Adoption: rage, hopelessness, attachment

[shimmerz]

Funny. Not haha. I was a foster child for 2 years and then adopted. There was so much f*cked up stuff to help me to 'normalize' and brainwash me into thinking how lucky I was to be adopted.

My T, when it kind of came to me that there were discrepancies in my thinking about the adoption, the circumstances I had been told about my adoption, and on and on and on, was absolutely CLEAR that I not delve into what happened during the adoption process. That I wasn't ready for it.

I felt ready for it, but I trusted him so I left it alone for 3 years.

I finally was granted disclosure (for medical reasons) and was asked by the disclosure chick if I had a good therapist. She knew. My T knew. It was ugly. I mean, even when it isn't 'ugly' it is still ugly, isn't it?

So I went (with two supporters and a tape recorder in my purse) and I listened and I asked questions and I ran out of the room several times. It took 3 days of disclosure ..... most of what happened was not disclosed. I was put on drugs at 18 months old, they wouldn't tell me what drugs, the hospital that did the operation on me wouldn't let me have (let alone KNOW about) my records because they belonged to my birth mother and she was dead.

It is a truly f*cked up process, system, mindset by those who make the rules. And it still goes on to this day. Not much improvement, not in this neck of the woods anyway.

You actually have a right to be enraged. Your T had a right to protect you from learning this stuff before you were ready. Pretty sure that would have been a big conflict for her. That is not meant to minimize what is happening inside you. There is a ton of processing that will need to happen in the near future, but it will get easier, I promise you. And it does sound like your T is looking at your best interests in a responsible way.

I think the biggest thing for me was trying to figure out how those who professed to be helping me, loving me, who chirped all the time about how LUCKY I was to have been adopted (which is bullshit), they lied to me.

I just didn't and sometimes still don't, know what to do with that.

Feel what you need to feel. Just if you can, let it don't, and try not to let it circulate around and around inside of you. I would ask your T, if you don't have those skills, how to do that for yourself.

Best of luck to you. May you find as much peace as you can in this situation.

 

[scout86]

I think the biggest thing for me was trying to figure out how those who professed to be helping me, loving me, who chirped all the time about how LUCKY I was to have been adopted (which is bullshit), they lied to me.

In a way, I'm not qualified to weigh in on this. I wasn't adopted although, ironically(?) at various times I thought I must be, because that would "explain everything", and wished I HAD been, by someone who actually wanted me. But, I'm going to throw one thought out there anyway.

Back when I said that those calves who got stuck with me for a 'mother' would have done better if they'd been raised by their biological mother, but 'me' was better than dying? Well, I really think it was. And those were the options. It was never a choice between me and the cow who birthed them. It was me or nothing. I think, the vast majority of the time, with people, the choice isn't between what you DESERVED and what you got through adoption, it's between what you were born into and what else was available. Usually, 'what you were born into' just isn't a viable option, if you end up in the system. The whole "two sane, loving parents, and a white picket fence" thing isn't on the table at all. It SHOULD be, absolutely. It just isn't. So then someone has to try to sort out the lesser of several evils. With limited resources.

When adoption ends you up here, it's because things end up on the radically f*cked up end of the spectrum. Instead of a caretaker who hears the calf mooing from across the road and wants to drop everything and run to see what's up, you get someone who thinks "Will you shut the f*ck up already? I'll be there when I don't have anything else to do!" (On the spectrum of how things work, I'd bet the calves who ended up with me did better than those guys would, even if mine would have been better off with bovine moms.) It happens. It shouldn't but it does. The other thing that apparently happens is 'the system' doesn't pay enough attention to this kind of thing. Adoptive parents need to understand the ups and downs of adoption and they no doubt need help working things through. This sounds like a huge oversight and like something that could actually be fixed. But, for the most part, I tend to think 'lucky to be adopted' because you at least had a CHANCE of ending up someplace better than you started out.

I guess part of the reason I say this is that I'm sorting of coming to terms with the reality of "Wait, my early life actually WAS kind of messed up, it really DID have long term implications, and there really weren't any other options available in this version of reality." Seeing things intellectually is a step or so removed from believing the reality. And that there are no do overs in real life. And some things you can't fix. And all that....... What you're talking about, I think, is one more thing on that list of things. Anger/rage seems like a legitimate response. It's probably not a productive place to stay, but I kind of doubt you're going to stay there (both shimmerz and simon). I think it's more likely that being there is another step along the way to sorting things out, and THAT is what I'd bet you're going to do in the end.

 

[Kintsugi]

It's totally unfair that you weren't born into a situation where you could be raised by good parents who gave birth to you

That's sort of the crux of it, as your husbandry anecdotes help illustrate. I'm not sure exactly how much it matters whether biological/natural/"first" parents are great or not, because the fact is, it is traumatic and unnatural to take a newborn from its mother at days or weeks old and plop them into a different family. My T was talking yesterday about the strong case for the "fourth trimester," when newborns should be kept more or less against their mothers and not exposed to too many unfamiliarities or stimulation (light, sounds). Newborns can detect the smell of their mother like a bloodhound, prefer their mother's voice immediately (and there is clear evidence that this continues well into adulthood on a hard-wired level), and prefer their mother's face over all others in early infancy.

I think I'm especially frustrated by the cultural airbrushing of the topic, and I'm also angry that my adoptive parents didn't allow for the possibility that it would have been better for me in the long run to have more time as a newborn with my biological mother, which was within their ability to accommodate (although this is not usually an option) OR to have an open adoption (also well within their ability). I know that they were motivated by fear, because they had adopted a baby before who was taken back by its mother after a few months. I know they were terrified that my biological mother would change her mind any moment.

When my cousin and her wife were talking about IVF vs adoption, her wife used me as an example of why not to adopt, because my biological siblings found me when I was eighteen. She said something like, "Well, just look at Simon. Her family still came out of nowhere. I couldn't handle that." I was and am still hurt by that, being an example of what could go "wrong," although where I am right now, looking back, it's crystal clear that they couldn't have adopted if they weren't willing to live with the messy reality of displacing a child from its natural family.

Adoptees are told their entire lives--not just by their family/parents but by society as well--that adoption simply doesn't matter and isn't a factor, or, worse still as @shimmerz experienced, how very lucky they are to have been adopted. Once, even before I started this process of coming out of the fog, as they say, someone told me that my parents must be wonderful people with such big hearts to adopt an unwanted baby, and how lucky I was to have been adopted. "Not really," I said. "White newborns are in extremely high demand." They just stared at me.

I'm also so angry at the entire institution of adoption, how it blatantly commodifies children at the expense of the kids and the families who lose them. No one truly wins in this situation, but if anyone comes out on top, it's the adoptive parents who get what they want, many willing to do, say, and pay anything for a child.

 

[scout86]

I'm not sure exactly how much it matters whether biological/natural/"first" parents are great or not, because the fact is, it is traumatic and unnatural to take a newborn from its mother at

I get what you're saying. But, on another level, I don't think I'm capable of getting it. I've heard this expressed before, but, because of my own total inability to feel any attachment to my mother, at all, it's really hard for me to accept that this is true. I'm not saying it's NOT. I guess it just leads me to wonder what's wrong with me, that I don't feel it.

I always used to joke that being a latchkey kid probably saved my life. Except that it kind of wasn't a joke. But, there are LOTS of people here who had crappy mothers, and I have yet to run across anyone else who didn't feel some kind of attachment like you're talking about. But, I got nothin'. Not even when she died. Could have been any other random old lady you who lived in the neighborhood when you were a kid. So, I'm thinking that the lack is me, not the mother/child bond. (I'll admit, I'm somewhat curious about what might have led things to be what they were.)

Seems to me that adoption matters a LOT. An in more than one direction. Because, it matters that you didn't get the attachment and the stable start you should have gotten. It also matters that someone wanted you. (And I'm going to ignore all the people who want kids for evil, warped reasons, even though I know they're out there.) That your biological family might some day find you, I'd cautiously say is way cool. But then, I'm not the jealous or possessive type and I think a person can't possibly have too many connections in this life. I don't feel threatened by stuff like that. Some people do. (That's kind of their problem and it would be nice if they'd see it and work on it.) I said "cautiously" only because a biological family is one of those things that can go horribly wrong, you know?

No one truly wins in this situation,

I think that's exactly right. Once you have a scenario where a kid can't be raised by the people who created it, you're already behind and trying to play catch up. I hope that at least SOME adoptees end up with people who really do love them, and cherish them, and give them the kind of shot at life that kids deserve.

 

[ladee]

The other end of that spectrum is me wishing they had adopted me out. Might have been a lot worse..or there would have been the chance that I would have been "wanted" by someone. That my life story would not and still be about feeling worthLESS.
Very few of us here got what we needed. I bonded with my mother..she never bonded with me.
All I know for sure is that I am grateful we have each other. At least I belong somewhere.

 

[Kintsugi]

Well, I'm sort of uniquely positioned as an adoptee, @scout86, because I knew that A) my mother really did not want to give me up and B) that my life would have sucked in many ways if I'd not been adopted.

My adoptive mother was in the generation and school of thought that babies would learn how to self-soothe by being left to "cry it out," which we now know is a bunch of bullshit, and that's something my T and I discussed too. Fact of the matter is, my adoptive mother likes to joke about how I "cried for three months, suddenly stopped, and didn't cry for three years!" She doesn't realize--and didn't then--that this was a terrible sign. My mother also likes to talk with much glee about what a freakishly obedient child I was, which is one of two recognizable traits in adopted kids. Typically, adoptees will either act out constantly, with lots of rage, testing their limits to infinity, or they'll be extraordinarily docile and "good," super well-behaved, not needy at all, attempting, theoretically speaking, to be good enough not to be displaced again. My brother was the former. I was the latter.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but a lot of my utter rage is about how duplicitous the institution of adoption is. Especially with international adoptions, but also domestically, adoption is big business--really really it is--and often, mothers are coerced, tricked, and otherwise intensely pressured to surrender children they don't want to relinquish, often with lying reassurances that they can keep in touch with their children or that their children will know the mother's information if they want to search later.

My adoptive mother, for her part, says she knew my biological mother didn't want to give me up, knew that she was doing it under brutality from my biological father, but she wanted a baby girl, and here one was out of the blue (my bio parents used a fake adoption agent and fast-tracked the process, somehow catching the attention of my adoptive parents along the way, who would have otherwise probably waited much longer for a "match"), and she knew the baby's home life would be rough, so she went ahead and adopted me. But I'm not going to say it was all about what was best for me. It wasn't. It was marginally about me but mostly about her desperation for another daughter.

The problem is and is not inherently adoption. Intrinsically, yes, adoption is totally problematic, and if you state the facts of adoption bluntly, anyone can see that it's an ugly, messy situation. However, it could be better. So much better. And there COULD be other options and ways of doing things where families and especially babies and children are truly prioritized. But that isn't how it is, because it would be much less profitable for the institutions surrounding adoption. Adoption agencies and charities overwhelmingly promise perfect little babies/young children to parents who can't conceive or just like the sunny, white-washed, airbrushed idea of adoption (and the story goes in our culture that these parents are heroes and saints), and that's the model around which they all conduct their business: find a supply of babies, especially white ones, and provide them to people willing and able to weather the expenses built into the adoption process.

In other countries, it is sooooo much worse, as I've been learning. Kids are ripped from families, stuck into orphanages, and then peddled heartlessly to the Western world. All the while, parents are told that if they really loved their children, they would sign consent forms, or those forms are forged. Meanwhile, the children and prospective adoptive parents are told that the children are completely orphaned.

Then there's the whole prevailing practice within adoption, which is perpetuated both by adoptive parents and the institution as well as surrounding culture, where the past is erased as fully as possible from a baby or child's grasp, and the mantra, again and again: "Adoption doesn't matter. The past doesn't matter. You're just like any other kid, except you're so lucky! Lucky you. You were chosen!"

It's all just too much for me to get my head around. I think I've already said earlier in this thread that what I'm experiencing is apparently totally a thing, a normal process for adoptees, called "defogging" or "coming out of the fog." I'm not a zealot. I'm just really pissed off that no one warned me, and I feel profoundly alone and not understood.

 

[shimmerz]

I'm just really pissed off that no one warned me, and I feel profoundly alone and not understood.

Yes, and I think that a ton of this had to do with what adoptive parents were told was best to tell their children. 'Make sure they know they are lucky, loved by the people that gave them up, and loved just like they were a naturally born child in the adoptive family.' Ummmm, yeah. Doesn't work out that way.

I actually thought that I knew my story. My adoptive parents told me it. I was loved ever so much, so much so that I was given up for adoption. And that THEY loved me so much that they adopted me out of all of the other poor little children that were standing in the adoption queue. (Survivor guilt much?)

Anyway, even that was actually a lie. My birth mother didn't want to give me up, so that was a lie, but actually she was unprepared to care for me, selfish, abusive. My adoptive mother wanted - not me - but a sister for her daughter. When her daughter hated me.... well, so did my adoptive mother. All the while being fed with 'but everyone loved you so much'.

No wonder I wandered around all of my life trying to normalize shit that was not normalizable. I still struggle with this.

Your story will be your story, just like mine is mine. And it will take quite a bit of time to work through all the feelings, nuances, beliefs, etc that comes with this adoption thing. It doesn't really help that your Mother did what she thought was right. Not to you. I know my birth mother tried to do what was right for me, but you see, because the concept was wrong, doesn't matter (imho) what mother I had been adopted by. The situation was fake just by nature of the system. And I think somehow we adoptees know this. Because it isn't natural. And adoptive parents aren't supported or warned that it is natural that their children are going to be affected (even if they seem like an angel sent from heaven) nor are the children given the proper support as they almost always start to act out.

 

[Fadeaway]

@Simply Simon Damn! I kind of vaguely knew about a lot of what goes on in the adoption industry, but hearing you tell about really drives the situation home.You don't come across as a zealot to me, more of a whistle blower.

 

[Kintsugi]

If it interests you, @Fadeaway, look into what happened with Korea and adoption after the Korean War. It's... really bad. I just watched a documentary online called First Person Plural about a woman's experience being adopted from Korea when she was... five? Who assumed a fraudulent identity, only to find out that she had a huge family who didn't want to give her up in the first place.

ETA: not to put too fine a point on it, but this article is reeeally good too
The Trouble With the Christian Adoption Movement

 

[scout86]

Sometimes being a zealot isn't a bad thing.

 

[Mit]

I'm adopted. I spent six weeks with my birth mother before I went into care and she returned to live with her parents who wouldn't have me, an illegitimate child in the house.

I found The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier validating. There is so much in the book that I could truly relate to. And it opened my mind to some aspects of my personality I hadn't connected to being adopted. I have been re reading parts ever since.

There is a lot I understand and really empathise with in what you have described. It makes my heart ache to read it. I will keeping thinking of you and hope you will keep writing about it so we can all support you.

 

[Isobel Wolf]

I wish I knew why I was given up. I don't know if all mental hospital babies are given up. I do know that many try to self-abort and that one of them had a parent who held a doctorate in PhD in religion. I'm new to all this adoption theory. My adoptive parents had the attitude that everything is ok because the baby is safe and loved now. They are still ignorant, and it hurts me too much to explain, adding the salt of insult to the injury of never bonding to them.

These are the first posts by adoptees I've ever read. I read Coming Home to Self- The Adopted Child Grows Up and also The Women Who Went Away about pre Roe V Wade adoptions, stressing what an awful thing adoption is. I don't feel like my life was saved by being spared the D&C. Murder me before I'm aware of, even being in the womb, rejected.

I didn't realize how complicated the decision was, how a young woman didn't have a choice, and can still be coerced into giving up and even carrying a child to term, and how harmful to behave as if the bio parents never existed. Reproduction is only ever just a mother's business for the privileged. The stigma around adoption is deserved- not that we were unwanted or less-than for being 'bastards,' but that it actually screws up our brains. Taking a baby directly to an incubator, which I also was, also inhibits the ability to form attachments and babies are shuffled through the system like dogs in a city shelter.

Thank you for creating this space to share