Adoptees

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]

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]

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]

The feeling of differentness causes some adoptees to isolate themselves from family and friends and to feel they are less of a person than others. Some typical behaviors for the adoptee who feels different are chemical dependency, seeking out lowlife peers, distancing from family members, and trying on new identities that are very different from their adoptive family. Some adoptees no matter how old they are chronologically feel that there is a part of them that will always be a child. Depending of the state of birth and adoption the fact that they will never be old enough to obtain information regarding their birth according to present laws and the closed record system. They may fee as if they are suspended… [more]

One adoption issue that I don’t think I have talked about is control. This might be when an adoptee feels as though her or she has had no control over the events in his or her life. Decisions surrounding relinquishment, choice of adoptive family, and information to be shared with the adoptee were all made by other people. The adoptee may feel helpless and frustrated that life seems to be a series of uncontrollable events. As a result the adoptee’s need to be in control of something often becomes an issue. Some typical behaviors are need for control, chemical dependency, defiance toward authority figures, and/or compulsive needs to be organized and plan ahead. Some adoptees are faced with a… [more]

Some adoptee issues seem very unique to me. Other times being adopted may only exaccerbate problems and make them more difficult. The issues that many adoptees face as I see them are as follows: 1. Connecting with others - I do not think by any means that it is impossible for adoptees to connect with others. However, I believe that sometimes it is harder for them to do so. Many adoptees have told me this is the case. Certainly non-adoptees have similar issues, however, I think this issue is more common among adoptees. 2. Loss - Some adoptees are more sensitive to loss than those who are not adopted. Some people suspect the early loss of their original parents may have… [more]

Although open adoption is supported by many there this is an understandably emotional issue. First off, when writing this I think in life in general for everyone whether adoption effects their lives or not there are a couple of things that we all need to keep in mind. The first is that the human spirit is incredibly resilient and the second is that every human being experiences some significant pain and/or dysfunction in his or her lifetime. As an example, life provides each of us some disappointment, not matter who we are. I know that not all adoptees have a desire to connect with their natural parents but for me the desire was built in or natural for me to… [more]

In a closed adoption, the identity of the child's birth mother and other family information remains confidential and is not accessible to the child. In an open adoption, this information is accessible to the child or limited information is available to the adoptee. In the most open situation of all, the child, his adoptive family, and his birth family interact more or less freely. The findings of the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) suggest that an open adoption is a good thing for the adoptive family, the child, as well as the birth family. The MTARP project began in the fall of 1984 to evaluate the changes that three agencies were making in their adoption practices. Prospective adoptive parents and birth… [more]