When and how did you begin to come out of your adoption fog?

Question

I wouldn't have thought I'd been in one, till I abuptly woke up while doing some work to heal my sacral chakra. It was 2 years ago this month. I'd had many miscarriages, as soon as I began to grieve my losses and explore healing - I carried a healthy pregnancy.

If you don't know about adoption fog, I don't need answers from you.

when or what woke you?

Answer 1

For me, I began to come out sometime in my teens.  I had known something was wrong for a long time, but it was only as I started really noticing how different I was from my siblings that I began to have an inkling it had to do with adoption.  

Having said that, even though I knew there was something very, very wrong with adoption, I couldn't give it voice.  I didn't know any other adoptees, and I figured I was just crazy.  It was only when I started meeting other adoptees (around the time I began my search last year) that I found out I wasn't alone.  That made it possible for me to talk about these issues.

Answer 2

After many miscarriages and 8 years of trying to have a baby. I looked into adopting and felt as if someone slapped me across the face. It was then that I decided to connect with other adoptees, read books by adoptees and search for my family. Immediately after meeting my natural mother I got pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful little boy.

Regarding Nyla's comment "I thought if you had problems carrying children it was supposed to tell you something, I hope you did the right thing by accepting your lot in life and remaining childless?"

I guess I was being told to find my family - I couldn't be happier with the outcome.

Answer 3

I was pretty fogged in until my mid-20's.  I never knew about the Baby Scoop Era (which I was a victim of) or that mothers actually loved and missed their relinquished children.  I was one of those that blissfully believed that they gave up their kids, went on with life and forgot all about them.

Then I started checking out online adption support groups, and started to see just how "real" n-mothers felt about their relinquished children.  It was an eye opener for me.  Especially after my own mother shut down in our reunion, I did a lot of research and talking with other n-moms so that I could try to understand my own mother.

But I still wasn't out of the haze, because I wasn't facing up to my own issues.  But Joy M reached out to me one day over at SofA and that was pretty much the beginning of the end of the fog for me.  I did a lot of self-examination, facing my fears, my pain, my "issues" and working through them instead of stuffing or assigning blame to something else.  It's hard work, painful work, but in the end, I finally can feel good about ME.

Answer 4

Here's your answer:

http://foreverparents.com/

ps: good luck with your chakras and Karma.

http://innerself.ca/html/relationships/f...

InnerSelf.com - What is Family Karma?

Answer 5

So is any adoptee who is happy in an adoption fog? Just for clarification?

Answer 6

Yep - I was 7.  I woke up from a nightmare in which my brother died.  The brother I had so often thought my parents had thrown on me as some sort of pennance.  I realized I didn't have to feel guilty about not feeling "the same" about him as I saw other people feeling about their brothers or even "the same" as I did for my other brothers.  I loved him to the point where it was the end of the world if he went away, and that was enough.  We were truly family - and families didn't have to be "just the same" to be real.  

This isn't what you meant by adoption fog, I'm sure.  However, children of parents who adopt are JUST as "thrown into it" as any adopted child.  Before that night, I HATED adoption in my heart.  I thought adoption was the most sadistic, evil thing on the universe.  I thought it took perfectly good, normal, "real" families, and put them through h**l that they had to pretend to like anyway, because if they didn't like it then it made them bad people.  That night, I learned my lesson.  I finally understood what adoption was.  It was about love on a level deeper than pretty family pictures, deeper than soccer in the backyard.  It was about love so true that it didn't have to fit into boundaries, it could be itself, as diverse as any other bond in the universe.  

Adoption didn't become "easy" after that night - but I'm not sure any family is ever "easy".  However, after that night adoption brought feelings of anger and guilt less and less often - and brought understanding, love, and appreciation of diversity more and more often.  

I never even thought about phrasing it this way until you asked your question, but adoptees and first parents aren't the only ones who lose something in adoption.  The other kids lose something too.  I lost MY "first family" too....  because no family is ever the same once you completely change the dynamic.  I'll never get back the family that would have been if two handicapped boys hadn't been thrust into it.  I'll never get back the family activities we COULD have done if the boys weren't there.  I'll never had again the parents that weren't jaded with concern and frustrated to their toes because of the struggles the boys brought with them.  After that night, there were many times over the years that I mourned the family life that didn't come, the relationship with my parents I lost the day my brothers came home - but I never truly hated it again.  Oh sure, when I'd get into tantrum moods of blaming anyone and everything but myself for all the bad stuff in my life, resentments would flare - but I would have resented something at those times anyway.  All children/teens have tantrums.  After that dream, I could appreciate everything I was given by adoption.  In the end, whenever I honestly assessed my life, I had to be happy the boys were with us.  They taught me so much about myself and life, and gave so much love.  Plus, the alternative for them was so bleak (wasting away in foster care where the older hadn't even learned how to hug by the time he was 3) that the thought breaks my heart - not just because it's not right for any child, but because I LOVE them, and imagining them in that kind of pain is unbearable.  

Love woke me - when I was 7

Answer 7

I didn't know adoptees had adoption fog too. have experienced it as a birth mother, am still in a horrible fog with my memory literally disintegrating. Felt Nyla's comment was cruel and uncalled for. How do you come out of this? Am interested in the answer myself. Had alot of separations from my parents when I was little and don't know if they are my natural parents. In my case it would be a blessing if they weren't as there was extreme abuse.

Answer 8

I did a lot of adoption reading in my twenties, but reading Journey of the Adopted Self is what blew the fog away for me.  This sounds wacky, but I think it gave me so much to process that it made me psychosomatically ill--I got a fever while reading it that went away the next day, and I had no other symptoms.  Spent that time in bed reading and crying....

Answer 9

I sort of answered this question here:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

But I don't think I was ever in a 'fog' as far as thinking adoption was wonderful.  Upon first hearing about it at 5, I thought it SUCKED.  No matter which way it was spun, you couldn't sell it's merits to me.  Years later, when I found my mother, I found out that I come from 'skeptical people'.  HA!  Go figure!

I was in a bit of a slumber, however.  You have to be, in order to function at all.  I knew I would 'deal' with it when the opportunity arose.  Well when I attended my first Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association (ALMA) in 1987, is was a real RUSH.  Like an alcoholic who attends his first AA meeting, I was SHOCKED (!) that there were so many adoptees who felt exactly as I did!  There were more! OMG!  

It has been a bumpy 20 years that no one should really have to endure.  I *know* there are 'worse things than adoption' but it's so often unnecessary.

And the truth really does set you free.

Answer 10

well, its tricky, one would think that MAYBE i came out of it when I searched, but if I ask my old school friends, they all say I was never in a fog, i always wanted to "search" as if "searching is being in a fog."  But when did I go from being the suppressed adoptee to the expressed adoptee? Just shortly after I found my natural parents, I found validation in myself and some of the things that made me different and suddenly I wasn't different, I was alike in MANY different ways. And so the fog sifted. Here I am.

Answer 11

It began when I met my Mom. It became apparent when I found the Yahoo! adoption chat room and was able to see others who felt the same way. It made sense when my grandmother admitted my Mom was forced, by her, to place me.

But I didn't get really pissed off about it until I stepped in here.

Answer 12

It was when I reunited with my natural family.  Things began to make sense in a new way for me.  It seems to have done the same for my ndad.  (My nmom had already passed away.)  Other family members tell me that he was like a new man after our reunion -- that they'd never seen him so content before.  I'm so happy for him to have that.

For me, reuniting has helped me to tap into parts of myself and my life that I'd never explored before that time.  I have become a stronger person in many ways as I've looked at these areas and been able to use the resources there.

Answer 13

Before I came out of the fog, or stopped drinking the koolaid, I was adament that I was the one who chose adoption, that my son was where he was, whoohoo adoption.  Then in a matter of one email with my son's mother I realized that the one pre-birth meeting where we discussed everything we hoped for with the adoption wasn't being fulfilled.  While it sounded like there might be the possibility of change, I know what they told another potential birthmother about what their openness agreement would have been.  They had changed dramatically from what they had agreed to with me.

For the first time there was a discontent that wouldn't be dismissed by owning my descision.  That's when I started reexamining all that I wrote and remember about the events leading up to relinquishment looking for the signs that this would happen.  I found them.  Telltale signs that this would happen.  And this is the exact moment I came out of the fog completely... all the other birthmoms who were bitter and angry suddenly made sense as to why they were bitter and angry.  I realized how poorly I had thought of them over the years now that I had become one.

Answer 14

Finding other adoptees who felt the same way I did.

Reading and identifying with 'The Primal Wound'.

Answer 15

When my also adopted sister started getting counseling and we sat down and talked.  I was probably 24.  I didnt realize how much I really needed to talk about things, and how much we really were affected by being adopted.

Answer 16

you know, "hooked on phonics" worked for me... now i can actually "google" uncommon terms and not allow my lack of culture to shine through!

i am a believer that many on this board would benefit from some sacral chakra work. as a matter of fact, i try to get reflexology work done at least twice a year. especially now that i'm pregnant. (oops, is that taboo to mention here?  my bad.)

any way... my adoption fog lifted when a partner of mine questioned me about why was i so neurotic about my son's cleaniness.  i disclosed my whole ordeal with the adoption bullsh$t ; and how i'd internalized this irrational belief that i would be reported for neglect if he wasn't always clean and neat.

he then told me..."you are a great mother and nobody is taking this boy from you, unless they want to deal with me!" he also went to counseling with me and supported me through my healing.

so that did it for me. and i married him two years later.

Answer 17

When I had a baby, mostly, but it took a long time, I was so entrenched in trying to be the good adoptee.