Any Other Adoptees Here? (Posts from non-adoptees also welcome)

[Uli]

I was adopted when I was 3 months old. I am 41 now. My wife got me a DNA test for my birthday in January. We weren't expecting or intending to find my biological family, I just wanted to know my heritage and we planned to make a date day out of the results (which ended up being full Irish breakfast at a pub a couple towns away, and a binge of movies that took place in Ireland).

But, it turned out my half-sister had used the same DNA site and once I had that info, I couldn't resist the urge to search out more info. So, long story short(ish), I found my birth mother in the spring, we have been chatting over FB messenger pretty regularly since then and we are meeting face-to-face for the first time on Sunday.

The experience has been mostly positive, she's lovely, said a bunch of the stuff that lots of adopted people hope to hear one day. Early on I was positively high off how much we had in common - from what I can gather, feeling sort of alien is pretty universal among adoptees, and a relief from that feeling, a concrete sense that I and my quirks, etc. came from somewhere/someone was very fulfilling. It has also at times been very overwhelming, lots of coexisting but opposing thoughts/feelings/truths, moments of absolutely spilling over with grief, anger, gratitude for my life, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't even have words for.

Being in the same room as anyone with whom I share DNA for the very first time in my 41 years (and I really do mean first time-she didn't hold me or anything when I was born, I was whisked away to the nursery immediately upon, um, exit. She peeked at me through the nursery window once very briefly) is a big deal. I'm kinda spun out. Sleep and calm have been somewhat elusive this week as the day approaches.

Anyway, if there are any other adoptees here, I would love to hear about your experiences, particularly if you have met anyone in your biological family. A general discussion around adoption or, heck, even other stories of big deal things that made you feel spun out and overwhelmed and how those experiences turned out, is also welcome.

Note: My lens for adoption is specifically trauma-informed, so i would like to request that anyone who has not considered and/or rejects the notion of adoption as trauma to please post thoughtfully/carefully. It isn't that I believe that adoption is bad, I am vehemently pro-choice in all ways, meaning that I think the more choices a pregnant person has access to, the better. It's just complicated and I wholly reject the over simplification of complicated things.

[Apocalipstic]

I am an adoptee. I was adopted at 11 days. I met my birth parents in my 20s. It was weird honestly. I wanted them to be sorry and they were not at all.

My sister got me an Ancestry.com last Christmas and I did it. Mixed feelings. It was interesting to find my genetic ethnicity/ies.

Not sure if I will go farther with it.

[dark_crystal]

I'm not adopted but my niece and nephew were adopted at 18 and 24 months from orphanages in Russia. My nephew is already kind of struggling with it. The Russian system is set up to be absolutely closed-- there is no way for them to ever learn where they came from and i worry about that for them.

The other thing i worry about is that they do not know they had a stillborn brother. When they find out, won't they wonder what would have happened if that baby had lived?

Those are rhetorical questions, i am not here to request emotional labor from adoptees. I just came to read the thread to glean clues for what kind of support an aunt might offer as these kids grow up, bc i adore them like seriously big time and would sell my soul to shield them from even the slightest existential distress

[Uli]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

I'm not adopted but my niece and nephew were adopted at 18 and 24 months from orphanages in Russia. My nephew is already kind of struggling with it. The Russian system is set up to be absolutely closed-- there is no way for them to ever learn where they came from and i worry about that for them.

The other thing i worry about is that they do not know they had a stillborn brother. When they find out, won't they wonder what would have happened if that baby had lived?

Those are rhetorical questions, i am not here to request emotional labor from adoptees. I just came to read the thread to glean clues for what kind of support an aunt might offer as these kids grow up, bc i adore them like seriously big time and would sell my soul to shield them from even the slightest existential distress

I so appreciate you being thoughtful about emotional labor. And existential distress is the exact right phrase to describe one of the effects of being adopted. I happen to feel like offering some emotional labor even though you didn't ask for it I don't have all the answers, obviously, because if I did I would not feel so spun out! But, here is what I do know: they need space to feel their feelings. Adults often want to shield kids from stress by putting every possible positive spin on adoption: "You are special because you were chosen." "Your birth mom loved you enough to give you a life she couldn't provide." etc and so on. And it's not that any of that is necessarily wrong, but it does leave a kid likely to feel some shame about their complicated feelings related to being adopted. In order to offer meaningful support to adoptees, I think you have to get really good at "both/and" - like, "I am so happy that you are in my life, and it's totally reasonable that you have some fucked up feelings about your adoption and early life."

[nycfem]

Uli, I appreciated that you started this thread, and also, in particular the thoughtful way in which you described your thoughts. It was very inclusive and meaningful to me.

Interestingly, all my cousins are adopted. One of them I am estranged from due to a falling out between my dad's side of the family and her parents. It's a shame because she is as nice as can be, a lovely person. She is so different from everyone in our family - not analytical, not neurotic, easygoing, simple- but not in a bad way, just lovely... though perhaps not much to talk about with her, not because she's not smart - she is very smart and successful. I cannot imagine that anyone with our bio family genetics could have ever created someone like her. I miss her but it was just one of those situations where we got caught in a difficult situation with our respective parents fighting. Such a shame. I am older than her and when we were young I used to sing a refrain from a song from by the Violent Femmes "I hear the rain, I hear the rain, got to kill the pain." Well as a little girl she would sing it along with me, the way little kids do. Then when she also became older she would still sing it to me, and we would laugh. It touched me that she would use it as a way to connect to me. She is stunning, very much unlike anyone in my genetic family. In high school she asked to find out the information on her bio parents but my aunt told her that she would need to go to therapy first so she dropped it.

Then I have two cousins on my mothers sides, sisters, though the two are not related to each other. One is in her thirties and a few years ago estranged herself from my aunt and uncle, who are her adoptive parents. It is just shocking. My aunt and uncle were good parents. They are somewhat distant and cold in personality but so was my cousin, so it's not like they had different personalities! My aunt and uncle are very upset about it and don't know what to do. They are hurt, angry, and confused. I still get together with my cousin. She gave some reason for cutting them off due to my aunt not keeping boundaries but the examples she gave were petty. My cousin is indeed cold and if I did not arrange to get together with her, we likely would never see each other, though she is amicable when we do get together. She told me never to cross share any information she shares with me with my aunt and uncle. Her bio mother wrote her a letter that was very nice and invited contact. My cousin barely even read the letter and referred to the bio mother as "stalker."

Her sister, my other cousin, reminds me of the cousin I described from my dad's side of the family. She is simple but also such a good, nice person. Again, not much to talk about with her, but I like her a lot. She is a big gamer and married someone she met on World of Warcraft and moved to Canada and married him. She is a horse jockey. Now, I'm sorry, but NO ONE with my family's genetics would ever be a horse jockey. We would never have those capabilities ever. For many years before the WOW marriage, she lived in a house with a bunch of jockeys in West Virginia who only speak Spanish and she doesn't speak Spanish. She was in a long relationship with one of them that was always fraught with problems. Now she's married to what we all privately refer to as a neanderthal. Still she's happy enough. He has kids from two prior marriages and she is the step-mom. They are very strict with their kids and raise them differently than they would be raised within the genetics of my mom's side of the family. This cousin has a history of lying which I've always been wary of but I like her a lot. She's an outsider. She likes living in very rural Canada. She relates MUCH more to animals than to people. She takes abused, broken horses and turns them into happy winners. She's very close with my aunt and uncle, so at least they have that. My cousin has never asked to get in contact with her bio mother. Her bio mother is known to be mentally ill and to live in London.

I have two step-sons with my husbutch. My husbutch raised the children with her ex-wife who is the biological mother of the children. They used two different donors. One of the boys is a lawyer with a big family, and they are all quite normal, almost to the point of being boring. I am at a loss for conversation with him and his wife. He recently did a 23 and me but I don't think anything special was found out. He was always wishing he had a way to meet his bio parents but I do not think there was a way.

My second step-son is in his twenties and is an unemployed, HIV+, gay, and heavily pierced and tattooed. He is very moody and has had problems emotionally and academically all his life. He is a huge source of stress for us, especially for my husbutch. He lives in Portland, Oregon. I don't think information is available regarding his donor.

When family members are adopted or even from half unknown genetic material (referring to donors in the case of my step-sons), it's always something that is thought about in regard to everything, even if not expressed.

I appreciate the opportunity to have a safe space to have this discussion.

[JDeere]

I will come back and respond later with my story.

[Uli]

Thanks, nycfem! That story of the song lyrics is so sweet and I love the Violent Femmes! It's a shame about both of the estrangements you mention.

Adopted people often struggle with attachment, which can manifest in a lot of different ways. I can so relate to the first cousin you talked about, because I, too, will often hold onto and continue to reference one certain thing that feels like evidence of my connection to someone.

Acknowledging the risk of projection here re: your cousin who estranged herself from her parents: I think it's super easy for some of the many feelings associated with being adopted to get misdirected/twisted up. I think it's one of the risks of trying to simplify a really complicated situation. If an adopted person has not had the experiences in life that lead one to understand that not all negative feelings are someone's fault, I can see how good adoptive parents can end up the target of a lot of anger that they didn't necessarily deserve.

Just to further illustrate what I'm trying to convey, here's an example that most of us have probably experienced: if we find ourselves attracted to or crushing on someone who doesn't reciprocate those feelings, we are likely to feel bad about ourselves/sad/unworthy/rejected/etc. but those feelings aren't the fault of the person we were crushing on (assuming they responded honestly and kindly), it's just a situation that sucks and no one necessarily did anything wrong.

It was very satisfying to me to read your words about your cousins, how you easily acknowledge the differences and lack of things in common, while still expressing love for them and your connections to them. A lot of people feel the need to walk on eggshells around the topic of adoption, and I don't know if this is universal, but for me that has contributed to the feeling of being an alien. As a child, I was sensitive enough to notice that people got kinda nervous and much more careful when the topic of me being adopted came up, but the words that were said to me were all superfluous 'adoption is so SO wonderful and you are SO special!' - it was difficult for my kid brain to reconcile those two things, like if it's so flipping great why does everyone get weird about it?

My mom used to say that she and my dad could have never made a baby as pretty as me, which was sweet, but she has never been able to acknowledge the deeper and more challenging stuff that happened because of our differences. On the other hand, she was such a champion for me with teachers' and others' reactions to my being adopted. I remember more than one of my teachers calling home with concern after I talked openly in class about being adopted, and my mother responding, "So? She is adopted and unless she was disrupting class, I don't see why her talking about it concerns you."

I don't always know if I have a point when I'm talking about all this stuff. Anyway, I appreiate your participation in this thread, nycfem

[Uli]

Originally Posted by Apocalipstic

I am an adoptee. I was adopted at 11 days. I met my birth parents in my 20s. It was weird honestly. I wanted them to be sorry and they were not at all.

My sister got me an Ancestry.com last Christmas and I did it. Mixed feelings. It was interesting to find my genetic ethnicity/ies.

Not sure if I will go farther with it.

Weird is a word I often use to describe the experience as well. Like could anything be weirder than meeting a stranger whose body you lived in for 9 months?

My birth mom did apologize right off the bat, not for giving me up, but she said "This all must be really hard for you and for that I am sorry." I don't think she regrets the adoption and I don't think it would be helpful to me if she did regret it. I certainly don't regret the life I've had.

I experienced a surprising amount of grief when it all clicked in my brain that no one was particularly happy about my existence or trying to bond with me for possibly the whole first three months of my life. She had requested that I go directly to my permanent family from the hospital, and the adoption agency let her believe that would happen, when really I went to foster care from the hospital.

My therapist and other sources talk about how difficult it can be to process pre-verbal trauma - like, we didnt have words when it happened so trying to process it with words is largely ineffective. It's maybe analogous to trying to paint a picture when what you have is a lump of clay?