Adoptee rescue fantasies?

Question

As a young adoptee I often day dreamed about my "real" parents finding me and taking me back. Did anyone else have rescue fantasies and if so at what age?

Answer 1

wow!  that's weird.  when i was younger, i always thought i was the only one who had that!!!!!!

Answer 2

I wasn't adopted and I had the same fantasies.

EDIT: Thumbs down me all you want. I did. I remember being angry with my parents for some reason or another and being sure I was adopted.....and wishing my "real" parents would come get me. I don't think that is a phenomenon only adoptees go through. I am not negating your experience, just sharing mine.

EDIT: Adoptive parents  ARE real parents.

Answer 3

no I am instead afraid that my real mom and dad are big time losers and I am better off not knowing them.

Answer 4

I did not--and I find that rather bizarre.  I think it would have been perfectly normal for me to do so.

Answer 5

I'm sorry, but I'm also with Elodie.  I wasn’t adopted but use to fantasize that I was.  For some reason in my teenage years I just didn’t relate to my family.  I just seemed so different from them not just physically but also in outlook.  My family was fine, but as far back as I can remember, I always had a sense of loneliness, of not belonging.   I even blatantly asked my mother if I was adopted around 13 yrs old because I just didn’t get them. She just rolled her eyes and didn’t really dignify my question with an answer.  But I remember asking and thinking for sure that she would finally reveal to me that I was adopted.  I guess I thought that would validate all these feelings that I had.  I didn’t really want my "real parents" to appear; I just wanted an explanation as to why I didn’t feel connected to my family.  Don’t get me wrong, I love them all and they did nothing to make me feel this way (in fact my sibling and I are best friends now), it was all me.  I also knew that I would adopt since I was about 13 yrs old, yes my thoughts have been with adoption since that young age.  Fast forward to now, I have 3 people in my life, my husband and 2 children (yes adopted).  None related to me by blood, but all my soul mates.  I feel like I have finally come home.  Sorry if my story is not relevant to this question, but I just wanted to add that I would totally understand if my children will have these thoughts one day.  As a-parent's I don’t think we should feel threatened or hurt at all because one day our children will find fulfillment but it won’t come from any of the parents.  It will be from the family they create themselves.

Answer 6

LOL...no.  I was terrified!  I was told I was adopted at age 5 and for months afterward I was terrified these strangers would show up and say they were my "real" parents and take me away.  I'd wake up at night screaming and make my mom or brothers sleep in my room on the floor in case they came in the windows.

Answer 7

Sure did!  Especially when I was in trouble.  My Dad always told me that he would help me find my birth mother when the time came but she found me first.  It was not a rescue, though she had hoped for the same when I was young, but we are now great friends and have a lot of stories to tell.

Answer 8

Omg, I still sometimes think about that and I'm grown for goodness sake.  

When I was young, I hoped like crazy that they were missing me very much and thinking about me all the time.  I was always afraid that they weren't thinking about me at all and having a great life without me.  

It's kind of twisted, but I guess I was hoping that they were miserable without me and regretting that they had given me away.

The problem with being grown and still thinking like this, is that I now realize that no one can ever rescue me from my misery.  At least as a child I had hope...now all I have is despair.

Answer 9

all the time!!!  When i actually met my birth mom i was totally disappointed.  When i was a kid i thought maybe they were movie stars living in california.  I thought they would come back and save me.  Turns out, they probably would have destroyed me.  Alcoholics and drug addicts.  Very gross.

Answer 10

Yes.

Can't put an actual age on it - but it happened all throughout my childhood - especially as I was told I wasn't allowed to talk about my adoption - so instead - I daydreamed like crazy about my first mother and the possible reasons for my relinquishment - and yeah - I hoped for many birthdays that she would just come and take me home.

I loved my adoptive parents dearly - it had NOTHING to do with them - or their care - I just knew I wanted to be with my bio fam.

Answer 11

It wasn't actually a fantasy, just a sense that I could see through their eyes occasionally...an unexplainable sense of a connection of sorts.  This has happened all my life, still happens.  I always thought it was just my imagination.  After searching, I discovered that much of what I had "seen" was sooo spookily correct.

Answer 12

I thought about it all the time!  I used to sing that "maybe" song from Annie while sitting in my bedroom window.  I was happy with my adopted family but it was always on my  mind that it could happen and how it might be exciting.

I am a total child of the 80's.  I used to fantasize that Madonna was my mother.  She was from Rochester, Michigan and I was from Rochester, New York and I thought that maybe she just went to another Rochester to have her baby.  I was so upset when she married Sean Penn because he wasn't my "father".  She is only a couple of years younger than my birth mother so I wasn't far off that way.  She just looks nothing like me!

Answer 13

Its completely normal to think/feel that way. It's part of being adopted. I dealt with that too when I was growing up.

Answer 14

i started having rescue fantisies when i found out i was adopted. My whole life i was told that my father was dead and that she was my mother. i am mixed, with what i don't know but i am so i never questioned it. when i found out at 12 that i was adopted she turned on me (and i can't honestly say we didn't turn on each other) but the black jokes started coming out and all the other racial slurs she could think of and i wanted to run away but i was scared to. i wanted my mother to find out how this lady was treating me and to save me from her. I was never saved but i do think that my father tried to find me one time.i still wish someone would have saved me and her nickname for me is still miserable. and no that's no made up that was my nickname from before my finding out. it was just that after i found out i knew why my nickname was what it was.

Answer 15

"real"? whats with that stupid word?! Its not real its a fantasy, you just said so yourself!

Oh yeah i dremt of my bio parents arriving at my "real" house where my "real" parents were, on a big white horse.

every day.....oh I think not. Why would i? Erm the person who didnt want me? the person who inflicted pain on my life for the first 6 weeks? oh h**l yeah......nice happy fairytale that is isnt it.

Answer 16

As a young girl, I would have fantasies about them, that they came back to see me.  Turns out my fantasies weren't so far off.    My first family was searching for me.

Answer 17

I think elodie has a point - most people DO go through that.  

For adoptees though there really ARE real parents out there

Answer 18

Boy...I can't really remember what age, but I would often climb out my bedroom window and sit out on the roof and watch up the road for cars.  I was always imagining that the next car to come down the highway would be her, coming to get me, but of course they always just kept on going and never pulled into the driveway.

Answer 19

Thumbs up to Elodie -- good answer!

we all, whether we're adopted or not, wish at some point someone would scoop in and take us away.  We all dreamed our parents were rich as could be and would come in and shower us with gifts . . . then, we get done being made at our parents and remember that our birthparents were neither rich nor in a position to keep us or they would have; and if they were but didn't, then they just didn't want us ..  .

back to reality

Answer 20

i never had fantasies of them coming to take me, but i had fantasies about finding them and finally feeling like i belonged somewhere. i had a great life, dont take my comment the wrong way. they just DID NOT understand me. i was wild, loud, rock and roll...

they were timid, quiet and country.

i was completely alien to them. they struggled alot with me, not their fault, no ones fault. it was just the way it was. square peg in a round hole type of thing. all still pegs, just cut from a different mold.

i dreamed of finding lori (my bmother) and feeling a 'click' as all the pieces fell into place. someone would finally appreciate the way my brain works and see that i talk at warp speed because thats how my mind is wired. a relationship that, at times, would need no words or explaining. i could say whatever i wanted and instead of a puzzled look i would get a knowing nod.

i never wanted to be take away with my bio family, i wanted to be taken to the next level with them.

i hope that makes sense.

in the end, i got it. lori and i share a brain i think. i dont have to find the words to make her understand, she nods and i know she honestly gets what i am saying. and she can keep up with how my brain changes gears at mach 5, because hers works the same way.

understanding is a wonderful, comforting thing