Adopted Children Are Not Blank Slates

Adoption does not erase the pain and the loss that came before. Children begin experiencing the world before they take their first breaths. They can feel the emotions of their biological mother inside the womb.

A child’s body, heart, and spirit are capturing information in real time as they experience this enormous separation. Infants do not have words, but they have hearts, bodies, and souls that remember. They carry their earliest experiences with them. Childhood is a delicate time for us all. Children are growing rapidly, learning who they are and exploring how they fit into their family and the world.

Everything is not all better because a child has been adopted. Separation from a child’s first family is disruptive and shapes how the child experiences love, safety, and connection. Placing the child in a loving home does not erase the grief that the child inevitably feels. Grief that they were too young to have words for.

What we don’t acknowledge lurks below the surface. Society as a whole struggles with emotional childhood neglect. Children who were relinquished can carry an unbelievable amount of emotional weight. Their caregivers or adoptive parents need to be able to embody emotional regulation to meet the child in their inner world. If the child is left alone in their inner emotional world, there’s nowhere for the pain, grief, and confusion to go except to be buried deeper.

Adoptees who find themselves in a loving, supportive, and connected family will still experience a profound loss on every level: physical, emotional, psychological, biological. It doesn’t mean the adoptive parents did anything wrong; it means the child is human, and humans grieve losses. The loss of the biological family can feel like a part of the adoptee died.

Celebrating a child’s devastation

Adoption is often viewed as a celebration. Society congratulates the adoptive parents on their new child—a shiny prize. Many adoptees are anti-adoption, and I understand the emotional devastation that abandonment and adoption can bring. I, however, am not anti-adoption. What I am is anti-emotional neglect. Adoptive families can bring opportunities and stability to an adopted child, and being afforded more privileges can be helpful. Being gifted a better life doesn’t make all the rest disappear.

Two things can be true at the same time. The parents may celebrate their child, but that child is mourning a family they don’t even know. Adoption resulted in profound loss, and the child may have a family that can meet them where they are.

Adopted Children May Hide Their True Selves

“Since I was chosen, I can be unchosen.” Adoptees can feel as though they are erased and written into another storyline. It can feel like we aren’t even real people. Since adoptees have their safety pulled out from under them, they can become obsessed with finding the feeling of home. It’s scary for a child when they depend on adults for their every need. They know that something went wrong before. A child doesn’t cognitively understand what happened and that it wasn’t their fault. They feel responsible for the relinquishment, and they feel flawed. They must perform. It becomes a way of life, doing rather than being. When I think back to my childhood, I never felt like a child. The only time I truly felt like I could be me was alone in my room. My room was always my sanctuary, just as my home is now.

My memory of how I felt as a child and all through adulthood: “I’m different; I must hide. I must fit in. I must belong at any cost. The cost will be who I am. The unknown is scary, and if I misbehave, I will be sent away.” —And my parents didn’t really say much bad about me or to me. My worldview came from what was NOT said and what I was praised for.

Many Adoptees Fear Being Abandoned Again

Even though I was hiding this painful secret of believing I could be returned if my parents found out that I really was a bad child, I was also determined to keep being the good girl that I knew my parents wanted.

Those of us who held immense fear that we would or could be thrown away again inevitably held on to that fear as we entered into any other relationship. Whether that be friendships, romantic relationships, or peer relationships. We notice when someone checks the time as we sit in front of them. We notice when someone doesn’t really want to be around us. We know the feeling of being invited, but still not belonging. We wait to be found out and left again. We hide ourselves away from the world, believing that showing our true selves will result in devastation somehow. We can cognitively know we are intelligent, creative, loving, brave humans and still not feel this as truth in our bodies. We can constantly live in two worlds and belong to neither.

Is There Hope For Healing Abandonment WOUNDS?

Does this reality continue until death? It doesn’t have to. This was my truth for so long. The moment my path shifted was when I found a trauma therapist who understood the impact of childhood trauma. Little by little, I excavated myself from the grave that I had buried myself in. Slowly, I began uncovering myself by letting go of the shame and guilt that I held.

The more I went inward with a trusted, competent professional, the more I was brought to life. The more I accepted my feelings and validated the darker side of my experience, the less I had to carry around. The more space I had to be me.

During my healing journey, I did not have a strong support system. I became my own support system. I don’t recommend doing it alone, but if you really are alone on your journey, you can still heal. It takes time, effort, bravery, and the ability to take responsibility for yourself.

The more I chose myself, claimed myself, and chased myself, the world around me softened. The thoughts of wondering if someone might abandon me are still there, but the wave of fear that would rush through my body has disappeared. Healing happens in layers, and it does come.

My Personal adoptee lens

My lens is from my unique experiences. I do not speak for all adoptees; no adoptee does. How adoptees feel about their personal situation as well as adoption as a whole is vastly different. Some adoptees are still in the fog and think everything is fine. Some adoptees had extreme trauma from their biological and adoptive families. Some adoptions resulted from human trafficking. Some adoptions happened after the death of their biological parents. Many paths lead to adoption.

Adoption is one word that represents countless stories, none of which are identical. Nobody gets a prize for the best adoptive family, and nobody gets a prize for the most amount of trauma endured. The triumph comes when the adoptee claims who they are for themselves and creates a beautiful life on their own terms. Whatever that may look like.

Last Thoughts

Being relinquished is a lifelong experience. That does not mean that it’s a life sentence of tragedy and trauma. As children, we don’t have very much agency or autonomy. As adults, we are able to reclaim our power as we parent ourselves. Is it fair? Of course not, but everyone has something about their life that isn’t fair. We all deserve to move through the world as our true selves. We all deserve a beautiful life.

Talk soon,
Stephanie