.

Today, in my all things adoption group I read – “An adoptive parent was asked why does she want biological children when she has two adopted kids. Her answer ? She wants a child that has a piece of her and her husband without any outside involvement. So, DNA DOES MATTER. It matters to all of us but many try to erase the DNA of adoptees and foster children. As if their DNA doesn’t matter and they should be grateful for it.”

My youngest son was sad when he realized that he doesn’t have any of my DNA. My donor conceived sons have contact with their donor at 23 and Me, if they wish to pursue contact. They have met her on several occasions but she lives far away and we don’t make long trips of several weeks duration out west currently. Yet, I knew DNA did matter and getting their DNA tested (both boys and their father) gave us an opportunity to explain why they were conceived the way they were.

Because they gestated in my womb and have been with me most of their lives pretty much 24/7, there is a strong bond between us. I also breastfed each of them for just over a year. My husband puts slide shows of our photos of our boys on his computer. I get lost in watching and remembering what it was like to have babies in my life again after so many years. My husband and I were married for 10 years before we started trying to conceive. I had my biological, genetic daughter when I was 19 and she has given me two grandchildren. My sons add a richness to our lives (myself and my husband) that I do cherish. I love it when they interact with me from a love that we have developed over decades. Even so, I know that DNA matters.

Our DNA can also tell us about the much more recent past. If we concentrate on the most recent bits of our DNA family trees, we can learn about the history of our modern human ancestors—when, where, and with whom ordinary people lived or moved about. I learned a lot about my own origins from Ancestry and being able to track a lot of details about my parents’ relatives. If you are not an identical twin, your DNA is unique. This means that no one else in the world has the same DNA sequence as you. Because your DNA is unique, your physical appearance, or phenotype, is also unique.

Your genes play an important role in your health, but so do your behaviors and environment, such as what you eat and how physically active you are. Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence. Your epigenetics change as you age, both as part of normal development and aging and in response to your behaviors and environment.

The Brain Has Been Rewired

Adoption trauma and ADHD can look similar or be co-existent. The explanation below comes from a trauma mitigation researcher was found helpful by some – “the brain has been rewired.”

Trauma (particularly neglect) can look close to “level 1” autism or ADHD/ADD. Their neural pathways are altered similarly, which is why the symptoms are similar. “Born” that way or chemically/head trauma caused (functioning altered from brain damage in childhood) and epigenetic/after birth alteration caused neurodiversity have slight specifics but ultimately the cause doesn’t matter in the “now”.

ADHD/ADD medication could help, even if they are only experiencing trauma responses that are causing those symptoms.

The difference tends to be that people with trauma have higher levels of BDNF – or a neuronal growth factor – and that gives them higher plasticity to regrow pathways. Medication does not reduce the BDNF level or neuroplasticity, in fact it can sometimes increase it further aiding in the process. The brain has been recently changed, instead of always being that way. So things like typical therapy (hypothetically) can rewire their brains, unlike people with “born” neurodiversity (and toxically caused/physically caused neurodiversity as brain damage that is typically permanent). People with born neurodiversity can “rewire” in their own ways but the traumatic stress from doing so, is a whole different thing. No matter the cause medication is a good choice.

More than one adoptee said things like – I do actually have ADHD and I wish I had been medicated for it as a child. I eventually turned to self-medication to try and function which developed into a full blow substance use disorder, which is not an uncommon outcome for children with untreated ADHD. Living with ADHD in a world that thinks you’re just lazy and chaotic is it’s own form of trauma. Not being able to stop yourself from acting in ways you don’t want to act is kind of terrifying, or it was for me as a child.

Another one – I wish I had been medicated as a child. I have severe ADHD (whether it’s trauma I couldn’t tell you). I was denied the medication that would have made school easier for me and the accommodations I deserved and needed to thrive. By the time I got to a four year university, I was so behind there was no chance.

And this – ADHD meds (Adderall) helped me concentrate. But I also have a diagnosis of ADHD on top of adoption trauma and CPTSD. I didn’t experience a downside aside from a bit of a crash, until I switched to extended release. A computer test at an ADHD treatment center that tested listening and reaction times helped tease out that I actually have ADHD.

And another – I didn’t figure out my ADHD / Neurodivergence until I had a toddler with traits much like my own, minus the adoption / trauma background. Turns out I’m a combo of both adoption trauma + ADHD. I recently figured out I’m also autistic. It’s quite possible many adoptees are Neurodivergent, on top of the trauma. So much of it is genetic — and who’s more likely to have an unplanned moment?? ADHD people. Meds were life changing for me. They’re short lived in the system, so if they’re not good for you, you can stop them and try something different.

Also from another adoptee – I read research recently that says adoptees are 2 to 3 times more likely to have ADHD or ASD. It fits with the damage done by maternal separation and forcing a child to pretend that strangers are their parents, when they know they’re not.

More – I have ADHD and my meds make my life significantly better I am calmer and can focus. Or this – I wish I’d been diagnosed as a child, I think a lot of us 80s and 90s babies got missed and labeled as difficult. My adoptive parents still tell me what an awful teenager I was. It is hard to say really, what was adoption trauma, ADHD, ASD or just being a teenager.

A different suggestion was this – I recommend trying the Safe and Sound Protocol before medication because it helps reset the nervous system and then, you can find out what was wired due to trauma/PTSD and what is chemical imbalances. I was over medicated for everything and it made me worse but no one realized it. The SSP is a music frequency that is designed to stimulate the vagus nerve which is in charge of your autonomic nervous system. It should be used for kids & adults with ADHD, those on the spectrum and PTSD etc! It can be LIFE CHANGING!

I found this from Janae Elisabeth, the Trauma Geek, on Medium – LINK>A Neurodivergent Review of the Safe and Sound Protocol. She writes – The original recommendation was for trauma survivors to listen to one hour of this filtered music each day for 5 days. That recommendation has been amended, as this pacing has been found to be too fast for many people. The current recommendation is to try 10–15 minute segments, and to take breaks between listening days. Even this pace can be too much for some people’s nervous system. For some people, a good pace involves listening to as little as 30 seconds of the protocol at a time. For other people, this tool may just not be a good fit in any format.

Childhood Disrupted

Short on time with a crazy week but I saw this book recommended in an all things adoption group thread and so I went looking. LINK> Aces Too High is a website related to Adverse Childhood Experiences often abbreviated simply to ACE. There is a review there which I am using to quickly dash out today’s blog.

This book explains how the problems that you’ve been grappling with in your adult life have their roots in childhood events that you probably didn’t even consider had any bearing on what you’re dealing with now. Childhood trauma is very common — two-thirds of us have experienced at least one type — and how that can lead to adult onset of chronic disease, mental illness, violence and being a victim of violence. It also showed that the more types of trauma you experience, the greater the risk of alcoholism, heart disease, cancer, suicide, etc.

Donna Jackson Nakazawa is a science journalist specializing in the intersection of neurobiology, immunology and the inner workings of the human heart. She says, “If you put enough stress on the immune system, there can be that last drop of water that it can’t hold, causing the barrel to spill over, and havoc ensues. What causes the immune system to be overwhelmed is different for every person – including infections, stress, toxins, a poor diet.”

She goes on to note – People who have experienced childhood adversity undergo an epigenetic shift in childhood, meaning that their stress-response genes are altered by those experiences, and that results in a high stress level for life. Stress promotes inflammation. These experiences are tied to depression, autoimmune disease, heart disease, and cancer during adulthood. She says, “. . . no other area of medicine would we ignore such a strong genetic link to disease.”

She has much more to say and I do encourage you to read her interview at the link. My apologies for not having more time today.

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.

Epigenetics and Abandonment Issues

An adult adopted woman wrote – My biological daughter is 30, married with 1 child and she is struggling so much with similarities to abandonment issues that I had all my life. Her self esteem is very low, she does not feel she’s worthy of her husband, sees him as being the better person as a father and in their relationship a better husband than she is a wife. I see her trying to sabotage her relationship which reminds me of myself doing the same because I always thought people would leave me because I’m not good enough. I had to leave them first (I find this remark interesting because I am the child of 2 adoptees and I have always been the one to leave a romantic relationship) or make them leave me to prove my point to myself. She has no abandonment experiences. She’s always been loved and cherished by her father and I. I am thinking it’s epigenetics like you’ve talked about.

Our children and grandchildren are shaped by the genes they inherit from us, but new research is revealing that experiences of hardship or violence can leave their mark too. Unlike most inherited conditions, this was not caused by mutations to the genetic code itself. Instead, the researchers were investigating a much more obscure type of inheritance: how events in someone’s lifetime can change the way their DNA is expressed, and how that change can be passed on to the next generation.

This is the process of epigenetics, where the readability, or expression, of genes is modified without changing the DNA code itself. Tiny chemical tags are added to or removed from our DNA in response to changes in the environment in which we are living. These tags turn genes on or off, offering a way of adapting to changing conditions without inflicting a more permanent shift in our genomes.

If these epigenetic changes acquired during life can indeed also be passed on to later generations, the implications would be huge. Your experiences during your lifetime – particularly traumatic ones – would have a very real impact on your family for generations to come. There are a growing number of studies that support the idea that the effects of trauma can reverberate down the generations through epigenetics.

A lot of epigenetic research requires a proof by elimination and looking at what may be the most consistent explanation. Many of the times when trauma is thought to have echoed down the generations via epigenetics in humans are linked to the darkest moments in the ancestor’s personal history. The idea that the effect of a traumatic experience might be passed from a parent to their offspring is still regarded as controversial by many people.

The consequences of passing down the effects of trauma are huge, even if they are subtly altered between generations. It would change the way we view how our lives in the context of our parents’ experience, influencing our physiology and even our mental health. Knowing that the consequences of our own actions and experiences now could affect the lives of our children – even long before they might be conceived – could put a very different spin on how we choose to live. Despite picking up these echoes of trauma down the generations, there is a big stumbling block with research into epigenetic inheritance: no one is sure how it happens.

A recent paper has revealed strong evidence that RNA (rather than DNA) may play a role in how the effects of trauma can be inherited. Researchers examined how trauma early in life could be passed on by taking mouse pups away from their mothers right after birth. The model is quite unique. It mimics the effects on dislocated families, or the abuse, neglect and emotional damage that you sometimes see in people. Different lengths of RNA molecules were linked to different behavioral patterns: smaller RNA molecules were linked to showing signs of despair.

The science of epigenetic inheritance of the effects of trauma is still in its early stages. It is suggested that if humans inherit trauma in similar ways to the mammal experiments, the effect on our DNA could be undone using techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy. That there is a malleability to the system. Healing the effects of trauma in our lifetimes could put a stop to it echoing further down the generations.

More about the research and results are described in this article – Can the legacy of trauma be passed down the generations?

What If ?

Sunday contemplative question –

What if, in order to adopt, you were the ones who had to join the child’s family of origin instead of vice versa. Would you still do it? If in order to “build your family” you’d have to lose your first one, would you still do it? If there was a good chance, if it was probable you’d never see your current family again, would you still do it? If you had to join a family with different customs, nationality, country, ethnicity, color… Would you still do it?

Many might argue that babies are too young and mentally undeveloped to remember their families. A baby does spend 9 months intimately involved with their mother. I recently read that oral memory traditions are from female biology, an epigenetic transgenerational process embedded with tacit knowledge, knowing without being taught.

When A Mother Doesn’t Want Her Child

Today’s adoptee story (not my own story) – Being adopted is having all of your rights stripped from you the minute you take a breath and become declared a human. That was my case. I had what is called a closed adoption.

There are many reasons people put their child up for adoption. Some women are coerced. Some have their children stolen. Some women just don’t want their child. That was me.

My birth mother named me, wrote down all of the non-identifying information about herself, her parents, my birth father, and his parents, and walked away to a fresh new start.

She had the child. She didn’t abort it. Many would agree that makes her a born again saint.

This is where no one wants to admit that the child will probably have many problems. That child was just given your epigenetics. The feelings you had while pregnant are now part of who that child is.

As for my mother, we have to assume things because she never used her words because she would never meet me or speak to me. She made me a living abortion by never having any responsibility or accountability for her actions. I assume she felt shame, guilt, embarrassment, anger, anxiety, and depression.

When my sisters and cousins met me, everyone said how much I looked like my mother and acted like her.

My emotions were torn.

I had always wanted to look and act like my family. Now I do, and the woman that gave birth to me is also the cause of my trauma. I wanted to rip my DNA out of my body.

I had suffered from anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation for most of my life. I had been given Prozac and Zoloft when I was in my mid 20’s. They caused me extreme pain in the back of my head. I came off of them and took an overdose of muscle relaxers one night and ended up in a psych ward over the weekend.

When I met with the doctor, he told me the prescriptions would have killed me had I not stopped taking them. I was having a reaction because of my low blood pressure. I did see a psychologist a few times after that, but it wasn’t any help.

I spent many years thinking I was fine after that. I had also learned not to let anyone really know what I was thinking after that.

I was in what is known as the “fog.” I went on with my life. I worked a lot and drank. I thought if I just stayed ahead of what I felt, I was ok.

The pain from adoption is there, whether we admit it or not. You can see it in people’s eyes when you say you’re adopted. They get that I’m sorry look. With so many people aware of the trauma adoption causes, you would think it would change.

As for me, I am doing everything I can now, to fix my epigenetics from my mother.