The Fear Never Goes Away

Not the source of today’s story.

(Not my own story either) I just really need to put this weight down somewhere where those who read it will understand. I also hope expectant moms who are considering relinquishing their child might see this and consider yet another way their choice can impact their child.

I was adopted as an infant. My mother willingly and intentionally relinquished me. My adoptive family was overall loving and kind. I am (finally) in reunion with my first family. I have never had Div of Children’s and Family Services involved in my personal life, though I’ve witnessed it firsthand with friends. I say all of this to show that there is no “logical” reason for how I feel, and that it is directly related to adoption trauma —

I am always, every single day, on edge and terrified of anything that could separate my son from me. My son is safe and healthy and loved, I am in my mid 30s and safe and secure, and yet… there is always the fear of having him taken from me and given to someone else nagging in the back of my brain. All day every day. I carried that fear through my pregnancy, and now still carry it at almost 18 months postpartum. The idea of him being taken from me makes me feel panic and sick inside. It’s its own kind of terror.

This is adoption trauma, 35+ years down the road. Even in a “happy” adoption story.

Blogger’s note – I was always worried that some do-gooder would misinterpret my family dynamics and my children would be taken away. It is not an unreasonable fear these days. Fortunately, my sons are now old enough that it is no longer a fear. Anyone who has witnessed the system in action has reason to be afraid. Even those of us without such a history worry about it. Adoptees carry such fears because they were separated from their birth family (regardless of the circumstances) and that is totally understandable.

Family Secrets

Kerry Washington recently learned that her father, Earl Washington, is not her biological father. It’s news that sent her on her current journey of self-discovery. “It really turned my world upside down,” Washington tells LINK>People.

As she began to record an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” with Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., her father began experiencing panic attacks. Having held onto the secret for decades, Washington’s mom, Valerie, a professor, and dad, Earl, a real estate agent, had a private conversation with Gates, who told them it was always best for families to discuss such revelations privately prior to filming. What came next, says Washington, was a text message from her parents inviting her to a family sit-down in the spring of 2018.

“When I got this information, I was like, ‘Oh. I now know my story,'” says the star, who recalls feeling a sense of relief at the news after long feeling her parents were keeping things from her and that something was missing. “I didn’t know what my story was, but I was playing the supporting character in their story.”

Washington says she kept her calm and asked a lot of questions while trying to give her parents grace in what was clearly a difficult moment for them. She learned that they’d opted to use an anonymous sperm donor to help conceive after struggling with fertility issues and they didn’t know – and didn’t want to know – anything about the man except that he was healthy and Black. They admitted they had all but decided never to tell her.

“I think that dissonance of like, ‘Somebody is not telling me something about my body.’ made me feel like there was something in my body I had to fix,” she says of struggling for years with anxiety, self-esteem issues, and an eating disorder when she was young. She now feels those might have been symptoms of subconsciously sensing her parents’ secret.

“My parents were not thrilled about me writing this,” she notes, though the couple grew supportive throughout the process. But, says the star, “this really is a book about me. I now get to step into being the most important person in my life.” The experience ultimately added a new layer to Washington’s bond with her parents.

“I really started to have so much more love and compassion and understanding for my parents,” she says. “Taking this deep dive into our family history made me put myself in their shoes and think about the things that they’ve had to navigate and what they’ve been through and what they’ve sacrificed. And it really made me feel closer to them.”

“Writing a memoir is, by far, the most deeply personal project I have ever taken on,” Washington told People in January. “I hope that readers will receive it with open hearts and I pray that it offers new insights and perspectives, and invites people into deeper compassion — for themselves and others.”

Never Their Fault

Sometimes it hurts my caring heart so much to learn the stories of adoptees, especially the ones with clueless adoptive parents who never comprehend their own accountability in the mental health of their adopted child.

This morning I was reading a story about a man who was adopted as an infant and now as a grown man with wife and children is in long term residential treatment following his second suicide attempt. His adoptive parents accept no responsibility and prefer to blame his spouse for this man’s issues – unresolved trauma, low self-esteem, deep abandonment issues, anxious attachment, and other specific but undiagnosed mental health disorders which have included serial infidelity. The adoptive parents lied to him about his being adopted, lied about having his paperwork, lied about keeping it from him and made his biological reunion about their feelings of betrayal. Even so, his wife continues to love and support him and does her best to understand.

Another adoptee with similar adoptive parents notes – the adoptive parents insist that the adoption has nothing to do with anything, it’s all just the adoptee’s bad choices. Even when this one discovered their biological parents and that they had been coerced into surrendering their child to adoption (more common than people with no adoption in their background might believe), these kinds of adoptive parents will tell the adoptee that their biological parents didn’t want them. These kinds of adoptive parents have absolutely no idea how to take accountability. How to apologize. How to admit they weren’t perfect, and simply say sorry. They aren’t capable. Some adoptive parents were told that they never had to tell anybody about their own struggles with infertility. That it was acceptable to lie to their adoptee and the child would never know the truth to be troubled by it. It doesn’t work. Having been made aware of so many of these kinds of stories I am easily able to see the damage too often done.

There is a kind of therapy that can be helpful to some adoptees developed by Peggy Pace and known as Lifespan Integration Therapy. This kind of therapy is known to clear trauma memory and the defenses against early trauma throughout the body-mind the trauma even when the emotional memories are pre-verbal and is not explicitly remembered. This method has been used to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety and panic disorders, mood disorders, and eating disorders. It has also been used to heal Dissociative Identity Disorder bringing more coherence to fragmented self systems eventually resulting in a unified wholeness.

A powerful realization can improve one’s overall quality of life, even when one will never completely understand what was done to them. Releasing these memory experiences means no longer holding on to the stress, burdens and overwhelming sense of the wrong done and for which the person was not directly responsible. When one is no longer forced to constantly recall the unpleasant feelings that have caused shame, guilt and anger, choosing to release the core cause as a reality that cannot be changed. Choosing instead to recognize the wisdom contained within the experiences. This effort can allow a person to release any attachment to the feelings associated with what happened and know that it is something that can ever be totally changed. The only thing that can be changed is how one feels about it.

One cannot expect to bring something wonderful into their experience until they have the internal space. That space can be created, by releasing what can never serve them, which can then move the person into a happier future. This is not a denial of wrongs committed against them but a gentle kind of the acceptance of reality.

This Is Us

First, a disclaimer. We don’t watch commercial TV in my home and I’ve never watched this show. What I do know is that it attracts the attention of a lot of adoptees and former foster care adults. Clearly, from the image above there is also an issue of transracial adoption.

For anyone somehow connected to adoption or child welfare, such viewers are likely to watch this show through a different lens. There are pebbles of accuracy surrounding adoption, foster care and birth parent reunions in the series as it unfolds from week to week. It is well not to forget that this is still a dramatic television show, which is never able to give anyone a fully realistic picture of what it’s like to be adopted or reunited with your birth father. But it’s definitely been judged one of the closest mainstream shows to attempt this issues.

The show’s writers are judged to have done their research and consulted with adult adoptees with the hope of accurately portraying not only aspects of transracial adoption, but also search and reunion, identity and trauma.

The truth is that each adoptee has a unique perception, opinion and view of their adoption experience — and that those very perceptions, opinions and views may change on a yearly, daily and at times hourly basis! But overall, the “feeling” of adoption as portrayed in mainstream culture is usually one of goodness, happiness and “rainbows and unicorns.”

In “This is Us,” we are introduced to a different side — the trauma and loss side — of adoption and foster care. We feel the push/pull of how an adoptee struggles with their feelings toward their birth parents. The writers painfully convey the angst that Randall feels when he discovers his adoptive mother knew from the time he was an infant who his biological father was — yet kept it a secret.

We see young Randall in a grocery store asking random adults to curl their tongues because he has learned this trait is hereditary and wonders if any of them — because they are Black — might be related to him. As he battles with forming his identity, he also carries a little notebook where he documents his encounters with people of color. In current time, we see Randall deal with panic attacks and his need for perfection and control. He is paralyzed by his own fears and the unknown.

As an adult, Randall and his wife, Beth, decide to become foster parents. They begin fostering an older girl and the writers introduce trauma triggers of abuse as well as the child’s deep connection with her mother. We sense Randall’s internal battle between wanting to protect his foster daughter while at the same time empathizing with her mother and the struggles she has experienced.

This show is recommended for adoptive and foster parents, especially those parenting children of color. This show would be appropriate for teenagers to watch, but it does have adult storylines and content.