Adoption trauma (and why you feel invisible)
I wanted to adopt because I was terrified to give birth. That, and for some reason, giving birth and making new children just never appealed to me. I don’t know why. I wanted a family, but I didn’t want to create my children. Since I was probably 15 years old, that’s just the way I’ve felt.
I’ve learned so much about adoption, the assumptions, the cultural perceptions, and the true, deep pain and grief of it. More than I could have ever expected.
If you grew up part of a Christian church, like I did, you most likely were taught that adoption was a beautiful demonstration of God’s love. Your church might have been visited by adoption groups or child sponsorship organizations, telling you heart-wrenching stories about kids who didn’t have access to clean water or education. You might have given to a collection to help provide for these kids’ needs, feeling really accomplished and good about yourself for doing something to “give back.” You might have heard things like “following God’s call to love the widows and orphans” and pictured adoption as a beautiful way to give a child a home that didn’t have one, a way of “rescuing” a child with no other chance. You may have even known a family that adopted and looked at them with such awe and reverence, telling them what beautiful work they were doing and how special they were.
You may have known people who adopted because they couldn’t conceive biological children and adoption was the “next best thing.” You may have known people who took in nieces, nephews, or grandchildren whose parents could no longer take care of them. You may have met foster families who fostered because they couldn’t have kids, or were done raising their kids and wanted to give back, or who just fostered out of the goodness of their hearts. Sadly, you may have known foster families who did it because they got paid to do so.
From the outside, adoptive families are generally looked at in one of two ways: either the family is doing such an amazing thing, rescuing a child and giving them a “second chance,” or they’re looked at as lesser than biological families, families who settled for kids that other people made, and that the love and bonds they had couldn’t possibly be as strong with their adopted kids as the ones they gave birth to. Or, if your adoption occurred long enough ago, adoption may have been considered so shameful that the fact that you were adopted was actually kept secret. That is absolutely devastating.
No matter which way you look at it, what all of these perspectives have in common is that they make the adoptees feel invisible.
As an adoptive mom, I am conscious every single day that my daughters have stories and experiences that I was not present for and will never understand fully, no matter how hard I try. I work extremely hard and extremely consciously to make sure my girls’ stories are known and understood. I share with them everything I can about their past lives as they are developmentally ready to understand it. I’ve read and re-read every piece of paperwork I have access to about them. I’ve saved every photo I’ve found. I’ve made photo books that the girls can look at and process as much as they need to. I even look up their biological family members on social media so I can gather information about who they are, what they’re doing, and help shape my insights about them that affected my girls when they were in their care. It is a wonderful and tremendous responsibility that I have to keep all of this for my children, so that I can share with them and teach them as developmentally appropriate, and so they will grow up with a sense of completeness about who they are, where they’ve been, and how it’s shaped them.
Yet, sadly, so many people who were adopted have never had someone do this for them. They grow up being told platitudes like, “Love makes a family,” “You’re so lucky to have been adopted,” and “God brought you to us.” The cultural narrative is that you should be grateful to have been adopted, that your life could have turned out so differently if you hadn’t been. And you don’t disagree with this, necessarily. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. You were a person before you joined your adoptive family. You had experiences before you met your adoptive family. Even if you were adopted at birth, you still came from someone else. You look like someone else, you may talk like someone else, you may have innate traits that match someone you never met. So few people truly understand this. There is an entire part of you that has never been seen, and that can feel so, so lonely.
There’s even a cultural perception that, if you were adopted young enough, you should be completely unaffected by anything you experienced pre-adoption. That’s just not true. In fact, in some ways it can be even lonelier to have been adopted before you can consciously remember anything. You will know that you had a life before your adoptive family, but you won’t remember anything about it. If your adoptive family doesn’t do the work to learn and help teach you, you will grow up with a painful, empty feeling of not belonging and not being understood. The loneliness and the grief can be so deep.
To further deepen the loneliness, so few people understand adoption, that even when you try to get help for it, you still really struggle to be understood. Most therapists have no personal experience with adoption and try their best, but really struggle to place themselves in your shoes. Most people mean well. You know this. You may feel bad for “complaining.” But really, you’re not complaining. You’re longing to be understood. You’re longing to understand yourself. And you absolutely deserve to.
I wasn’t an adoptee myself, but I am an adoptive parent trying as absolutely hard as I can to help my kids feel a sense of completeness. If you were adopted and you want the space to grieve everything you’ve never had, I will hold that space with you.
