Is it Adoption or do some people just Feel Loss?

Question

As an adoptive parent I do want to be sensitive and respect my children's feelings including their feelings about Loss.

I have to admit however, that I am not 100% convinced these feelings are all about adoption.

I have always been a Deep Person, always sensitive and diagnosed rather young as "Clinically Depressed" And FOR me the description has always (from age 5) been a feelings of "Missing" something.

As a left-handed person I recall hearing some study years ago that suggested a Lefty had Absorbed their Right Hand Mirror Twin and I thought that just had to explain this feeling I had.

I can speculate that I felt this loss because my parents were forced to be married, but, that seemed nuts to me... Or that my grandfather passed when I was 3 and I miss him.

I am wondering is it possible that some of us just Feel this Feeling we call Loss and the adopted people have something more than I have to explain it?

I mean this question with No Disrespect.

Answer 1

Of course Loss is deeper in some, whether they are adopted or not, someone who experiences a death and is NOT adopted may grieve for months compared to another person..

Of course each adopted person is different and the degree of loss they feel is going to vary

but make NO mistake ALL Adoptees feel the loss whether they care to admit it or not..

Answer 2

I guess it just depends on whether you are going to let what has happened in your life determine who you are & how you view the world.

I feel a great sense of loss too ~ but I was both adopted & abused ~ which one of these do I attribute my loss to? I don't, I move forward not thinking of them as losses but as growth.

I think I understand what you are saying...

Answer 3

I wonder this every time I read about loss in this section.  I personally don't think it's adoption related.  I think it's possible, as you've speculated, that the loss could be coming from any number of losses that humans just go through as they go through life.  But, the closest I've gotten to a happy, respectful medium for here on Y!A is to know this:

With any adoption there is a loss.  It's physical, and a fact.  A baby and their biological mother/father are physically separated.  No one (that I know of) disputes that loss.  How someone reacts to this loss is what changes.  Some feel grief while others do not.  Some honestly do not care while others care a great deal.  Both are possible and valid.  We can't tell others how to feel, nor should we tell ourselves it's not okay to feel how we feel.  So if people here want to say that their grief is because of adoption, who am I to say it's not?  

Hope that helps~

Answer 4

i of course cannot speak for adoptees but i think it is normal to feel loss.  Adoption is about loss, loss of adoptees not having bioparents, loss of birth parents to their children, and, for adoptive parents there is a degree of loss as well that you well often may be missing some key milestones in your childrens lives and may not get to experience the early years.

Answer 5

I can't answer your question.  I don't think anyone can.  I don't know why you feel as you do.  But I do know your children suffered an actual loss.  They lost their first parents, their heritage, and all connection to anyone who looks or smells like them.    

I mean no disrespect either when I say I am a left-handed adoptee who also has a depression spectrum diagnosis, and I know which hurts more:  the actual, factual loss, not the "I heard this thing about being left handed once" maybe-loss.

I also mean no disrespect when I ask if there is a reason your sadness/depression must be labeled "loss" when you have, in all probability, lost nothing.  How do you know that the feeling you call "loss" is the same as the one stemming from my real loss?  

Maybe it is.  I repeat, I don't know.  But I find your question confusing and a bit dismissive (although I accept that this was not your intent) of my experience and feelings.

Answer 6

Yes, medical research has shown that there are more twins conceived than we realize, because one or both get absorbed early enough in the gestation process that they are never discovered. So it is possible that you legitimately have a feeling of loss for your missing twin. There's no way to prove it, however.

I don't understand why this is in the adoption section.

Answer 7

I will start by saying adoptees do and can suffer loss- and so in that respect it can be an issue of adoption- however I will also share that my husband, who is not adopted has more of a sense of loss, then my 2 adopted kids, and myself, who is also adopted have.  Just because someone was adopted does not make them 100% suspectible to loss.   My hubby has felt abandoned more than once by his own biological family.  However, once again adoption cause be the reason beyond feelings of loss, however, it is not inclusive to adoption

Answer 8

I was adopted. I've known since I was knee high to a grasshopper. My parents never bought us (my brother was adopted too, from a separate family) toys from the store - we adopted the toy. My parents never hid any aspect of our adoptions.

I've never felt any kind of loss. Curiousity? Definitely. But not loss. I don't believe my brother has either, at least he has never talked about it.

Answer 9

I understand what you are asking.  I have wondered this too.  I was telling someone once how I felt about being adopted and she said "how do you know it is because you are adopted, you don't know what it is like not to be adopted?."  She had a point.  

I'm honestly of the mindset that "life is difficult."  We ALL experience great loss and a huge part of life is coping with it.  I am not convinced that the loss an adoptee faces is any greater or less than the loss of someone else.  Really, who can measure this?

It is easy to interpret everything from an "adopted" lense.  I am not just an adoptee.  I have had a complicated life and I really cannot say that all my negative emotions are attributed to adoption.  It definately is worth examining how adoption has impacted me, but only in relation to my entire life.  Adoption was my first profound, life-changing experience, and I cannot ignore that it has impacted me.  But I've had 40plus years of joys and losses since then and they are ALL are part of who I am.

That's how it is for me.  I know other's see it differently.

Answer 10

Well, adoption requires loss.  The child loses their original family.  (Maybe it's for the best, but the child is too young to understand that in most cases.)  So there is loss in adoption.  Adoption cannot happen without loss.

That's why, in general, I do not emphasize feelings of loss.  Adoption is loss.  (Whatever is gained does not, somehow, erase the original loss.)

What feelings are caused by that loss seem to vary from person to person.  Others can feel loss, too.  And I believe we are too quick, as a society, to pathologize reasonable reactions to unreasonable situations.  

My adoption has long been a source of concern for me.  Is it possible that there is something just "off" in my brain and I simply attribute it to adoption?  I suppose.  But I thought we weren't telling other people how they feel?

For me, it's about adoption.  I can't speak for anyone else.

ETA:  I have never said everything in my life is about adoption.  I have never said that the problems of adoptees are worse than what others experience.  I do hope no one has ever thought I was saying anything of that sort.

Answer 11

I felt the loss of my first family before I had ever experienced the loss of anyone else in my life, through death or any other means.

How is that NOT adoption related?

I missed and wanted my n-mother, I felt sad that she wasn't in my life.  

If I hadn't been adopted, I wouldn't have missed her.  How can anyone say that isn't adoption related, is beyond me.

Answer 12

I don't want to speak for adoptees, but here's my view of it.  First, I have seen my daughter, two years old, express loss that I am certain has to do with adoption.  I think adoption is an experience that always comes with loss.  People wouldn't say that not everyone experiences loss with a death of a close family member.  Of course, anyone who experiences the death of a close family member experiences loss.  In the same way, I think everyone who is adopted experiences loss.  Now, I think there are a huge range of ways of dealing with loss, emotional responses, etc.  I think how a person experiences and expresses loss has to do with temperment (some people are simply more emotionally resilient to all kinds of things than others) and the opportunity to express the loss and find some healing.

Answer 13

Since there is an actual, physical loss that occurs during relinquishment, it's likely that any feelings of loss have at least some basis in that.  That's just logical.  

My best friend's father died yesterday.  My friend is sad and cries.  Do I think she has some sort of neuroses or other mental/emotional defect because she's crying over the loss of her father?  Of course not.  There are different reactions a person can have when someone dies.  Grieving that includes crying is one of these NORMAL reactions.  Do I think that her tears may have some other source?  No, but even if they did, who cares?  She states she has pain over the loss of her father.  Her word that his death is the source of her grief is good enough for me. I don't question it.

No, my analogy isn't perfect.  But, it doesn't have to be, as we've already established a physical loss occurring in each.

Can we just let people feel how they feel and allow them to declare the source of their feelings for themselves now?

Thank you.

Answer 14

For me it's a triad of it's own.  The mother-child-clan LOSS, growing up in the social construct that is adoption, and the relationship with the adoptive parents.