ROOTED IN ADOPTION

"The deepest pain I ever felt was denying my own feelings to make everyone else comfortable."

~Nicole Lyons

When I was growing up back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, I was never asked by anyone how I felt about being adopted. Not even as I got older. I just suffered in silence and never let on about what was going on inside of me. 

I would overhear people telling my adopted parents how lucky they were that I was an intelligent, good looking, well behaved child, a child to be proud of. No one ever discussed with me how I felt about losing my biological family, my true heritage, my history. That was something they never could relate to, never empathize with, never comprehend, never understand that it might be something that hurt and bothered me. 

Friends and relatives would talk about their ancestors, who they were, what they accomplished, with pride and shoes to follow in because they shared their blood. I could only remain silent and wonder whose blood I shared. My adoptive mother loved to say, “Blood is thicker than water,” but never told me whose blood she was referring to. 

So I suffered in silence because no one wanted to talk about my loss. They expected me to make believe I had no other family. And that’s what hurts the most.

They told me I was special, chosen. Chosen, like the Hebrew people in the Bible! Christians use that term, “chosen,” to vilify Jews today. Do these Christians think these are Jews today have lived for three thousand or more years and wrote “chosen” in the Bible? If not, then why the hell do they bother them? I feel similar when referred to as special or chosen. Or when blamed for my conception by those I thought to be more intelligent. 

How could special or chosen entail not knowing anyone who looks like you, thinks like you, feels like you? That was my mindset and I knew no other adoptees. So I thought.

I have since come to learn that many of my childhood schoolmates may also have been adopted but, like me, were taught not to discuss it. So sad that we could have become better friends and consoled each other. Our parents egos were more important than our feelings, our development, our sanity. We were their chattel, not their children. 

With the advent of the internet, the world became smaller and now I could come in contact with other adoptees. I learned I was not unique. There were many similar to me, felt like me, understood me. I was no longer “special,” but rather normal, or at least normal in a newly discovered subset. 

While there are many adoptees who are similar to me, there are also many who deny their biological family and are adamant that their only real family is their adopted family. Love, they claim, is the reason for their rationalization. I choose not to further discus that other than to say I understand where they are coming from.

To the thousands who feel like I do, thank you for letting me know I am not alone. Everything you have written and said has been of tremendous help to my psyche. I see myself in your words. The following is just one example.

IT'S COMPLICATED

"The sense of identity provides the ability to experience one’s self as something that has continuity and sameness, and to act accordingly.”

~Erik Erikson

I don't think I truly understood how much adoption affected me until several months ago, when I learned that my birth mother had taken her own life four years previously. That unleashed many years of suppressed emotions.

But looking back, I think about how one of my favorite children’s books was “Are You My Mother?” and how I wrote in my Judy Blume diary at age eight that my real mommy was a princess and she was going to come take me away when I was mad at my mom about something. Around the same age, I called my (controlling and cleanliness-obsessed) mother "Mommy Dearest." For a long time, I think Christina Crawford was really the only adoptee I knew about. Though fortunately I was not physically abused, I certainly related to her on some level.

While I always knew I was adopted, it also wasn't something that was really talked about much, and I definitely didnt feel like I could share any difficult feelings about it. My upbringing was mostly okay, but I did always feel like the odd one out. I look nothing like my mom or dad, and I stared at my face in the mirror a lot, from about age seven through my teens. My mom said I was being vain, but I think now that I was trying to figure out who I was, who I looked like. I was tall and dark-haired, with big eyes and full cheeks, a stark contrast to my Scandinavian mother and Irish stepfather. I was a daydreamer and a reader, off in my own little world much of the time. I liked the arts, while my mom and stepdad were very math and logic oriented.

I wrestle with issues of self-image and self-worth to this day, and I think part of that is due to the lack of genctic mirroring, of never seeing myself reflected in those around me, I have struggled with depression for at least twenty years, much more so for the past several years. I have not been actively suicidal, but I have had periods where I just didn't care if I died and did not take good care of my health, leading to problems now. I have a tendency to isolate myself, or test people to see if they will leave me, and I have a hard time holding onto lasting friendships. I chose to estrange myself from my adoptive family for several years.

Growing up, I felt sort of vague and nebulous. I didn't know anything about them at all. I wondered about my birth mother and who she was quite a bit, and though I did sometimes wonder who my birth father might be, he was much less on my mind.

When I was about sixteen or seventeen, my mom told me my birth mother's last name. Every time I had to fill out medical history information and had to write, "unknown - adopted" I felt a twinge of sadness and would wonder. Like so much about being adopted, it's complicated.

My birth mother had not been supported in keeping me, as I eventually discovered. Instead, she was coerced by her own mother into giving me up, an event that affected her deeply for the rest of her life and contributed to her mental health struggles.

I wish it were not a closed adoption. I feel strongly that closed adoption is a moral evil, cutting off vital information and possibilities for connection. It has caused pain for me and so many others.

I am enraged that adoption agencies can get away with charging so much money for what is essentially my own information, and that Im also not allowed to access the first legal document of my life, my original, unaltered birth certificate.

I wish my birth mother hadn't felt so overwhelmed by the situation that she cut off contact. I wish I had tried reaching out sooner. I wish she knew that I do not blame her for anything, that I feel so much love and empathy for her. I wish more people had been there for her when she needed it.

I can't really regret the life I have, the people I love, the experiences I've had, both good and bad. At the same time, it's so hard not to wonder “what if?” What if my birth mother had been supported by her family? What if my birth father had known? What if I'd been able to know them all these years?

It’s healing and exciting to be making these connections now to my birth family, but it also fills me with deep sorrow and anger—the very fact that I have to get to know my own father, aunt, cousins and other relatives. And underlying it all is the grief that I cannot do this with my birth mother. I also feel such sorrow for newborn-me, who was taken from the familiar smells and sounds of her mother, placed in some sort of foster home for two weeks, and then removed again to be adorned.

~Anonymous