I wonder if some adoptees do not go through some or all of these issues? I was talking to another friend today (adoptee) who said she was always comfortable & happy in her family & had no desire to search or reunite. I questioned her about it & we talked in depth because she knows that our family is involved in three very open adoptions. She thought I was a bit weird because we had alot of contact with my kids b-families.
I was just wondering if it is the common belief that ALL adoptees must experience this process on some level? This is not the only adult adopted friend who has expressed they might not have experienced the extreme feelings of loss of longing & have no intention to search for birth family. Can it be that some or none of these core issues are experienced by a notable portion of adoptees? I know everyone is unique. Has anyone ever taken a poll or survey of some kind to find this out?
Thanks for the topic.

As an adoptee I have run my course through nearly all of those listed issues. I understand also not having the intent to search even though I am attempting my own search. My decision to search has been waning back and forth for maybe 10 years. I deeply love the family I grew up with. But there are times when I look at my cousins and grandparents and see the ties in biology that I have never seen in me. I was adopted at birth so I also hear the old"nature verses nurture" arguement quite a bit.
I think I may have more drive for my search now because I am a proud parent. I love looking at my son and being able to see the genetic ties that I was never able to see in anyone else. I also wonder , who else is in there?
Thank you for reading this. I have been needing this kind of support for a while.

I am a 49 year old adoptee that have had all of the issues listed here. My biggest sadness is the lack of continuity and family history. Who do I look like? Is my behavior like an uncle's, aunt's, mother, father? Where did I get my (fill in the blank).......Over the years, starting in grade school with the family tree assignment to recent discussions with friends about their geneological searches and their delight in their discoveries, I have but one thing to say, which I never do: I have a family history of one: me. I have a 26 year old son and an 18 year old son. They are my first blood relatives. It still delights me when people comment how much they look like me! And I'm always surprised, because until they were born, I had not once received that comment concerning my adoptive family, even though I was supposedly "matched" with them.

Some of my favorite quotes:

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. ~Gail Lumet Buckley


Not to have knowledge of what happened before you were born is to be condemned to live forever as a child. Cicero (c. 106-43 BC)

In all of us there is a hunger, narrow and deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we have come from.
Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning.
No matter what our attainments in life, there is a
vacuum, an emptiness and a most disquieting loneliness!
Alex Haley, Author

In the Old Testament. the phrase "I will blot out their names" (to erase their identity...as though they had never existed)
is a more powerful threat even than physical death. Dr. Rollo May

When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school . . . But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
Miles Davis

What will I pass on to my blood sons? My family history of one: I am writing my childhood stories and hopefully setting the foundation for my great, great, grandchildren that they share many of my characteristics etc. so hopefully, they will feel connected.