Inherited Adoption Trauma

~ Miley Cyrus ~

In an apparent case of inherited adoption trauma, Miley Cyrus shared that her mom was adopted. She believes that she inherited some of the feelings her mom had (I can believe that since my mom was also adopted). The feelings of abandonment are real. An adoptee, and at times this includes their children, has a need to prove that they are worthwhile and valuable.

Miley also shared that her dad’s parents divorced when he was 3 (same thing happened to my daughter – her dad and I divorced when she was that age). In Miley’s case, she says that her dad raised himself.

She goes on to share that she did a lot of family history research and found there a lot of addiction and mental health challenges. This was her effort to answer the question – “Why am I the way that I am?”

She firmly believes and I agree – that by deeply understanding the past, we understand our present and create a better future from that awareness.

Miley said – “It’s really hard because especially being young, there’s that stigma of ‘you’re no fun.’ It’s like, ‘honey, you can call me a lot of things, but I know that I’m fun.’ The thing that I love about it is waking up 100%, 100% of the time. I don’t want to wake up feeling groggy. I want to wake up feeling ready.”

Miley Cyrus has now been sober for 6 months.

It’s Not The Same

From personal experience, I believe the biology matters more than the genetics. The bonding that occurs when a baby grows in the mother’s womb, is kept close to her after emerging in birth and nurses at her breast for an extended number of months. The love I experienced at the moment of each of my three children’s birth was instantaneous and overwhelming. Unmistakable.

Certainly, children are usually easy to love. The innocence and purity of their new lives unsullied by the travails of life’s circumstances.

An adopted child is never really “yours”. That is a mistaken concept. An adopted child is one you care for and in the best circumstances care for equally as you would care for a child that issued forth from your body but what is lost is not replaceable.

You may not love your adopted child “less” than biological children if these are also present in your home but the quality of love is different, it is not the same.

Most adoptive parents are afraid to admit this truth because they’re afraid people will judge them and think it means they love their adoptive kids less. Deep down they know it’s not the same at all. They are lying to themselves to keep up the farce. It will never be the same love. It can’t be. And they can’t deal with admitting that.

Love ebbs and flows in all loving relationships, even between parents and biological children. You never stop loving your children. My mom struggled with the challenges of my youngest sister all their lives. My sister believed, even after our mom had died, that our mom hated her. I know that is not the truth. However, from my perspective on the outside witnessing, my mom didn’t accept my sister was the way she is. My mom was always trying to make her what my mom would have preferred her to be like. That was the source of the tension and conflict between them. But love – I definitely know my mom did not stop loving my sister.

The connection between a biological mother and the child she gestates is different than adopting a child who’s life began elsewhere. In truth, it has nothing to do with loving them or not. It has everything to do with hormones and biology.

So, biology does matter. It doesn’t mean an adoptive parent will treat their adopted children differently, or love them less but it’s not the same because biology does matter. You will never have the same relationship with your adopted children, that you have with your biological children. That’s the effect that biology has. The bond is special and it simply can’t be recreated through adoption.

How Grief Passes Down the Family Line

A dear friend pointed out that I don’t seem to believe I have the right to be a mother. The circumstances of my life have done this to me. The tears come. She was quite perceptive.

She noted that on a photo of my daughter and her family (children and husband) I wrote – that I could take no credit for the wonderful person she is because I didn’t raise her after the age of 3. My friend noted – When men take your children away they really do a number on women.

This is sadly true and it has happened to me with ALL of my children in one way or another. So, my ex-husband ended up raising my daughter when my own desperation to financially support us led me to try driving an 18-wheel truck to make some decent money because he simply refused to pay any child support and I wasn’t going to spend my life in court fighting against him.

Truth be told, I never intended for him to raise her. I left her with her paternal grandmother for temporary care that I had no idea how long that would be needed. The grandmother could be forgiven for viewing that as my having abandoned her. That was never my perspective but I can see how it may have looked that way as the days turned into weeks and then months.

That her father could give her a family life with siblings had everything to do with my not even attempting to interrupt that blessing (which is how I saw it though I have learned recently that “blessed” was not exactly how it was experienced by her and more’s the sorrow in this mother’s heart). She rightly views her step-mother as her mother and who am I to argue with that perception.

Then there are my sons who are donor conceived. Therefore, I do see them as more rightfully my husband’s than my own. Again, robbed of my own children by the circumstances of my life which I do not claim that I am a victim of but the one who made every choice to bring these circumstances about.

So I wonder about the grief that is passed down the generations. Both of my parents were adopted. Therefore, BOTH of my own grandmothers suffered the same kind of grief I experience and my sisters experience (both of my sisters also lost either by surrendering to adoption or the courts) an opportunity to raise their own children.

The only good thing I can say about it all at this point is that our children have survived and are managing to raise their own children, even a nephew who in a sense is fulfilling my friend’s insight as he has custody of his own son after a divorce. You just can’t make this stuff up.

What’s Done Is Done

I think that I need to add some context. What I seek is to promote reform in the methods of securing for children who need that, a loving and stable home. It is not my intent to pass judgement on anyone who has adopted a child and is raising that child. What is done is done.

I would hope that any prospective adoptive parents reading this blog would pause in their headlong rush to acquire someone else’s rightful baby. One suggestion would be to read The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier. Actually that is good advice for people who have already adopted and would like to understand their adopted child better. She says of her book – it is written for the adoptees, birth and adoptive parents as a bridge to understanding their child(ren) and to promote the healing process for all of them. Rearing an adopted child is different from rearing one’s biological child.

Ms Verrier is the mother of two daughters – one adopted and one she gave birth to. She also has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and is in private practice counseling members of the triad. I learned about her by being in a private Facebook group of adoptees, original mothers and adoptive parents. I have learned a lot from them, especially about the effects of adoption as adult adoptees begin to wake up and speak loudly about their experiences. I know how it feels not to raise my own precious daughter, so I have a sense of what birth mothers feel and that pain of separation as well. Navigating the complexes of interacting with a second mother who is more mother to my daughter than I am. It is not an easy path.

I am not an adoptee myself.

My parents were both adoptees, both of my sisters are birth mothers who surrendered a child to adoption and one of my sister’s lost her child in court proceedings. So there is a lot of observation of life experience to cause my interest in ALL things adoption. I have read many books and articles and I listen to the wounded in the private group. Two years ago, I would NOT have said a word against adoption. Today, I realize how lucky I am that I was not given up when my teenage, unwed mother discovered I was growing within her.

It has been a journey in which my perspectives on adoption have changed radically in only about two years time. There is no going back for me and I cannot promote or cheer on adoption as it is mostly practiced today. I know too much now. No more unicorns and rainbows and I have woken up from my own kind of adoption fog.

So here is where I am at regarding FUTURE loving homes for the children that need it.

Guardianship (kinship if possible), no name changes, no birth certificate alterations, total transparency in an age appropriate manner as to the child’s biological/genetic family and full access to the complete medical histories of their parents. Reform is needed. Making MORE adoptions possible is NOT what I support at all. Loving homes – yes – non-abusive circumstances – absolutely !!

I also support ALL mothers who want to raise their children being financially supported at least until the child(ren) reach maturity. That would have certainly helped me and at least one of my two sisters remain in our childrens’ lives as we expected when they were born. If we can obscenely support rich people and corporations and huge military budgets, we could actually support families. That our society does NOT is a travesty with mental health and self-esteem impacts.

You Can Start Over

There is not much a child can do about the circumstances of having been adopted. When a adoptee matures into adulthood, there is a chance to reframe the experience, to find ways to make the unique experiences that an adoptee goes through – a strength.

There is not a universal agreement that adoption harms the self-esteem of adoptees. Studies seem to indicate it does not but adoptees will often highlight the ways that it did harm their own self-esteem. I trust the adoptee’s perception over that of a researcher.

Without a doubt, an adoptee suffers the loss of their natural family connection. This impacts the development of their identity. Often, as an adoptee matures they have an understandable interest in their true genetic information.

Compared to a true orphan who cannot regain the physical presence of their original parents, an adoptee will have a sense that out there somewhere are the people who are related to them genetically. It is like missing a limb that one knows should be there. There will always be an uncertainty and often a level of grief or anger over a situation the adoptee did not create. There is often a fear that if the adoptee does not live up to the expectations of the adoptive parents they could be rejected, abandoned or sent back to some place that is not a home.

In every person’s life there are emotionally charged milestones – marriage, the birth of a child, or the death of a parent – when the unique issues of having been adopted are more keenly felt. In fact, it is often in giving birth to their own children, that an adoptee begins to really want to seek their origin information and if possible, experience a reunion with the people they were taken away from.

It is not possible to undo a life that has always been informed by having been an adopted person. It is possible to seek a perspective that empowers rather than victimizes the adoptee. An adoptee can seek to take control over their life and it’s further direction, something most of them lacked (control) in their childhoods.

Chosen Parents

There is a poem common among adoptive parents and often framed and hung on the wall. There is actually more than one version out there.

“You’re a chosen child
You’re ours, but not by birth
. . . Chosen above the rest.”

“I had to tell you, Dearest Heart,
that you are not my own.”

This concept of being “chosen” is often disturbing for an adoptee. This is not a supermarket where people go to buy commodities. Adoptees are human beings with feelings and so many of the messages they receive are contradictory statements and confusing.

When my sister learned she was pregnant, she also knew that without a willing father to help her raise her son, she needed to give him up for adoption. This being a “modern” version, her son wasn’t chosen so much as the parents to raise her son were chosen.

Couples submitted applications, glossy proposals of why they would be the best choice. I was with my sister as she tried to make a decision. She sent these packages to me for my opinion – though the ultimate decision was one she made for herself.

The messages adoptees receive are paradoxical – they were unwanted, abandoned, and yet chosen, special and lucky. They rarely feel the “yets” as much as the more obvious facts. Their original mothers are often marginalized as “incapable” but oh, they were heroic to give up that baby to a mother who could raise a child no other way.

Adoption is a legal contract to which the child never agreed. They are made to appear “as if born to” with their identity amended to hide their true origins. An adoptee is asked to live their life split off from their true identity. They become masters at people pleasing – sometimes compliant, other times defiant.

Finding Out One Was Adopted

Above is a segment of my Dad’s original adoption papers. He was actually adopted twice (his adoptive mother divorced the first husband and remarried, changing my Dad’s name when he was already 8 years old). Upon discovering one of my Hempstead relatives, the first thing she noticed had entirely been missed by my own self, the Salvation Army appeared to “own” him and his mother’s name was nowhere to be found on the document.

I don’t know how old either of my parents were when they learned they were adopted but I believe each was as old as they needed to be told. I think they always “knew” even before they consciously knew.

There are many ways an adoptee can learn they were adopted. They might accidentally overhear a conversation. They might develop a serious illness that requires accurate medical information. They may discover papers in their adoptive parents’ files after their death or a stranger may come into their life (thanks to DNA testing) and claim to be related.

Most human beings have a need for love and a sense of belonging, also for self-esteem and a recognition of their value. It seems the almost all emotional wounds need these and some also highlight safety and security and I believe that is true of adoptees as well.

There are so many sad, false beliefs that filter into the heart of an adoptee – something must be wrong with me because my “real” parents gave me away, I don’t belong anywhere, I probably never should have been born, I don’t know who I am and if my “real” parents could abandon me, anyone could.

An adoptee seeking reunion with their original family fears another rejection. If they were adopted into a family with children already, they may believe they are loved less and many fear they could be taken away from their adoptive family and even fear that it might be the original family recovering them.

Adoptees suffer many side effects of having been adopted. They may be subject to mood swings, they feel less equal within a family unit, they may be obsessed with the past, struggle with a sense of identity, see how they are different than the adoptive family they are living within, have a hard time saying good-bye, may be always trying to prove their worthiness, may expect to be deceived or engage in risky behavior and may exhibit behaviors indicating a subservience.

That is a lot but it actually is not the end of it – they may experience anxiety or situational depression, they may need to double-check facts for accuracy, they develop various insecurities, they may be cynical and reject the adoptive family. An adoptee may fantasize about a reunion with their “real” family and actually seek them out.

On the plus side, an adoptee respects honesty and openness. It may have been emphasized to them that they were chosen, even if they had a hard time accepting that as a positive aspect of having been adopted. They are adaptable, analytical, appreciative, centered, curious, diplomatic, easygoing, empathetic, happy, private, sentimental, supportive and wise.

They are as complex as any human being could be.

Impact Of Adoption On Health

Every adoption is unique and every situation is different. There have been well studied impacts on mental and emotional health for an adoptee that other people in the general population are less affected by. Most have to do with a sense of abandonment or rejection. No matter how much the adoptive parents try to convince their adopted child that they are “special” because they were “chosen”, nothing seems to shake that initial feeling of having been unwanted or not wanted enough for the original parents to work things out. This is mostly a child’s perspective because they lack the mature experiences of life that most adults acquire.

My dad (both of my parents were adoptees) often accused my mom of being a hypochondriac because of her constant and evolving health problems over the long decades of their marriage. They were married over 60 years at the time of my mom’s death. I never judged her that way. She did have a LOT of health problems from her heart to her kidneys to her pancreas and beyond. She had a intervention scheduled for a blockage in her esophagus pending when she died just a few days before.

I am a believer in mind/body health implications. I do believe my mom suffered from low self-esteem. There is no way to know for certain whether her adoption had an impact but given her belief that she was stolen from her parents and then denied her adoption file and told at that same time that her mother had already died, denying her once again the reunion she desperately desired, there is a good chance that her mental/emotional state of being played a role.

Statistics tells us that 80% of visits to primary care doctors are the result of emotional distress. Stress kills. My mom had several interventions for her health beginning younger than I am now. First a bypass and then angioplasties and stents. My mom died of a massive heart attack that no one could have saved her from quickly enough. The coroner said it was instantaneous and thankfully that she didn’t suffer.

Sadly there is a lack of financial incentive for doctors to prescribe stress reduction instead of surgery, drugs or other expensive medical procedures. I continue to do battle on that front with my own doctors for my own best health as I age.

Profound and Mystical

Painting by Nazar Haidri

At the time my parents were given up for adoption, not as much was known about how the initial relationship of a child to his mother contributes to a healthy self-esteem. My parents were each with their mothers for 6 months or longer and that was a good thing. My mom seemed to me to have less self-confidence than my dad but she had a difficult adoptive mother who I doubt my mom ever felt she lived up to the expectations of that woman.

My niece and nephew who were given up for adoption were taken from their mothers shortly after birth. I don’t really know what effect that had on them and it is difficult to know which was worse. I think my parents probably suffered more because they had that time of closeness with their mothers and then suddenly she was gone. They were pre-verbal. How to explain that the sun has ceased to shine and won’t be back ?

The success of human beings on this planet has much to do with the ability to adapt to changing conditions. There is yet much to learn about the cost of having to adapt, regarding the attempt to substitute an unrelated mother for the original natural mother. I would suspect that at the least there is a wariness about what is happening.

The relationship of a child to their mother is profound and mystical.

They Would Abandon You Too

It was important to stay on the adults’ good side.
There was no one else to take care of you,
and if you questioned them too adamantly,
you’d probably get sent to your room without dinner,
or they’d drive a stake through your ankles
and leave you on the hillside above the Mobil station.
~ Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Many adoptees have a lifelong fear of being abandoned – again. Whether they remember their earliest days or not, it is buried deep within them that someone important once left them behind.

Logical reasons for their adoptive state do not always soothe an adoptee. After all, if it happened once, it could happen again.