Shame

A question was posed to adoptees – Have you ever felt shame around the fact that you were adopted? I’m a first mother from the LINK>baby scoop era and had crippling shame around my pregnancy, but was surprised to hear adoptees sometimes have their own feelings of shame about being adopted.

Some responses –

One who was adopted as an infant into a trans-racial situation (adoptive parents and adopted child are different races) said simply – Yes. There are shameful, negative, or insecure feelings that can arise from being adopted.

Then this long response from a domestic infant adoptee – I think environment and language used surrounding adoption can push feelings in either direction. Complicated feelings surrounding it. I didn’t feel anything at first, it was all I knew.

I shared the fact that I was adopted openly when I was very young because I didn’t know it was something other kids didn’t know about. They’d ask me questions like “what’s it like to be adopted?” But I was well liked outside of my home and nobody teased me about it. I think if they had it may have added to what I felt later on.

As I got older and understood what it meant, combined with my adoptive mother’s constant need to express disapproval for women who’d “gotten themselves into that situation” (her words), I began to feel ashamed of it. Her go-to was “shame on you” if I did anything she thought was wrong. Shame was big in our house growing up. Shame of body, shame of what the neighbor’s might think…everything was shameful. (blogger’s comment – I do believe this happened to my adoptee mom. I know she felt body shamed. Interestingly, she ended up pregnant while still in high school. When I discovered there were only 7 months between my parents’ marriage and my birth, I held it against her myself. How dare she lecture me about morality. Some time later she shared how difficult it was for her and I dropped my resentments, understanding she was trying to spare me her own experiences.)

I had a strained relationship with her from early childhood, she lost interest in me once her biological son was born. As I got older I started to think for myself more and began to reject her and her ideals as they didn’t make sense to me. That she’d go out of her way to acquire me just to abuse and neglect me, and ALSO look down on the woman who’s heartache she benefited from, was abhorrent to me. I knew it was wrong, but didn’t quite have the vocabulary yet to express it. As a teen, her constant reminders that “you don’t want to end up like your birth mother” as an admonishment not to have sex before marriage pushed me even further from her.

I also had one grandparent and some aunt/uncles/cousins that did not view me as a “real” family member. Now that the adopters are deceased, I don’t hear from anyone at all, although I’ve made efforts to stay in touch. (blogger’s comment – since learning about my adoptee parents’ origins, I can’t think of my “adoptive” relations as my “real” family either – though I still love and appreciate their presence in my life. What a complicated mess we get thrown into by adoption.)

Then, this person added – I think some feelings are inherent, like loss, confusion, rejection, trauma, sadness etc. These are normal reactions to knowing you were given up/taken away/not knowing the circumstances of your adoption at all. (blogger’s comment – my own parents’ situations as well – they died still not knowing what I know now.) I think others are taught or amplified depending on a number of factors including the ones I experienced. A very good caregiver/parent can help a child process them in a healthy way, and help them develop productive coping mechanisms for them. A very bad caregiver/parent can exacerbate them.

Someone else corrected the word choice – the word wouldn’t be shame surrounding my adoption. It would be unworthy, undeserving, less than. But not as a hang your head feeling down about it like shame feels. More a matter of fact, that this is how it is and must be. I guess I view shame as a feeling like I had a choice. I won’t wear shame but the weight of unworthiness, undeserving and being less than in some circumstances/ relationships is the way it is.

Yet another explains – Everyone knows a perfectly good baby would never be given away, right? There must be something terribly, unspeakably, sickeningly wrong with me that my own mother didn’t want me, right? Spent a lifetime trying to cover up the depth of that shame. (blogger’s comment – I think my dad may have felt this. He didn’t want to search because he was afraid of opening up a “can of worms.”)

Then this from an adoptee in a “mixed” family (meaning the adoptive parents also had biological children of their own) – All of my friends knew I was adopted. My now 16 year old sister, has been taller than me since she was 7. She is my adopted parents’ biological daughter. They also have 4 biological sons, all are least 6ft tall. My biological brother and sister that did get adopted with me, we’re all way shorter than the rest. You could look at us and tell we’re not from the same people. We felt like we didn’t fit in. The “family clan” is all a bunch of giants. We never felt like a part of that. And we were treated differently, we felt as if our adopted parents sensed something was wrong with us, like our biological mother did. If she didn’t have a problem with us, then she would have quit drugs in a heartbeat – knowing that if she didn’t get help, she would lose us.. She lost 5 of the 6 of us. She was able to keep her youngest. Still don’t know why she didn’t love us enough but she switched her ENTIREEEE life around for our youngest brother. I only feel shame in the fact that I know she doesn’t care about the rest of us. She had a favorite and she only tried for him. She fought for him. She couldn’t lose him, like she easily lost the rest of us. Why? I don’t know. We were just kids. And I think we’re all pretty awesome. It’s my biological mom’s loss.

One who was adopted as an infant said – yes, I carried the shame of my biological mother for whom I was the product of her shame. I was adopted in 1951. (blogger’s comment – had I been given up for adoption when my high school teenage mother discovered she was pregnant with me, I would have been like this, had I known – maybe even if I didn’t – these emotions can be passed through to a fetus in the womb.)

She adds – I met her once, years later. I snuck into her hospital room. I happen to be working at the hospital and was told my biological mother was there. I had nurses watching out for the rest of the family because I didn’t want to start any trouble. I knew I was the shameful part of the family. My mother was in her ’80s and had dementia. She was happy to see me, yet she didn’t know who I was. She thanked me several times for coming to visit her. I comfort myself by saying – at some level she knew who I was. (blogger’s note – my sister gave her daughter up for adoption – under no small amount of coercion from our parents. We took her with us to visit my dad’s adoptive father. He was elderly and at the end of his life. We didn’t try to explain her to him but had a distinct feeling that somehow he knew.)

She then added this – I think the trauma comes from the birth and then losing your mother. The baby must feel terrified. Babies have no words and adults have no conscious memory of being born, so as the baby grows she can’t express what she feels, even to herself. YOU can express and process your trauma. WE as adoptees will never be able to do that. We as adoptees un-knowingly pass that to our children in several ways including our DNA. Probably similar to the way birds pass on the fear of fire to their offsprings. I think the mother who gives up her child has an advantage that the child she gave up never gets.

This one describes coming out of the fog (the positive narratives the adoption industry puts out) – Yes, I definitely felt ashamed that I’m adopted. I was told when I was 11, I got the “you were chosen” talk, along with a bit of badmouthing about my biological mom, and that was it. My adoption’s been always a huge taboo within my adoptive family. In retrospect, I think that I internalized my adoptive mother’s shame (of me not being her biological child, due to infertility). Only my adoptive family, my biological family, and 1 or 2 friends of mine knew. Random strangers and acquaintances used to comment “it’s obvious, you guys are mother & daughter”. I always hated it, while my adoptive mother loved it, of course.

Since I came out of the “fog” two years ago, I finally found my voice, and I can’t help to constantly talk about my adoption. Guess it’s some sort of trauma response/coming out of the “fog”/healing thing. I lost a good friend because of this. Guess, she only wants to listen to rainbows & unicorns stories. Anyway. Being ghosted, abandoned, etc. triggers a different kind of shame. The shame most adoptees know all to well: not being good enough, not being worthy of existence, etc.

The mom who posted the question responded – We each have our stories that we tell ourselves. In my case I was convinced my daughter would be happier than I was growing up because she’d been chosen/wanted whereas I was one more unwanted/unplanned kid for parents who didn’t enough patience or resources to do a loving job of it. I thought my daughter would be well-off and have everything she wanted. And she did, as far as material things, but as you and others have taught me, nothing can take the place of your mother. One of my daughters, who I raised, told me she’d say to her half sister, if they ever connect, “That I got you (me, her mom) and you didn’t”. That really hit home. It’s too late now, my first daughter is in her fifties and unable to walk that road. It doesn’t matter how much I want her. (blogger’s comment – this seems to be a common perspective among some adoptees, who know their genetic/biological mother went on to have children that she did keep. It adds to those feelings of somehow being not good enough.)

Then this one – I never did, but my adoptive parents told me from the start the story of my adoption, so it was just something I always knew. I knew it wasn’t because of anything I did or didn’t do and I never really felt “abandoned”. There were a few times growing up where I felt different than my peers, but it was few and far between.

I know there is a lot of pressure on adoptees to be grateful and just fit the happy rainbows and sunshine narrative that a lot of people think adoption is. While I am grateful and love my adoptive parents dearly, and don’t even feel a particularly strong connection to my birth mother, I am just now acknowledging the fact that adoption is inherently traumatic. I am in my 30’s. The agency I was placed with is highly reputable and one of the best in the country. My adoptive parents were told I would have resources. if I ever needed them growing up. That turned out to be untrue.

I know this blog is long but I do think it is important to understand the mental/emotional impact of having been adopted on the adopted person themselves. So one final comment – Not only internalized shame, also we are shamed by others. Children can be particularly cruel, and I can still feel the burning sting of shame when hearing things said by my school mates taunting: calling me ‘second hand’ and “no wonder my family didn’t want me.’. Sadly, both are factually correct.

Intentionally Creating an Adoptee

So the topic came up about how a birth mother loses her baby – intentionally surrendering the baby at the hospital to pre-selected adoptive parents who are hovering there through labor, delivery and immediately after the birth – or because the baby has been taken away by child protective services.

The topic first came up from a woman who falls in the latter category and feels despised by just about everyone as a despicable failure.

In this adoption group I belong to, I’ve come to know that the predominant opinion is that adoption in general is a bad thing. That young mothers are convinced by parents, religious authorities and society in general that they are incapable of parenting a baby they have conceived and carried to term. This has created a hugely profitable industry supporting the separating of a baby from its original mother and handing it over to a couple that can afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of calling the original mother’s baby her own.

So the first response, to the sad feelings of the mom who lost her baby due to the intervention of child protective services, comes from an adoptee thus –

I’m way more judgmental of women that carry children to full term knowing that they have no intention of parenting. Like the minute they have the baby it goes to the adoptive parents without a blink. In my mind…they are purposefully creating an Adoptee. I find that despicable. (This is of course a very broad statement that does not apply to every single one.) Mother’s that lose their children to the system did not plan on creating an Adoptee. They had every intention of raising their children. Then something happened between the time of birth and the time of separation. Regardless of the reason for removal…it was never their intention for their children to be parented by strangers. (Again…a very broad statement that does not apply to every case).

Another woman, a mom who lost her child writes –

There’s a stigma that if your rights have been terminated through the system then as a mom, it puts a red X on us. Here’s just a few examples of things that have been said to me – “You obviously didn’t try hard enough.” “If it was my kid, I’d fight til the death.” “You must have done something just really terrible.” A lot of people in society, especially adoptive parents only see a different side of the system. They don’t see how people get there or the months of fighting for your child just to be fought at every turn. It seems as though everything is weaponized against you, not just during, but for years afterwards.

Yet another mother who lost her child adds –

Watching somebody else raise our kids is always hard. Watching somebody who was deemed “better than us” do it is harder. And when that person is abusing them while the child you were PERMITTED to raise is thriving (for the most part) is harder. As mothers of welfare loss, we have to live with the fact our children are in a system known for its abuses. I’m lucky to have contact with mine.

The problem is that society is conditioned to believe that Child Protective Services is infallible and only takes kids when something is severely wrong and their parents give up, correcting that narrative is very hard. Realize just how broken the system is. Most of the time these women forcefully lose their children only due to poverty.

And finally, this perspective from a woman who once wanted to adopt –

Society as a whole has to make these first moms villains to feel better about the systems. Infant adoption is justified by calling birth moms brave, selfless, any other positive attribute you can think of. But since mother’s who lose their children to welfare didn’t just willingly hand over their kids to some family who wanted their kid so badly they are neither of those things. A narrative that these mothers have done horrible things to their children is pushed to continue to justify removal. Until you meet them, join Facebook groups, or otherwise learn the truth you are often under the impression that they simply aren’t safe. In short, they’re “bad” because they “didn’t want the best for their children,” whereas mothers who place are saints.

So, it is true that there’s a huge stigma if a parent lost their child to the foster care system. That parent is judged as having been terrible. People think they didn’t deserve their own kids. That the parent must have harmed them. Termination of Parental Rights and Adoption is justified by demonizing people. Society as a whole doesn’t see anything they don’t want to see. They aren’t willing to see the poverty, lack of resources or that these parents are pushing mightily against a system that’s determined to take their children, often supplying strangers with financial stipends, rather than trying to help the parent achieve their potential with financial support, therapy and basic living resources.

When There Is Another Mother

Cinderella and her Step Mother

Step-mothers have an enduring place in the societal imagination and like natural mothers they come in all types from loving and kind to cruel and indifferent.

I often relate to original mothers who have lost a child to adoption. In my case, I lost custody unofficially to my husband when he remarried a woman with a child and they proceeded to have another child. Because my daughter grew up for the most part away from me, I suffered every bit as much as any mother who has lost awareness of her child’s day to day life. I am grateful that I continue to have my daughter’s presence in my life though it is mostly at a distance and that for the most part our relationship is a good one with no more than the usual number of bumps along the road of our life’s path and unfolding.

When I was on a path of discovering who my original grandparents were, a big breakthrough was learning that my dad’s unwed mother had subsequently married and what her married name was. I learned that thanks to finding a copy of a will on Ancestry.com that was her step-mothers. It was clear between the lines that there was some kind of rupture in the relationship of the step-mother with her husband’s children by a previous wife who died when my grandmother was only 3 mos old.

When I discovered a cousin with the same grandmother thanks to 23 and Me DNA testing, she told me stories she had heard about my grandmother’s life with her step-mother. How the step-mother would tie her to a tree in a lightning storm either to scare my grandmother into being compliant or in the hope the tree would get struck and eliminate the life of my grandmother. Who can know now? But it was traumatic for my grandmother. Also that her step-mother put her to work in a rayon mill, barely a teen, in Asheville N Carolina when they migrated there from Oyster Bay Long Island. Her step-mother would take the money she earned to assist the family’s financial support and while that is not unusual in itself for a family in poverty, it was still yet another area of conflict between them. So my grandmother “divorced” her family in effect by refusing to return to N Carolina and instead stayed in La Jolla California with her aunt. It was there that she met the father of my dad.

I was reading this morning about step-parent groups are as mean and nasty to original parents as some foster/adoptive parent groups. I suppose it is a type of insecurity that would drive someone to bash the child’s original parent, want to erase the child’s original parents and want the child to replace those with the step, foster or adoptive parent by insisting the child call them mom or dad. My daughter tells me that her step-mother always insisted my daughter maintain a relationship with me. I can only guess regarding some of the less than happy thoughts my daughter may have had about me from time to time but as I said, I am thankful for the relationship I still have with my daughter. Her step-mother died some years ago. My daughter still honors her memory. At the same time, I feel less competition, if that is the proper word for it. I have tried to heal my own wounds around the situation.

One step-mother admitted that she hates it when her step child calls her by her given name. She has to explain to other people hearing that, why her step daughter doesn’t call her mom and is personally embarrassed. She thinks it’s disrespectful of her step daughter because this step-mother accepted her step daughter as her own child. She considers her step daughter her daughter. I think the most hurtful thing that ever reached my own ears related to my daughter’s step-mother is that she told my daughter that I gave birth to her so that the step-mother could have her instead. Not an exact quote but close enough.

Regarding these online groups, one woman said of the mommy groups and step parent groups that they can be awful. The entitlement. The control issues. When you marry someone with kids, the kids have parents already. You’re accepting the ex and the child or children. It is very important to never bash the ex partner who is also the child’s parent or have unrealistic expectations about how your step-child relates to you. You came into the child’s life uninvited.

Much the same applies to adoptive and foster parents as relates to a child’s original parents. Many wounds come from this negativity in an effort to build up one’s own ego.

A Different Story

Maybe you are here to be uncomfortable and dig deeper. When you find yourself uncomfortable, that is a sign you need to consider what I share here more realistically. Triggers tell us where our issues are.

The fact that society has crafted adoption as this great, positive, wonderful thing for everyone adopted as well as those who adopt is the very core of my concern with adoption. It’s the very reason adoptees can’t speak freely in general society without being dubbed ungrateful or hateful or negative. It’s the very reason expecting moms feel unworthy to parent their own child.

Adoption isn’t negative or positive. It’s complex. It’s not simple at all. How someone feels at 5 may not be how they feel at 13 or 30. It is not wrong to fight to change the narrative as I seek to do here everyday

It is not wrong to want those that cannot be raised by their parents to have the tools and the right to understand how adoption works, what it means for them now and in the future.

There is no shortage of places you can go to hear how great adoption is. I am here to be as real about adoption as I have developed the ability to understand something that is rampant in my family’s life even though not as directly my own experience as others in my family. Even so, I wasn’t able to raise my own daughter and she grew into an adult guided by others and with no small amount of shame and guilt in my own self to deal with for not being a “better” mother to her.

If you want a space where adoptees will tell you how wonderful their adoption was and how grateful they are because that feels really validating to you – then there are other places that will do that for you. Don’t expect to find much of that here.

Adoptees can have a loving and caring adoptive family and still not believe adoption is the answer. No one’s story is identical to another’s. I try not to say that here. I certainly don’t expect a one size fits all explanation of all things adoption. In fact, that is why I can always find something new to write about this topic every day. Each adoptee and/or former foster care youth will have a different viewpoint about their own story. This is as it should be. I certainly know this. There are a variety of “stories” and a variety of “outcomes” among my own family members who have been impacted by adoption. Bottom line – there is no single story.

With my own blog I seek to educate my readers on the harder parts of adoption, not the rainbow and unicorn fantasy parts (even if those are actually mostly true for the one experiencing it as such). You can find plenty of happily ever after stories related to adoption if you only go looking for them. My own daughter said to me once – you seem to be on a mission – and I didn’t deny that. After over 6 decades in the dark about something so immediate and personal as adoption is in my own family, I came out of what is often referred to as the fog. It is the concepts and beliefs that society puts out there about adoption.

Being uncomfortable isn’t bad thing. That includes adoptees too. If you never allow yourself to be uncomfortable, you miss learning about a larger reality. Pushing through discomfort and emotional reactions can yield any one of us so much personal growth and character development.