Can we heal from the loss of adoption?

Question

Every player in the triad may experience loss....birth parents, adoptees and even adoptive parents who may have grieved not having biological children, before adopting.

Can we heal from our losses?

Like other difficult life circumstances, can we take what we've been given and become better people as a result? Or is it an irreversible pain that continues through life?

I have been very enlightened on this site by responses to adoption very different than my own. I really am seeking to understand.

Answer 1

AS an adoptive parent, I coudn't have put my feelings any better than what Erin stated in her response.  Kudos to Erin!

Answer 2

In some ways we can. With me, reunion and counceling helped.

Answer 3

I don't think I will ever heal fully. The damage is too complete for that. Very few people, other than adoptees, are damaged so early in life. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again... all a newborn wants is a cuddle and a boob. I got neither.

I started healing 9 years ago when I found my mom, as time passes I heal more and more but it will never be enough. I will never feel the same way a non adopted person feels. I will never experience the same bonds as a person who was raised by their natural parents. Even now, 30 years later, I am always waiting for people to leave. I am unable to accept that anyone would want to be around me just to be around me. I know how irrational that is but I can't get it out of my head.

So yes, for me, it is an irreversible pain that will continue throughout my life.

LOOSING MY MOTHER WAS NOTHING LIKE PUTTING A DOG DOWN! WTF????????

Answer 4

I feel that access to my own birth information and truth of my own origins would be immensely healing

Yes there are things we have to accept in life.  Sealed records - secrecy surrounding our identity - is not one of them.

Answer 5

I never felt a sense of loss personally.  I've just finished reading Primal Wound and completely disagreed with most of it.

The past is the past for me.  I can't change it so I choose to not dwell on it.

There is loss in everyone's life.  People touched by adoption do not have the corner on that market.  I hate to say "get over it" but there is a point where you have to assess the situation, determine if there is anything you can change what happened, and then move on with your life.  My family moved a lot when I was younger so I was constantly saying goodbye to friends.  After a couple of moves, I learned that I could make myself miserable by focusing on what I had lost (friends) or I could pick myself up and focus on what I had gained (new friends, new town, etc.)

Do you heal after losing a loved one in a car wreck?  Do you heal after putting your precious dog down?  Do you heal after losing your house in a fire?  It may take a while but yes, yes, and yes.  Why should adoption be different?

Of course, everyone has different experiences so I certainly can't speak for anyone else's feelings but I'm getting tired of being told that I'm damaged and suffered a "traumatic loss after being ripped from my real family."  The loss theory doesn't apply to everyone either.

Answer 6

Of course.  we can't let it define who we are.  we can't blame every wrong turn in our lives on that.  

i lost a dear friend to a dui accident -- hurt like heck and a half, but you go on and deal with it.  It's a fact of life -- it exists whether we like it or not.

it's what we choose to do with it.  we either choose to let things eat us up or we choose to go on and find other things to be grateful for in life -- be it a beautiful snowfall, our own children, a favorite pet, etc.  

its our own choice - we make of it what we make of it . .  .period.

ETA:::: soeone mentioned fears of abandonment, etc . . .don't bios have RAD, depression, anxiety, etc as well?  what do they have to blame it on?

Answer 7

Oh...so you're admitting there's a loss now?  That's good to see.

I agree with the sentiment that it's next to impossible for the wounds of separation to completely heal.  There are damages to the psyche that run too deep, that are too damaged to ever completely go away.  Fear of abandonment, inability to trust, attachment issues...all of these stem from that initial separation as an infant and I will deal with for the rest of my life.

Does that mean that I walk around in a constant state of depression, crying and moaning and feeling sorry for myself?  No, but it does make me want to fight the system that caused this damage, and try to make sure that future generations don't have to go through this unnecessarily.

My n-mother never got over losing me, either; it caused the destruction of her marriage to my n-father ten years later.  She chose not to carry many pregnancies to term after losing me, because she didn't feel that she was worthy of being a mother.  Even reunion couldn't begin to heal these wounds; it has taken us 11 years to finally come together, for her to get over her guilt and grief so that she can face me and begin to communicate with me.

Is adoption really worth this kind of pain on two human beings?

I don't think so.

Answer 8

It is my belief that whatever life hands us can be overcome.  Painful things don't go away.  We simply learn to live with these things - learn how to be contributing members of society with what we've got.  We all experience pain in one way or another.  No one who hasn't experienced the pain of adoption can really comprehend it...but each of us can empathize with pain in general.  It's entirely up to the adoptee to decide what to do with his or her pain.

Answer 9

i'm glad that you've been enlightened by the site,  so have i. yet, i am surprised that you find that there is no healing taking place.  

i am a big believer in heal-ING... as i believe it's a process.  and one which might be inconvient for others. especially when in the process of healing people are defending attacks on their character, their infertility, their lack of 'appreciation' for adoptive parents, their desire to become parents, their desire for reform, their b/f/n-families, their need to connect with their natal history, their experience with adoption agencies, et. al...

healing is as individual as pain. and since no one can measure the pain of another, i believe no one can suggest how or even when a person heals.

Answer 10

I think healing comes if we want it to.  Positive thinking gets positive results.  If we dwell on our problems and negative thoughts day in and day out, they seem to grow bigger and bigger until they are bigger than life itself and they take over our lives.  I think we have to DECIDE that we want to be happy before we can BE happy.  Happiness is an attitude and a choice.  Lkewise, dwelling in misery just makes us.....well, miserable.

Answer 11

I can't speak for adoptees or birthmothers, or for that matter others who have experienced infertility, but  I have "healed" from my "loss" of infertility.  I am not in active grieving over it like I once was, and haven't been for a long time, but it's still part of something I went through that is a part of me and always will be there.  I can truly say that I do not grieve the fact my child and I do not share a biological connection.  My connection with my daughter is completely fullfilling to me. What I do sometimes struggle to deal with, and have become much better at, is the pain of the fact that my parenthood has to be complicated.  It means accepting the fact that my family is a nontraditional family.  It means accepting the fact that my child will always have loss to deal with.  It means accepting that, while my connection to my daughter is completely fullfilling to me, it may not be for my daughter.  It means accepting that I must listen to hurtful things said about adoptive families in places like this site when I participate in educating myself to be the best adoptive parent possible.  There are just so many ways that adoptive parenting is so much more complicated than biological parenting.  I would never wish to have any other child as my daughter than my daughter, who I love more than life, and I gladly accept any complications that come with it.  I just sometimes wish it didn't have to come with all the stuff, and sometimes I really want to rest from it.  But it does and that is that and life goes on and I accept it for the priviledge of parenting my daughter.

Answer 12

hmmm..no loss here.  I have GAIN.

Answer 13

A lot depends on the way the adopted parents treat the child.

Unconditional love is so important, but many adopted children feel they're always on trial.

Answer 14

LOSS? erm.......nope not at all. Infact, I gained. Why would I feel a loss? I was a baby, I didnt know what was happening!!!!

Answer 15

There are some losses that people never heal from, like the loss of a friend or family member from death, from an adoption, or from a failed adoption.  They work through the pain and the grief and find a life again.  The life is an altered life, sometimes merely existence.

Do we become better people?  Not sure about that.  I don't like using the words "better people" when it comes to adoption - it is a word that is over-used in adoption.  We become different people.  Some people go through life in a fog.  Some people bury their pain so deep that no one even knows that it is there.  And some people deal with their grief by becoming activists with the goal of protecting other people from the pain of loss.

Thanks for a great question.  Perhaps you could add to your question "loss from failed adoption".

ETA - My answer was based on my experience with helping a friend who is trying to survive the death of her 9 yo son last year.  Time does NOT heal all.  Anyone who says this has not lost a child to death or adoption.

Answer 16

Of course that's a pain that can heal over time, especially adoptive parents. I don't know any adoptive parents who still grieve not having bio-children after adoption and I know MANY being in the surrogate/adoption/egg donor community. I know several who  have still not found the child to adopt and are in a lot of pain over trying to find that child...especially ones who've been scammed several times. There are also many adopted children who've led wonderful lives and have no care (or pain) over their birthparents). Then there are birthparents who just don't care that they gave a child up for adoption and therefore don't hurt over it, those who have kept an open relationship with that child and child's adoptive family and that's the best they could have hoped for.