“My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.”
Steven Wright
Steven Wright cracks me up. His droll delivery of distilled nuggets of simple, yet warped observation always strikes me as funny, and often gives an amused pause for thought. Getting to where he ends up requires strolling in from new and unusual directions, something that can be very good for keeping perceptions fresh and challenged.
The line above, of course, caught my eye and started me down a thought path that has led to a blog post. How handy, since a blog post was on today’s “to do” list.
Although “The Evolutionary Benefits of Adoption” is a ridiculously grand title that appears to claim one hell of a lot of ground this post never even begins to approach, it makes me laugh … striking me as funny on many levels … and reflects my morning ponderings prompted by Mr. Wright’s one-liner.
There are plenty of people who would never choose to put the words “adoption” and “benefit” in the same sentence, some even going so far as to suggest that adoption itself spawns nothing less than mass murderers, serial killers.
The website “Adopted Killers” … picture lurid, blood-red copy on a black background … that postulates this connection is high drama, courtroom photos and turgid bombast that in spite of supposed intent ends up making a pretty good case for adoption.
(Keeping with the theme of amusing lines, one from this site is a classic, although I doubt it was devised to entertain:
WHY are there twice as many Adopted Killers who are known to be in the category of Adoptees Who Killed Their Adopters?
Now, really … isn’t that one of the funnier lines you’ve seen in a while? Not only the spontaneous use of capital letters which is always a hoot, but the heart and soul –no mention of brain, of course — of this classic example of nonsense and illogic. I have to laugh ever time I see it … and it is fairly widely quoted by those who apparently don’t see the joke.)
As I read through the sketchy examples of adopted killers, I can’t help but notice the damaging effects of inappropriate kinship placements, foster care, mental illness and genetics, and it occurs to me that some of these people may have found less dangerous paths if adoption had been more a feature in their lives, rather than less.
As for evolving humanity, the examples of adopted people making huge changes for the positive in the world are impressive.
From way back in the 300s BC when Aristotle’s parents died … he wasn’t officially adopted, but raised by a guardian, then married an adoptee and adopted himself … and the basis of what we now call science was born, to the 1800s in America that saw George Washington Carver, one of this country’s most important inventors, adopted after the death of his mother, the evolution of our humaneness has been spurred by adoption.
Would I be writing or you be reading today without the contributions of Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison and who they became at least partly through their adoptions? Perhaps, but there would be long odds on the information age developing as it has had they not forged the trails they did.
So, perhaps there are some “evolutionary benefits” of adoption, after all, since the world has more than marginally improved through the efforts of adopted people who have passed along the positives.
If nothing else, I suppose, those opposed to adoption might take comfort in the idea (?) that twice as many adopted killers are adoptees who killed their adopters, therefore suggesting to anyone equating adoptive parents with evil incarnate that the result is fewer of those.
I wonder what Steven Wright would do with that …
(Here’s a list of famous people with adoption in their backgrounds.)
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
I personally don’t know anyone who associates adoptive parents with evil incarnate. The adoptive parents I know in real life, mine and the others in my neighborhood, where adoption was not uncommon, tended to be really nice people, esp. in my era (70s) who could not conceive and were told adoption is the same as having a bio child.
They didn’t know about how adoption could affect the child in question although plenty of them know now.
Kirshner (sp?) says a lot of censorship around adoptee issues causes unmanageable rage, for most adoptees I think this gets turned inward, as so many people are invested in shamng adoptees for having difficulites around the peculiarities of being adopted.
On the balance sheet, I am a success story, I have the trappings of a very nice life, that does not mean I don’t also have difficulties I would not have if not adopted, and it doesn’t make me laugh that some adoptees fail so miserably to accomodate all the rights and responsibilities of being adopted.
I certainly don’t think many adoptive parents are evil, some certainly are, the woman in Florida who chained her adoptees up, the man who adopted Masha Allen for example, but in no way would I consider those people the norm, nor do I think adopted people have nothing to contribute to the world, I imagine some of the adoptive parents killed by their adoptees were actually good parents, and I find that sad that their lives ended that way.
I do think however, the subset of adoptees that do cause real harm to others, would be reduced if people would enter into adoption with more reverence, more honest information, and lifelong support.
I think the glossing over of what adoption can be like for the inner world of the child does much to create this subset of powder-kegs, I mean surely it is understandable that if you felt a great deal of pain about a certain situation and were met with ridicule , censorship, and disrespect at every turn, it would cause some twisted grief that might explode in rage—btw, I hear from those that know Jobs, he is hell to work with.
He may be brilliant, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t walk the same muddy path as the rest of us.
Joy,
Being one who has met with ridicule, censorship and disrespect a lot lately, I do understand that powder keg thing. I don’t claim to own it exclusively, but I certainly do get it.
Thankfully, my meditative nature helps me to diffuse much of the tension that arises from personal attacks, but there’s no doubt that honesty, honor, ethics and right-thinking all the way around would help many who find pressures difficult to bear.
I know people who know Steve Jobs and find him a lovely man, by the way. I also know people who worked for Jeffrey Skilling who say he is a real jerk. That muddy path is everywhere.
Joy,
With all due respect, the “muddy path” is where I lose you in your arguments. You are absolutely right that we all travel one–we all have different stressors in our lives that we can blame for one thing or the other. Whether it is identity issues that you blame on being adopted, control issues that I attribute to infertility, depression that a birthmother attributes to placement, weight issues that someone attributes to too much stress, money issues that someone else attributes to lack of education, job issues that yet another attributes to race…the list goes on and on.
While I believe that these issues can and do contribute to who a person is, I DON’T think that taking any one of them away would be some magic pill that would solve all of that person’s problems. It is in our nature to look for an outside factor that “made” us feel unhappy. Rare is the person who just says, “Yep, life happens, even to me. These are the experiences I have had, now what is the life that *I* will choose to shape for myself?” I really think that the outside influences don’t matter (usually) nearly as much as our internal choices and attitudes.
It would seem obvious to me that it’s not ADOPTION that would cause something like adoptees killing their parents anymore than people having biological kids causes child abuse.
Really it’s a depressing sign that the system needs to be reformed. They can start by not moving children from one home to the next constantly without any people to teach them about love and trust. That has been proven to be damaging to children, and it’s time people face that.
A. A person is adopted
B. That person kills
C. All persons who are adopted are killers.
First of all, anyone who takes Intro to Logic knows that this is not a logical equation.
Second, IF it were true, then this equation would be true as well.
A. A person is adopted
B. That person is successful and happy
C. All adopted persons are successful and happy.
Just because people are grouped under a general category doesn’t mean that all the people in the group share all of the same traits to the same degree and under the same circumstances.
If someone thinks that adoption is bad or that they are unhappy as an adopted person and they seek the company of like-minded individuals, that’s fine. Just don’t use specific experiences to assign labels to everyone.
Aren’t statistics fun? I once had a relative who told me they had read a statistic that said that people who floss daily live an average of two years longer than those who don’t. She also told me she was flossing with regularity, as she wanted to score her extra two years.
Flossing one’s teeth daily does not magically add two years onto one’s life span. Surely there must be a few other factors involved. Likewise, being adopted does not make you a killer, or a malcontent, or a basket case, or rich “techie”.
Another very intelligent, insightful post Sandra. Thank you.
You have raised many important questions regarding adoption. Very thoughtful post. Thanks for sharing.
Mixed Nuts:
I agree with a lot of what you said, with some exceptions.
I am going to try to make a sensible comment here with copying and pasting, let’s see if it works.
MN: ” Joy,
With all due respect, the “muddy path” is where I lose you in your arguments. You are absolutely right that we all travel one–we all have different stressors in our lives that we can blame for one thing or the other. Whether it is identity issues that you blame on being adopted, control issues that I attribute to infertility, depression that a birthmother attributes to placement, weight issues that someone attributes to too much stress, money issues that someone else attributes to lack of education, job issues that yet another attributes to race…the list goes on and on. ”
Absolutely true, life in and of itself is bound to throw even the most privileged of individuals some difficult curve balls. Even the most pampered of among us cannot escape aging and eventual failing of health. I have never believed that adoption issues are the ONLY issues that one can face in life. That is certainly not my experience, I have experienced and watched people I care about experience a wide range of difficulties, this blog post, and blog in general IS about adoption, therefore my answers are focused on adoption, vs. the plethora of other ways life can knock the wind out you.
MN: “While I believe that these issues can and do contribute to who a person is, I DON’T think that taking any one of them away would be some magic pill that would solve all of that person’s problems.”
Neither do I. I don’t think had my mother kept me, I would not have faced difficulties, I most certainly would have, as would she, they would have been different, but I would not have been raised like a little Buddha, I kept and raised my child in a very similar situation to the one I myself was born into. I would not say that my son does not have “issues” from the way he was raised, he is doing very well, and being that he is only in his late teens, suspect he doesn’t have the sophistication to even recognize what some of the difficulties of being raised by immature, initially quite poor, and stressed parents has had on him. At this point he claims, unprompted by us, that he is very glad he has young parents, there are some benefits, but there are also drawbacks. His life has been far from perfect, but I can’t help but notice where he is emotionally and physically, is far more grounded than I was at his age, despite the fact that I was raised by more mature, although still fairly young, but well-off, and very stable aparents. For example I moved once growing up, he has probably moved upwards of 14 times, always in the same community but still…
MN: ” It is in our nature to look for an outside factor that “made” us feel unhappy. ”
Being an adoptee is certainly not an outside factor, it is deeply, intrinsically a part of the adopted, most adoptees will tell you that because of societal messages that we are “bad, ungrateful, lucky malcontents” if we question just how our adoption affected us can tell you stories of retreating to a complex inner-world to deal with the difficulties.
The reality is no one who has studied attachment in infants disagrees with this. Separation from mother when an infant does not even psychologically recognize himself/herself as a different being from mother has documented physiological impact on the infant, on brain formation, coritsol levels, etc. There really isn’t an argument in that arena. There are lots of famous scholoraly works written on this phenomena. There will be the occasional naysayer, often arm-chair psychologists, but they are like the creationist-scientist, or those who espouse that global-warming is a liberal conspiracy.
There is just no basis. It is kinda obvious, despite the hue and cry that to be wanted by strangers abdicates the original and abiding loss.
MN: “Rare is the person who just says, “Yep, life happens, even to me. These are the experiences I have had, now what is the life that *I* will choose to shape for myself?” ”
Actually, I disagree with this point, based on just my own opinion, what I find around me in real life, is exactly the opposite, although perhaps I am misreading you. I don’t think I am following exactly. I find most people I run into adopted or real kids, do accept life as it happened to them, although the second part of the quote, paraphrasing “what do I do NOW?” They don’t ask.
So I know lots of people non-adoptees, who of course have their own bag of not-so-nice-tricks that life has handed them, an abandoning father, alcoholic parents, raging parents, sober-but-sexually abusive parents, parents who simply put the individual down at every turn, like you said life has a host of ugliness that can present. Most people, not the people I connect to on a deep level, but many people I find are unwilling to look at what made them and what to do about it, how to improve their lot, but instead become reactionary repeaters of ugliness, or simply addicted to being unhappy in their own way.
So they explode at business meetings, become paranoid or hypochondriac, or whatev those that don’t have the inner freedom to examine who/why they are react.
One of my dearest friends is lesbian, who was raised by such an enthusiastic Christian minister father that she saw her own father perform exorcisms. You can imagine how he has reacted to her sexuality. That is her difficulty, it is not mine, but it doesn’t make being adopted any easier, as my being adopted by people who would never subject me to the spiritual inner-war that she has fought make it easier on her. They don’t intersect.
As for what I am going to now? Excellent question, I think more people should give themselves the freedom to ask that, that is exactly what I asked myself when I started my blog, I had this big thing in my life, ADOPTION, I was afraid of it, I didn’t want to deal, no one understood, I still don’t talk about but with a trusted few in real life, I hated it, I hated how it made me feel, I hated how ashamed I felt about my feelings. I hated how my feelings made me feel like Judas. I finally decided to face it after 34 years of life and 16 years of reunion. If anyone fought this monster, being a monster in their lives, I did.
I certainly wasn’t crying in my beer for 34 years, I had a career, a family, I traveled. I came to the point though where it became apparent if I was going to make my life better, I had to examine exactly what I was running from.
You know what? It works, I am better.
MN “I really think that the outside influences don’t matter (usually) nearly as much as our internal choices and attitudes.”
I would encourage you to read “A General Theory of Love” and “The Lucifer Effect ” then. I would encourage you to read anything dealing with how the limbic brain works.
As much as I hate a lot of the “gifts” adoption gave me, like high-anxiety, I also really have a lot of sympathy for many adoptive parents. I know that many really love their adoptees and want to do right by them. Which is not easy, what I think adoption really calls for from the adoptive parents perspective is reverence and empathy, which cannot be an easy path to walk. On one hand you must respect the loss your child lives, on the other you can’t harp on it, as it might upset the child’s sense of stability. It also calls upon one of the hardest things for any parent, living with a loss, you can’t “fix” Oh, you can help, be open, be loving and all that makes a difference to be sure, but you cannot undo the loss.
Adopted adults who are finally getting the chance to connect, to say “oh yeah, me too!” are healing themselves, they are being positive even if it seems they must dig deep into some dark pockets that they wouldn’t allow themselves before. Figuring out the nature of the problem with the intent to move on that has been so denied.
I think adult adoptees experiences are important to read, all of them the wide breadth of them, no one of us is the same,
What I find missing most is REVERENCE, adoption is serious, it is profound, it is multifaceted. It is not “turn that frown upside down” Adoptees, like everyone else need respect and care.
In my experience all people adopted or not, do their best when they feel respected and cared about, dismissing our issues never accomplishes this. We are not doomed, but we have way too many people working against us, albeit misguidedly and unintentionally.
Sorry, Sandra to be such a babble-fingers, but my standard disclaimer, this is VERY close to my heart. There is no joke, no insincerity on my part, just hope, as I kick my own feet up and admire my own feet of clay.
prosit
Joy,
Feel free to expound any time! This is wonderful stuff. I’m going to take a bit of time with it, as it deserves.
Thank you.
i have so much to say on this.
its hard for me to put into words…
in short, for now, i’ll say that I don’t think that adoption killers means that adoption caused the act of killing i think its the connection of loss and separation trauma on the killers that led them to killing.
I do believe in it. I’ll post more on this later…gotta go grocery shopping while the rain has stopped!
I am responding mostly to the previous comments by Joy21. Maybe I am way off topic here, so feel free to redirect me. Also, before opening my big mouth and inserting my foot, I want to preface this by saying that I really respect a lot of what Joy has to say. It has given me food for thought, and clearly she is speaking from a place of introspection and soul searching and much thought. There was a few phrases that jumped out at me though, as really not PC in the adoption world. (And PC is my middle name…NOT!) I find it funny, because lots of well meaning people use these phrases all the time, and other people regularly get all bent out of shape, and I have been chewing on this from several different vantage points.
She at one point refers to adopted people versus “real kids”. Now in the world of adoptive parenting I have heard lots of people get really angry to have their biological children refered to as “real”, as opposed to their adopted children as…what? Fake? Even the term biological gets thrown back in your face occasionally, since “all children are biological”. So you scratch your head wondering who you will offend by using what term, and are you scarring your adopted child by even attaching that adjective to the word child. I mean give me a break. Our children joined our family as much older children, and they are another race as well. So clearly I did not give birth to them, and they KNOW they are adopted. I struggle, with this because I feel as though I don’t want them to feel like outsiders in their own family…but if we just absorb them and ignore that they did indeed arrive here by adoption, are we robbing them of part of their identity?
Another phrase that popped out was the idea that adopted parents really do care and want to do right by their “adoptees”. Are they really not our children? I have never thought of these children as my “adoptees”, and the thought that they may never truly want to be a real part of our family is heartbreaking to me. Not that I don’t understand their need or desire to continue to be part of another family as well.
It’s a fine line to walk, since on the one side some people seem to want to include their adopted child into their family so much that they are willing to forget the child has lost another. But on the other side of the line, if you differentiate too much, you might be accused of not really embracing your adopted child as a full member of your family, and always making them the outsider.
I just have this sneaking suspicion that I am going to be damned if I do and damned if I don’t…somewhere down this long road.
Scraps:
My use of “real kids” is just an expression, not meant to demean adoptive parents and their relationships with their children, it speaks to my real jealously of belonging that bio kids raised by their bio parents have.
As for being damned if you do, damned if you don’t, yes that is part of all parenthood, but it amplified for adoptive parents. Part of the reason, I don’t think I could ever do it.
Yes, adopted children, adoptees, ,are your real children, the shared history and experience do not escape adoptees, we are some of the most loyal people on earth, in fact my loyalty has been a source of problems for me personally, it caused me to fail to differentiate properly in early adult hood, I had a too long lasting habit of putting my aparent’s needs before mine, even before my husbands. What I meant is that although they are your real children, they are your real adopted children, and there are many adoptive parents who not only want to be good parents in the traditional way, but also emcompass the adoption aspect of their children’s lives, there are lots of adoptive parents who want to do right in the adoption arena, not ignore it, but then what?
What is the big question, you have all these BSE babes saying talk about it, which is good, but where is that line, between talking about it and freaking a kid out. There are so many ways to say, “don’t do xy and z” and not a whole lot of direction for what is good, what is appropriate.
Adoption is full of walking both sides of one fence, which is difficult and often the walker ends up losing their footing and the result is a bloody crotch.
We want it to be easy, it would be so wonderful if it was, but it is not.
Joy,
I agree on the double-damned. It’s a parent thing, and you, in fact, have done it, so only get a pass on the adoption-damned part of the damned double-damning. If anyone spent enough time considering all the ways our kids can turn on us over the years, would anyone ever have any any way?
BSE? I’ll assume I’m safe to assume that we’re not talking about mad cows … are we? Can you please define this one for this geezer?
And your “bloody crotch” analogy cracks me up! Adoption ending up with a bloody crotch! Ha! I know exactly what your saying, but to try to explain that one to someone just coming to the conversation would be pretty darned funny …
(Can we tell I’m tired?)
(Did any of this make any sense?)
Joy,
While the time constrainsts of everyday life don’t allow me to do the indepth reading that I’m sure you would prefer, I did try to do a little looking into the limbic brain. I also looked up the books that you recommended and read the reviews (editorial and individual). I must admit confusion.
First, most of what I found on the limbic brain was strictly stated in a functional aspect (the section of the brain that deals with emotion). The little that I found that took it further could be summed up in this quote:
“Your limbic brain is the source of your feelings of conviction. Paul MacLean, a neurobiology pioneer, said: “The limbic system, that primitive brain that can neither read nor write, provides us with the feeling of what is real, true and important.”
Our knowledge of the limbic brain helps us understand simultaneous incongruence between knowing (intellectually) that something is true, while feeling (emotionally) that it is not true. (This is especially common when thinking is influenced by identity loss and relationships bonds).
Logical arguments (mediated by the neocortex) rarely change emotional beliefs (mediated by the limbic system).”
OK, I’m really not trying to sound sarcastic here (but I know I’m probably going to fail at it), but the only way I can fit this into our discussion would be to assume that you are saying that your emotions surrounding your adoption leave you unable to look at it logically. Again, I’m guessing that isn’t what you wanted me to get out of it, so you’ll have to explain.
Now, the books. First, I’ll admit no small amount of confusion or concern over how a book subtitled “How Good People Turn Evil” could be considered necessary reading for understanding the state of adoptees. Especially considering the fact that it appears to be a highly inflamitory attempt to prove that the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib fiasco were less reponsible for their personal actions than was the Bush administration. I also question the validity of any book that requires a revision less than a year after the first edition was published.
The second book does look a little more promising, but I noticed in the review something that I had been waiting to see. The description of it as a “humanistic approach.” You are not talking to someone who really buys into the theories of humanism. So, naturally, we are going to see things differently.
I am aware, and do not dispute the fact, that an infant recognizes things like its mother’s scent and heartbeat, and those things can be comforting. I am also aware that taking these concepts to the extreme (such as the Primal Wound theory) was considered over-reaching and out-dated when I was researching adoption five years ago. I find it interesting that this is trotted out in regards to adoption, but no one ever questions the long-term emotional impact on severely premature infants who spend long periods of time sequestered in incubators, or children who sleep in nurseries, or infants who are placed into daycare…It just seems to be an overly-simplified and rather convenient argument. I see a tremendous difference between separation at birth and abandoment later in life.
I am not saying that your feelings aren’t real or valid. I would never suggest that I know the internal workings of another individual. But I don’t think that your experiences are universal. I have noticed a tendancy, whenever someone mentions adult adoptees they know who do NOT express feelings similar to yours, for you to immediately pull out the argument that you don’t discuss it with other people, so we just aren’t getting the full stories from those we talk to. It is effective at ending the conversation almost every time (really, how can you argue with that?). While I may not have a specific argument for it, I will say that I don’t agree. I’ve talked to enough adult adoptees from the perspective of “What should I expect for my child?” I’ve heard a variety of answers. The one that did tell me about really wanting a reunion admitted that finally having that reunion did not end up being what she expected (she was surprised to not have much of anything–including looks–in common with her birth mother). You are also the only person I have ever heard claim that society paints them as “bad, ungrateful, lucky malcontents” because they are adopted. And I would have no respect for anyone who did try to attach such a lable.
I don’t have all of the answers about adoption. I don’t know what it feels like to be adopted. But I do know that not everyone has the same experience that you have had. And I completely agree with one of your more recent responses–there is a really fine line that has to be walked. I really do believe in the concept of self-fulfilling prophesies. And I think that it is dangerous to try and convince adoptive parents that their children will be unhappy based on the fact that they are adopted. If you are successful, and they act with that belief in mind, their children WILL grow up unhappy because they have been told that their differences should make them so. I would much rather focus on the positive aspects, and only worry about problems when they actually occur.
BSE – BabyScoopEra unwed mother homes, forcerd surrenders, when our nation went in and scooped an entire generation of children out of their mothers arms against their will. The Girls Who Went Away – Ann Fessler. 1940 – 1980 are the years I believe, but it doesn’t mean every mother in that time, just many.
Thanks, Gershom. I’m very familiar with the history, having been a knocked-up teen at the time, but didn’t get the acronym.
I actually got fan mail from Ann Fessler on a series I did on TGWWA, and that’s something I’m proud of.
Hi again, did not mean to abandon the conversation, just have been really busy.
Mixed Nuts, again you bring up a lot of good points.
As far as the people turning evil relating to adoptees, it doesn’t really, it just relates to the idea I was picking up on from your last post, about hard-line determinism, which I think is dead in the water at this point in understanding about the human psyche. It’s not really about adoption at all, but the human experience, which adoption is a subset of.
“A General Theory of Love”, I read right after it came out, by that time, I had been dealing with adoption in the forefront of my mind for maybe more than a decade? I can’t recall. Anyway, it has nothing to do with adoption, just how the human mind works. Strangely, I felt it explained adoption more to me than nearly any book I had read outside of
“The Primal Wound” I was a fairly early reunion, I dealt with a lot of these issues isolated and on my own. Reading about them later helped me feel validated.
Of course, I don’t think everyone experiences adoption the way I do. I am an intense, introspective personality. I feel things deeply.
I think of it this way, as a weak comparison, all adoptees are green, but within green there are no less than a million varying shades. Some are Kelly, some are Olive, some Emerald, some Seafoam, but you get the gist.
As for me being able to look at adoption logically, an unequivocal NO. I cannot look at adoption logically. I tried to for years. If you knew me in real life, you would know I am famous for saying things like, “let’s be practical” “putting emotion aside”. I was raised by Scandinavians after all.
I could NOT understand why I was so attached to my mother, a woman I considered a stranger, a woman that I had ONLY been with 9 months of my life, it C0NFOUNDED me, I rejected it.
I was the good/happy adoptee, or at least that is what I told everyone, less than 3 months before I contacted my mother, whose information I got from my amom.
I hated every bit about my feelings. I wrestled like Jacob with the angel.
Nothing about it is logical, that is why people don’t get it, on the balance sheet it looks great, the intangibles are where we suffer.
When I first met my mother I wouldn’t let her touch me, this only went on for about 16 years. I am not an adoptee who had fantasies about her being a princess pony, on many levels I rejected her as the woman who had rejected me.
When I could bear to let her touch me, I was afraid she would make me disappear. I was healed. When I could bear to let her hold me in her gaze, and she stared at me like I stared at my newborn child, I felt myself physically change. I know you will find no scientific support for my claim, but I felt it. I found myself waking up for the first time in my life, on my back with my feet joined heel to heel, the way a baby sleeps.
I know it sounds crazy , because it is crazy. If it had not happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it either.
The only way I can describe it is it, my skin was like wearing an ill-fitting sweater, it scratched and pulled, but I thought that was the way all skin felt, my cells were standing on end, and not until I met my mother did I realize why, I thought that was how it felt to be alive, so of course I didn’t complain against it.
It is not how it feels to be alive.
Can you even imagine my heartbreak to realize the people I love so much, my adoptive parents, would not be in my life if I wished this pain away?
I can’t even do that. I cannot even wish it away.
It is complicated, it is difficult, I love my natural parents, I love my natural siblings, I love my adoptive parents, I love my adopted sibling. I hate like hell what this has done to my psyche. I hate what it has done to my son.
I hate what this has done to my relationships.
Clear as mud eh?
I hate that this would be unnecessarily done to any child, because it has cost me tremendously.
The personal cost to me has been huge, to others I have known in real life huge.
I don’t feel as if I am getting my point across, as my point is in the shadows, in the tacit, in the knowing looks.
I wish so badly, that people would understand it is not crazy, bad, or evil, but out of a deep sense of caring that we adult adoptees speak out.
I really don’t want to hurt anyone. I just don’t want any child to go through what I went through.
No, I don’t represent ALL adopted children, but I represent some, and the ones I represent, are smart, are kind, are loyal, are creative and so much want to be loved.
Joy,
Than you so much for this wonderfully eloquent explanation. By generously sharing your story, you have gone a very long way toward bridge building through understanding, having offered a guided tour of the path adoption laid at your feet … a path many will find perhaps startlingly unfamiliar.
Your deep sense of caring comes through bright and clear.