Please explain this feeling of "LOSS" that many of you go on about. What do you mean?

sunny

So if someone had a leg amputated as an infant, would you ask them as an adult if they 'missed' their leg, and explain to them that you don't understand why they would miss it, because they should not have remembered that they ever had it anyway? I mean, they never even got to walk on that leg--so what's the problem, right?

Flying Monkey #073177

If you have no feelings of loss does it really matter why we do?

Minnimouse

When you are a baby you have bonded with your mother in the womb. This has now been proven scientifically. Birth is also a significant time, the first person the child sees apart from nurses and doctors is the mother. The baby has the biological connection that no one else can replace. The baby has heard the mother in the womb for several months, the baby gradually learns the mother's smell and her warm arms. When you are adopted you lose that sense of connectedness and safety. The person you only ever knew is gone.

As an adoptee, I find it hard to explain it myself, but it definately is a sense of loss, just like a death but one thats ongoing and takes a lifetime to work through. While there is the more scientific way of looking at it, I think the bond between mother and child is massive, even if the mother doesnt feel bonded to the child, the child definately feels bonded to the mother. The baby has been physically connected to her for one thing for 9 months. To me It feels like a part of me is missing, something was taken away that day I was adopted and there is a hole that can't be filled no matter how much love I am given and how much I have been spoiled by my adoptive parents.

I think one aspect that partly makes it worse is that you are not only taken away but you grow up with a different identity. Your name has been changed, your birth certificate has been altered, your whole identity has been replaced and while you might not be completely concious of it when you are a baby, as you grow up there is a sense that you have lost your true identity and been living a lie. That's how I felt. This is my personal experience.

Temperance

I was adopted at five months. I learned to walk at eight. Sure I have fantasies, but not at all like a country I've never been to! My mom was a person, she was someone who had problems and found a way to solve them. Sure I am sort of mad since I am a very interesting person, but what can I do? Right, I had no say in it, I learned to talk at the age of like 14 months so...

I feel I have lost part of myself. If you hae read Looking for Alaska, I am Looking for the Great Perhaps. I hope forever to escape the labyrinth of not knowing, of living my life oblivious to what it used to be. Don't think I am suicidal, because no I am not. But sometimes it feels as if I am not a complete person, and as if I am missing my life, as if there is no point to mine, but that might just be because I have been bullied for months now, so...

-Tempe

BTW: Am I the only one who finds this question a tad rude?

Independ"ant"

"If you were adopted as an infant, isn't this like longing for a country that you have never visited but only heard about?"

Read up on the disproven blank slate theory and keep religion/politics out of it. Keep the focus on science.

If you believe in the blank slate theory than you would have to agree that humans can have their gender reassigned to them.
Nature vs. Nurture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

kateiskate

Have you never had a best friend move away, a family member die, a beloved pet die? If you have, you have experienced a loss. If you are adopted, you were carried for nine months in your first mom's womb. For whatever reasons, you were separated from her. This is also a loss! Not admitting to myself that JUST this was a loss was something terrible I did to myself for too long.

"If you were adopted as an infant, isn't this like longing for a country that you have never visited but only heard about?"

Yeah, I was adopted as an infant from Korea and I also experienced a loss of my first country and culture as well.

What I am trying to get people to understand, is that you have experienced a loss. And it's OKAY to feel it! It's okay to admit it! Nothing you feel has ANYTHING to do with your adoptive parents.

almost human

I don't know if I "count" or not, as I was old enough to babble baby talk, but not old enough to remember anything. but I can try and help you understand,

It's not about memories or fantasies. It's about imprint. It's about what gave us our shape to begin with. There's no molding in the world that can altar the essence of us. That's the thing about essence - it is pre-memory, pre-verbal.

We know what we lost, even if we can't picture it. Because in its absence is a void, possessing the same shape. We are imprinted with this shape. It is a big mother-shaped void. It is a big puzzle piece. It is unique and specific. And gone. And empty.

We don't have to remember to recognize how different we are from those that have adopted us. We are reminded every day that we are essentially and fundamentally different. It is as plain as the nose on your face.

If we have fantasies, they are of imagining a world where everything fit and nothing reminded us how different we are. A place where we do not have to constantly adjust to being the odd man. This steady work becomes second nature and we ignore the toll it takes. But we long to relax, because holding together the pastiche of our essential selves, the void of mother missing, and the hopes and dreams and expectations of our adoptive parents, is exhausting.

We don't long for a country we have only heard about but never visited - that is foreign to us. What we long for is confirmation of what we already know. Because it IS a place we have visited. It is where we were born. It is where we were forged. It is where we were imprinted. What we long for is not foreign to us, but is foreign to everyone else. We long to know we aren't foreign. That we aren't the other. That we make sense somewhere on this planet.

Mei-Ling

[If you were adopted as an infant, isn't this like longing for a country that you have never visited but only heard about?]

Never "visited"?

I was BORN there. I WAS there.

What did I lose? My Mama, Baba, Elder Brother... language, culture, customs, original home...

Ah, but then this is where you tell me "But look at what you GOT, it must have been FATE for you to lose all that so you could gain these things!"

Lose Mandarin = gain English
Lose Taiwan culture = Gain Canadian culture
Lose Mama & Baba = Gain Mom & Dad
Lose original home = gain new home

So far, there's a balance. I don't see anything here that I have gained *exclusively* that I wouldn't have had in my birth country.

If you can point that out to me, be my guest.

Heather B

I was adopted as a baby and have felt the loss of my family and heritage all my life.

Why wouldn't I? I was there when the separation happened!

Why do you care anyway.

Linny G

Your manner is an insult to all Bostonians. Why do you care? Are you an adoptee struggling with your feelings of loss and rejection? Are you an a p who is trying to learn why your child has issues? Are you a n mom who is trying to cope? Lucy, you got some 'splainin to do....

LiiSsY

I was adopted as a baby, and yes, I do have a longing to find out my history. I want to know where I come from, why my parents couldn't keep me and what events lead to my mother making this decision. In some ways, I thank her. Who knows what could have happened to me if she had kept me. At least she put me first and made sure I was adopted into a family that could care for me.
I wouldn't say I feel a "loss". I don't feel like I don't belong in my family, my brothers and sister, my parents, they are my true family. Maybe not in blood, but in experience and in bonds. I just feel, now that I'm getting older and wiser to the world, that I'd like some answers.
It's really hard to describe to people who aren't adopted, and I'm sure not all adopted children/infants get this feeling, I just know that I do.

SJM

If you bought a dog from a pet store with the intent to breed and were promised papers but never received them, would you turn to psychology to explain the loss and tell the pup's potential buyers that their bloodline doesn't really matter? Or would you take action to get their papers?

Are adoptees of a lesser importance than dogs?

lonleylilstarr

I was an intercountry (USA) adoption and I felt loss. I was also part of an adoption group where most of those children were NOT from the US.

We all felt loss and a longing for what we probably will never know. Its just the idea (we knew we were adopted) that there is a family out there that we are genetically related to that we will never meet..brothers and sisters we will never touch.. its just a longing. Some people feel the need to move to the Caribbean or Ireland because they feel a longing. For me, its almost the same.

Its just kind of "finding" yourself. You need to know who you are to find who you are.

âš¡Energyâš¡

Although it hasn't been explained scientifically, my working hypothesis is that separating an infant from its mother during the first year of life creates a seemingly irreparable rift in one's psyche. Apparently an infant feels attached to its mother and must have ample time to separate naturally and come to see itself as a separate individual otherwise it experiences this separation as a horrific traumatic experience of loss, loss of self.

Memory is a funny thing, especially in children, and the truth is while children don't remember every incident this doesn't mean everything that happens to them as infants and young children has no meaning, in fact the opposite is true, repeated incidents become lumped together into an average memory of that type, and a general feeling is remembered.

Personally I think this trauma of loss I experienced left me in a state of distress which continues to this day and has left me precious little time to spend on socializing, creativity, and focus. Anything that may be wrong with me, social phobia, depression, are just symptoms of my life-long focus elsewhere.

Lillie

I wonder the same with you and a brain.

Excuse my common sense manner.

Luv2Answer

I understand what you mean. If I found out I were adopted I would have no interest in finding my biological parents. They didn't want me and are complete strangers. Who even cares what the reason is. I would not want to disrupt my relationship with my adoptive parents either. It would seem terrible to hurt them like that, as if they didn't do enough for me. I don't really get it. Why dwell on the notion that you weren't wanted when you were . . by the people who raised you!

Jackie B

I was a baby, so I don't know that I registered any "loss" at the time, but now that I'm older I'm missing an ENTIRE family. Mother, father, grandparents, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins. I've always wanted a sister. I've actually got 2 of them. They are lost to me. I've lost a big chunk of my history, my family story. A lifetime of experiences. You could argue and I would agree you can't miss what you never had, but that doesn't mean I don't have any losses.

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