Adoptees, did your adoptive parents...?

Question

...know about, understand, and/or acknowledge your loss? How did that affect you?

Answer 1

Yes, they were always willing and open to talking about my questions/concerns/etc. I don't remember feeling a great need to talk about it often.  I had friends who were adopted, and I never felt strange or bad because of it, at home or elsewhere. It was simply how I had joined my family.

It was nice to have parents who were open and honest about everything, who never let me question their love for me or my place in the family but who also would hypothesize with me what my birth parents might look like or what they might be doing. I would say the fact that they were happy and comfortable with my adoption, that they were secure that they were my parents and so happy with our family, allowed them to work through my emotions with me. Also, I think always knowing I was adopted helped it to feel normal and regular to me.

Answer 2

I don't know if they fully knew how much it was going to affect my relationships as I grew up, and some of the fears I had, but as those things came up they were very understanding as I went through it.  They didn't make me feel like I was a crazy or anything lol for feeling the way I did.  They just helped me deal with problems as they came up.  

Obviously, this made my adoption experience a lot better then it could have been.

Answer 3

they never once shyed away from the fact I was adopted, however they did something even better.  they created their own story a new story with me at the center of it/   How they first saw me, how they knew i was the "one".  thus I am satisfied with my own story fo how I came to be.

Answer 4

That's hard to answer, because even I don't fully understand my loss.  My "adoption journey" is still developing even though it's been 44 years since I was adopted.

But yes, my parents acknowleged that there was loss and pain involved.  The difficult thing is that they were encouraged to "just make me feel like one of the family", and not to focus on my biological/enthic differences.  I spent a lot of years knowing nothing about my birth culture, which was hard since I grew up in a multi-ethnic family.

I am now raising a daughter who we adopted who was born into another culture.  I am trying hard to accept all of her feelings about adoption/loss/pain/birth relatives, and to share as much of her birth culture with her.

Answer 5

Oh yeah definatly. My Aps were and still are very aware about my feelings reguarding my adoption. Then again though, we have always been an open family and they have always been open with me. I guess I never felt the need to hide any feelings from them. I think thats the basis to a really great adoption between the Aps and the Adoptees. Trust and honesty.

Answer 6

this is an answer that will most likely get many thumbs down, as they have before- but my adoptive parents never needed to understand my loss, because I never felt any.  that is NOT NEGATING others- so please understand I am sorry for those who feel that they experienced a loss.

Answer 7

I am not adopted, but I do recognize my children's loss.  It is still very early for one of my children (as parental rights were just lost) and with him being so young it's hard on him.  We do tell him every night that both his mommies and both his daddys love him and that it is ok to be sad.  When he does want to talk - we do listen and answer questions the best we can given his age.  I think it's highly important not only to let him "grieve" but to make / help him understand that in his circumstance it wasn't his fault / he didn't do anything bad to make it where he couldn't see them anymore.

Answer 8

It was never acknowledged - and I was never allowed to talk about my adoption/first family - as it upset my a-mother.

She made it all about her - not about me.

This in turn caused me to daydream constantly about my first family.

It also made my adoption a 'bad' experience / an experience to be somewhat ashamed of.

If a-parents aren't open and honest - and keep their own feelings in check - adoptees can feel as though their adoption is shameful - and therefore they are to be shamed.

I'm sure it had a major effect of my personal skills - and I became the ultimate people pleaser - trying my hardest to impress so that peeps would like me - hoping that they wouldn't reject me.

I think that only when there is openness, honesty, respect and complete transparency in adoption - about the losses (not all may feel it - but their ARE losses), about the reasons, about the history, about the people - that adoptees can feel more OK about themselves and about their adoption.

Answer 9

My adoptive parents were a victim of the times, I think.  They were told that if they loved me and treated me as if one of their own, there would be no problems.  They never really talked about adoption, never mentioned loss.  It caused me a great deal of turmoil about my adoption, and I believed, for many years, that something was wrong with me.  I never talked about it with them.  I wish we had been able to discuss it more freely.

Answer 10

no, they simply couldnt understand any loss. in their minds they took me in when no one else wanted me.

it wasnt their fault, they thought all bmoms were trash, thats what the agency told them. lori was portrayed as a drug addicted s**t that did everything short of ditch me in a trash can. then ran away after to 'do her thing'-free of any remorse or responsibility.

you know my story, and you also know that was all c**p.

they tried, but in light of the information they were given, i should have been blindly grateful, not mourning loss or having any compassion for her.

Answer 11

No, most definitely they did not.  Since this topic was never discussed, I figured i was the only one who had it and felt confused and a little guilty for it.

Answer 12

As Phil said, my adoptive parents did the best they could with the info they were given.  No loss was acknowleged then by anyone involved with adoption.  

It made me feel there must be something terribly wrong with me--to have been given away in the first place and to have feelings about it that were not supposed to exist.  This led to my believing that none of my "negative" feelings about anything should be shared.  I don't know how many times some problem came to a head and one of my parents would say "But why didn't you ask for help?  Why didn't you tell us you were sad/angry?"

We didn't talk about it openly until I was in my late twenties, and I still feel there are things I can't quite say.  I think--I hope--we're doing better by adoptees today.

Answer 13

I was adopted back in the "old days."  There was no such thing as open adoption.  People often did not know why a child was available for adoption.  There weren't many books available on the subject of  adoption.  

Despite this, I think that any parent with common sense understood that a loss had occurred.  I don't say that to sound snippy, it's just that most of the people who adopted back in those days tell me that they realized there had been a loss.

My amom said she thought about that every one of my birthdays.  When I was very, very young, I remember my younger abrother (my parents' biological child) complaining about how I reacted to something.  My afather said to him that he needed to understand that I didn't have parents to hold me very early on.  (I was adopted out of foster care, and my aparents envisioned foster care as an orphanage.)

So, yes, they understood that there was a loss.  I was very, very glad that they didn't think I just "metamorphasized" out of nothing and dropped into their home one day.  I was glad that they could acknowledge my beginnings, the loss in those beginnings, and how it could have affected me.