Adoption Trauma and Me

November is adoption awareness month and tomorrow is my adoption day and so it feels like an apt time to share my adoption journey and how I'm feeling about it today, which may or may not be how I feel about it tomorrow, laughing out loud. I turned 40 this year, 40 years adopted tomorrow, and so it feels like I don't want to waste one more minute being quiet or cagey or demure or respectful. Today is the day. 

I don't think anyone is unaware of adoption, but I think most adoption narratives center around the adoptive parents, biological parents, and the adoption event itself, sometimes even talking about child adoptees. But we so rarely hear from adult adoptees and aren't we the experts on our own experiences? 

Shouldn't we be leading the discussion? I couldn't give 2 shits what the different kinds of parents have to say. I want to hear from adoptees!

But even then, so many of us are the result of our own internalized conditioning around adoption, how society sees us, how our adoptive families want us to be or feel or behave, and our individualized stories, so how can we possibly be expected to lead, when so many of us are still unpacking our own trauma?

I've spent so much time unpacking my adoption (among other trauma) in therapy that just contemplating the pressure to speak for adoptees feels too monumental. And then my dear friend told me today something that made it click (I'm paraphrasing): adoption is isolating. I feel so alone in my journey sometimes, despite the people in my life who know and love me and support me, I feel like nobody else can possibly understand. 

It's isolating. It's designed to be that way. It's systemic. 

So I've been seeking out adult adoptees who are already thought leaders, who are already blazing the way and I've learned that it's not up to just me or even one singular leader; it's all of us, speaking up and telling our stories. And there is so much nuance that it's not even my place to speak on, such as trans-racial adoption or trans-national adoption. All I can do is tell my story and add it to the pile. 

It's not perfect. I've met adult adoptees I disagree with or who want to tell me how to feel about my adoption or my family or gatekeep my adoptive identity. I've spent 15 years in therapy figuring myself out and, while I'll always have more to learn, I think gatekeeping within our community and not leaving any room for personal growth or nuance is just not the way forward. 

I want to change a lot of things. 

I want to change the system and how it treats babies and children as commodities, while also othering us and keeping us from our own information and disempowering us from our own lives. I want to change the narratives around biological families from brave and selfless parents to just people who were likely in shit situations and did the thing they had to do. I want to change the narrative around adoptive parents, from selfless saviors to people who may or may not have the best intentions or who feel entitled to babies or just as completely human and flawed people who have no idea what they're getting themselves into and who are unprepared for the endemic trauma that comes with adoption. 

Unlike some adoptees, I don't think all adoptive parents are bad people or ill-intentioned or abusive even, though that is extremely common. I think there are lots of really good people, like my dad, who are doing their best, but nothing prepared them for what adoption really means psychologically or even physically. So much has changed since my adoption in 1980 but so much hasn't and our society has so much to learn and change. 

But most of all, I want to change the narrative around adoptees themselves. We're othered and disempowered and there's so much in our society that keeps us as separate, from how we're treated in a doctor's office (ask me about my first mammogram sometime) to our own legal records. But also how we were treated in our own homes. I, for one, always felt the pressure to be perfect and to earn my place in my family, knowing I was a replacement child for the one who died, compounded by a narcissistic mother who would never have let me grow into an actualized and independent person. 

I also think that while we look to dismantle oppressive systems around adoption and move forward, that we don't romanticize the what ifs of it all. I do think that if a lot of things in our society were different, then adoption would be extremely rare. For example, making sex ed, contraception, and safe and legal abortion accessible and understood would radically change the landscape of unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. If more pregnant women had better access to healthcare and resources to care for and raise children, then they wouldn't be put into the position to give up babies if they didn't want to. 

But, there is nuance there. I won't go back in time and vilify by biological mother for "abandoning me" nor will I canonize her for "making the brave and selfless choice" either. She's likely neither of those things and it happened. Me pretending that I would've had a much better life with her does nothing but stick me in a fantasy land where I can't heal my trauma in the present and live the life I have. And she died in 1987. I was 7. There's no guarantee I would've live any differently than I actually did and I'm a big believer in dealing with reality. 

There's also another reality that I think we forget and that's that adoption should be an option because shit happens. A lot of adoptees say that all adoption is bad and shouldn't exist, and while I agree that the baby market needs to stop, shouldn't it be one form of a safety net for kids? Do we want orphanages again?

Parents die. Accidents happen. False negative pregnancy tests happen or some women even menstruate while pregnant and then it's too late to abort. Sometimes adoptions are within families to keep kids with some kind of family after a death and sometimes not because maybe a single mom is estranged from her family and doesn't want her child with them. Those are just examples, but my point is that even if we improve society to the point where most unwanted pregnancies are prevented and abortion whittles down the rest, there will still be parentless children for a myriad of reasons and shouldn't we improve the system to better care for those children rather than end the practice entirely? 

And, I have to say, that, if it's not clear already, while I'm in support of systems and support that make adoption rare, part of the adoption narrative I have issues with are as last resort or consolation prize. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a friend or family member thoughtlessly say they'd never adopt because, "it's just not the same." It's hurtful. It's othering. It makes me feel like less than a whole person. It makes me feel like an orphan. 

I don't know how to square those disparate thoughts, because I don't want people buying babies like commodities, but I also don't want us adoptees to feel like less-than their peers or family members in biological families. Perhaps one is a systemic issue and one is cultural, but both live within me regardless. 

Here's what I know: adoption is traumatic. The trauma is shown to start during gestation. 1 in 4 adoptees attempt suicide. Lots of things need to change if we're going to survive and that change needs to be led by adult adoptees and adoption trauma experts in the mental health community. 

Okay I need to end this here. Come back tomorrow and I'll share everything I know about my own adoption and I'll also be doing my first ever post about my biological family.