Moving Forward

A woman writes – For as long as I can remember, my adoption has been a defining part of my life, shaping my identity and experiences. Over the last six months, I’ve been on an intense journey to uncover the truths hidden within my past.

It has been a time filled with pain, confusion, and a desperate need for answers. I’ve come face-to-face with the trauma that has been quietly influencing my life for years, and I’ve realized that some of the people closest to me—those who claim to have no trauma—are unwilling or unable to face the truth alongside me.

For the first time in my life, I’ve had the courage to stand up for myself, to ask the difficult questions that have been weighing on my heart. I’ve come to understand that if the people who say they love me can’t acknowledge or address this part of my life, I can’t let that hold me back.

My journey of healing and self-discovery isn’t dependent on anyone else. I’m moving forward, with or without them, and for the first time, I feel empowered in my decision.

And receives encouragement – It’s a hard journey, but learning our truths is so important. When I went through something similar, I started to feel like an adult and not a little girl. Here’s to the next chapter of your life. Including this from another one – It’s such an eye opener to see how much that experience defines one’s life, we start to identify with it. Sounds like you’ve reached a point of much needed clarity. You deserve truth, kindness and understanding. We wish you the best in this next journey of your life! And this from another – Getting to this point is not for the fainthearted. It takes so much strength and pain and reflection and honesty huge amount of bravery.

I really liked this analogy – life is like you are on an elevator. And there are a group of people on that elevator car with you. Sometimes you stop and a few people get off and others get on. Along the way those who get off may get back on again… or they may not depending on so many factors. It’s ok if people who were on that elevator car get off. Sometimes they need to for you to continue on your way. Sending strength.

A Warning About Delay – Some wait for so long to look for some information and/or answers, that they are no longer obtainable. These wish they had done it sooner.

Usually No Support

Today’s story from a Natural mom, in reunion –

I saw my therapist this morning and he keeps saying I need to forgive myself. I just don’t know how. I placed my son when he was 5 months old and I was 17. I now know that I had extreme post-partum depression and a shitty support system. He (26 now) says that his adoptive parents were great, but he was so angry and rebellious as a kid. I just have so many regrets. His adoptive parents gave him my contact info when he turned 18. We saw each other and talked a lot for several years, but now he is married and his wife thinks I’m a horrible person, so I rarely talk to him now and haven’t seen him in 4 years. I also have 4 daughters that I raised. I’m looking for advice and practical ways to truly learn how to forgive myself. The pain is still so overwhelming sometimes.

blogger’s note – I actually replied on this one – It can be hard. While my situation is not the same, I continue to struggle with feelings that I did not do “right” by my daughter. Though never my intention (I left her with her paternal grandmother for temporary care while I tried to earn some financial support for us by driving an 18-wheel truck cross-country with a partner), her dad ended up with her and he remarried a woman with a daughter and they had a daughter together. I thought this was giving her the kind of home I could not. I only learned recently (she just turn 50 yesterday) that life in that family was not as good as I had thought – mostly because of her dad (like, yeah, I guess I should have known having been married to the man). Anyway, though we do have a good relationship, I continue to struggle with the feelings I have about it all. Yes, I did the best I could at the time and it had unintended consequences. Keep working on your “reasons” and “feelings”. Understanding changes over time but we can never regain all that we lost.

One adoptee writes – I’m so sorry for all you’ve been through. Coming from the opposite perspective, I WISH my natural mother was like you and wanted contact with me and cared enough to try. You can’t change the past, only the present and the future, so you must focus on those. Keep working on your relationship with him, I guarantee it matters to him. As much as I begrudge my natural mother for rejecting me twice, I would never wish her to feel guilt all her life. You are worthy and deserving of peace.

Another commenter wrote – When looking back at our decisions, we come to judge ourselves very harshly based on what we know after the fact. But this isn’t fair. All you had at the time was your depressed brain and other influences telling you that you couldn’t care for him. You had deep love and care for him all along with no way to properly give it. I am so sorry for that. But you should forgive yourself in order to move forward. It might feel like it’s too late but it’s not. His wife doesn’t want him to feel pain, but if you keep up a healthy and consistent relationship, I think she will come around. Wishing you the best.

From another natural mother – I completely get this. When I feel especially shitty about what happened, I try to remind myself I was a young teenager and I didn’t know what I know now. But it honestly doesn’t help much. I try to forgive myself. I know intellectually that I had no outside support and didn’t feel I had a choice. I still feel shitty. I read what adoptees say here, and I’m so sorry that my son has to live this life that he had no choice in. I feel extremely guilty and regretful.

From a father who is also an adoptee – Write a forgiveness letter to your younger self. Get it out on paper that you did the best you could under the circumstances. Take the letter and burn it as a symbol of letting go. Carrying the guilt, grief and possibly shame isn’t helping you or anyone. I am also a reunited absentee father from my son. We have a connection but it takes work.

I loved this perspective – I’m also working on loving myself and forgiving myself with my therapist. It sounds weird, but the biggest mindshift that’s actually worked for me is viewing my past actions as if they were of a close friend instead of my own. And in a way, you’ve grown and changed so much, you truly are a different person from past you. So anyway, if you’re anything like me (or most people, from what my therapist says), then you say things to yourself that you would NEVER say to a friend. It takes work to think that way, and I have to stop myself mid-thought sometimes, but I really think it’s starting to help. Sometimes I’ll even imagine what I would say to my best friend if she were coming to me with the same concerns I have about my own past.

Another shares her own mantra – “We are all doing the best we can with what we have.” This does not excuse us from committing to the hard work of doing better in the present and future, but it allows us to accept our past selves (and others!) as we were.

One person notes this truth – Adoption was promoted as a fantasy for the child. There was no public criticism if it. At 17, you were totally at the mercy of the adults around you. Don’t hold yourself responsible, when the industry was designed to prey on you. One adoptee notes – adoption is a societal failure, not the parents’ failure.

Abandonment is a Perception

Perception matters. As we go through our own “adult” stuff and often have to make hard choices, we are not always aware of how our children are perceiving what we had to do. My marriage at 19 ended in divorce after the birth of our daughter a few years later. Eventually, I then left my daughter with her paternal grandmother (about the age of 3), but she eventually ended up with her dad and a step-mother. I made attempts to stay in contact and reassure her always that it never was about her directly but my own problems. Fortunately, we are close today as adults raising children (my grandchildren and two sons I have now from a subsequent marriage who’s ages are close to that of my grandchildren). I have faced that as a child her perception was understandably about having been abandoned, even though it was never my intention to never to have her under my own roof again during her childhood.

Today, I read about a woman with somewhat similar concerns. She left her child’s father when her daughter was only a year and a half old. She gave her mother legal guardianship of her daughter as she was going through a really rough time in her life. It’s shameful and it’s tough to face these kinds of reality. Finally, this woman met someone with whom she has been able to create a whole and loving family with her daughter and a subsequent baby brother from her new relationship. This daughter is now 9 years old and there are understandably “issues”.

Her daughter has ADHD and a fiery personality. Also some mood and behavioral problems exasperated by her abandonment trauma. She tends to be self-centered (normal) and melodramatic (from me). She can be very mean and unforgiving at times. She easily gets stuck on feelings of being left out or forgotten, even while we’re actively spending time with her.

One response suggested – Behavior is communication. Give each other grace. You are not the choices you made.

Another offered a perspective which I find valid – She has emotions that she is shoving down because she does not know how to deal with them. A huge part of healing childhood trauma is to grieve the losses that caused the trauma. For her, it was not having you or her father in her life for those years. My suggestion is that you start working on grieving your losses, and be open and honest with her about it (age appropriately). Let her see that you are in denial, angry, bargaining, sad, and finally accepting of what happened. That will give her permission to explore those feelings that she has inside of herself. I would also suggest a trauma/grief informed counselor.

You were part of your daughter’s wounding, you can play a major part in her healing too. It all starts with the parent healing as an adult. Learning what triggers us, so we can be the calm, consistent adults that our kids need because our calm becomes their calm, our ability to regulate our emotions becomes their ability.

More than one recommended LINK> Trust Based Relational Intervention – which I have seen and mentioned before. TBRI is an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children. TBRI uses Empowering Principles to address physical needs, Connecting Principles for attachment needs, and Correcting Principles to disarm fear-based behaviors. While the intervention is based on years of attachment, sensory processing, and neuroscience research, the heartbeat of TBRI is connection.

Someone else suggested mediation. Sometimes a safe person who’s not her parent can help her better understand/hear what you may be trying to communicate (and vice versa). And her suggestion came from personal experience – “I’ve had mediations done with both my and my mother’s therapist, and each time seemed to help shed some light on new aspects of a topic being discussed with our respective therapists.”

And an acknowledgement that I also understand personally – The mere fact that you care so deeply, is absolutely everything. DO NOT ever give up on that. Parenting is so hard, even without the added guilt you carry. All you can do is wake up and do the best you can do for that day.

Finally this from someone who’s been there (and hits me in the guilt place for I have done this too) – I wish my mom had owned her hand in my trauma WITHOUT excuses or trying to push blame onto others. I wish she would have validated my experiences. I wish she would have created and protected a safe space for me to understand and unpack all of the feelings and thoughts I had, preferably with a therapist. I wish she would have spent time one on one with me doing things I cared about, getting to know me deeper. I wish she wouldn’t have told me how hard XYZ was for her, I didn’t care, it wasn’t a competition, I was the helpless child. Even if my mom’s choices were between bad and worse, she was an adult who had brought me with her to that point. I wanted a mom who wanted to BE my mom.

She added – Your bit you wrote about your daughter feeling left out or forgotten hit me like a ton of bricks. That feeling is something I am working on to this day. I felt so out of place with my mom, stepdad, and new baby brother. I knew I was forgettable and honestly with a new baby – replaceable. They felt like a whole little family and I was just the chump she had to come back and get so I could tag along. (blogger’s note – though I never was able to bring my daughter back into my own life fulltime – we did have visits – I did go on to have 2 sons who I have been raising. This caused me to consider how that might feel to her – even though she is an adult with children of her own.)

One more – Focus on being your best self today and in the future. That’s how you can make it up to them, they’re often incredibly wise about this stuff. This way of thinking encourages you to reach a point of acceptance and decide… everyone’s alive, healthy, and you can’t change the past. I think that’s what I would say to my own parents, just sin no more and I don’t want to dwell in the past. (Though there may be times when the wounds bubble back up.)

My own last insight – life is messy, complicated and sometimes very very difficult. We can only acknowledge where we have failed but instead of continually beating ourselves up over that – move forward with being the best person we have managed to be at this time.