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Thank you for understanding. You found what I meant overall, even if it isn’t what I thought at the time that I meant. (I was, after all, extremely tired at the time of posting).

I really appreciated the bit about brokenness. The bit that you quoted me as, I was actually trying to quote from you. So, you win. You made me think about adoption in a new way, which is pretty rad. Sometimes I get all “I am the authority on this” at least in my head. And I don’t want to be, nor do I (really) think I am.

It is just hard to explain adoption to non-adoptees. Even people who want to adopt kids some day don’t tend to get it. People are particularly confused when they’ve known me long enough to know how hard I used to defend how adoption is great in every way, and how now I don’t. Or am wrestling at least with not feeling that way anymore. Though there is, of course, still guilt attached.

Eventually, i think I’ll be rid of that. I hope!

And yeah, I loved your thoughts on not knowing there was a different way to be. I think a lot of my ways of going about life go back to that central thing. I don’t know what “normal” looks like.
And I liked your take on loss. It’s a good way of looking at it. Going to have to ponder it some more as far as how to get there, but yeah. I like it.

Thank you for honesty and understanding!

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I was adopted. My adoptive mother went through treatment and failed time and again. She was and is awful; I stopped having regular contact with her in my late 20s on the advice of a psychiatrist I was seeing. She’s never really been able to see the person that I am. I am either a devil or an angel depending upon how much the way I am currently acting looks to her like her image of the daughter she believed she would have.

She doesn’t really even like children; she liked dancing and she liked her work, but she didn’t enjoy living in a house with small kids, yet she had to do it because it was expected of her.

I have been in therapy since I was 16 and I have a huge abandonment issue, but I think that could have been resolved if I had been adopted by someone who was able to acknowledge that I am actually a person with a personality that is all mine. My father and I got on all right. Anyhow…there is all kinds of garbage attached to talking about this. If your parents don’t rape you or beat you until you bleed you are not supposed to cut them off, ever, and if they are saints who took in someone else’s abandoned baby…well.

I found out later on that my biological mother fought the adoption.

I’ve never been to look for her and people think I should; but she was very devout and I’m not sure she’d be any happier by the way I turned out; plus, there is no way in hell that I can feel good about telling her that the people she fought were not good parents.

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(I think I felt this way but couldn’t put words to it because when the feelings formed it wasn’t with conscous words attached)

While I don’t share your experience of learning to put words to your feelings about adoption, I think I understand what you mean here. At least, this part spoke to me. It took me so long to realize how damaged my life had become with my abusive ex, because I had never not been abused. I didn’t realize that the feeling people were describing with the word “love” was different from the feeling I was describing with the same word. How would I know? I had to find these things out by having new experiences, but I didn’t even know there were new experiences to be had. I didn’t know that I was missing anything, because I’d never had it long enough to miss. I had to learn these things by talking with others about them, but when we were all using the same words to describe different feelings, I just frequently came away with a sense of alienness and brokenness, because everybody else seemed to be able to deal with the things they called “stress” or “worry” or “anxiety,” and I felt completely crippled.

I remember the day it clicked for me. I was reading a description of a panic attack from a psychology textbook, and I suddenly realized that it was describing, accurately, these feelings I just seemed to keep getting, every day. The only word I’d had to describe that before was “stress,” and I thought that’s what it was. So I thought I was just utterly broken, because other people somehow managed stress by “getting over it,” or talking about it, or just relaxing, or having a glass of wine, or watching a movie, and yet I was just completely incapacitated by “stress”, unable to breathe or walk straight, feeling like I was in a tunnel, seeing yellow bands across my eyes, afraid I would start screaming or yelling or convulsing in public. I thought that’s what everybody felt, and somehow they were just able to handle it. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard of panic attacks before, but the ways people described them, it sounded like something that just completely broke you, made you end up in a hospital. And since I was able to walk and talk through my panic attacks — albeit I was in a complete daze and digging my fingernails into my palms until they bled — obviously I couldn’t be having a panic attack, because I didn’t feel that bad. It didn’t occur to me to think that the way I felt was bad enough, goddammit, but instead I thought it wouldn’t actually be actionable or worth considering until I was tied to a hospital bed.

Anyway, when that all finally clicked for me, it was just this confusing (though often relieving) revelation that I wasn’t unable to handle normal living, because I had never actually experienced it. What I thought was normal was never once the thing other people mean when they talk about a normal life. I was having trouble handling a sincerely fucked-up situation, and people should have trouble handling that — that’s what proved that my brain and body somehow knew that what I was experiencing wasn’t right, wasn’t okay, wasn’t for me. That was my health shining through, the parts of me that screamed “YOU ARE IN PAIN,” and all those years, I thought that was my craziness shining through, and that I had to suppress it at any cost.

it still is not how things were intended to go, and there is loss there.

This isn’t what you were saying, but it made me think of something. One of the issues I see around adoption is, like you said, the feeling that somehow you are not allowed or able or encouraged to express that loss, because there are also happy things in adoption, and somehow the loss is construed as negating the happy things (instead of coexisting with it, or even being an integral part of the happiness). I think, to some level, this speaks to the idea that loss is not natural, that it is something to “get through” or “get over” or ignore or suppress, and that’s something I see in so many places. But every living thing is assured, just absolutely guaranteed from the moment they draw breath, that they will experience loss at some point in their lives. It may not be “natural,” however you choose to define it, but it’s certainly expected, and normal, and inescapable, so it’s amazing that people still manage to react as if it’s something to be pushed aside so quickly and easily. That’s unnatural.

The things I have lost have made me grab on harder to the things I now know are important, and I wouldn’t know these things were important — wouldn’t consider them so — if not for that loss. The loss is a crucial part of the things that are wonderful; they would not be wonderful without the loss having come first. The seven years I lost in an abusive relationship make me grasp at each day, and feel lucky to have them, and feel lucky to still be young, and it makes me have the backbone (where I never had one before) to put a stop to abusive situations that start to crop up much, much sooner, because I don’t have the time to waste anymore. That’s a proud part of myself. When I decide I am “over” the abuse, that it’s time to stop talking and thinking about it, to stop feeling grief over the years I lost, I start to forget about how it started, how it crept into my life, how it seemed so normal, how easy it was, how hard it is to stop once it’s started. That’s not a worthwhile trade-off for me. My caution and my strength and my mouthiness are parts of me that I respect and love because they were well-fucking-earned, and came from a place of such deep loss that I could never have imagined having caution and strength and a big mouth. I may have rather never been abused and give up those things I earned, but that’s not my life and never will be, so there’s only so much future in that line of thinking.

Anyway, what I’m badly failing to say is, I think loss is a very respectable part of the human experience. That doesn’t make it right or wanted, but it does make it a crucial part of every human being, and what makes their lives unique, and what makes their joys unique. And it’s a deep shame that the loss of adoptees is a subject of contention and dismissal, instead of a necessary part of a very rich story about what makes the goodness in their lives so intense and special — loss is what helped make that goodness happen, and loss is what made everybody think it could never happen, and the existence of survival and thriving in the face of loss is a necessary part of the story that there will always be survival and thriving in the face of loss.

It’s late. I’m rambling. Sorry for hijacking your comment.

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First, I am offended by phrases like “regular parents” or “natural parents.” That implies that adoptive parents are somehow irregular or unnatural, and that’s a pretty damning thing to hear about your own family. Imagine if I referred to families where a member has Down’s syndrome as “abnormal” or “damaged” families, and referred to all other families as normal. That’s the sting you deliver with those words, to both the parents and the children who have to hear themselves described as unnatural. I can’t tell you what the “appropriate” terminology is, because people in the adoption triad all prefer different things. On this blog, I use the term “adoptive family” and “biological family,” and those are acceptable terms to use here. But I can tell you that people who use the phrases “regular parents” and “natural parents” have just outed themselves as knowing fuck-all about adoption — terminology like that is a dead giveaway that you 1) have not learned enough about adoption, 2) have not made even the barest glimmer of an attempt to learn enough before deciding you are informed enough on this topic to open your fool mouth, and 3) don’t even have enough common sense to realize that what you said is hurtful. I’m sure you would not prefer I call your son retarded or a freak, even if I obviously had the nicest of intentions while doing so, and I’m sure you’d think I was a bit of an insensitive, thoughtless asshole if I did. It wouldn’t matter if I said, “How wonderful your retarded freak of a son is, he really reminds me of my normal son, and it’s wonderful that I can see all the similarities between them,” I would still be an asshole for saying it. It would also be a red flag for you that I know absolutely nothing about Down’s syndrome, and perhaps you’d then prefer I keep my mouth shut about it. That being the case (your case, that is), I suggest you read up on what adoptees, adoptive parents, and biological parents think, feel, and prefer before you decide you have the knowledge or experience to comment upon their lives in any way that isn’t ignorant, offensive, 101, or just plain cruel.

Actually, that kind of goes for the rest of your comment as well. While you might have a lot in common with an adoptive parent who has adopted a special needs child — when discussing special needs — you do not have anything in common with them when it comes to adoption, because you have not adopted. You may have a lot in common when it comes to the basics of parenting, such as what it’s like dealing with homework or tying up shoes, but you do not have anything in common when it comes to parenting an adopted child. There are certainly many ways that adoptive and non-adoptive families are similar, and I agree that we could all do with learning more about this and finding new ways to extend empathy and understanding and tools of support to one another. But that doesn’t mean that a non-adoptive family can know, at all, what life is like for an adoptive family, though as you can see, that doesn’t stop people from making grand assumptions about their own ability to generalize.

If you do not know how your experience and an adoptive family’s experience are different, it’s because you have not bothered to find out. Not knowing, and not taking the time or work necessary to find out, is a privilege you have. You get to decide if it’s a privilege you want to keep, in the rest of the world. On this blog, you do not get to decide, because this is my blog. If you want to comment here again, you are required to do a little more work than thinking about the fact that you sure do love your son. I’m not going to give you an assignment, or tell you how to go about learning about adoption. Part of your work is realizing that it is not anybody else’s job to rectify your ignorance. From your immediate reaction to this post (let’s talk about me! I’m quite sure that’s relevant somehow! These things other people with completely different lives go through? I’m quite sure I know a lot about that!), I’m assuming learning about adoption isn’t high on your priority list — at least, it’s not higher than mouthing off about adoption, and I’ll advise you that those priorities need to be switched around right fast.

While your story is an interesting story and a nice story, it has nothing to do with adoption. The fact that you thought it was relevant to a discussion about adoption is staggeringly arrogant. The fact that you thought your story that does not involve adoption somehow gives you insight into adoption is staggeringly ignorant. Imagine if, after discussing the difficulties and challenges inherent in raising a child with Down’s syndrome — something which may require a certain level of vulnerability from you, and you may expect some kind of sympathy, kindness, or basic affirmation that I have actually even heard anything you have said — I told you that hey, you know, you should really remember that everybody experiences that, because this one time I nursed a sick puppy. Or, if after discussing how difficult pregnancy or the decision to continue pregnancy was for you, I responded that once I had gas, and I had to decide if I wanted to go out to a party that night or stay in, and it was a really hard decision. That would be extraordinarily dismissive of me. This is what you’ve done here today, and it was extraordinarily dismissive of you.

If you are interested in what adoption is like, for all members of the triad, and if you are interested in how you can and cannot relate to that experience, I highly suggest you close your mouth and open your ears, starting here.

And, to cover what I suspect will come next, you can try here, here, and here as well.

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Just a little story I would like to share – I don’t think adoptive parents and regular parents struggle with so many differences that they can’t be understood… here’s what I mean:
When I was pregnant with my son, my own mother said (based on a false alpha-feta-protein test that was wrong) “Your child is going to have DOWNS SYNDROME… the doctors said he would! (hence, the false-positive test)…GET AN ABORTION! YOU DO NOT (screaming here) WANT TO RAISE A KID FOR 30 YEARS BECAUSE HE CANT TIE HIS OWN SHOES! I think that was the deepest breath I took before I finally put the phone down, and turned to my husband: “We are keeping this baby,” I said. “Yes, it’s the right thing.” And it was. But yes, I (or any of us that are reading this blog -adoptive parents, natural parents– could have chosen at that time instead to say “Hey, I don’t want all that responsibility. Forget this — take the baby back! I don’t want it!” (so ok, I came real close to that in childbirth…40 hours of labor and I was real close to saying those words! But … I digress) What I’m trying to say is… we (most of us) do stick with something like this for someone we love (our children, whether of origin or of adoption – it really doesn’t matter). And for us parents that had ours the “old-fashioned way” there are still times I don’t understand why my child isn’t somewhat more like me… why we can’t work out certain differences… why he wants to go do something silly like that (???! – whatever “that” happens to be at the time)…
but you know what? He and I have put his differences aside. Even more importantly, he does not have Downs Syndrome, despite 2 doctors’ warnings that he would…

All of you parents out there, no matter “how” you became a parent, keep love in your heart and make time to learn their interests, as well as wanting them to share in yours… you both might learn something (I have learned so much from my son. I HOPE one day he learns something from me! lol)

Keep the faith xo

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This. This. Sorry to be coming to this so late, but when all that was going on in April, my partner and I were reeling from having just disrupted an adoption. Because I am an academic expert on a country which sends many “orphans” (hah) into the transnational adoption system, I knew enough about it to know that I could never bear to support it. The private system here is for people a *lot* richer than us. And so we decided to adopt via the public system.

Our public-system story: We got all the training available, read all the books, thought we knew what we were getting into, carefully asked not to be matched with any child with an attachment-disorder diagnosis. (Yes, we know now that this was unbelievably naive. But we’re Canadian! We expected that civil servants would be truthful! We thought that there would be clear diagnoses that everyone would agree on! Among many other dumb assumptions!) (And yes, of course, we also thought that love would fix everything, just like everyone else.)

So we were matched with a severely traumatized 11-year-old girl who started being physically violent toward me almost immediately after “coming home.” We called up the social workers. They said “what are you doing to her? she’s never done that before!” She told us, no, she had done that before, that’s why her previous adoptions had been disrupted. We said, what previous adoptions? the social workers said, “oh, um, her file is very thick, we must have missed something…”

So one of the problems was that in the public system here, social workers come and go very quickly and there’s not much continuity for a kid in the system. Plus a child available for adoption gets a completely new adoption-specialist social worker who may never speak to previous foster-care social workers who may never speak to previous child-at-risk social workers. Plus social workers specializing in difficult/late adoption placements get paid out of a special grant set up by the Dave Thomas Foundation and that grant money depends on a certain number of adoptions being finalized in the province every year … Of course we didn’t understand any of this until much too late. And maybe we would have done the same thing anyway, maybe we couldn’t understand until it was too late.

Anyway, it ended up after six terrifying months with the child we were trying to adopt back in a group home, and then another group home, where she appears to be doing all right now, or as all right as a child in a group home could be. I think she’s more physically secure, anyway, and maybe less likely to hurt other people. My partner and I are both in not such great shape ourselves. We will always wish that we had the strength to continue to live with this child, despite the violence. We were so full of grief and anger that it nearly ended our marriage. His parents were so angry that we disrupted the adoption – they really, really wanted grandchildren, and were unable to believe that the violence was not my fault somehow – that they are still not speaking to us. My family, meanwhile, were supportive but now puzzled about why we can’t just “put all that behind us.” So a lot of relationships were terribly disrupted by this,not just our relationship with this child.

I don’t know what would have been the best thing under the circumstances for the child we tried to adopt, but clearly we weren’t it. And to live through those weeks when everyone’s water-cooler talk was about this Russian event right after – yeah, that was hard. Anyway, belatedly, *thank you so much* for this blog and this post, and for trying to keep a space open for truthful talk on this difficult subject.

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Circumstances are not allowing my brother to “legally” adopt his daughter at this time. Because of the trauma the mother went through, she’s having trouble with everything and has gotten everything from “Why didn’t you just get an abortion” to threatening to take her daughter away because they deem her incompetent. Not let the child live with my brother, literally take the child and put him into “the system”. My mother has offered to take her in. I have offered to take her in. But it’s up to the biological mother who is being thumbed at by her family because she is traumatized and desperately trying to be a mother at the same time. If the mother’s family has her way, they will BOTH be put into the system.

My brother has no say in what happens to his daughter and it sickens me. He could very well lose the baby girl that he’s pledged his heart and soul to. He has no rights as he isn’t the “legal father”. As her Aunt (and I consider her my Niece) I would walk over fire for her but I’m legally barred from doing so. My brother isn’t the bio-dad and therefore has no rights to a child who was born from incredibly unfortunate circumstances despite the fact that there’s a huge support network RIGHT HERE that is willing and able to take her in and do whatever we can for my sister-in-law. We don’t care how the child came about. She’s a child and she needs love and support just like any other. The sad part is that she may end up in the system because of legal technicalities, and so may her mother if her family’s motions to gain custody of her as an adult go through.

We are legally barred from so much as visiting her because of the mother’s family. My brother is looking at the possibility of losing his daughter to a rapist because the biological father has legal precedence when it comes to custody. He has to surrender the child before my brother can “legally” adopt her. Before any of this village can step in and help.

There’s a village waiting but the people that run it may put a child that has a support network in place in a place where there is one. There is nothing beautiful and wonderful here except for the fact that the child exists. The birth father is a criminal but also a human being and you can’t ignore the fact that he may well feel emotionally liable to the child despite his crime and that there’s also a possibility that he WON’T want the child and is just holding custody over the mother’s head.

Who gets to decide who is most fit to raise a child? Why can’t all of us play a certain part? I have never even met my Niece but I’m doing all I can for her. Why are there legal bars between a man who loves his wife’s child and is doing everything in his power to HELP her and his wife. Why is he being forced to live apart from them because his wife’s family has deemed themselves more competent than anyone else to take care of their daughter, period.

I hope that was followable. I hope you can see that there are multiple families, multiple generations and multiple connections in this whole mess. That you can see there are privileges that are present that aren’t deserved and ones that are deserved that aren’t being given. I hope you can see that I myself am speaking from privilege; that I simply assume the position of Aunt based on the fact that there was a child born into my family yet I am not a legal Aunt, and that my brother has assumed the position of Father yet is not a father. I hope you can see that the Biological Father is both in and far from a position of privilege.

Most importantly, I hope you can see that LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH when you are dealing with trauma, legal technicalities and money. That LOVE WILL NOT EXPLAIN what is going on to my traumatized sister-in-law and my niece. That LOVE WILL NOT HEAL the hurt that is going through this family, and it is not going to make this all just go away like a soothing balm.

This hurts, and everyone involved is hurt. But you know what? It’s a child. If I turn my back on her because I am a hurting adult, I may as well turn it on every other child in need. Who am I to pick and choose which child is “worth it”?

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