Triad Issues

Adoption can be difficult for both adoptive and biological parents. The same is true for adult adoptees, especially those who have reached out and haven't had successful reunion experiences. If you're an adult adoptee and you feel hurt, betrayed, or depressed, there are ways to move forward and find happiness and contentment in your life, despite the choices of others. You may be angry because your biological parents placed you with an adoptive family, or because you wanted your biological parents to parent you instead of letting another family do it. You may feel lost or alone because your past is a mystery and you don't know your or your family's history. No matter your personal adoption experience, you can emotionally heal and… [more]

For a birth mother in reunion, all sorts of remarks will be offered once you volunteer the news that you have been found or found your child. One of the main reasons I never told anyone that I was a birth mother until reunion was my fear that people would reject me once they heard my "secret." All in all, I was fortunate to receive lots of support and few insensitive comments. Here are some of the ways and comments nearly guaranteed to stir up reunited birth moms and set their blood boiling: 1. One of the all time favorite comments made to reunited birth mothers upon news that they are reunited: "Oh great, so everything is okay now!"… [more]

The term or word abandoned has negative connotations not only in adoption but in every aspect of the word. However, there is a different between how and adoptee can feel abandoned and saying that all adoptees are abandoned. The word abandoned really doesn’t define what happened and doesn’t it invalidate the trauma of the initial loss and the ongoing pay that is carried? Maybe the term surrender is a more appropriate word for natural mothers because it seems they didn’t have a choice. At least during the closed adoption era. Doesn’t the word surrender suggest that they didn’t have a choice and maybe feel less like a slap in the face. Adoptees are not the only ones… [more]

The more I think about the subject abandonment the more I think I should write a little more on the subject. Doesn’t the word abandonment itself seem to cause a lot of hurt feelings? Don’t all triad members have their own strong feelings about the word itself? Maybe adoptees want an acknowledgement that they felt abandoned. It doesn’t mean that the adoptee blame the natural mothers or think that they had a choice about it. I am not saying to deny the natural mothers experience. The closed adoption era was a different time, and era when being an unwed mother was shameful to families that mothers were sent away and really didn’t have another choice. However, with that… [more]

The article published on March 1, 2007 titled “Family Counsel: The Primal Wound of Adoption" caught my eye. The article made me think of the book titled The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Verrier. Although the book is mentioned another book is also mentioned titled Babies Remember Birth. In this book psychologist David Chamberlain writes “minutes after birth a baby can pick up his mother’s face which he has never seen from a gallery of photos. This suggests the child will also be aware when the person is missing. On the other hand, The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child explains bonding as a continuum of physical, mental and spiritual events that begin during pregnancy… [more]

If you read a post of mine on any given day, you might believe that I am stuck, and angry. Read another day, and you will find that is not the case. Although I have angry moments, I use those to fuel my fires and give me the incentive to keep working to change some bad adoption practices, and faulty counseling for pregnant women. Although adoption continues to tinge my life with sadness, I embrace life and lead a full and rich life. In my day to day life, I have made some peace with my adoption loss, and it no longer prevents me from a measure of happiness. Everyone has some baggage, adoption or not. For some of us, it prevents… [more]

Part 1 ended up focusing more on what birth parents at reunion are not entitled to receive, rather than what they are. However, I think it is important to know both. As for a relationship after being found, that is something that you cannot legislate. Although I encourage at least one meeting between the parties, you cannot force a relationship. If an adoptee or birth parent who is found refuses to form a relationship, you cannot force them to connect with each other. It is helpful to realize that a relationship is a privilege, and not a foregone conclusion to which you are entitled. There are a few rights that birth parents are entitled to receive at reunion: 1… [more]

There is a great deal of talk about how birth parents deserve their privacy and are entitled to refuse contact if they wish to do so. However, I find it interesting who normally makes those kinds of remarks. Birth parents rarely do. Generally, adoption social workers tend or those adoptive parents opposed to open records often voice their opinions on what birth parents want. Once in a while, a birth parent will agree that they are entitled to their privacy. However, most birth parents that I know believe saying that they need their privacy is a bunch of baloney. “Privacy” from your own child? Who needs that? Why are adoptees considered any threat to their birth parents?… [more]

That night I proceed to get drunk so I could just not worry about the situation, because I remember that when my mom and dad left the party my dad said we would be talking about it tomorrow. The next day while I was home my heart started pounding extremely fast and hard. I told Tina to call an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack. I ended up in the ICU for three days but the doctor’s said it wasn’t a heart attack but actually an anxiety attack. I spoke to a therapist a week later and he started giving me Paxil for depression, I was out of work for a month. The first day I returned to work… [more]

When it comes to how people feel the bottom lines is that each person feel the way they feel. No one can make them feel any differently and each person must work through their own feelings through time. A natural mother may feel as if they didn’t abandon their child. They may try to find peace with that. They may feel or thing that the adoptees that feel abandoned could never understand what the natural mother s went though. Some natural mothers may not be able to understand what adoptees deal with in their every day lives. I think it is safe to say that most adoptees feel differently about their beginnings. Some feelings for adoptees may have changed more… [more]