Adoption Is a Wonderful Thing—Unless You’re the One Who Was Given Away

As adopted people, most of us hear it all our lives….”you’re so lucky to have been adopted”, “your real mother gave you up so you could have a better life”, “it was an act of love”, “adoption is a wonderful thing”. And for many, these statements resonate to at least some degree. Of course, I’m grateful for my adoptive family and that I didn’t spend my life in an orphanage or in the broken foster care system like so many!

Only an adoptee can understand the flip side of those statements; the questions we secretly ask ourselves all our lives:

• “If she didn’t want me, why did she have me?
  

• “How could she have known I was going to a better home than she could have given me?”
  

• “What is wrong with me that made her decide that giving me up was the right thing to do?”
  

• “What would my life have been like had I stayed with her or even been adopted by someone else?”
  

• “Why did I wind up HERE?”

Especially for those of us who knew we were adopted from a young age, the relationship issues, economics, addiction, or abuse that may have driven the decision had no meaning for us. In the end, we were given up by the very person who brought us into the world, disconnected in an instant from the only safety we had ever known. As more is known about the physiological, psychological, and spiritual connections between mother and unborn child, the profound nature of this separation becomes apparent.

For many adoptees,  asking questions feels like a lack of gratitude, and something to feel guilty about. So we just don’t ask them. But they keep coming up, manifesting in different ways throughout our lives. 

For an adopted person, their adoption is the single most consequential event of their lives, beyond being born. Where we landed was largely a random draw of the cards of life, and every aspect of our lives changed with a swipe of a judges pen, oftentimes after a whole lot of bureaucracy or a long and protracted court case that may have had us in several foster homes. We’ve all seen the pictures of kids being shuffled from one foster home to the next, or going for a “trial stay” with a prospective family with their second-hand suitcase or even a garbage bag filled with all of their worldly belongings.

We are different, and we know we are different. Every day of our lives. Being adopted changes a human being in ways that can be hard to understand if you have not lived it yourself.

And then there’s the search and the reunion with biological family so many adoptees crave. While it’s gotten much easier over the past decade or so with the unsealing of “closed” adoption documents and the advent of programs like Ancestry.com or 23andme.com, the road to reunion can bring its own set of challenges. Some find their bio families and think they may have been better off reared with them, while others meet yet another layer of disappointment and rejection when their bio family isn’t interested in meeting them or even answering any questions.

When I read Nancy Verrier’s book “The Primal Wound” it resonated with me so much. It comforted me to know that so many others have struggled with the same issues I’ve had all my life; apprehension about trusting others (especially women), seeking validation from external sources, people pleasing, empathy to the point of self-sacrifice, overachievement, and perfectionism. I recall being a bit of a melancholy, serious child who always felt different, out of place, and misunderstood. Over the course of my life, my feelings about being adopted have evolved from anger and sadness to indifference, to curiosity, to apathy, and back again, over and over like a broken record.

Thankfully, after many years of delving deep into my own psyche through a number of modalities, I discovered hypnotherapy. It’s helped me to understand how I’d been viewing my life through a lens of rejection without ever even realizing it.  I’ve stopped seeking validation from others and have sanded the edges off my perfectionism. I’ve learned to embrace my gifts of intuition, compassion, and empathy. And most importantly, I’ve learned to forgive my biological mother and the whole situation and to love my story for the beautiful tapestry that it is.

If you’re ready to embrace your adoption story and transform negative emotions and belief patterns, I’m here to help, free of judgment and from a place of deep understanding. Because I’ve been there.