Her Biggest Mistake

From an all things adoption group I belong to – Everyday I hear natural mothers share how giving up their child was the biggest mistake they ever made. I see them share their heartache and pain that sometimes is spanning decades. Sometimes I just don’t understand how hopeful adoptive parents can continue going through the process of adopting, if they are listening to these women. I mean what do they tell themselves to make it ok to take someone’s child, knowing the pain it could cause. The hopeful adoptive parents in groups seeing this, do you feel guilt ? How do you reconcile another’s pain for your gain ?

Some random comments –

From someone adopted as an infant – What’s interesting is as an adopted child I was almost raised to believe it was my “responsibility” to also adopt. In reality, I longed for genetic mirroring and went on to have 2 wonderful children of my own (who luckily got to meet my genetic, biological mom, uncle, and half sister 3 weeks ago, for a weeklong visit of beautiful reunion)! I had my first child at 31, second at 33, and did not really start to come out of the fog until after they were born. I wonder if I had been unable to have children, if I would have still felt adoption was an option, or my “responsibility”, or if my nature would have known otherwise.

From a mother who “lost” her child to adoption – Family friends adopted my son, knowing that I longed to parent. They watched me receive pressure and coercion from my own family, offered me no practical help (although were very “kind” to me), and then told themselves that I made my own decision and that my son’s adoption was God’s will. They even kept the adoption open. So they saw my pain very openly until eventually I pulled all the pain inside. Obviously no one around me cared. Even IF no adoptee had ever expressed trauma, wouldn’t our own lifelong suffering be enough reason to end this practice? And then in fact, on top of our tremendous pain, sits the pain of our children. Wtf is wrong with our culture, that we would rather throw away the struggling than to help them?

From another mother of loss – I know that my daughter, who just turned 35 and is still very very much in the fog, was told that she couldn’t have any contact with me “for safety reasons”, which of course was a complete lie (It was a private adoption, not a Child Protective Services case or anything like that) and I think that idea that I was “dangerous”, even without saying specifically that I was, was incredibly scary, damaging and alienating to her.

The sister of an adoptee shares – a woman who had adopted a newborn was saying the baby’s actual mother was texting, saying she regretted giving her baby up for adoption. The adoptive mother was getting advice like “block and move on”, which is insanely cruel. I advised the adoptive parent to “do the right thing and return the baby to it’s mother who clearly misses her baby”. I was then dog piled on for even suggesting that because the actual mom had already signed away her rights, so the actual mom didn’t have a leg to stand on. The selfishness of many adoptive parents just drives me up a wall. I probably should have not been so blunt in my reply as I was blocked and didn’t get to see what happened but I couldn’t stand by without advocating for the reunification of this family. An adoptee replied – “I can’t imagine having someone else’s baby and not immediately taking steps to return the baby after receiving those texts. Do these people have hearts?” Even a foster/adoptive mother notes – “I don’t see how you can acknowledge someone’s deep suffering and when it is well within your ability to assuage that suffering… withhold the remedy. Even if it comes as a great cost to you… that’s what we are all here for. To love one another. Serve one another. I just can’t wrap my mind around that.”

Counseling On Adoption Trauma

Today’s question – Do you feel like you were informed or educated on adoption trauma prior to adoption/guardianship ?

A mom who gave her child up for adoption answers – I was never offered counseling nor thought to seek it. When I did google information on adoption back then, nothing about trauma came up. If I had known then what I know now, I never would have done it. I have regretted it every single day of my life and will until the day I die. In response, someone noted – Those sentiments in a conversation with an adult child. Feelings of having been coerced (universally common in agency adoptions). Regret. Loss. Honestly expressing these may go a long way to help her and the child heal as they come out of the fog. An adoptee who also surrendered a child to adoption adds – It was incredibly healing to hear similar from my mom, and having that conversation with my son brought us even closer. What would have been unbelievably hurtful would have been to hear that my mom was happy she gave me away.

The experience is different when adopting through foster care – an adoptive parent answers – Yes and no. The agency we adopted through, the program we did, was mostly older (in the adoption world) placements through foster care. So yes, there was a lot of information about trauma. I felt very well educated and very well informed. We read a lot of books, had a lot of mental health resources already in place, attended trainings, etc. I am also a psychiatric nurse, so I had exposure to it already. That being said, there was still a lot of focus on the trauma being prior to adoption or early in adoption process. Since we were educated on how important birth family was, to honor that loss and grief, keep connections, and knew not to punish behaviors that were from trauma, utilize/provide resources for the children and ourselves etc, then everything would be rainbows and unicorns eventually. (Reality check – it is NOT that false narrative.)

Another adoptive parent shares – No. The Dept of Social Services (DSS) didn’t give any information, but I had studied adoption trauma in grad school. DSS was actually “shocked” when I said that my foster daughter needed therapy. Thankfully, we were referred to an OUTSTANDING doctor who dealt almost exclusively with adoption trauma, including Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).

One who has guardianship notes – there was nothing. The judge signed the order and I had to figure it out from there. Child Protective Services stopped in one time to make sure we were minimally sufficient and we had one call from the court investigator. There was no support or information given. I actually find it really frustrating because when we finally did get a little support it was like a quarter of the amount foster parents get. And I was trying to keep a family member out of the system. To become a foster parent there were multiple classes. I’m not sure if they were actually as unhelpful as I remember but the whole process was overwhelming (I was 20, my cousin was going into foster care, long term guardianship was denied and we had to get approved, so he didn’t go to strangers). I’ll be honest. I was not trauma informed at all. I didn’t have a great understanding of addiction, mental health and trauma. As we get closer to adopting (a separate kin placement 6 years later) there has been a lot more information but we haven’t been offered counseling specifically. There was a two day adoption class through the state that was actually really informative and had people from all parts of the triad there to speak. We have cared for older children but it was a fight to get services for them and one child that needed medication wasn’t able to get it until reunification.

Thanks For Choosing Life

I read these 2 questions in my all things adoption group today –

Have you given public (like social media) credit to your adopted child’s birth mother for “choosing life” ? Why is this inappropriate and problematic ?

Some responses –

From an adoptee – I always wonder if people who say this to birth moms also say it to any random person. They have no idea who was considering abortion vs who wasn’t. Another adoptee shares – I’ve been told “you’re lucky your mom chose life” so many times.

One woman noted – I know people obviously don’t do this directly BUT one thing I’ve noticed since becoming a Mom is that people DO seem to assume you are pro-life if you have babies, especially young ones and especially if in a married “nuclear” family ! Like, no I had an abortion in between my 2 boys because I didn’t want a baby that soon, pretty simple ! And people are always SHOCKED. Even pro-choice people sometimes.

Another adoptee admits (and she was not the only one) – I told my birth parents this as a naive young teenager thick in the fog.

From one woman who surrendered a child to adoption – I’ve had 2 people say something like this to me and I literally burst into tears. I don’t want or need “thanks” for experiencing the worst event of my life and the life of my child. To which another shared a brilliant comeback – I had someone (a friend at the time) ask me wasn’t it better than an abortion. I told her to try it with one of her kids.

Another women who works in women’s health said – I’ll hold their hand and support them, whatever they choose. Not my body, not my business. Women should not be incubators for babies they don’t want. An adoptee says similarly, These phrases reduce women to breeders in support of the adoption industry. They make me sick.

Another adoptee shares – Would I rather have been aborted? Not the same discussion but for argument’s sake – I didn’t have sex until I knew, if necessary, I could be a single parent (I have not been raped and my abuser was female). I knew I couldn’t knowingly put a child through what I went through.

One who had bad experiences shares – yes, I understand the chain reaction of my son and his mom had I never been born, but I also recognize the horrible hell I suffered from foster / adoptive / foster parents. And of course, you have to equally weigh the negative impact of my not being born, my parents wouldn’t have been so traumatized, they’d likely have graduated, I know for sure my mom would have done very well for herself, as she was working her butt off and trying her best, until I was wrongfully taken. (Blogger’s note -It does get bad and I just can’t but child predators are mentioned).

And sadly, I’m certain this woman is not the only one – As a pregnant teenager in a violently abusive cult, they never, ever would have let me abort. A baby created out of violent abuse that I was terrified to have and never wanted to begin with but was left no other option than to birth and raise another vulnerable child in the confines of the cult. I used to feel guilty because I just wanted the baby out of my body. I wanted control over my body for once. I was never so relieved (and so ashamed) when I miscarried at 19 weeks. I never chose life for that baby. The baby was forcefully conceived, forcefully carried, and would have been violently abused had she lived. Every woman should be able to choose and be radically supported in her choice.

Really ? Infertility Called You To Do This . . .

The image comes from from Natasha Metzler’s essay LINK>Adoption is Not a Fix for Infertility.

She writes – I can tell you, without question or qualm, that adopting did not and could not fix our infertility. It wasn’t a cure or a correction. Adoption is actually an entirely different everything from infertility. It has its own set of highs and lows, good and hard, beauty and trial. So if you’re ever tempted to say to someone who is struggling with infertility, “Why don’t you just adopt?” I’m letting you know that’s like telling someone who lost their minivan in a car wreck, “Why don’t you just get a Mack truck?”

I started into this topic after reading someone in my all things adoption group write – I made a post on my own wall about my frustration with the Christian belief that one is individually “called” to adopt via infertility.

My adoptive mother’s cousin (my cousin, who is one of my truly favorite people on earth and who I adore) commented. And, in typical traumatized fashion, I instantly reached for the most harmful cognitive distortion I could find: I assumed that if I told her what was true for me (that I am an abolitionist) that it would come back to my adoptive mother (with whom I’m currently living) and I’d be on the streets.

Now. It’s not like my cousin to spread things that could hurt other people, for one. For another, my adoptive mother knows I’m an abolitionist. And finally, even if she hadn’t and this “news” got back to her, she isn’t likely to throw me out — our relationship is better than that.

So the easiest way for me to avoid painful cognitive distortions like this is to avoid talking about adoption in public at all. When I do, I am always very careful to only say what is palatable for people whose lives are otherwise touched by adoption in other ways (including other adoptees who are still experiencing the cognitive dissonance we refer to as “the fog”).

The adoptees you know are the same, whether they are “happy dappy adoptees” or they are “angry adoptees.” I promise you they don’t tell you everything they feel about adoption and that the reason (whether conscious or not) is fear.

You will always come closest to a real understanding of adoption through adoptee voices. But you must understand that many of us are STILL holding back the truth of our lived experience and our reality as adoptees.

So when you think you know, and you’ve just begun to hate this industry as much as we do, know this: You still don’t know how bad it is for us because so many of us are terrified to tell you.

So I went looking for that post she referred to. She wrote – This post is going to offend some people who simply think adoption is a wonderful way to help children in need.

Here’s the first quote: “We have always wanted a family and after two years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, we feel that the Lord is leading us to expand our family through adoption!”

I have two problems with this. The first is that it took until after two years of struggling with fertility treatments for this couple to decide they wanted to adopt. This means that adoption is Plan B. It means that we, as adoptees, are plan B. (I’ve accepted this a long time ago.)

The second is that if God was calling you to adopt, would He truly have used your suffering, pain, and personal trauma to prompt you to follow a calling, or would He give you signs that didn’t require you to become so broken *before* becoming parents? (We know that broken people don’t make the best parents, regardless of the process they had in becoming parents.)

“We are open to any gender and we would prefer a newborn.” So God called you to become one of the 100+ couples waiting for each newborn who becomes available for adoption while hundreds of thousands of children wait in the American foster care system for permanent homes through adoption or guardianship — and many want to be adopted AND can consent to it? This is not a way in which God calls people to help solve a societal problem because there is no lack of homes for newborns, only a lack of newborns for homes.

“After much consideration and prayer, we have decided that we want to have a closed adoption.” So God answered their prayers about adoption and told them that the best way for them to serve Him is to sever a newborn permanently from their family tree of origin and then to make it as difficult as possible for that child to know where they come from. All so they can make the baby truly theirs.

She ends with this – As much as I cannot understand this mindset, I’m sharing this in the hopes that some of you who have never thought about what it means to adopted people to live with adoption might take a moment to think about how weird these beliefs are. I cannot imagine that God has called anyone to participate in family destruction for the purposes of family planning.

It Is Hard To Do

From an adoptee – Coming out of the fog is hard. It’s a bit like jumping out of a building but instead of dying before you can even hit the ground, you hit it, hard, and break every bone in your body.

This is to say that coming out of the fog (losing the cognitive dissonance you’ve been living with your entire life) is first of all very painful and second of all takes a long time to heal. Then, even when it heals, it never feels quite right again.

This is only the effect of coming out of the fog and not a lifetime of adoption trauma.

Anger is part of the grieving process. We talk about grief in adoption in a relatable way: We grieve the loss of our first parents. That’s true, but it’s also true that as we come out of the fog, we begin to grieve the things we believed to be true.

Loving adoption, supporting it, and verbally confirming the societal bias that adoption is a loving way to support children who can’t live with their families for some reason, and then leaving that behind when the fog lifts is a huge change, and when huge changes occur in our lives, we do often grieve.

We grieve the person we are leaving behind, the assumptions that we once carried, and the comfort of the lies we told ourselves. (Blogger’s note – while not an adoptee myself, I’ve been greatly impacted by adoption – both of my parents were 1930s era adoptees. Learning who my original grandparents were, who who all deceased by then, had an unexpected but profound effect on me. I would assume I am still processing my feelings 6 years later.)

Anger is part of that grieving process, and each grieving process is different. Some people will always be angry. Some will spend their lives in denial (the fog).

If we are angry, there are a number of reasons but grief is an important part of it.

We are not (always) mad at you, as a person. We may be angry with adoptive parents, but more often than not this is not personal and not personally directed at you. When it is personal, it’s because you have triggered one of our privileged voices, often by gaslighting, demonstrating fragile behavior (cognitive dissonance), or you have challenged someone by calling their lived experience their opinion and justified your behavior by saying you’re allowed to have your opinion [on their experience].

Some people are angry with adoptive parents in general. You might not understand it, but there are points that I could make which would indicate this anger is justifiable. Most of us are angry with the adoption industry and an extension of that anger is that we are angry with the people who feed the demand that drives this industry. Without demand, there is no industry (and we already know there aren’t hundreds of babies waiting in an orphanage to be adopted).

Anger with people who participated in the system of oppression is natural. I’m not a professional therapist, just a life coach. Whether or not this anger is healthy or if it is merely a coping tool for trauma that masks other big emotions, I can’t say. Either way, anger is part of processing what has happened to us that we had no control over. When you see our anger, it is because we are hurt and we are healing.

Adoption is a multi-billion dollar per year industry in which people (infants, children) are exchanged for as much as $60k each. It’s really easy to overlook facts that don’t agree with your personal cognitive bias, especially when you benefited from this industry. If you paid an adoption fee, regardless of who received that fee or what they did with it, you exchanged money for another human being.

It might be hard to see yourself as having participated in human trafficking but you did. Even if money were not involved, we are still talking about the redistribution of human children.

You can see, no doubt, that the objects of that trafficking (adoptees) would be angry to have been trafficked. Or, if you cannot cognitively comprehend the word “trafficking” in this situation, you can understand that adopted people are goods that were exchanged from one bearer to another.

Being adopted is a lifetime of ongoing trauma and chronic stress. It doesn’t go away when we turn 18. It doesn’t stop when we meet our biological families. It doesn’t end because we are in therapy.

When you accuse adopted people of inappropriate anger, you are contributing to the ongoing chronic stress and trauma we experience as adoptees because you are asking us to perform for you. In order to feel “safe”, many adoptees will, and, this is SUPER important, so please listen! You’ll never know they’re performing for you, you’ll just think they’re better people for not “attacking” you. You should know, then, that we are, at all times, under a high-pressure situation. You might step on a landmine without knowing you were stepping on a landmine but it’s a landmine nonetheless.

Therapy doesn’t always help. Sometimes it harms. We promote therapy as though it is the panacea for all trauma. And many people, when facing opposition to their cognitive dissonance use therapy as a way to gaslight and abuse. “You need therapy!” as a response to someone’s heartfelt outpouring of emotion is arguably always abusive. (This leaves aside that it is always dismissive and used as a way to silence the person expressing themselves due to the need to protect themselves from further trauma/abuse.)

Most adoptees who have seen therapists have, at some point, encountered a therapist who didn’t have good training in adoption trauma (even if they thought themselves to have been trained). These therapists often follow the larger social narrative of adoption as “rescue” and further silence us by correcting our emotions (due to their own natural defensiveness and cognitive distortions) or they avoid the subject altogether, leaving the adopted client confused and gaslit.

Adopted people aren’t to blame for our trauma — adoptive parents are. Some of you are already thinking “Trauma happened because of the birth parents and I had nothing to do with their decisions!” First of all, if you adopted an infant privately (not through foster care), you did have something to do with their decision, even if indirectly (through a lawyer or agency). This is a matter of fact, regardless of any coercion you participated in directly — but a lot of you — especially the ones accusing adopted people of being “hateful” did participate in coercion directly.

The trauma of adoption is not a single event but a series of events that are ongoing throughout our lives. Those events are often facilitated by, or at least not prevented by, the adoptive parents. You can never protect your child entirely, but you can learn to support them better by increasing your emotional awareness and maturity. When you accuse adopted people of being angry, hateful, or blaming adoptive parents for their problems, you are in fact deflecting your own culpability onto the object of a contract to which you are the subject and therefore the beneficiary.

To put it simply, you accuse us of shifting our own blame onto adoptive parents because something in you has been confronted and you may be experiencing some form of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Shifting the blame you hold for participating in an oppressive system onto adoptees and expecting us to solve the problems created by our adoptions — on our own! — is not the way you want to present yourself to the world.

Wanting To Say The Right Thing

A question about being a considerate friend –

I’m not in the adoptive triad (natural mother, adoptee and adoptive parent) but two of my close friends are adoptees. I live in the USA in a part of the country known as the “Bible Belt”, a place that is saturated with Evangelical Christianity and rose colored glassed about adoption. Out of my two friends that are adoptees, one has been reunited with her first mom for over a decade and they have a friendly and somewhat close relationship. The other knows of her first mom but I don’t know if they have met in person. There are other details about their stories I know about but don’t want to get too personal.

The stories I heard have confirmed some of the icky feelings and questions I’ve had about adoption but didn’t understand and couldn’t voice. Because outside of the triad, everyone knows how adoption is painted and its very pervasive, at least here in the US. To be critical of adoption is to have an outlier opinion.

I haven’t said anything negative about adoption to either of my friends. But, I want them to know that I don’t judge them for having negative feelings about being adopted and that I am becoming aware of some things. For anyone in the triad, if one of your friends said those things to you, would you feel weirded out? I don’t know if my friends have negative feelings about being adopted but I’m sure they do somewhat.

An adoptee responds – I personally live in the Bible Belt myself. I get what your saying and it wouldn’t weird me out of someone asked me about my feelings on adoption as long as they weren’t being weird about it. It would make me feel heard by someone for a change.

And another adoptee – I also live in the bible belt. I’ve talked with people about my adoption and the things I’ve been upset about. I didn’t feel it was weird or rude if questions were asked to get more perspective or if other people voiced what they felt was negative.

An adoptee notes – Adopted people appreciate our allies, people who have made the effort to better understand our plights. That said, the majority of adopted people that I personally communicate with usually recognize that we are more comfortable talking about these sorts of issues with other adoptees (not all adoptees will feel like that and in fact some adoptees will talk to anyone about their adoption, others won’t talk to anyone at all). We aren’t a monolith, one size fits all. But, adoptees who realize the harmful aspects of their childhood are very specific about who they share their innermost feelings with. We know who is a safe person to talk to. I guess for me why someone wants to discuss these sorts of deep, dark issues would be important. Are you just wanting to let them know what you have learned or are you wanting to be a ‘caring ear’ willing to listen more than talk?

The “friend’s” response was – I mainly just want them to know that if they ever need to talk, I’m here for them and they can express criticism about adoption. I won’t judge or criticize them.

Another adoptee agrees with the one above – with friends of mine who aren’t adoptees, I might talk about these issues superficially but only as things come up – regarding parenting adoptees (many of my friends are adoptive parents) and I try to help them “get it” and I talk to their kids and try to help their adoptive parents get it.

This one goes on to say – I would not like my non-adopted friends to make assumptions that they know I have negative feelings on adoption. I do but it’s easier for me to have those negative feelings about other people’s situations. Naming that about my own situation to a non-adoptee would not be likely to happen. Exposing myself that much wouldn’t happen. It’s like that feeling, when you can be mad at your brother but if someone else is, you tend to stick up for them… that’s the kind of feeling it would create for me. You don’t get the right.

I know your trying to be supportive but to me you need to let them lead, don’t become a part of the show. I’m suggesting you consider staying out of it. If they talk, then listen, and even validate their feelings. Give them permission to have the negative feelings but not unless they express them. To me that would feel like you think I should have some negative feelings or would want share them, if I do.

A transracial adoptee also admits – I’m in the Bible Belt. Have they ever confided in you specifically about adoption? Are you in any way associated with Evangelical Christianity, or are they or their families? I ask because Evangelical Christians are pro-life and typically hold more of the positive rainbow pro-adoption propaganda views.

I think it would really depend on the conversation and how you brought it up. I think using certain vocabulary like “adoption trauma”, “the FOG,” “centering adoptees,” “adoption industry”, “family preservation,” etc. could help signify that you’re a safe person. Personally, I’d recommend following their lead, not to purposefully bring it up, but not ignore/deflect any conversations.

As I came “out of the fog,” I’ve found it harder to speak to non-adoptees, simply because they more often than not (and because being in the Bible Belt) didn’t have the same views as me. I think as an adoptee, I’d find it reassuring to know that a close friend was an ally.

The “friend’s” response was – I used to be a Christian but I’m not any more. I met friend #1 at church over a decade ago and we reconnected a couple years ago and became close friends. Her adoptive parents were very conservative Christians. She identifies as kind of a liberal Christian but more witchy than Christian and doesn’t go to church. I’m kind of agnostic. Friend #2 is a young lady I know from my city Choir. She is a mainline Protestant Christian and active in her church but she is liberal. Her parents, I think, are more conservative but I don’t know to what degree. Both friends know I’m not pro life at all, that I’m LGBT and child free. I have some negative views toward having children but I’m working on it in counseling.

To this, the transracial adoptee wrote – I wouldn’t bring it up, especially since they haven’t really confided in you. Bringing it up only centers yourself, rereading your last paragraph really just points out the reasons for approaching this subject are your reasons, for you. I think, if you truly are a safe person to vent to, then they’ll come to you. I reiterate – just follow their lead, don’t put them in an uncomfortable spot, so that you can feel like a good ally.

The child of an adoptee (blogger’s note – I am the child of two adoptees) and a first mom (another blogger’s note – this is a mother who gave a child up for adoption – which both of my own sisters did) writes: obviously *I* am not personally an adoptee but I do live in the Bible Belt. I am just curious, why on earth would you bring up someone else’s private business to tell them you’re “a safe space” and they can “express criticism without judgement”? If they’re **actively discussing their trauma** with you, that’s the time for you to reassure them that you’re “on their side.” Purposely bringing it up, may make you appear to someone like you’re just being a trauma tourist.

The “friend’s” response was – Its not something I would ever bring up out of the blue. If someone you love or are friends with has something really awful happen and they share it with you, you know it’s awful for them and you express that you know it’s awful and show you are there for them. However, the overarching opinion of adoption is that its positive and negative opinions are met with hostility. So, it’s a little different. Most people that have bad things happen are allowed to feel bad about something and say it sucks. But I don’t know if the average adoptee feels like they are allowed to feel that way about adoption, let alone express such opinions. They’ve shared about being adopted. But, if they share again, I want to say the right thing.

To which the previous commenter responded – if they bring it up, I think it’s fine to say you’ve done some reading and you want to be supportive and non judgmental, or even briefly share your opinions on the practice and systems. I don’t think it’s something that should be brought up independently but you said you’re not gonna do that, so you should be good to go.

Another who was placed with her kin remembers – Before I came to accept the reality of my own disappointment, I would have been insulted if someone tried to tell me they were a safe space for me to vent. I didn’t realize I needed to vent. I was in complete denial. In high school, I had a few people respond to some grisly parts of my story with astonishment and anger on my behalf. I was confused, miffed, and maybe a tiny bit amused that they were angry about something that “didn’t bother me.” Why don’t you ASK how they feel instead? Perhaps let them know that you’re aware that some people feel extremely grateful for having been adopted, but that you’ve been made aware of a different perspective of anger and loss… and that you’re curious to know their thoughts, IF they’re open to share them.

Another adoptee suggested – if a friend said something like “Hey for some reason adoption has been on my mind and I was reading a lot of adoptee experiences and researching how it affects a high percentage. I’d love to hear your thoughts.“ I wouldn’t be weirded out.

One adoptee had a cheeky response – Tell all those church attendees that Jesus’ mother was unwed and 14, so Jesus born in manager. Being young, unwed or poor is no reason to give your child away to strangers.

One woman who’s ex-husband is an adoptee and who also lost her daughter shares – I’m still close to my ex-husband because of his messed up family ties both biological and adoptive. I sometimes have to watch what I say, when he vents to me but he knows I’m a safe space for his negative feelings. Most people tell him to basically suck it up. I have a few more adopted friends but my ex husband is the closest story I know, besides my own daughter. My cousin, who was my daughter’s foster parent, didn’t think an autistic 17-year-old could be a parent, so she worked against me. She became a pastor in the Baptist community and was working at a homeless shelter for families. My daughter is in a closed adoption “for safety reasons”. I am not even allowed to know who the adoptive parents are. This is kind ridiculous because now I have a 2 month old and had to deal with Child Protective Services again. Thankfully, my case was eventually closed. Now I realize even more than before how much my family didn’t help. All I needed were a few resources, when I was 17, and I would have been fine, just like I am now at 26. I do have “issues”, my cousin knew my daughter’s adoptive parents before the adoption through her church and that they’re infertile. I don’t know if my first kid is ever going to know about my second kid. To me that’s not very Christian – to keep siblings separated – when there’s obviously no concern for safety. I have also had to take what my ex-husband told me into consideration – that when my child is older, she maybe not want to contact me and I will have to process that better, because I’m the adult. That is hard to think about even with years to prepare, if she does contact me.

Double Whammy

An adoptee writes – “My birthday was a few days ago, and with Mother’s Day this weekend, there are a lot of complicated emotions flying around.”

Some background from the adoptee – I was adopted at birth by my aunt (my genetic mom’s sister) and uncle, and moved several states away. I was given a new name, new Birth Certificate, the whole works. My adoptive parents had been trying for a baby, and since my original mom didn’t have the resources (job, place of her own) they asked to adopt me. A month after I was born, my adoptive parents ended up pregnant with my brother. My sister followed a year later. I do not look like anyone in my adoptive family and I never felt like I fit in or belonged. I was treated way differently than my siblings. My adoptive mother passed away when I was 19. Since then, I’ve had a mediocre relationship with my adoptive dad, barely there communication with my brother, and my sister won’t acknowledge my existence.

I was a rebellious, angry teen, and my issues carried over into adulthood. I caused my family a lot of pain, but had no idea that any of my issues were likely caused by trauma. That said, I take responsibility for my decisions, own up to them, and have repaired relationships where possible. Still, I have lived most of my life filled with shame and thinking I am defective and a bad person regarding some of the choices I’ve made.

After years of therapy for depression and anxiety, a wonderful therapist suggested that my lifelong issues could be a result of adoption trauma. I brushed her off, saying “My adoption happened a long time ago. I’ve dealt with it. I’m fine.” And she gently replied, “No, I don’t think you are.” And so it was, that I started coming out of the fog five years ago, right around the time I turned 40.

I have always known who my mother was, but never got to know her and have only met her three times. The first was when I was 3. She visited with her new husband so that she could come clean about her “past.” The second was when I was 15. I was in the throes of angsty adolescence and started having issues around my identity. The whole purpose of my visit was to talk to her openly about my adoption, but…although her husband knew I was her daughter, she would not acknowledge that I was his sister to my half brother, who was 10 years old at the time. I had to tiptoe around for a week while he called me “cousin.” More shame. The last time I saw her was at my adoptive mother’s funeral, almost 26 years ago. We talk here and there, mostly on Facebook, but I literally don’t feel anything for her. She still talks of giving me up as being “the best thing” for me, without acknowledging the harm. I realize she was in an impossible situation, but just to have her see me, acknowledge the hurt I experienced and continue to deal with, would mean so much.

Adoption Is Only The Beginning

Image by Madelyn Goodnight

Today’s blog is inspired by an article in The New Yorker – LINK>Living in Adoption’s Emotional Aftermath. From the article –

Deanna Doss Shrodes believes that a child who starts life in a box will never know who they are, unless they manage somehow to track down their anonymous parents. It distresses her that many of her fellow-Christians, such as Amy Coney Barrett, talk about adoption as the win-win solution to abortion, as though once a baby is adopted that is the end of the story. If someone says of Deanna that she was adopted, she corrects them and says that she is adopted. Being adopted is, to her, as to many adoptees, a profoundly different way of being human, one that affects almost everything about her life.

“I explain to friends that in order to be adopted you first have to lose your entire family,” Deanna said. “And they’ll say, Well, yes, but if it happens to a newborn what do they know? You were adopted, get over it. Would you tell your friend who lost their family in a car accident, Get over it? No. But as an adoptee you’re expected to be over it because, O.K., that happened to you, but this wonderful thing also happened, and why can’t you focus on the wonderful thing?”

This is the less than fairytale ending – There are disproportionate numbers of adoptees in psychiatric hospitals and addiction programs, given that they are only about two per cent of the population. A study found that adoptees attempt suicide at four times the rate of other people. Adoption begins with the ending of the connection to the people who conceived and birthed the adoptee.

“Coming out of the fog” means different things to different adoptees. It can mean realizing that the obscure, intermittent unhappiness or bewilderment you have felt since childhood is not a personality trait but something shared by others who are adopted. It can mean realizing that you were a good, hardworking child partly out of a need to prove that your parents were right to choose you, or a sense that it was your job to make your parents happy, or a fear that if you weren’t good your parents would give you away, like the first ones did. It can mean coming to feel that not knowing anything about the people whose bodies made yours is strange and disturbing. It can mean seeing that you and your parents were brought together not only by choice or Providence but by a vast, powerful, opaque system with its own history and purposes. Those who have come out of the fog say that doing so is not just disorienting but painful, and many think back longingly to the time before they had such thoughts.

Adoptees are often looking for those pieces of their lives or their selves that were missing, or had been falsified or renamed, trying to fit them to the pieces they had. I think those missing pieces were what motivated me to go looking and find out what could be found out. And I did. Families of people I was genetically related to that I never knew existed, living lives I had no idea about. Some knew my parents had been born and given up for adoption but didn’t know about me. DNA has helped with being accepted as being another one who is actually part of their family but building relationships has not proven as easy as finding out about these.

Not A “New” Life

This comment came up in a discussion about how adoptive parents change the name of their adoptee when the adoption is finalized. One woman commented – “Nothing wrong with that, we started using his new name too to get him used to it. New life, new name.” She was quickly corrected – “I need you to fucking not. Adoption isn’t a “new life”, it’s a continuation of the life they are already living. This comment is insensitive at best.” This one had started new childcare job. She is a domestic infant adoptee. One child in her class is in the process of being adopted and that X is their legal name and Y is the name the adoptive parents have chosen to change it to. This child isn’t an infant, so the childcare workers are basically having to train the child to respond to a new name.

I will admit, I did a little sleuthing into the one who made the insensitive comment but could find nothing definite except that she is relatively new in the all things adoption group. There are some interesting photos but nothing certain as to her status in adoptionland but her comment seems to indicate an adoption there.

Lacking that, I looked for some context and found this recent (Oct 2022) article in The Atlantic LINK>Adoption Is Not a Fairy-Tale Ending, with the subtitle – It’s a complicated beginning. While maybe not perfectly what I was looking for, I did see how it begins – In America, popular narratives about adoption tend to focus on happy endings. Poor mothers who were predestined to give their children away for a “better life”; unwanted kids turned into chosen ones; made-for-television reunions years later. Since childhood, these story lines about the industry of infant adoptions had gradually seeped into my subconscious from movies, books, and the news.

The author, Erika Hayasaki, notes – researching a book on identical twins raised in radically different circumstances, the reality of adoption is far more complicated than some might think—and, as many adoptees and scholars have argued, deserving of a more clear-eyed appraisal across American culture. Her book, Somewhere Sisters, chronicles identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam in 1998, and their mother struggled to care for them. Isabella (born Loan) was adopted by a wealthy, white American family that gave her a new name and raised her in the suburbs of Chicago. Hà was adopted by a biological aunt and her partner, and grew up in a rural village in Vietnam with sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons.

Twins have always fascinated me. I was born a Gemini and have always wondered what happened to my twin. When I was a child, my 13 month younger sister and I were often dressed alike and sometimes people thought we were twins. When my daughter was preschool age, she used to claim we were twins. I suppose I’ve had at least two surrogate twins in my life. I digress.

The author discovered that when reunions with birth families do happen, they aren’t always happy; they can be painful, confusing, or traumatic. Adoptees who are parents, lawyers, educators, or activists are challenging the rosy image of adoption that stubbornly persists in our culture. Children are not offered up for adoption in a vacuum. Many of them “are available because of certain, very strategic political policies.” Often the reasons for removing children from their parents comes under the heading of “neglect.” Throughout adoption history, this broad category has encompassed homelessness, poor hygiene, absent parents, and drug abuse in some instances, or simply leaving a child with caregivers outside the nuclear family.

A happily ever story after adoption often comes at the cost of forsaking everything that came before. The process, known in the adoptee community as coming out of the fog, refers to when an adoptee starts to see beyond the narrative about fate and question their true feelings about the adoption system, and how it has impacted their relationships, personalities, and identity formation. As the child of two adoptees, I also had my moment of coming out of the fog because adoption had seemed like the most natural thing to me until I was over 50, both of my parents had died and I began to discover my families true origins.

For me, coming out of the fog was, and continues to be, a process that involves simultaneously holding my adoptive grandparent’s love and good intentions in my heart’s memories alongside all the ways that adoption robbed me of what, for most people, is almost an unconsidered common reality. There are all of these contradictory realities within one’s experience of belonging to a family created by adoptions. The duality of that space can be hard for those without such a background to reasonably understand.

The Words Are Wrong

Often it would be better not to say it at all. Today’s story –

I wish my parents wouldn’t say shit like my son is going to take after them when it comes to genetics, even something as silly as toe nails. It makes my story feel insignificant to them. NO, I have my own story and entire genealogy behind me that I don’t have the privilege of understanding. I don’t know what my son takes after when it comes to me, then saying things like that is a reminder that my story was wiped clean and brushed under the rug. My mom constantly reminding me that she nursed me when she was pushing 50 and wasn’t lactating does not feel good, another reminder how out of touch she was with my reality. Why would latching a baby when they are hungry with no food to offer ever feel like a good idea? And if they mention my weight and how worried they were that I was going to not lose any pregnancy weight I might just scream. They spent 3 hours here with my son (5 weeks old) and I am emotionally exhausted. So many small comments that felt so heavy for me. I’ll tell ya, having a baby sure slapped me in the face with adoption bs. I kind of thought I was out of the fog for the last 2 years, NOPE! Thrown right back in full force. From seeing someone related to me for the first time in person, to not understanding how in the world someone gives a baby away for money alone. Crazy time lately!

It’s bad enough when total strangers say stupid things but people who ought to know better . . . sadly too many don’t – know better.