How Does It Feel To Be Adopted

(by Jody, Mental Health Matters)

Someone asked me a question a while ago, to which I did not have an instant answer. She had asked me “what’s it feel like to be adopted?” and my instant reply was “how does it feel to not be?” but long after the conversation ceased, I found the question still rattling around in my brain.

I began pondering the many emotions and thoughts I have had over the years regarding my adoption and decided to try and answer that question from my perspective, which, please keep in mind, is not the average adoption. Every adoptee is going to have their own experience, which in most cases does not mirror mine.

Adoption is a weird amalgamation of rejection and acceptance. I was adopted at 18 months old and had bounced through multiple foster homes before I arrived at my permanent family, and although I was too young to fully comprehend the situations I had been through, I knew something was wrong. There was never a time that I did not know I was adopted and my parents made sure it was an open issue should it be something I ever chose to explore.

I was told the typical things by my parents…you were chosen, so that makes you even more special, or that someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure and although I tried to believe their words and intentions I never for one day felt like I fully belonged. After all, to be “chosen” means you were already “un-chosen”. I often felt like I wasn’t actually chosen, I was next on the list of children up for adoption, and they were the next parents waiting.

For me, there has always been a sense of detachment, not only from my parents but from most people. I wonder if it comes from being chosen rather than being “born to”. Not only did I deal with feeling unwanted and not good enough, from being given away, but I also felt like I was disposable; I had been given away once, and then in my case four times after, so there was obviously something wrong with me; something that made me not good enough to be loved and cared for at such a young age.

When I was around five years old, my parents fostered a girl a few years older than me for a period of time that I can’t recall, due to circumstances which I cannot remember; she left our home and was placed back into the foster system. I never heard from or saw her again. From that day on began an innate fear of being abandoned to wherever it was I came from. After all if they could return her, they certainly must be able to do the same thing with me. This is the base for my deep seeded fear of abandonment and insecurity.

There is an odd feeling of disconnect that comes with adoption. Perhaps it is the not knowing; the curiosity about our family of origin and our birth parents background. It was always weird to me to see other kids who looked like their families or brothers and sisters that looked alike. It made me wonder who I look like…do I have my father’s eyes and my mother’s lips, or did I have a sibling somewhere that I resembled, someone with similar features to mine? I yearned to look around and be able to see someone that looked like me.

As I grew older I wondered about such things as my personality traits, my abilities and my physical and mental health background. There was always a curiosity if I was talented at soccer because my father was athletic, or maybe my passion for reading and writing came from my mother, but instead I am left with a sense of transience and curiosity.

There were times I wondered if either of my birth parents came looking for me, or if they ever thought of me, or if I was just a forgotten part of the past. I wondered why she gave me up and how she felt about doing so. I grew up with an innate sense of rejection and wondered if she ever felt bad for abandoning me. Were her reasons legitimate or was I just too much of a burden.

It was in my early twenties when I learned her background and her propensity for drugs and alcohol and suicide attempts so maybe she really did give me away in hopes of a better life, or maybe she abandoned me to get back to partying. So many answers to my questions were buried when she died, before I had a chance to meet her, and I think because of that I have had to make peace with creating and living with my own answers.

So adoption for me, to sum it up, feels like being loved on the surface and not unconditionally. It feels like not quite ever being able to find your place in a family, a relationship, workplace or even the world. It feels like living with a never ending curiosity which you know will never be satisfied with the truth.

Most of all for me, it was the sense of being abandoned so many times and living with the fear it could happen again. That fear, unfortunately became the driving force in my life and by allowing that I have lived my life doing anything and everything to avoid abandonment, when in reality, that is just not possible. I often heard my friend’s parents tell them they love them no matter what…that sense of unconditional love I crave so badly but will never receive is something that has left a void deep down in my soul.

I just wanted to belong.


- Jody (Jody's Blog)

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Jody

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Survivor, Warrior, Conqueror

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Adopted & Abandoned Children

All my life, I never felt like I fit in with my family. I always felt like the odd person out - the one that did not fit in, the one that didn't belong! I was so sensitive to things and saw things in a different way than my family with the one exception - my mom. She could sense, pick up on things and just know things that weren't visible to the conscious mind. I'm much the same way.

After I left home, I remember obtaining a copy of my birth certificate to see who my actual parents were. For a long time I felt like I was adopted. I felt like I had been born into the wrong family or someone switched me at birth. Really - I did! The birth certificate states my parents are the ones that gave birth to me. And of course, for a long time, I didn't believe it until others started telling me that I did resemble some of the physical features of my parents.

This may all sound odd to question and believe me, I still question it at times. Yes, I know I grew up with these people and I resemble them and I share some of the traits my mom has but in all honesty, I just don't feel like I belong to the family I was born and raised into. Maybe that is for good reason considering all I went through but it is a hard pill for me to swallow.

Several years ago, when I had went through my paralysis and was trying to piece my life back together, I received many hurtful, painful and downright evil letters from my family. It got to a point that I could not even think about going to my mailbox without having an anxiety attacks. These letters came to me for many months and were chastising and demeaning and manipulative.

Things got so bad that it came to a point where I had to just sever all ties with them. I had to totally let go and cut the ties in order for me to survive. My life was a fragile pile of pieces at that point where I was barely getting through my days. With the nightmares that haunted me every hour to the anxiety attacks that came as the wind blew to the fears that overwhelmed me, it was difficult to function. Any outside attacks on me just became more weight that piled on me as if there was no tomorrow. Many times, I wanted to give up. Many times, I tried to give up.

So my choice to stop all communication and contact with my family was out of necessity. It is a decision no one should have to make. No kid should ever have to endure what I went through either. Yet, I have struggled for years because I don't have that family connection. It is a biological connection. It is a basic connection for all humans.

Yes, I've heard many say that you can create your own family and you can make your life into what you want it to be. I know you can do this and I've done a lot of this work already. But at the same time, you cannot replace the biological family connection. It is such a basic function in our biology. Without that biological connection, you face life as if you are on your own. There is no "family" to fall back on and there is no "family" there to support you. You're not able to talk to your family much like others do. It is like a gaping hole within you that no matter what you put in there and no matter how much you try to fill it in, it is still there. It never seems to go away.

Maybe this is how children who are adopted and abandoned feel. I've known some people in my life that were literally tossed in a garbage can on the street and somehow they survived. However, you could see the deep pain of abandonment in their eyes and you could sense how out of step with the world they felt. There are so many children that are born because two adults decide to have sex but when the child comes, they could care less if it exists. The lucky ones find homes where they are loved. The unlucky ones are left to fight and struggle for their existence. And yet, we as a society turn our heads to these things as we close our eyes hoping that these type of situations just don't exist.

Writing all of this really doesn't bring any answers for myself and it really doesn't give me the comfort I need. I long for that biological connection which is now lost forever. Even if I could have it, the connection to the person that hurt me is so toxic, I would not wish a moment alone with them. I continue on in my life, trying to deal with the absence of the biological connection to my family. Maybe at some point in the future, it will lessen more but I can guarantee you that every holiday which comes around, I am reminded in very strong ways that the connection does not exist. If I ever figure out how to completely let go of this part of my life, I'll be sharing it with the world! For now, its a process that continues to unfold.

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