What I Hear

​My cinnamon cardamom tea is hot and soothing as I try to put these words out into the universe. Welcome, and thank you for always coming back to Blogville to see what I’m rambling about! 

This particular blog is about the impact adoption had, and still has on me. It also deals with my thoughts for adoptive and kinship parents that I share in the hope that it might help them manage the loss(es) their children might be feeling.

I found love with my adoptive parents. They both loved me, and I loved them until their last breaths. I am content knowing that my birth parents were able to move on and find love with their respective partners, and that their legitimate children loved them until my birth parents took their last breaths. 

After a few false starts, including having been neglected in foster homes, I found love in the last foster family I was placed with before I was adopted. They loved me for seven months and then had to ‘pass the baton’ to my mom and dad. We never saw each other again. Well, not until I found my foster mom when I was in my 60s and she in her 80s. Sadly my foster dad had already taken his last breath. Those foster parents were the first people to love me.

But before I knew love, I experienced multiple abandonments and losses. Relinquishment abandonment by birth parents has an impact (conscious or subconscious) on an abandoned baby, child, or youth. That trauma remains throughout their lives. Their feelings of abandonment and loss impacts their future relationships in a big way. 

For me, I feel that there is a ‘grown up me’ reaction and a ‘child me’ reaction to what I perceive as rejection. There are days when I decide to call a friend and when they don’t answer I immediately wonder if they are screening their calls to avoid me. There are times when I suggest a plan and if my friends are ‘not available’ (that is legitimately how I feel- ‘not available’ in air quotes) I wonder what is more important than me and usually decide, ‘anything’.

Sadly, I sometimes feel this way with my adult children too. I’ve learned a trick with my kids though; I just offer to watch my grandchildren or my grand-dog for them! They feel obligated to visit a little when they pick up! I’m just kidding, I love spending time with my grandkids and enjoy the calming feeling of my grand-dog sleeping by my legs on the recliner. My hubby and I also host Sunday dinner weekly, mostly so I can see the ones who live nearby face to face. Face time has been an amazing way to watch my far away grandson grow and develop. 

I find that I often internalize it when a plan changes or my phone call goes unanswered. Immediately I feel that whomever I was reaching out to  probably didn’t really want to go with me or hear from me in the first place. After all, my first parents didn’t want me, so why should my friends? There is a scar of insecurity on my heart that will never go away. When I hear from a friend or one of my adult kids that they did something I liked without me, or went somewhere I wanted to go without me, I am not surprised that I was left out, abandonment is familiar to me, but I still find it emotionally painful. 

So, literally as I was writing this blog, one of my birth half-sisters posted some old (birth) family photos on Facebook. There are no words to describe how abandoned I felt, but at the same time how curious I was as I searched those faces for familiarity. If I find it, when I see that I look a little like that person, or that I’m built a bit like that person, I feel both grateful and lost at the same time. I also feel disloyal to my parents.

I share all of this as my way of trying to help other adopted folks and their families navigate and maybe even mitigate the relinquishment trauma. At the same time I try to help families formed through adoption. Your children love you, but they are also curious about their birth families in an effort to understand, and to mitigate their trauma. 

If you have pictures of your child’s birth family, share them from the beginning, there is no magic age for your child to see who they might look like. If you have stories or information about your child’s birth family, share it when it is developmentally  appropriate; check with a therapist or professional if you are not sure how or what to share. Your children are curious and need to know that you are okay with their questions.

Children deserve to know that their need for an adoption plan was about adult choices, not about anything that they did or didn’t do. They need to know that sometimes children are simply left out of their birth parents’ life plans and it isn’t anything they did or didn’t do. Children need life’s rejections to be normalized so they do not personalize them. 

Please know that when your adopted child asks questions, the questions are about them, not about their relationship with you. Their questions are about where they came from and not related to their life with you, or their love for you.

Your children are trying to understand who they are and why they are different from other kids. If your child used a walker, or had an artificial limb, or was the only one in your family who could  sing, or wore glasses, you would expect questions right? They are not questioning your love for them, they are just trying to understand how they became part of your family, and sometimes why they needed a new family. Who better to explain all of this to them than their REAL parents? Who better to help prepare them for society’s questions about their birth parents than their REAL parents? 

When I was young my parents might have been better off worrying about what I was thinking, and feeling, about having been adopted, rather than worrying about having the ‘right’ answers. I simply wanted my REAL parents to share what they knew about my birth parents, and where I had come from; to share my truth with me. 

Thanks for visiting today. As always you are welcome to share your comments with me here or by sending me an email at [email protected]
See you next time!