Is there anyone here who is both a birthparent and an adoptee?

Question

How do your feelings about one role affect the other?

Thanks~

Answer 1

I can only report what our daughter's birthmom said about it when we met her.  (She is both and adoptee and birthmom.)  She said she knew her own bithmother better after the experiences and understood her decision and that her life as an adoptee strongly influenced her decsion to make an adoption plan for our daughter.  (So, I am guessing from this - and it is in writing - a letter to my daughter - that she's not angry, bitter, nor unhappy about being an adoptee.)

Answer 2

Yes I am.

I had my daughters when I was 14.

To me, one greatly influences the other because I was abused and I worry about my daughters facing the same as I did.

I also worry that by having them at such a young age & placing them that I have sentenced them to live the same childhood I did, thus continuing the cycle. I can only hope that they are the ones to end it.

Answer 3

My wife is both.  She always says it will help our son when he has questions, because they are likely questions she has asked herself.

Answer 4

yes i am both and i think that being adopted myself has helped me to know that i made the right decision when i relinquished my daughter but at the same time i wish that she will agree to meet me at some stage to give her my reasons for doing this it hurts,and always will,for me to know that my natural mother seems to have vanished and that my daughter doesn't want anything to do with me but i hope that,one day,we will all be reunited.People who aren't adopted or who haven't given children up to the adoption process don't realise how people like me feel and how we always think about whoever is not in our lives but knowing both sides of the adoption story helps me understand a lot more about what people go through in lots of different things as well

Answer 5

I struggle with how to feel almost daily. My pain as an adoptee is often conflicted. How can I allow myself to be angry at my own adoption when I put my child in the same position? Being both has caused me immense anger and self loathing. On one hand I hope that being an adoptee will allow me to help my son deal with his own issues some day, on the other hand I wonder if my adoptee issues will cause me to push him away when we reunited. I have a tendency to push away the people I care for most, almost a fight or flight instinct, I am too afraid of rejection to fight so I flee before anyone has the chance to hurt me. I am terrified of pushing him away when I might be the best person to help him. His was an older child adoption through foster care so it is highly unlikely he will walk away unaffected.

My pain as a natural mother is still very fresh. Even 10 years later I find I am not able to fully grasp how deeply it has hurt me. I have had 30 years to grasp my adoptee hurt and anger. I grew up as an adoptee, it is the only life I know. Loosing my child happened to me as an adult, my poor coping skills were already in place and I was running long before I lost him.

Being both is like having a split personality. I am never both at the same time. I am either feeling as an adoptee or as an nmom. They are so seperate in my mind. Maybe because if I had to deal with them both at the same time I would totally crack.