Joy M
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I think this is a really good question.
I don't know anyone personally who feels this alienated from their family, but it is certainly something I have heard before and I don't discount it in the least. It is sad when parents don't make an effort to understand their children.
I don't have this experience, my adoptive parents did, I feel try to understand me, not all the time, but certainly gave probably more than the average adoptive parent in this regard, and I still maintain and have a good relationship with them, I love them very much, including my adoptive brother.
With my adoptive family, I do feel there is a unconditional love in the regard that if we just met each other as adults, it is unlikely that we would take the time to get to know each other, esp. my adad and I have diatmetrically opposing views on issues that are closest to my heart, including the war we are in. Yet, I still visit, and put up with his rantings, and occasionally vice versa.
To me family more means people you love despite great differences. I still definetly consider my adoptive family, "family" although there is always the added difficulty of not having the physical bond, where you belong to each other no matter what. At this late stage in the game, (I am 35) I don't think any incident could occur where I would cease loving them or stop considering them as my family.
Sometimes I think this makes it harder on me than for adoptees who could just cut ties, or dismiss their adoptive families in their entirety. We have a shared history, I have some very tender memories. I also believe a lot of the negative things that happened, were in part due to their infertility, and me being so different than them.
Which leads me to my second point, my natural family. I met them again when I was young, which I think was good for me, but it was not something I understand/understood. It was very physical, like gravity pulling on me. In all honesty as far as my understanding goes, I had absolutely no reason to care for them, no logical reason anyway, they gifted me to strangers. They turned themselves into strangers.
My mother and I have probably the most pain-filled relationship of either of our lives, and yet we still have it. The bond is powerful and indescribable, the only thing I can think of comparing it to is not knowing what it is like to have air, and then having it, I was much more like my mother at age 18, who at that time was a stranger to me, than I was like my adoptive mother, it was kind of shattering. I moved like my mother, I talked like my mother, I laugh like my mother.
Before I met her, I felt like being adopted never bothered me, but I also felt a very restless anxious feeling, and my skin hurt. I thought that was just how it felt to be alive, but when I met her that kind of changed. Before I met her I kind of felt like my cells were on edge, I know this sounds nutso but there aren't really words to describe what it is like, it was such a physical ache.
It wasn't about what I wanted for sure, I wanted nothing more than to be the good adoptee, who was casual if at all interested in her natural family. I wanted to please my adoptive parents and let them know how completely and totally grateful I was for their caring and support. Unfortunately, I was willing to do this at a great personal cost.
It is still a struggle for me, I still feel guilty for not being their bio child, although it is getting better. There is just so much that goes a long with adoption, for example as a little girl, I instintively felt that their bio-daughter who should have been, would be much more like them than I was. I would pray at night that she ( the unborn bio daughter) would somehow magically replace me and I could go back to the orphanage, I was never in an orphanage, but you know it was just a little kid thing. It just seemed so unfair that they didn't have a natural child, it is unfair.
As an adult though, I can see how that isn't good enough, it isn't good enough to burden a child with that, even though it was stuff I just picked up on from the ether. I shouldn't have had those struggles, esp. considering that I was a child born to an upper middle class young adult woman who was coerced into believing this was the only option.
My mother, was not depraved, unloving, or neglectful, just railroaded.
Adoption is always a complicated proposition for the adoptee, all too often adoptees heads are filled with the idea that they owe their lives to their adoptive parents. My aparents actually did not do this.
I do think adoption has its place, as much as my heart wishes it didn't, as much as my heart wishes that all parents were loving and capable. I do think at times it is the lesser of two evils.
In this case I believe that only children who are bereft of family should be adopted, none for social reasons, like the stigma of unwed motherhood, but serious reasons like debilitating mental illness, abuse, etc.
Sadly, in this country (United States) there are 114,000 children in care. Children who could really use a committed parent to help guide them, not change their identity, not usurp them into mini-mes, but who could definetly use adoptive parents.
Meanwhile,we are subjected to the hue and cry of how hard the paperwork is, how long one must wait for a hwi (healthy white infant) , which is just wrong. Adoption should be about finding loving homes for children, not finding children for homes or separating less than ideal mothers from their children.
Adoption shouldn't be the baby store.
If I could waive a magic wand IA would stop, infant adoption would become negligible, like in Australia, and there would not be 114,000 American children in care.
Sadly, America is still exporting black babies, and European couples are coming here for their hwi's. as the other western countries have nearly nil infant domestic adoptions.
I bet you are sorry you asked, sorry to go ON, but this subj. is very close to my heart. |
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Adult 
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