The following comment on yesterday’s post has me doing more contemplating on loss, mulling the many ways life deals it out, and pondering the many practices of coping.
I think that is why many adoptees feel torn, as if they have to choose to feel either one way or the other, but not both. This seems dangerously similar to the idea of having to pick sides/loyalties, with feelings of loss and sadness and loyalty to birth parents on one side, and feelings of luck, happiness, rejoicing and loyalty to adoptive parents on the other side. Although many adoptees do make this choice and choose one or the other, it doesn’t seem like a particularly healthy one to have to make.
I have, of course, given much thought to adoption-related loss. My kids are reason enough to delve deeply into the issue, study the research, listen to voices of experience, read, discuss, question and more. Writing on adoption every day has presented a more academic motivation that has added a layer of understanding I may not have found otherwise.
Yes, years have been spent grasping for greater comprehension.
But is wasn’t until Sang-Shil posted the comment partly quoted above that I made a connection between loss in my own past and adoptee loss.
Here’s my reply:
What you describe sounds very much like the process for children of divorce. Since that also often manifests as loss, especially for the kids involved, it seems a fair comparison and is one I have experienced personally. Being placed in the middle of a sometimes rancorous situation is certainly not healthy, and children will always take on the pressure of feeling a need to side with one parent over the other. Issues of loyalty, concerns about the welfare of the absent parent, guilt over assumed responsibility for the turn of events, a sense of powerlessness over circumstances and such arise constantly.
My parents divorced when I was ten. My brothers were eight, five and one. All of us suffered, although the impact of the loss manifested differently in each of us.
We not only lost the wholeness of our family through an absent parent, we siblings were split up and my youngest brother grew up only knowing us older three through holiday visits.
Although I won’t assume to speak for my brothers or reveal the effects they experienced from the breakup, I would guess that my parents’ divorce had more than a little to do with my choice to become sexually active as a teen, a decision that led to me getting pregnant when I was seventeen.
So, having shared some of the meat of my own loss, I’m asking … How close have I come to feeling the same sort of loss adoption conveys, of knowing the pain? Am I miles away, or is there common ground?
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
Great question. I look forward to reading some answers from those who have experienced adoption loss.
Great conversation!! Now THIS is what it means to ponder adoption issues in a respectful manor with each other!!
I have never experienced the loss of divorce. But am I wrong in thinking that divorce does not have the gains that adoption has? I know no one is saying that it does, that’s just what was going through my head.
I thank you too Sang-Shil for your insight. I connected the loss-gain dilemma more clearly in my head while reading the posts quoted above.
THIS is why I am reading on adoption. I want to approach my children in the healthiest way possible about adoption.
Sandra, could you expand sometime on why the argument does not fly that adoptive parents should just give the money we spend on adoption to the families and countries so that the children can stay in their family of origin.
I’ve gained knowledge that gives me peace about it but I am interested in hearing your insight on the topic.
If you’ve already posted on the subject, can you point me in the direction of where I can find your writing?
Thank you.
There are miles and miles of my writing on Adoptionblogs.com since I wrote there from the inception of the site and covered the International, News and Older Parent blogs. I hesitate to recommend anyone go there for my writings, though, as I hate sending them the hits, but I did do a lot of writing of worth there. Where I specifically addressed the “donate your adoption money and save the world” BS, I don’t recall offhand. Sorry.
If you do go there and read me, think about leaving comments about how stupid they were to let me go, what a complete waste of space the present “editor” is, and how ashamed they should be for the treatment I got. I love it when that happens. Of course, the comments get taken down quickly, but the points are made, nonetheless, and people who should be are annoyed.
Sandra dear,
I think that you can safely say that you’ve felt loss at a very personal level, and others in similar situations have become bitter and angry towards their parents.
I think your analogy is helpfpul to all of us and thank you for sharing.
Love ya,
L.
Hi Sandra,
Glad to see/hear that you are still alive and kicking. I don’t visit adoption.com too often anymore as being a single full-time working mom of a two-year old doesn’t leave me much time, but I was sorry to see you go! Silliness all around.
Anyway, I think the adoption loss/gain is very real but just like children of divorce, it is handled differently. I personally when through a very violent, rancorous divorce and it wasn’t even mine – it was my parents. It was ugly, ugly, ugly, and my brother and I were very often put in the position of having to choose. I hated it! Spent years in therapy trying to overcome a lot of it – and I have. My brother on the other hand emerged relatively unscathed. Not to say he didn’t suffer any effects from it, but he is just a very different personality and coped with it very differently. I ate myself into a blob – he went out and scored goals and home runs and touchdowns and whatever else he could physically do.
One of the things I have noticed in the debate about adoption loss is the insistence of some that all children suffer this loss and if they don’t admit it, then they have hidden it or ignored it or whatever. While that may be true for some, I find that more often than not it is a difference of personality and the processing of experiences. I am pretty confident that had I been adopted I would have spent my life suffering and in angst (it’s in my personality and my family – my niece is starting to show signs of it), but my brother probably would have shrugged it off, moved on and and become some Olympic gold medalist.
I truly hope that my son is able to handle whatever loss he becomes cognizant of in later life much more healthily than I ever did. More than anything, I do not want him to become one of those bitter “better off dead” adoptees whom I think are a slap in the face to anyone who has fought to live through horrible illnesses – like my sister-in-law’s sister who died last year of cancer at 43 and said “I just want a couple more years!” Ok, going off on a tangent, but that sentiment angers me to no end. I think, given what I have observed of my son’s personality (he is easygoing with his emotions right on his sleeve), that he will be ok, but….that is why I read these sites.
Romee
You are headed in the right direction about adoption in re: divorce, you probably remember lots of questions and thoughts and doubts that you didn’t share with anyone. I think this is pretty normal for children, they don’t have sophisticated reason.
I am a divorced mother and am kind of shocked at how little I know about what that experience was like for my child.
Of course with divorce there aren’t nearly as many losses as there are with adoption. So while I definetly see similarities, I would consider divorce a mole hill to adoption’s mountain.
Sandra, thanks for sharing your experience with this. I’ve been holding back in part because I *don’t* have any personal experience with divorce, and really don’t want to presume to judge another person’s pain or even know anything about it. All I have are questions.
Josh & Jessica raise(s) an interesting question about the “gains” of divorce. I’m wondering if children (or adults) of divorce might feel a gain when divorced parents remarry — do they feel like they are gaining extra family members? Or does it depend on the specific people gained, what they’re like, and how the newly blended family comes together (or not)?
Also, I’ve heard that some children might be relieved when their parents divorce, because it means that at least the fighting stops, and everyone can move on with their lives (or so the story goes). Or they are relieved because divorce means that other things, like abuse, also stop. So perhaps that relief could be a kind of gain?
Speaking generally, do the losses of divorce outweigh the gains? Because I can imagine that for one individual person they might, and for another they might not — even within the same sibling group. But what about divorce, taken as a whole? Or is each divorce so different that they can’t be taken as a whole? Again, I have no idea as it’s not something I have experience with, so I’m really just throwing it out there. I will leave it to the people who are the experts on their own experience to decide if it’s true from their perspective.
Hi Sandra,
I’m glad I found you again! Summer hit and I didn’t check adoptionblogs.com very often, then came the cold and more computer time and I was reading now and again, and then POOF! you were gone. I have always enjoyed you.
I also instantly thought of divorce before I finished reading where you were headed. In my experience, divorce has losses and gains, but even as an adult child, I paid a price for what my parents were going through. Yes, the ugliness created by two people who shouldn’t have ever married to begin with ended. But so did family roles (for better and worse), family ties, and anything remotely close to “normal.” We adult children ended up piecing together our immature adult parents, and that’s no fun. You are forced to choose sides, hear things you don’t want to hear, and do things you don’t want to do. I often thought that this must be so terribly hard on children given how difficult it was on us as adults.
Back to adoption…maybe “loss sucks” sums it up? I feel, in a way that has surprised me, a sense of loss for my child’s birthmother. I really have grieved for her. So while I don’t want to project this onto my child, I won’t be surprised or hurt if/when/how he feels loss. Hopefully he will also feel grace and love.
Glad to find you again!
romee,
Thanks. I am very much alive and still giving a good kick from time to time, and I’m happy to see you here.
I have had long conversations with friends who were adopted as children about the “insistence of some that all children suffer this loss and if they don’t admit it, then they have hidden it or ignored it or whatever” phenomenon, and they get pretty angry over the arrogance of those assumptions and the refusal to allow them their own experience.
The “better off dead” attitude usually comes across, not as a wish to end it all, but rather an excuse to deny others a life they might relish.
Joy,
I’m not surprised that you consider “divorce a mole hill to adoption’s mountain” since one is my pain and the other is yours. Not that this is a contest, but your comment does seem dismissive of whatever you don’t own.
I really don’t want to be nasty here, but I have to wonder if being a bit less self-focused would allow you to better understand how your divorce impacted your child. Should your loss trump your child’s loss because of the mountain/molehill POV?
Sang-Shil,
Gains in divorce? I’m sure there must be some for someone, but for the children … ? An end to witnessing an abusive relationship might qualify, but I think even then kids experience the loss of their whole family. Also, a married parent isn’t the same as a divorced or remarried parent, which often means the child loses some aspect of both, even the custodial parent.
As for new family, I had a couple of those, and I wouldn’t classify any of the relationships that resulted as gains. Stepmothers, stepfathers, stepsiblings did little but emphasize the losses and make life unpleasant … to say the least.
In the case of my own divorce, my ex-husband sure thought he had gained when he was free to marry his girlfriend. The fact that it ended badly may have had him reconsidering that gain, however. At least that what he tells me now.
s,
Good to see you! It wasn’t really a case of POOF! and gone … more like SCREWED and still wondering why. (Read all about it … .)
I’m sure that watching your parents divorce and getting tangled in the mess is very difficult as an adult, as well, especially since the inclination would be strong to give them both a good smack and send them to their room. Since they are still your parents, however, that won’t fly, and the pressures to balance between them must be hard to bear.
And, yeah … loss sucks, and life can be hard and unfair. But what are ya gonna do?
As a wise woman said in an email I received just this morning, “You have two choices….get up and go on, or curl up and die. Simply put, there are no other real options.”
Oh I certainly don’t dismiss divorce as not painful for the child, obviously even if a child is relieved by the divorce as Sang-Shil noted might be the case it still means something was very wrong in the home.
As you noted it is also my child’s loss and absolutely do not diminish it, maybe you don’t realize but my son is in his late teens, I didn’t spend time on the internet until he was 16, because I was very focused on him.
Sandra – Again, thanks for sharing your personal experience… You’re right, there *don’t* seem to be a lot of gains in divorce, at least for the children involved.
But doesn’t it feel odd for someone to suggest that there are? To dismiss and minimize your pain by emphasizing what you’ve gained, things that you don’t see as gains at all?
I think this is why many (NOT all) adoptees can get defensive when our “gains” are held up to our losses, as if enough gains will outweigh and negate the losses that we feel.
I think there are both, and they each need to be acknowledged and accepted separately, side by side rather than looking at looking at which outweighs the other.
Hey Sang-Shil:)
“But doesn’t it feel odd for someone to suggest that there are? To dismiss and minimize your pain by emphasizing what you’ve gained, things that you don’t see as gains at all? ”
Sure, I understand that. You need to have as much respect for the losses as you do for the gains. I think that applies to many things, but most certainly to adoption.
Thing is……I don’t see Sandra saying that there aren’t losses. In fact, having read her posts for the better part of a year, I’ve read mountains of posts acknowledging the losses, the pain, the inequity and the just plain suckiness that occurs in adoption.
I wonder if what the people who attack Sandra so vehemently want is for her to mention ONLY the losses and NEVER the gains. In fact, I strongly suspect that is the case.
Supressing or ignoring the truth is never enlightenment; it’s always oppression…..be you on side A or side B.
Hey Tisha 🙂
“Thing is……I don’t see Sandra saying that there aren’t losses.”
I don’t think that Sandra’s saying there aren’t losses either, since she clearly stated this in a comment to me just a few posts back. I was really glad to read that because it made things a bit clearer in my mind, and also made me think that there may not be as much distance between our positions (at least on this point) as I had thought.
“Supressing or ignoring the truth is never enlightenment; it’s always oppression…be you on side A or side B.”
Exactly. I wonder if it’s now a matter of defining what “the truth” actually is — both who is defining it, and for whom. Right now, I’m thinking that we are each the expert on our individual experiences, and define the truth for ourselves at any given moment. While I don’t want to make assumptions, I do hope that many of us would agree on that as a starting point. I think where it gets muddier is making generalizations about anything beyond a person’s individual experience, such as X in general, or Y as a whole. I’m still thinking a lot about that one.
Hey Sang-Shil:
Your post makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks. I’ve been thinking about it, too……..
Peace in this season to you and your loved ones 🙂
Tisha,
Thank you. And the same to you and yours.
SS