Hello my Blogville friends! Thank you so much for coming back to visit. This blog looks at the impact society has on adopted people of all ages. I am sipping on an herbal tea as I try to express why I think some adopted children and youth spontaneously act out, and how society’s use of the word ‘adoption’ may contribute by triggering trauma responses! As an adoptee, I often find that society regularly reminds us of our adoptee status in innocent but painful ways. Some examples? 
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Just the other day I was completing a newspaper crossword puzzle (yes, they still exist) and the 5 letter clue was, “Take home from the pound.” You guessed it, “ADOPT” was the correct answer. Ironically the ‘A’ from the word ADOPT formed part of the word across, “FLASHINTHEPAN” (in case you are interested, the clue for that answer was “*brief success”). These are the sudden reminders of what happened to me being equated with the rescue of animals from the pound, and in this case, the other answer might well describe the relationship between my birth parents I suppose. Adoptive parents, talk with your children about how these crossword clues and ‘definitions’ make them feel? I know I wanted to tear up the paper to express my ongoing distaste for being equated with an animal. Instead, I decided to blog about it as others out there might be feeling these things too (not that many people do crosswords anymore lol). 


The humane society does wonderful work and demonstrates a true dedication to the safety of animals. However, their ‘pet adoption’ confuses me about my value as a person compared to that of a kitten or a puppy. They even use the same terminology as some people use regarding children, such as; “waiting for adoption”, “waiting for their forever home”. They have “foster homes” for animals and complete an adoption application process prior to releasing an animal to a prospective owner. Our local news has a segment with the local SPCA Animal Centre and the whole purpose is to recruit people willing to adopt the animals they showcase. Depending on where my self esteem is when this segment comes on, I often have to leave the room. I continually wonder if a child or youth in care is watching this segment too, and if so, what their thoughts are about whether a family will be found for them, or if a prospective adoptive family might choose a kitten or puppy instead. When you notice your adopted child watching a humane society public service announcement, talk to them about the word ‘adoption’, what it means to you, and what the word means to them. Whether you are a foster, kinship, or adoptive family, talk to the children and youth in your home about how society sees and uses the term adoption very lightly, but then be sure to follow up by taking the time to explain that ‘adoption’ is a really big word in your family, with a very big meaning.


Speaking of adoption promotional campaigns, I do not believe that anyone can truly promise ‘forever’ (as in ‘forever families’ or ‘forever home’) to children and/or youth, simply because life happens and we all know life is unpredictable. Just think of  the impact of separation and divorce on families, or the accidental or sudden death of otherwise healthy parents. Even birth children cannot be promised a ‘forever home’ or ‘forever family’, not even by the very people that brought them into this world. Frankly, instead of ‘waiting for their forever family’, I would prefer that adoption promotions regarding children and youth simply say, “waiting for a family”. It is noteworthy to mention that there are some posters out in society, many of them associated with the Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption, that have more positive messaging such as: “May I have a few years of your time?”; “You may not have seen my first steps, but you will see me walk down the aisle.”; and “Never too old for family” (referring to youth adoptions).


“Adopt a Highway” signs are another emotional challenge for me as an adoptee. “Adopt a Highway” is a program in Canada and the United States wherein some provinces and states encourage individuals or community groups to clean up the sides of a specific section of the highway by removing litter and garbage. Often, much to my dismay, they even refer to the volunteers belonging to these groups as ‘adopters’ in their promotional descriptions. Yikes! I mean they certainly CAN use it, but my brain takes it to so many different levels, such as ‘adopters’ taking care of something (sides of a highway) that does not technically belong to them. We won’t even get into the fact that “adopters” are picking up trash or litter left on the side of the road by other people.


Though I have spoken about the “Adopt-A-Highway”program before in terms of the reactions I feel every time I drive past one of these signs, I think it warrants repeating. The sign’s message to me is that my own province sees fit to reduce my value as an adoptee to that of a neglected highway; a strip of tarmac that needs its garbage removed by volunteers. It also reduces ‘adopters’ to people who pick up and appropriately dispose of trash. So please, talk with your  children about those signs. Explain how the program is meant to find people that want to help take care of important things, or about how people can work together to make a great thing happen just like birth parents, adoption workers, and adoptive families work together to plan for adoptions. Please do not just drive by those signs and let your child feel what I still feel when I see them, instead, ask them how that sign makes them feel. 


Remember in school when you did not raise your hand in class unless you were pretty sure you knew the correct answer? Remember how it felt when the teacher called on you even when your hand was not raised? Remember how unprepared you felt and how you did not want to stand out in the class? Often, adoptees feel like that just by living in our society, and they too simply do not want to stand out. Every day an adopted person somewhere is faced with the laissez-faire attitude of society toward the use of the word ‘adoption’. Politicians adopt policies, scientists adopt positions, companies adopt practices, and so on. Families adopt children. Adopted children and youth will hear and/or see the word ‘adoption’ both in context, and out of context everywhere. Your job, as adoptive family members and workers is to prepare them for this exposure so they do not feel reduced to the same status as neglected or unwanted animals, strips of highway, experiments, policies and procedures, etc. Adoptees face enough rejection at the mere fact they were freed for adoption, they do not need to feel more through society’s use of a word that to them means, “Family.” Encourage your child to talk to you about these events, preparing them for ‘raising their hands’ if you will. Help your children and youth be prepared for posters and signs that are out there, talk about people using the same adoption terminology when referring to rescuing animals, as well as preparing them for managing *inappropriate questions about them, their birth parents, and/or their adoptive parents (*more about this in an upcoming blog). An “ounce of prevention” will help your child or youth, and yourself, be ready to handle these emotional roller coasters!


I’m glad you visited today, thank you for stopping by, and I look forward to ‘seeing’ you every second Tuesday of each month. Follow me on Goodreads for my blogs to come to you via email. As ever my Blogville friends, I welcome and look forward to your comments here or by email at [email protected] 

Hello my Blogville friends! Thank you for joining me for some Raspberry tea and a read of my thoughts. It is so lovely when you visit. I hope you find our tea time worthwhile.
This blog is a real hodgepodge of thoughts around adoption trauma and its impact on my parenting and even grand-parenting. Again, these are my thoughts and feelings alone, I would never attempt to speak for other adoptees. I share my thoughts and feelings because I strongly believe that recognizing adoption trauma for what it is will promote healing, mine for certain, but maybe for others too.

Recently, my husband and I had the privilege of visiting our son and his family for a couple of weeks and we enjoyed the luxury of spending time with our toddler grandchild. Spending time with my adult children and my grandchildren is often mind-boggling to me. I belong to an Adoptee Group on Facebook and recently I read a new grandmother’s post that said something to the effect that she had just spent some time with her first grandchild (newborn) and was feeling validated that she must have done something right as a parent. I believe that she says this in deference to her own start in life as an unplanned pregnancy and then to her experience with adoption trauma. I could relate to her post. So many of us live in fear that our adoption trauma will impact on our ability to be good parents, or even grandparents. 

As I have mentioned before, I was often terrified during my first pregnancy. Remember, I had no real information about my birth parents except the little that my parents were told, and a lot of that was inaccurate as it turns out. I certainly did not know any medical history.  I did not know if my baby might be born with features more associated with other cultures, nor did I know if there might be a family history of medical concerns relating to my child’s birth, or afterwards. My husband was so understanding and he seemed honestly unconcerned. His only hope was for a healthy baby. What should have been a time of excited anticipation was actually terrifying for me. It turned out that together, we had created a healthy baby girl.

My mom came to spend time with us when our first child was born. I had so many questions! I could often hear a sadness in my mother’s voice when she would reply to my multiple questions with things like “I’m not sure, I never had a newborn.” or, “I don’t know Lynn, I only know about babies after they are nine months old.” I started feeling too guilty to ask her things anymore. Mom felt that her role in spending this post-natal time with us was to clean the apartment, cook our meals, and to keep me company. My mom even sewed cloth diapers when the doctor recommended them for the baby; who can make homemade diapers? 

In reality, mom’s ‘baby experience’ was not fully accurate. My mom was the oldest of a family that had five children. She often talked about helping her own mother with her baby siblings, rocking them, changing them, and feeding toddlers. She knew a great deal about taking care of babies. Sadly, her inability to have biological children seemed to have impacted on her confidence as a grandmother. I believe that these feelings eventually wore off because she was a wonderful and confident grandmother to my children and my niece, but it must have been such an emotional struggle for her.

Speaking of emotional struggles, I don’t think I will ever feel confident that I was a good parent myself. To be fair I’m not sure any parent feels completely confident even without having been an adoptee. Any time my children had questions for biology-related or family tree type of school projects I would panic. I always felt that their projects would be inadequate because of my adoptee status and the resulting lack of information. I always felt my children would be impacted by some weird adoption domino effect. In these moments, I would remind myself that our children have a great dad, a dad was raised by his birth parents together with his little sister who is 3 years younger than him, and a baby brother who was born when my husband was in his mid-teens. He gave me the confidence to believe that together, we could raise great kids (despite me having been adopted)!

I was always on the look out for ways that my being an adoptee might negatively impact on my parenting. I think (hope) that my children would say I did ok as a mom, that they felt loved and secure in their family and in themselves. But I know inside that when things were not going well I would think, well, my own birth mother didn’t think I was worth keeping, so why should my kids respect me? I would ‘depersonalize’ my parenting through behaviour reward systems and charts. That way, the children could be upset with the chart’s consequences and not me. Please don’t get me wrong, using appropriate and reasonable behaviour charts/reward systems is a very positive parenting practice that I have had great professional and personal success with, the problem specifically for me was my motivation. I did not think that I could parent well, so I resorted to using programming instead of building my own confidence. When my children were upset with me I would feel that it was another rejection, however, with a behaviour modification program, I could believe they were rejecting the program and not me. Again, I think I did ok as my children grew up well and they are all kind and responsible adults. The ones who are parents themselves are pretty in tune with, and respond well, to the needs of their children as far as I can see. (Phew!)

I am in true awe of my grandchildren. Since each of them were born, I have found myself studying them, their little faces, their statures, their personalities, always in search of myself. I know that my children had two parents and that I am only biologically related to them by half, and that my grandchildren have two parents and that I am only biologically related to them by one quarter, but still, I look for myself in them. When her paternal grandmother says how much my granddaughter looks like me, I literally get butterflies in my stomach, I want so badly for this to be true. I think this need was created in me when, all my life, people who knew I was adopted would try to placate me by saying how much I looked like my mom, or like my dad, or even that I looked so much like my mother’s mother. None of this was fully true. My own biological children don’t really look like me so I think that family resemblance is a lot to ask of the adoption process, don’t you? I think better comments (if you feel the need to comment at all) to say to adoptees are things like, ‘you have the same sense of humour as your dad’, or ‘I can see how much you like drawing, like your mom did when she was younger’. Identify something they have in common with their parents and/or extended family members (like sports, or music, or whatever) and talk about that. Looking like our adoptive parents doesn’t make us any less adopted, however, enjoying activities and learning new things together helps us grow and identify as a family.

Even at my age (a senior citizen), I can still feel insecure. I believe that when your birth family does not want you, it leaves a mark. So when my children became adults I became afraid of their abandonment of me too. What if I do or say something wrong and they stop visiting? What if they stop loving me? I see my friends whose children call every day, or spend game nights with their parents, or text each other all the time. I see people who continue to do everything with their now adult children and their partners and cannot help but compare myself with them. 

I think because my own birthday was always a day of mourning for me, I have never been good at celebrating my children’s birthdays. I mean we did the parties when they were little and of course I acknowledge their birthdays but I am really not good at it, certainly not like I see on my friends’ FB posts. I regret this a great deal and I hope they know every day how grateful and proud I am that they are my children.

Once I found my maternal and paternal birth half-siblings, I learned about the close relationships they had as they were growing up with each of my birth parents. A closeness maintained even into adulthood for many of them. I felt they were lucky to have known them, and to have been raised by them. I often wonder if not knowing my birth parents impacted on my confidence as a parent. I never felt confident enough as a parent to believe that my adult children want to spend time with me, so when they do, I am simply, grateful. Just like people telling me I should be grateful that I was adopted.

When some of my adult children moved away from our community, the adoptee in me secretly knew it was to escape from me. Therefore I felt responsible for my husband’s loss as well. Would things be different between him and his children if he had married someone who was not an adoptee? Irrationally, I sometimes fear that my adult children might like their partners’ parents better than they like me and that they prefer to live closer to them than me. When you were not meant to exist, relationships become very fragile. It is hard for the unwanted to feel wanted. This is adoption trauma.

Adoptees and adoptive parents, please know that my feelings stemmed from unresolved trauma. Just like some physical injuries, the wound takes longer to heal for some people than for others. Again, I strongly believe that recognizing adoption trauma for what it is will promote healing. Some healing will even require the intervention of professionals. Get that help if it is needed. There is enough shame in the adoption process without feeling shame about getting help! 

My parents, my brother and I were a family built through adoption. My husband and I became a family through marriage. Having birth children expanded our family through biology and genetics. Our children have expanded our family even further through marriage and having children of their own. My children and their children, my grandchildren, are my biological family. Without the unconditional love and acceptance of my parents, none of this would have been possible. Accepting that domino effect, is a huge part of my healing journey from adoption trauma. 

Thank you for joining me today my Blogville friends. As ever, I am open to hearing from you and invite your comments here or more privately via my email at [email protected] Choose to smile, it looks good on you!

Hello my Blogville friends, welcome back. Let’s brew a cup of tea and visit a while. You have no idea how much your visits mean to me. Being adopted, as you likely know, creates a trauma. Not every adoptee struggles with their trauma so it’s important to note that my feelings are mine alone and that I do not speak for all adoptees. However, in case other adoptees may feel this too, I feel it is important to say things out loud, so they know they are not alone. I also think it is important that you know I was raised in a loving home with loving parents just as I imagined my birth mother had hoped for me when she chose an adoption option. 

That being said, let’s talk about rejection, real and imagined. This is a tough one for me because rejection has been a big part of how I see the world. Whether how I feel and respond to rejection is part of my psychological make-up, or maybe it is simply because I was adopted, remains an unsolvable mystery really. Like an armadillo, or a turtle, when faced with rejection I tend to curl up and expose my hard shell in order to protect my soft “underbelly”, which is akin to my vulnerability.

When my birth mother agreed to go away to a home for unwed mothers I consider that it was  not a rejection of me, but rather of the concept of single parenting, in that she did not, or could not, even consider parenting me. After all, she had no project manager, aka the position of father, to help her make this critical parenting decision. I will never fully know how much of this rejection was driven by her, and how much was driven by her parents and/or society’s view of single mothers at that time. Ultimately though, she was not able to, or not willing to, apply for the position of mother that I had available. I was not yet born, so at this point I feel that she was rejecting the idea of ‘parenting’ itself, not the idea of parenting me specifically. That brings me some small comfort.

Sadly, there are no words written in my file about whether or not she saw me at, or following, my birth. I do not know if she ever knew, or wanted to know, how long I was or what I weighed. I will never know if she looked into my eyes, her daughter’s eyes, when I was born. I do not know if she held me, heard me cry, or even looked at me. All I know is that she was very anxious to leave the facility and return to her home community to attend an event being held in her parents’ honour. So some days I picture her holding me in her arms for the first, and last, time as soon as I was born, and of course I picture her crying. Other days I picture a woman giving birth, a propped up sheet preventing her from seeing the baby and in my mind I hear her begging to see me. As part of that fantasy the baby is quickly covered with a sheet or towel and whisked away, the last sounds the baby hears are of her mother’s cries. Solely because there are no details available to me about my birth, or any time spent with her following my birth, I am left with only my fantasies, never knowing the full truth. 

It cannot be denied that one confirmed rejection came in the form of the decision to relinquish her right to parent me. When she made that final decision I was already born, so that would have been her first rejection of me as a person. Those consent for adoption forms she would have had to sign required my being given a name, which in turn, gave me an identity. She had given me a name, so I existed now. Sadly, just like the moments following my birth, I have no information about contact, or lack thereof, during the brief time she and I were at the facility together. I often wonder why I can never know any information about whether she and I ever met or spent time in each other’s company when I was born, yet I can know for a fact she signed a form to relinquish her parental rights. Seems unfair.

Once she returned to her home community her family began preparing to move away and have a fresh start somewhere else. Her parents’ goal was to settle in a new community where others would not be aware of her having had two babies ‘out of wedlock’. She had given birth to my half-sister first, born in her home community three years before me, and then gave birth to me in another community. As a result of my birth half-sister and I being born ‘out of wedlock’ she and her family ran the risk of being rejected by their whole community in those days. Instead, they left for a new community, off to a fresh start, our birth mother, birth grandparents, birth aunts and birth uncles; leaving the memories of us behind. 

While my birth family was preparing for their move, I remained in the clinical setting of the hospital, according to my records, rejected by my birth family and abandoned by the agency mandated to protect me and my rights. I was born on the 22nd day of the month and my birth mother discharged herself from the home for unwed mothers on the 26th day of that same month and returned to her home community to get packing. There was a plan in place for a worker from my home agency to attend the home for unwed mothers to pick me up and return me to my birth family’s community to begin adoption planning. My records indicate that three weeks after I was born the Mother Superior wrote a curt letter to my home agency commanding that they come and get me as the facility needed the cot for “other unwanted babies.” It was hard to read those words in my file.

So I think you can see how rejection is my greatest fear. Who knows if it is because the people who created me chose not to parent me or if it is simply a part of my genetic make up. Perhaps it is a combination of genetics and life experience; again, nature/nurture at work. It still affects me, even now in my 60s. I know there are other adopted people out there who feel it too. We are not alone. 

It is important to note that I do not remember any specific feelings of rejection as a young child. I do remember feeling a bit weird when my mother would talk about her miscarriages and her lost dream of motherhood. Then she would retell the story of how she and my dad had attended mass one Sunday when a visiting missionary talked about adoption. He talked about how many children exist in the world waiting for families to adopt them and love them. According to my mom, she turned to my dad and said that maybe they should look into that. I have always felt loved by my parents but somehow always felt a little bit less worthy of their love than my mother’s lost babies would have been. Sometimes it felt like I would always be second place in a bizarre bid for my mother’s affection between me and those lost babies. I want to be very clear here, these are feelings created by my own emotions, not in any way by my parents’ behaviour or their messaging to me. 

As a result of my adoption story I struggle with rejection. Meeting my birth half siblings left me in awe of the people my birth parents chose to raise, and constantly comparing how we are alike and how we are different.  When I am left out of plans by friends, how can I blame them when my own mother did not want me? When my husband and I have disagreements I feel that I’d better change or fix things before he rejects me too. I live in fear that I might do something to alienate myself from my children or their life partners. Even sometimes writing these blogs leaves me feeling vulnerable to the possible rejection of people who may be reading them. But you know what my Blogville friends? You Are Worth The Risk! If you benefit from joining me here then that makes me happy. In closing I want to say, “We are adoptees, we are awesome and we are meant to be here!”

As always, I look forward to your comments here, or via email at [email protected]! See you next time in Blogville! 

Welcome back to Blogville my friends. Today I’m drinking a hot chocolate with a nod to Northern Ontario winter adventures. One advantage as an adoptee is that I was able to be raised in the North by my adoptive parents, as my birth family had moved to Southern Ontario following my birth. Read on to learn what I would have missed out on . . .

My husband and I were both raised in Northern Ontario, and we raised our four children to adulthood in Northern Ontario. We have experienced the benefits of winter activities both as participants and as spectators. Northerners do not let winter travel stop us from driving from community to community for activities like hockey tournaments, curling bonspiels, skiing, swim meets and a myriad of other types of competitions! Therefore, winter stays at Northern Ontario hotels when there is also a tournament in that town are always adventurous.

Just curious, have you ever stayed at a hotel in Northern Ontario in the winter? If you have, you will likely relate to this blog. If you haven’t yet, this blog should help prepare you for your first time. Recently, we took a trip down south with a stop halfway. When we arrived and saw that trucks and trailers had reduced parking spaces by half in the hotel’s lot, that was our first clue that our overnight stay would be an adventure. When we finally squeezed our truck into a remote spot, and exited it, we were immediately surrounded by the distinct smell of snowmobile exhaust, classic Northern Ontario! Bath and Body Works should look into that unique scent for a candle, maybe they could call it ‘Northern Winter ‘. We could gift them to friends and relatives about to come north for the first time. Or gift them to homesick college and university students or former Northern Ontario residents. Just a thought.

Anyway, we hurried towards the hotel building and when the main entrance’s automatic doors slid open to welcome us, we were hit with the unique odours of empty pizza boxes and hockey equipment bags. An odour that can only be found in Northern hotel lobbies! I feel I should note that no candle product should be created to smell like a hockey equipment bag does. Happily, the new smell of pizza made us quickly forget the odour of the snowmobile exhaust.

While my husband checked in at the front desk I took note of the stack of at least 50 pizza boxes in the ‘breakfast nook’ area and the haphazardly placed chairs filled with hockey parents laughing and debating the wisdom of the tournament organizers. Even after a four hour drive south on a snow-packed Highway 11, we were clearly still in a Northern Ontario hotel. It was apparent that we had unknowingly booked ourselves a room at a hotel in a tournament-hosting community so we prepared ourselves for the trek to our room. We shouldered some of our luggage and were wheeling the rest toward the bank of elevators when we suddenly stopped, looked around while listening carefully, and realized that there was not a child in sight in that very busy lobby area. Uh oh.

We loaded ourselves and our luggage into the elevator and selected our floor. After a few moments the doors opened and we instantly realized that we had found the children who had somehow become separated from their parents in the lobby. Here they were in the hallway, just outside of our assigned room. It is a well known fact that hotel hallways are the perfect venue for practicing wrist and/or slap shots. After all, the space at the end of the hallway is just a little wider than the standard hockey net opening. In addition, the walls and room doors act as great sideboards. It is important to note that not having a goalie in net will potentially save any teeth (aka chiclets), from a hallway slap shot. This significantly reduces the risk of having to drag a hockey parent out of the hospitality suite for a trip to ‘Emerg’ to get their child a stitch or two and maybe a dental consult. 

Having had experience with hallway hockey practice during many previous Northern Ontario hotel stays, we planned precise timing for our trip from the elevator to our room while using our wheeled luggage like goalie pads to prevent injury. Finally we were safely ensconced in our hotel room without injury or penalty and we started to relax. Very soon we noticed that the ‘kapow, kapow, kapow’ of the hallway hockey practice was suddenly drowned out by the revving sound of snow machine engines being warmed up outside in the hotel parking lot. To Northerners, this is the ‘white noise’ that helps us fall soundly asleep.

A dedicated Northern Ontario snowmobile enthusiast will often travel to many different regions in the north to enjoy their sport. These adventurous folks load up their snowmobiles on trailers, attach the trailers to their vehicles, and then drive for hours, often on treacherous northern highways, for the thrill of riding on another snow packed, tree-lined trail in a different region from their own. This is a passion I do not totally understand, but, to be fair, my snowmobile experience is rather limited. My last ride was straight up the side of a steep hill, then suddenly falling backwards, machine, driver and me, rolling back down the hill like a sad reenactment of the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme. As a result, I cannot relate to the thrill of the ride, but I do understand that snowmobiling is a great way to embrace our Northern Ontario winters!

Before calling it a night, but to avoid another hallway hockey adventure, my husband and I decided to order a pizza. Sigh, it was a two hour minimum wait time for pizza delivery.  By way of explanation for the unusually long wait time, a seemingly frazzled staff member stated, “Sorry ma’am but there is a hockey tournament in town.” Thinking we might be able to risk going out to pick up some food, we ran to the window and were saddened by the view of a very full parking lot. Driving to find food would likely mean no parking spaces left upon our return, well except for the one or two spaces between the commercial garbage bins in the back lot. Oh, and it had started to snow. Lucky for us there was a Tim Horton’s restaurant (you can’t get more Northern Ontario than that) and a small convenience store within walking distance of our hotel. 

Waiting for a break in the hallway hockey game we carefully made our way back to the bank of elevators. Once the elevator doors opened, we cautiously negotiated around the water puddles left on the elevator floor by the hotel guests whose children were competing in the regional swim meet, also being hosted by this northern community. We waved to the desk clerk and told him that we were on our way for a short walk to go grab some food. Looking appraisingly at our footwear he told us to watch our step as the sidewalks and roads were pretty icy. We thanked him and made our way out of the lobby. “Watch out for skidoos” he called out to us in additional warning as we were exiting through the automatic doors. “Don’t worry, we’re Northerners” we called back as the doors whooshed closed behind us. 

I hope you enjoyed my little Northern Ontario travelling tale. Thanks for joining me for this blog. Please feel free to share your comments with me either on the blog page or more privately by email at [email protected]. I love hearing your thoughts.