Other adoptees please?

Question

do you find you have a hard time opening up to people in your life?

i cant decifer if my emotional walls are due to adoption or my own past experiences.

i am definately leaning toward my past, because i am totally comfortable with being adopted. no hard feelings or anamosity.

Answer 1

Rachel, what a good question!  I think a lot of adoptees might wonder about this.  Sometimes, we attribute way too many things to the one thing that stands out, or that we are sensitive about, or that we question or others notice.  Then it snowballs into everything being attributed to our being adopted (or our having ADHD, or being an overachiever, etc.!)  In truth, there may be somethings we can link to our adoption (or birth, or personality, or ???)  But probably not likely that most things lead back to adoption.  Especially if you, like you have said, are comfortable with your own adoption!  I would bet on your "past experiences" playing a role in not being able to open up, or just your own personality, as well as possibly some uncertainty about adoption.  I think this is why I never recommend that adoptive parents share their child's adoption facts or story or info about their birth family with others, not even family.  (This info is for the child to eventually share, or not).  Because sometimes, people start attributing everything to the child's adoption!  Before you know it, the adoption is the reason you don't clean your room, you occasionally have a bad day, or you sassed your mom!!  : )

Great question, and I hope people start a great discussion about it.  (Hope so!)

Answer 2

I do find it hard sometimes.  I think it's a combination of everything from my past.  Being adopted, growing up in a military family, and now finding out that my birth mother is the same way, so possibly it's genetic as well.

Answer 3

i don't find it hard to open up tp people at all.  I am so thankfull to have lived the life i have. the only problem i am having is that now that i am a mother, i wonder more and more about the mother i never met, you know???

Answer 4

whatever.  just be glad your parents even wanted you