The Emotional Impact Being Adopted Has Meant In My Life

Reflections

I see this person staring back at me and wonder who it is I see?

Are those her eyes?  Is her face the same?

Do I look like him?  What were their names?

Mirrors like pictures tell thousands of tales but the stories told have always failed.

In lending me the slightest clues to endless questions and intangible truths.

For I feel just like an empty shell that has no history or past to tell.

A single light shines all alone in the dark so far from "home".

Burning bright to light the way into the dawn of another day.

To illuminate where I must go and guide my steps through this unknown.

Discovering trails back to where, I'll find that face that's in the mirror.

Some of this may repeat or over lap what other adoptees have written or expressed about being adopted.  That is the great thing about communicating with other adoptees, you finally know your truths are similar to others.  There is a lot of comfort in that especially after being so alone in the world with all the issues of being adopted that are never spoken of, and usually dismissed as unimportant instead.  I enjoy hearing from other adoptees who inspire me with their voices of truth and encourage me to voice mine.

I do tend to speak for other adoptees too, and I feel after 15 years in adoption search, support, education, activism and reform, I can.   I have gleaned a lot of experiences from the voices of thousands of other adoptees.  Today though, I am going to speak of my personal experience about what it means, and how it has felt and still feels, to me being adopted.

Many adoptees will tell you that they have never felt the way I do, and are happy and grateful for being adopted.  They consider their adoptive family their real and true family.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that in any way.  What I can tell you is that there are a good amount of adoptees, who feel as I do.

It's growing up living a secret double life that no one really knows about, including you.   It's belonging, or many times not belonging, to two separate worlds.  And always, always, trying to reconcile each with the other.

Being adopted means watching from the outside.  Constantly analyzing other families and comparing them to your own.  It's never fitting in anywhere, even inside your own skin.  Because your own skin is all you have to belong to genetically.

Pondering your navel in ways nonadopted people would never think about, and where that connection that once was is now.  Birthdays that are spent wondering if your mother is remembering you, and if she is in what way, good, bad, or indifferent?  Being adopted means being puzzled with the reasons parents could give you away, and walk away, and leave with so many unanswered questions.

Mirrors are tough, because they tell so many stories about you, yet none you really know to be true. Fantasy becomes a huge factor in your every day life.  You are often caught as a child staring off into space, or called on by a teacher for not paying attention.  It's not that you mean to be like this, it's that you don't know how NOT to be like this.

Being adopted means a lot of pretending.   Pretending everything is o.k.  Pretending you are someone you are not, because you have no idea who you really are.  You are always examining others to see how they do it and seem so comfortable with themselves.  You become chameleon like to blend in, and to appease others as you have no true sense of self and you fear further rejection.

 Adopted reality can hit you really hard, like a fast ball to your heart, an unexpected sock in your gut, when you hear your adopted mother snicker and proclaim, “No wonder your mother gave you away”.  And then, a large part of you believes it to be true.   And you always will in some capacity believe this, and hear that voice in the back of your mind.

It can also pull the rug out from under your feet in a matter of seconds, this being adopted, when you hear a social worker say "I'm sorry your biological mother is asking no more mail be sent."  Or, "Your biological father will not claim you are his daughter, put anything in writing, and says he understands your need for information but everyone there is healthy."  No nonadopted person can quite fathom what it means that the people who you were born from want nothing to do with you, ever.   And instead want to brush you, the dirty secret of their lives, off and away under the rug somewhere hopefully you'll never crawl back out from under.

Coping with losses and rejection so deeply unfathomable that sometimes the overwhelming facts and reality of what you face is so unbelievable you can't wrap your mind around any of it.  It all seems like a bad B movie, or an even more outrageous soap opera plot, or a nightmare you'll wake up from eventually.  But it's not.  There is no escape and you live it each and every day of your life.

Some days are easier than others.  Sometimes you can almost nearly forget, at least for awhile.  Of course, it's always there and you realize no amount of denial, food, drugs, alcohol, or other relationships are going to erase the perpetual questions, mend holes in the fabric of your existence, or fill the massive loss adoption has brought to your life.

I hope this gives those who can not understand adoptees some insight into the pain and trauma adoptees can and do endure most all of their lives.  Especially, those who want and need us to be grateful, and thankful, and happy that we were adopted.  I will never be happy to have been adopted, or relinquished, or "left" by two families.  I can only go on to attempt to educate the world and reform adoption, and hopefully help heal and support other adoptees struggling with their personal battles, issues, and truths in their own lives.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.” ~Steve Jobs

Adoptees In Transition

“It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.”  ~Rob Sheffield "Love is a Mix Tape"


I am moving half way across the country in three days.  This move is necessary but it is far from wanted.  I am leaving behind an eleven year marriage that is broken, my three children, friends, and for 30 years now the place I have called "home".  I have given away most of everything I own, donated what I could to charity, and reduced what I have in the last year by about 90%.  I am leaving behind my three children, yes they are grown, they are still "my children".  I am stepping into total unfamiliar territory and out of everything I have known for decades.

I know these roads, and stop lights, and school zones, and neighborhoods like the back of my hand.  I know the comfort of homes I have lived in, playgrounds my children grew up on, comfort food I could get right around the corner, take-out menus from places I already knew the menu from by heart just needed the phone number, and establishments my family celebrated birthdays in.  I know the season's weather, and the time of light and darkness, and where I went through the door every day I called home.

Friends try and tell me how great and wonderful this new adventure is.  It might be what is best for me, but it is based on pain and loss.  It is a lot like being adopted.  Adoptees are expected to be grateful for new families, without being able to mourn for the loss of their original one.  It's like telling someone who is losing their legs to focus on being thankful for their arms.  It undermines their pain.  It causes them to feel misunderstood and for their suffering to be dismissed.

A dear friend who has known me for 25 years or so who GETS ME, said this recently.  She nailed it as far as how adoptees feel about loss, especially those of us who are held at arms length, by two families.  Her comments below:

"Unfortunately, this "adventure" has been forced upon you and it is devastating. I have lost all of my possessions at least a couple of times in my life and it sucks. Starting over with NOTHING sucks! Not knowing the outcome of the "new beginning" sucks! Everyone on Earth wants to have that feeling of belonging...(you especially) and we associate our surroundings..home, furniture, clothes and other "things" with a sense of self. Without family it is all one has to call their own. Losing these things can feel like waking up in the wilderness, naked, and all alone. I DO understand and I know that it's terrifying and I am so sorry that it has come to this."

I feel I've lived in my life walking a tight rope with no safety net below.  I am told I am strong and brave.  I have had no choice.  Adoptees can often find themselves left out in the cold, in the darkest of unending nights, left behind by those that gave them life and those that promised to love them. 

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” ~William Shakespeare 

Freedom for Adoptees

Denied

I plead though they ignore my cries.
The record's sealed is their reply.
Time and time again I ask.
I'm told to put it in the past.
I can't get them to try and see.
They have what belongs to me.
I beg for truth but no one hears.
It only falls upon deaf ears.
I get no matter how I try.
The same stone cold response.
"Denied"

Today is a great day for Americans to celebrate.  For many adoptees it is another day we are denied the same rights as other citizens of this country.  We can believe we are a country that supports the rights of the citizens that live here and celebrate that, but adoptees know and live another truth.

My original birth certificate, the one every other citizen of this country is granted upon request for a small fee, is held by the state by "law".  Laws I had no right or say in, and laws that dictate I am held and bound by agreements made by other parties without my consent.  This is discrimination at the least.

Adoptees live with out full truth.  And are expected to be grateful to do so.  We are NOT!  We are not asking for anything other than what other citizens can have.

So today while you are celebrating your freedom remember that there are citizens who can not do that like others do.  And btw, it not only effects adoptees but their children too.  Hence, my handsome son with the sign in the photo above.  He at a young age got that I am left without the knowledge and capability to know where he or I came from and who he really is too.  If a young 12 year old can understand, why can't legislators?  Why can't the rest of the world?

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.” ~Abraham Lincoln

Adoptee's Genetics Speak - Please Listen Carefully

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”  ~Bill Gates

I grew up within an adopted family genetically opposite of everything I was and grew up believing that everything about me was wrong.  Being relinquished for adoption and transplanted into another family with which you share zero genetics or biological traits can be extremely confusing.   Being told you are just like every other child is not the truth, nor is the denial of the very basic facts of life everyone else has.  The lack of recognition of these issues too complicates bonding and forming functional and lasting relationships with members of your adopted family because they have no understanding of your loss, pain, and ongoing frustrations with trying to fit in.

I hear from many people when I talk and write about  how being adopted can feel say they feel like adoptees do too unwelcome, or rejected, like a foreigner even when surrounded by their biological family and relatives.  The difference is that as ostracized as they can feel, they at least grew up with and or have the knowledge of who they are and where they came from.  What they can not understand is the foundation they were given that when taken away or denied adoptees, can have negative and devastating impacts.

I do not think that my adoptive family and I could be any more different.  But, that is the lottery system of adoption.  Even with trying to match backgrounds genetics speak loudly and clearly.  Unfortunately the "voice" of an adoptee's genetics are usually ignored, the blank slate theory, and expected to be drowned out and unheard and rematched to those of the family they are placed in. 

My adoptive family is the polar opposite of me.  Neither is wrong or right, they are just VERY different.

They are a soft carefully patterned paisley.  I am a boldly colored bohemian print.

They are a predictable, well manicured, and designed English garden.  I am wild flowers growing where the wind blows me.

They are a safe, secure, home in a small residential community.  I am a city abode bustling and surging with lights and sounds and energy.

They are stoic, quiet, and reserved.  I am emotional, loud, and demonstrative.

The information I have received, even if not names, photos, or anything identifying at age 39 about my biological family changed the way I saw myself, my place in the world, and abolished immediately all the unfounded beliefs and incorrect theories I had compiled since childhood about myself.  The surprise of it is almost always reassuring and empowering to finally understand yourself as a unique individual yet belonging to a larger whole, and as a person most other people have always known themselves to be.  After growing up and living without any awareness of any of that, or comprehension of how crucial and vital is it, how positively life altering it can be once obtained and realized. 

However, I will never recover those lost decades of feeling incomplete, unaccepted, and disfavored and feeling somehow it must be my fault.  And that is a huge tragedy in adoption.  A tragedy only adoptees have known and lived for far too long.

How to not think about being Adopted - NOT

It's there no matter how you try and avoid it all the time.  Most adoptees do try but quickly realize it's futile.  Adoption is everywhere it seems.  Below are some of the ways, in no particular order, that it's nearly impossible to put being adopted aside for any length of time, despite what others believe it's possible for adoptees to do.

1.  General daily conversations - Between various people talking about their "Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Grandparent" etc...and thinking about how you have two sets of parents and grandparents to deal with along with doubles of extended family member, the complication from all of that, and all the missing people you have never been able to find, might not ever be able to find, or who passed away or will pass away without you ever having the chance to meet or know them.  And, how no one around you can understand the complications being adopted brings to your life.  Sometimes I almost can not bear to hear what others can have and take for granted, that is denied me every single day.

2.  TV/Movies/Commercials/Social Media -  It's enough with the "bad" adoptee themes, killer adoptees, stalker adoptees, vengeful adoptees, the stereotypes are maddening to say the least.  Soap operas are filled with themes of adoption long lost children, baby selling plots, and mothers with amnesia however this is probably the most realistic of the TV/Movie adoption story lines, still hard to watch sometimes.   I SWEAR I have contorted my aging body in ways I never thought possibly in the last few months to mute the Ancestry.com commercials.  I will dive over couches, leap coffee tables, and if they continue I see a real possibility of a broken pelvis or a dislocated hip in my near future.  Facebook is FILLED with adoption agency agendas and blatant promotion of adoption but only the hearts, love, and teddy bears side without allowing adoptees to voice the most intelligent arguments otherwise.  Even one of my favorite hangouts Pinterest has Pro-Adoption related photos and quotes so escaping there to get away is not an option either. 

3.  Holidays - All of them.  My favorites are Valentine's Day, May Day, and Fourth of July.  Non family related celebrations.  Helps to avoid all the triggers and hide from the festivities you do not belong to in either family or relative you are not accepted by.  And, if you do belong to both how to play diplomat to each by dividing time equally and fairly without pissing off a multitude of different people. 

4.  Search - For many adoptees search is a life long journey to find names and the people who were hidden from you by altered and falsified government documents, also called ammended birth certificates.  Endless preoccupation with ways to find your biological roots, patiently awaiting government and agency adoption documents and the results of court petitions for identifying information, or for responses from family members located by email, phone, or letter is nerve wracking and nail biting and can send the strongest adopted person to the nearest liquor store, pharmacy, or  into a carb or sugar induced coma and addiction to soothe the over loaded brain and nerves.

5.  Adoption Billboards, Signs, and Bumperstickers - These are everywhere in Texas.  Adoption is big business here, literally.  Beside Freeways, on Church lawns, and on cars of all kinds the promotion of adoption is blatantly promoted everywhere.

6.  Birthdays - One of the biggest adoptee triggers ever.  Our birthdays are not about a celebration of life they are often about mourning the loss of knowledge, family members, and the separation from your family of origin.  And, nonadopted persons don't get this without lengthy explanations so instead we usually just plaster on the mask, it's easier than explaining.

7.  Your children's school family tree projects - It was tough enough enduring them when you were child and being told to "lie" (which it was) and use your adoptive family's background, but now you have to explain (if you are into truth telling and as adoptees we mostly HATE lying to anyone let alone people we love because it's been done to us and we know the damage it does) to your children about adoption, what it means, and how it affects them.

8.  Mirrors, Photos, and Belly Buttons - Sounds silly doesn't it?  It's not, it's our life peering into mirrors, searching photos of ourselves for resemblances and biological family members.  Growing up and even now not knowing who the person is who carried you inside her, who you were connected to for nine months, and who gave you life.  It's just surreal and weird to say the very least.

9.  Children and Grandchildren - Some adoptees only have their children and grandchildren to see any recognition of themselves in. I am in that category and may remain there for the rest of my life.  It's almost inconceivable if it weren't so true.  Sometimes I stare at my children, armed with only with the scraps of information I have received about the physical traits of who I came from, and pick out the similarities.  It's a constant piecing together of a never ending puzzle.

10.  Waking Up - That's all it takes to start the above nine items I have mentioned running through adoptee's minds.

These are just ten I thought of I'm sure there are more but seriously, I am exhausted from thinking about it....at least for the next three minutes anyway. ;)

An Adoptee's Hidden Past

 

Hidden Past

How do I see my future when I can not find my past?

How can I build foundations that I know are going to last?

With bits and pieces missing and secrets kept from me.

How do I stop the questions, and find serenity?

My mind is always traveling down roads that I create.

Where quests are finally finished, and much sought answers wait.

Scenarios repeat themselves with solutions changed each time.

I roll the imaginary film and all endings I could find.

My head is always in the clouds my feet not near the ground.

Can you hear my constant secret prayer the song that has no sound?

My heart will always be tied to another time and space.

Until I find the passage to the secluded hidden place.

Where it started long ago, or once upon a time.

Each day until I find my way I'm searching for those signs.

The ones that will point out the way the direction I should go.

To solve this life long puzzle and the past I need to know.

Adoption is a life long journey, one that never ends especially as an adoptee.  And unfortunately in being adopted, these emotions and issues are not addressed or discussed, allowed to be acknowledged for the most part, or ever understood by adoptees themselves.  Living a life under the weight of nondisclosure, secrets, and lies can impact an adoptee in a great variety of ways.

For me it's not just about my biological parents who want nothing to do with me in their lives and no relationship.  I got over the need to be a wanted child long ago I am an adult now.  But I am continually reduced to being treated as an unworthy child by the actions of adults who with hold vital life altering information from all of their children, not just the one they relinquished.

It's not just about the separation from the parental factor in adoption most people who are not adopted think about.  I  have grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, but most important to me are the siblings who have never been told I exist.  Have we ever crossed paths, has their FB profile blinked across the screen at one point in time, do we have mutual friends, and what would they do if they were told about me?

These decisions that are OURS to make have been taken from us and are being controlled by people without our consent or say.  Our rights are being trampled over and on continually.  And, when will it be too late?  There is no guarantee of reunions decades from now life happens and it happens in adoption each and every day as people are losing one another, the knowledge of each other, and the chance to FIND one another.

When abandoned and rejected by family, friends, and significant others  in life, even if not intentionally done, there are several choices one can make.  Long ago the choices I made were forced denial, suppression of emotions, addiction, and codependency.  Now I speak, I write, I talk, I promote adoptees rights when and anywhere I can and hopefully help other adoptees in their journey and in healing.  I also cry, my heart bleeds, and I quietly and internally pray that someday and somehow I will find the people who are the answers to my questions and connect my past to my future with whatever time I have left.

“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.” ~Adrienne Rich

Silencing Adoption Reformers - What the Industry of Adoption doesn't want you to hear

Today on my Facebook news feed I saw an adoption agency FB page posted by an adoption reformer friend (Not naming site names there are too numerous to count).  They had postings for babies available for adoption listing PRICING in dollars along with their "ads" and the usual promotion of how wonderful adoption is.  Wonderful maybe to those who have not been involved with it firsthand.

The Adoption Industry does not want anyone knowing how much money they are making, that they are selling adoptees back their own information in post adoption services, and how much fraud and corruption is involved in adoption.  A system of adoption that was initially supposed to provide children with homes and has turned into blatant human trafficking.  Human Trafficking strong wording you think?  YEP and very necessary to truly describe adoption these days.

Not only were our comments about our experiences and knowledge of adoption deleted but we were banned from posting further.  None of my comments contained cuss words (only in my head lol) or were attacking anyone on the page.  Numerous other adoption reformers were silenced in the same way.

The Adoption industry is silencing us all the way to the bank.  They don't want the truth about adoption to be known, only the propaganda they spew that keeps them in business.  They are "banking" on the fact they can keep the public in the dark to the realities of adoption so they can continue to profit.  

If this were the first time, or if it were a few times, I've witnessed this activity I could chalk it up to a handful of unscrupulous adoption agencies.  Unfortunately advertising in adoption is way out of control and babies are now being marketed with dollar signs next to their profiles.  It's running rampant in adoption because the availability of newborns being placed for adoption is at an all time low and the amount of parents wanting to adopt continues to rise.  It's supply and demand and adoption agencies are having to go to extreme measures to coerce pregnant woman in delicate and difficult and often TEMPORARY situations to get their hands on their children.  The Billboards, crisis pregnancy bumper stickers, and now online and social media advertising are drawing in more and more innocent victims into the web of adoption industry lies.

Are there children in need of good homes, absolutely.  Is adoption the cure all solution these agencies want you to think it is, NO.  They want you to believe that adoption is the fairy tale ending to a bad situation for a child and its parents.  It is far from that.  I read it in my Adolescent child psych book in college "Orphaned, neglected, and adopted children often have the same issues of abandonment and rejection".  The system of adoption does adoptees no favor too in adding to these issues by putting a price tag on our head, placing us into the lottery system of adoption, selling us back our own family information later in life in post adoption services, and sealing our original birth certificates from us.

Many adoptees are further rejected by their adoptive families.  Babies and children are cute but they grow up and into their own genetics, often very very different from that of adoptive families physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Adoptees are not chess pieces to be played by others and then expected to be grateful for it.  We are human beings with voices that won't be silenced about what has happened to us because of adoption.

By trying to silence us the Adoption Industry is only really revealing the depths of their fear that their control over the profits from adoption will disappear.  I wonder how many of these non-profits and pro-life/pro-adoption agencies will continue on "for the sake of the children" once their large incomes and salaries are diminished and cut back.  Rhetorical there.

We won't back down.  We won't stop speaking out.  We won't be silent.

"Never be bullied into silence.  Never allow yourself to be made a victim.  Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.  ~Harvey Feirstein