"Adoptees are faced with a feeling of loss and grief that they are not allowed, by society, to actively mourn... She is aware that family members are lost to her, but is expected to not mourn the loss of this family member she has never known."
Not in my house. When that issue arises, I'm hoping I will remember my own grief and mourning of losing a family member (or a few family members!) that I never knew, and never existed. (And now I'm looking at that word - existed - ans wondering if it's spelled correctly. Don't you hate those words that just look wrong on paper?)
Should you google aladult adoptees," you will find lots of scary stuff. Some wish adoption was illegal. A lot are angry at the parents who adopted them, and think more highly of their birth parents. A good many are disappointed with reunions or the lack thereof. I'm wanting to believe that it's a "support group" type thing. I want to believe that those adult adoptees who are happy in life and treated well by their families, just don't see the need to blog about their life as an adopted person, because it's just not an issue. Much in the same way you wouldn't really expect someone who's never been touched by infertility to blog on and on about how easy getting pregnant was, and how awesome it is to not have to spend a year's salary trying to get that first baby here.
So I'm left with wondering how to get from here to there; how do you raise an adopted child to feel loved and wanted more than anything in the world, while balancing that with acknowledging the loss of a different family, and appreciation of the birth family, regardless of the circumstances leading up to the adoption? It seems to be a balancing act. If I weren't so darn shy, I would ask these questions of people I know who have/were adopted. Maybe I'll try http://www.successisrelative.com's Fearless Friday challenge, and just step out and do it!
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3 comments:
Speaking as a "scary" adult adoptee blogger, I really wish that you'd dig deeper when googling about us because you'd find that not all of us had horrible childhoods, or were angry at our adoptive parents.
I stand for Family Preservation, and believe that children should grow up with their family of origin. But I do know that sometimes that's just not possible. In those cases, I believe that legal guardianship is the way to go. It's not right to take a child's birth certificate and change the names to reflect the adoptive parents as the biological parents. It's a lie. And it's for reasons like that that a lot of us are angry.
Thank you for your comment and opinion.
Let me clarify: I do not think adopted people are scary -- the whole situation is scary. Scary for the adoptING parents (what if bmom changes her mind, what if love is not enough,etc) scary for the adoptED person (not knowing you bfamily,history,you know this far better than I), and scary for the biological mom and family (someone else raising their child, will the aparents really let me see my baby, etc). It's scary FOR everyone involved, but I would never refer to the actual PEOPLE as "scary"!! I apologize if that's how it came across. I actually am close to several families who adopted. Some of those now-adult adoptees are well-rounded, productive, law-abiding citizens, and some are quite the opposite. I can say the same for families who had biological children and never adopted. The main point is this: I want to know, and am doing my homework to find out, what steps we can make when we do adopt, to better ensure our children grow up to be productive, happy, law-abiding citizens.
In an ideal world, adoption would not be needed, for lots of reasons. Loss is a theme for all 3 parts of the adoption triad.
I'm a little curious about whether mine was the "not so friendly" comment you mentioned in your last post...I sincerely hope that's not the case as I was just expressing an opinion :)
I'm glad you are doing your homework..I wish that more PAP's would.
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