Dancing on eggshells - guest post from adoptee David

Maybe it is the people pleaser in me, but as an adoptee I find reunion like dancing on eggs shells.  There are so many people's feelings to juggle and for some reason we put ourselves last in that list. We talk about the adoption triad, the child, adoptive parents, and the birth parents, but there more people involved when it comes to reunion.  This can range from siblings, both bio and adoptive, our spouses to wider family in general.  Everyone has feelings on the situation, even if they don’t vocalize them.  We’re afraid to upset any of them in case we are discarded and end up as alone as we were when we were given away.

I was born in 1983 and was adopted shortly after birth.  I had a happy childhood and spent my entire youth in the fog.  I didn’t want to look for either birth parent. I thought I wouldn’t be prepared for what was on the other side if I opened the door. That all changed in 2006 when my parents received a letter from the county council adoption services which said my birth mother wanted to know how I was doing.  This could have been addressed to me, but the adoption agency chose to send it to my parents in case I had not been told I was adopted.

The music starts, and my first partners take to the dance floor.

I seem to remember my parents handing me the letter and watching me while I read it. It was a lot to take in so I can’t be sure this memory is correct.

I was in a daze for several days after, the actual woman who gave birth to me wanted to know about me.  I didn’t think this would ever happen, what do I do and how do I handle such a massive situation.  I know, I’ll talk to my parents about it.  I remember trying to talk to my parents about what to do, they were and still are the people I go to for life advice, but on this occasion, I found out the situation was different.  My dad said, “surely you must know what to do”, his tone was frustrated and almost angry, like it was choosing between them and my bio mum.  I countered with the argument that both my parents and bio mum made their choices regarding adoption and gave it thought.  I never made any choices but am supposed to know what to do.  I heard the eggshell crunch as I stepped on the dance floor.  The passage of time has shown my parents that there is no threat to them, I love them all the same.  This allows me to be heavier footed as I throw my metaphorical shapes.

My next partner, and the most delicate to dance with, is my bio mum.

Meeting my bio mum was a whirlwind, at the time we were in different social classes.  She had done well for herself, she was 38, and her and her husband part owned a company and two restaurants.  I was young, 23, and came from inner city terraced housing, with working class parents.  She was ready for dancing the Waltz, and I was warming up for Gangnam style.

 I tried to navigate the relationship seeing if I could fit in and be up to what I thought her expectations were.   I sometimes found myself in uncomfortable situations and didn’t speak up as I thought it might jeopardize our fledgling relationship.  For example, the day we met she invited her husband and children to meet me, only telling me when they were on their way.  I wasn’t ready for this; in hindsight I should have spoken up.

I opened my life to my bio mum, which meant juggling my parents' feelings and still building a relationship with my bio mum.

The only thing I ever asked of my bio mum was information of my bio dad.  This wouldn’t so much trigger an eggshell crunching, but more an explosion like dynamite.  Over an 8-year period I only ever asked about my bio dad 3-4 times. The first couple of times she shut down as soon as I said “Can you tell me about my bio dad”. 
The next couple of times I got the smallest of snippets.  A name, his sisters first name and was told she would not have any idea where they were now.  This was hard to deal with, yet I did the dance and swallowed the pain of opening my life but not getting the information I wanted in return.

Eventually I got to the point where I said to my bio mum, on a phone call, either tell me more about my bio dad or we won’t talk any more.  She said “ok” and put down the phone.  I didn’t speak to her for a couple of years after that.  It cut very deep, being dropped like a stone for asking one question in a pleasant and civil manner.

My wife told me years later how much this event affected me. I thought I was fine.  But my wife said my self-esteem plummeted at this point and I had a lot of inner anger.

The next set of dance partners is a complicated mix…

My wife and I eventually found my bio dad and his family.  He had a very distinct surname and we tracked down my grandparents using old telephone directories, electoral roles and Zoopla (to see if the house they lived in had ever been sold).

I dealt with this reunion differently, I chose a slow dance rather than jumping into something too fast, but it was complicated and delicate all the same.
My bio dad was hard to locate, so I approached my grandparents via a letter.  They responded and were very open and supportive. My bio dad is an ex-heroin addict and has demons of his own.  My nan had him when she was fifteen. My bio dad found out at age twelve that his dad, who he grew up with, was not actually his biological father.  This does play into the reunion dance as I must be careful what I say on this subject as he and my nan have different views on being told at a later age about his true father.

My grandparents asked if I really wanted to meet my bio dad after they told me he had been an addict and had been to prison.  I said I did and have managed this relationship ever since.  I get on well with my grandparents, but find the relationship with my bio dad difficult, he is unreliable, and I have to make all the effort.  I don’t gel with him on a personal level, but I do not want to sever that relationship as that is what my bio mum did to me.  I love spending time with my grandparents, aunty and cousins.  I don’t want to leave my bio dad out, but I don’t want to spend time with him either.  This is a difficult dance to choreograph.

A second reunion and more dancing

When my son was born, I reconnected with my bio mum.  I didn’t want him to miss out knowing he had an aunty and uncles because my bio mum would never have reconnected.  I had to do all the repair work, even though I felt it was not my job to do.  It is hard to be the better person in this situation as all the pain was inflicted on me, my bio mum told me she would never have reached out to me.

After this reunion my wife was talking to my bio dad's sister, my aunty.  She said did my wife know that her son, my cousin, is friends with my bother on my bio mum's side.  They had been friends since infant school and had grown up together and spent a lot of time at each other's houses.  My bio mum knew where my bio father and his family were all along.  When my wife told me on the car journey home, I felt so angry.  The pain caused by never being given information about my bio dad and the lie of telling me she had no idea where they were felt awful.  But, as a good little people pleaser, I suck this up to prevent an eggshell being broken and tolerate the excuse my bio mum tells that she didn’t want to ruin the friendship my brother and cousin have. 

My wife found it hard when I reconnected with my bio mum.  My wife is a loving and protective person, she couldn’t understand why I contacted my bio mum when all she caused me is pain.  This is a subtle little dance all on its own, my wife has an opinion on this subject even though she doesn’t always voice it.

I honestly don’t know why put myself back in this situation with my bio mum, my logical mind says I shouldn’t have done it, I am worth more.  But my heart says you need to prove yourself worthy of your bio mum, you are good enough to fight for and keep like her other children.

I am still wary of this dance, like the eggs will suddenly all crunch and the music could turn off at any moment, purely because of something I might say.

I must be very careful when meeting either side of my biological family, they live nearby each other; my cousins and siblings went to the same schools.   My bio mum doesn’t want to interact with my bio dad’s family, even though they never knew I existed my entire life.  My bio dad's family are welcoming and kind, but the pain my bio mum went through in giving me up (forced by her mother, who is now deceased) means she could never face discussing that with them.  I am guessing at this last point; I think it is too sensitive a subject to ask about.

Extra dance partners…

With all the dance partners I’ve described, along with so many others I haven’t mentioned, like siblings or friends, it can feel like a disorganized line dance with 10 or more people.  You’re dancing with everyone at once, to their own music, and you are trying to be so delicate on the dance floor when really you just want to stomp around and enjoy yourself.

My reunion story is lucky and simple compared to others. I have found and have a relationship with both sides of my biological family.  I have been welcomed.  But even in this ideal situation, there are so many people involved all with their own feelings.

As adoptees we can never truly be ourselves, we are always beholden to the decisions and feelings of others.   Some people, such as our biological parents, have a power over us we cannot control.  We go back to them even if it causes us immense pain.  We accept their lies to preserve relationships.  We do the dance.

My advice here will be hypocritical as I don’t follow it myself, I am too afraid.  I think we should be ourselves, talk openly even if others are uncomfortable with it.  Not many people think about their words before they talk to adoptees, so why shouldn’t we be as free.  We never asked to be born or given up, we don’t owe anything to anybody but ourselves.  Be aware that the eggshells will break, and relationships can end.  Hold your head high and ask yourself, if someone isn’t supporting you then do you really need them.  Being a people pleaser and keeping quiet only hurts ourselves.  We always absorb the pain that others have caused.

Be free, choose the music you like, and dance as hard as you can.  We only get one life, no matter how we got here we should enjoy the party the same as everyone else.

 Photo credits:

Egg photo by Fernando Andrade on Unsplash

"File:Psy performing Gangnam Style at the Future Music Festival 2013.jpg" by Eva Rinaldi is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Group of people dancing: Photo by Ardian Lumi on Unsplash

Learning to steer my own kayak through the adoption fog - guest post from Chloe Morrison

‘When you negotiate a kayak through sea caves, or negotiate your way along a hiking trail —in other words, when you successfully travel in the direction you need to go—what are you doing? You’re steering. In my work, I teach that negotiation is any conversation in which you are steering a relationship.’

                                                                        — Alexandra Carter, Ask For More, pg. 5

I guess you could say that growing up I was the cliched “grateful adoptee”. People pleasing, academically achieving, and totally unbelieving of the possibility that there might be anything more to having been adopted than the fact that I didn’t look like my parents or my also adopted brother. 

I was chronically shy though. My heart would race at the thought of speaking to someone else who wasn’t tightly woven into my inner circle. I’d send my brother to ask for the ketchup at restaurants, I’d almost rather wet myself than have to face the embarrassment of interrupting a conversation to go to the bathroom. At school I’d follow along with the lesson, the cogs of my brain working overtime to know the right answer, just in case I was asked, but each year the comments from my teachers would be the same: she’s such a bright child, we just wish she’d put her hand up. 

My life was controlled by fears and anxieties, and yet I very seriously believed that being an adoptee was just a little quirk about myself that I would happily share if prompted, but rarely spoke about of my own accord. People’s responses would surprise me when I told them: words of ‘wow, that’s so sad’ as they spluttered through their unsolicited tears. Or, they would concoct intricate plans for when we’d go and find my bio family together, and how they’d support me through the whole process, and oh wow, isn’t this all just so exciting!! Like a fairytale!! 

And then I’d laugh at them for being too sensitive, too unaware of the fact that everything is fine, and I’m so lucky, and can you imagine? My birth mum was probably horrible anyway, and my parents are the best in the world, and what are you even talking about? I don’t want to find my bio family, that would hurt my ‘real’ family, and I would never hurt them because I’m a doting daughter who loves her parents with every ounce of her being, and anyway stop talking about it because I’m absolutely fine. No, seriously, I’m just fine thanks. 

And then I got pregnant. 

I was 23, living in London, studying for a PhD at a well known public health School. A historian scrambling amongst medics, scientists, and public health practitioners. They say imposter syndrome is so inevitable it’s practically part of the initiation into academia. And there I was, even further from belonging in this world of rigid categories and formulaic seeking of objective truths, while I frantically tried to create a home built from nuance and complexity, wading through the murky depths of the “grey area”. An imposter unbelonging even to the rest of the imposters. Funny that, so eerily familiar.

So, when I found out I was pregnant I felt compelled, for the first time, to find out about my bio family. For the sake of my baby. And in strictly medical terms, of course— at least, that’s what I told myself, and everybody else. And I guess you could say that this was when it all began to unravel. Slowly, quietly. Invisibly, at first. I was initially pre-occupied with the anatomical realities of growing a baby inside me. Then, the practical realities of becoming a parent. Where should we get the pram from? What colour should we paint the nursery? When should we have the baby shower? 

It wasn’t until early 2020, when my son was 6 weeks old, that I plucked up the courage to call PAC-UK requesting my adoption file. Then I was put on a waiting list. Then I waited. Between February and June I didn’t think about it much more, because then the pandemic happened and I, myself, unravelled into a mental state that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Then they called me to let me know that I had been assigned a counsellor and they would be in touch soon. Then it all fell apart. 

Over the course of just more than a year, from October 2020 to January 2022, I journeyed through “the fog” and found my way out of it. I’ve heard the phrase “coming out of the fog” thrown around as part of the adoptee vernacular, and I’ve also heard it contested as a term too simplistic and perhaps even subtly damaging to the overall community. And, based on my own experiences, I’d like to add something to the conversation. 

But first, some context. My partner is Australian, and we met in Brisbane. He moved to the UK to be with me for the birth of our son in November 2019. By November 2020, we had moved to Australia to find a more stable life together as a small family, where my partner could find work and I could breathe a little easier away from the scariness of covid. I came off maternity leave in January 2021, and by September I had withdrawn from my studies. 

I’d started seeing a therapist the month before, and it only took me a few weeks with the right support to realise that I’d already made the decision to quit, long, long ago. I just hadn’t validated my own instincts and needs, instead desperately clinging onto the status and pride that might come with being Dr. Morrison. Not because it set my soul alight (though I absolutely loved being a historian and all the amazing discussions I was privileged to have), but because it would buy me infinite approval from the whole entire world. Or so I thought. 

Making the decision to drop out was the most freeing and liberating decision I have ever made. Instantly, I felt a weight lift off my entire being and for the first time in years I could actually relax. And now, being far away from the wounds of my past in this present life I was living on the other side of the world, I realised that it was all on me now. 

What did I want to do next? Who am I now that I’m not a PhD student anymore? I soon realised that for the first time in my life I’d ditched the script and had freed myself to write whatever I wanted to next. And this terrified me. I soon then realised that I have no idea who I am. At all. Oh no, I thought, as I trembled in horror, have I just lost everything I’ve worked so hard for? All the while, I was also learning about another past that had been left far behind on the other side of the world: my adoption. 

To get through this spiritual awakening-cum-dark night of the soul, or whatever you want to call that feeling which epitomises “coming out the fog,” I read a lot of soul-searching books. And, more recently, I started Ask For More by Columbian law professor Alexandra Carter. Within only a few pages I was struck by the power of her message. Trained first as a mediator, she shares her tips on how to negotiate exactly what you want: in life, in business, in relationships, in and for whatever your heart desires. Literally. 

I opened this essay with a quote from one of the first pages of the book. She argues that ‘negotiation is any conversation in which you are steering a relationship’. Then she asks: 

What happens to the kayak if we stop steering? We keep moving, but maybe not in the direction we want. Outside forces like the wind and water will carry us away. And the kayak metaphor tells us one more thing about negotiation: You need the right information to steer with accuracy. You can’t close your eyes and ears and expect to arrive at your destination. You need to watch the waves and feel the direction of the wind. Everything you see, hear, and feel helps you steer with accuracy toward your goal.’ Pg. 5

It stopped me in my tracks. Have I ever steered my own kayak before? Was dropping out the first time I’ve taken the paddles and took control for myself? 

Wait a second, does adoption necessarily preclude you from the ability to steer your own kayak at all? 

Listen to what she says: ‘You need the right information to steer with accuracy. You can’t close your eyes and ears and expect to arrive at your destination.’ As adoptees we have never had the right information. Sure, we might be lucky enough to have our original birth certificates, some information about our parents names, personalities, traits. Maybe we even knew our families before we got adopted as older children. Each individual story is so unique I would never try to paint us all with the same brush. But, I would be so bold as to suggest that the very fact of having been adopted, at whatever age, in whatever country, does forcibly close our eyes and cover our ears to the knowledge that would optimally set us up to determine our own destinations in life. 

I know that for me, I was too busy avoiding the wounds of the adoption, the underlying grief and trauma that had weighed me down for as long as I could remember but was never fully able to acknowledge, let alone articulate. So busy, that I wasn’t even bothered about steering my own kayak. I was too busy trying not to drown. Too busy trying not to just give up and jump right out of the boat once and for all. 

Then, I made choices, bit by bit, to take back the reins of my life. Moving to the other side of the world opened up space in my mind for a complication of the narrative, which ultimately opened my eyes to the traumas and losses of adoption. Becoming a mother myself forced me to imagine, and really feel, the forced separation I’d had from my own mother as a baby. Dropping out of my PhD pushed me to paddle as hard as I could for shore as I determined, on the fly, what destination I actually wanted to arrive at. 

This experience, this book, made me consider adoption in a new light: 

Are we, as adoptees, metaphorically smuggled onto a boat late at night, blindfolded and tied up at the edges, forced to watch someone else steer the kayak designated for us, while we silently struggle and squirm in our binds? 

Once we become cognisant beings do we get handed the paddles, only to unknowingly inch closer into the eye of the storm? 

Does the fog of misty clouds that surrounds our tiny boat prevent us from ever reaching our own destination of blissful wellbeing and contentedness? 

Have we been institutionally and societally denied the possibility of negotiating our own lives this whole time?

I’ve realised that to negotiate what I want from life then I must first take control of the paddles. Then, glisten and glean whatever information I can about myself to set me on an authentic course: through reflection, journaling, therapy, somatic grounding, connecting with my bio family and heritage by whatever means I can healthily. And even before we can attempt to do all of that, as adoptees we’re forced to navigate the extra layer of fog that comes with the disenfranchising processes and institutions of adoption. Perhaps, then, it takes getting to our most raw and peeled back forms to clear the fog, take a breath and, finally, steer for ourselves. 

Read more at Chloe Morrison’s blog

Follow Chloe

Image credit: https://unsplash.com/@blunkorama

The Alien Chameleon asks, “What do you want me to be?” - guest post by Roz Munro

One fundamental problem with being adopted is no one understands how much it feels like you are an alien. The writer and fellow adoptee, Anne Heffron puts it very simply, “You want to hear my generalized story of the adoptee in six words? ‘Something is wrong. No one understands’.”

Possibly if adopted as a young child rather than as an infant, then people would see that you had a history with your parents or foster parents, or in an institution of some kind, but I was placed for adoption in the UK immediately, with the gap of only seven weeks between birth and relinquishment and no one in those days (1967) thought that was enough time to have a history. I don’t know when it was felt that having a history started; my brother was three months old when he was placed for adoption and no one thought he had a history either, even though he had been with his first mother all that time and cried for a full day when first he came home with our adoptive mum and dad. He cried until he was exhausted and then was fractious, but no one thought about the trauma to him of losing his mother, suddenly and completely.

Another point made by Anne Heffron is this; imagine being suddenly removed from one life completely then confusingly placed somewhere unknown randomly and told to get on with it with people you do not know, where you can have no contact with your previous family or life, where if you are upset by this they simply don’t or can’t understand why. Now imagine this happening to an adult. It is called kidnapping and is a criminal offence! But that is how closed adoption works, where files are sealed, and no contact or correspondence is allowed. I know it’s different now in many modern cases, but this is how it was for my adoption.

By the time I reached mum and dad at seven and a half weeks I was on my third mother as I had been in foster care for four weeks, so the alien syndrome was already present. It is now known that new-born and young babies are responding to their mother, and she mirrors them, she smells right, and she has the other half of the bond they share, fixed before birth in the womb, the biological bond that is our animal heritage birth-right. Of course, an adoptive mother, even if she is the most loving and devoted parent can have none of these advantages, she is on the back foot before she begins.

Our biology also involves the limbic regulation that a mother provides to her baby, to soothe and to give a feeling of security - the attachment bond. This begins as part of a neurochemical hormonal bond in the womb and without it the child feels overwhelmed. It is this devastating loss at the start of life that causes a large part of the traumatised response induced by maternal separation. I imagine my little mind was full of confusion and terror, the limbic overload of trying to mirror and connect but not getting the right signals, maybe not any signals given my adoptive mum was not a cuddler or an empathetic mother and suffered with clinical depression all her life.

My baby-self needed to connect to stay alive, literally, the baby is helpless and all they have is this connection; it is a matter of survival. The baby’s responses are elements of the adaptive behaviours that adoptees use as attempts to get their needs met, they are survival responses to the relinquishment trauma suffered on loss of our mother. Nancy Verrier writes in “Coming Home to Self” about the two modes of coping that adopted children implement to manage the alien situation: acting out and acting in, i.e., defiance or emotional shut downness. She also distinguishes between these behaviours, which can define a child early on, and their true personalities that are hidden under levels of management of self: to fit in or to radically object.

Either way it is not the true self that is known to the family, or to the individual. I became a compliant baby - a “good” baby, mum said. When the Adoption Society conducted a welfare visit I was reported to be on three meals a day and sleeping through each night. I was 15 weeks old. The reptilian brain works very basically: Do as they want, and this will not endanger me. This translates in my adoptee brain as “do what is asked of you and be safe, anything else and they too might abandon you.”

This layering of behaviours and coping strategies add further silt to the difficulty of knowing, or being, oneself after the trauma and resultant brain changes of being relinquished as a baby and adopted into a biological strangers’ family. I conformed and turned into a very proficient chameleon. I continued to be a compliant and quiet child. The chameleon who asked unconsciously in every interaction or relationship “What do you want me to be?” In essence, I wanted to know what you needed me to be, so I best ensure that you stay happy, and I remain “good enough to keep”. My mum said I was easy as a younger child and young teenager; it was when I left home that I “became difficult”! I feel I was attempting to exert my independence, be myself, but that was not welcomed.

I was into my forties before I began to unravel this chameleon feeling as I worked on myself in therapy. It is a strange experience when something that feels as natural as breathing becomes obvious to you, a behaviour you previously didn’t see becomes visible - or more than that, becomes visible and feels odd. The sensation felt like I was acting outside myself; I was watching myself during interactions and I did not have control over my reaction. I literally didn’t know myself.

Much of my learning about emotional self-care has come through personal therapy. I know now I was brought up with physical care (being clothed, washed, fed) and educational needs provided, but emotionally was neglected. I am now on an ongoing path of discovery about my needs for nurturing and am trying to reparent myself and accept all the disparate psychological parts of me that formed during the early years to help me to survive the traumas and dramas of my life.

I find the early development trauma research and theories are pertinent and resonate strongly, helping me to understand my history and my reactions. For example, I discover I have lived my life in a constant state of nervous system dysregulation. (Stephen Porges and his Polyvagal Theory) This is a result of the primal wound, (Nancy Verrier) which is formed because of the separation from my first mother. Now it is more accepted that relinquishment is a trauma (Gabor Mate, or Paul Sunderland) and losing the first mother catastrophic to a baby. I have been hypervigilant and overanxious and felt the need to control my environment extremely tightly. This hyperarousal is a symptom of an overactive sympathetic nervous system and it being constantly in fight or flight. Then there is the Hypoarousal of freeze, or in the case of the chameleon the fawn response is prevalent too. These are biological responses that are triggered by early trauma (Pete Walker, 4Fs in his book Complex PTSD) and, unless mitigated with attunement to the child by the care giver, or later in therapy, remain out of conscious awareness and can ruin lives. In the dysregulated system a sense of ease or feeling safe is fleeting, and moments of connection with others are brief and feel tenuous. This is an exhausting and debilitating way to live.

As this was the water I swam in for all my life it has taken until just very recently, and with the help of a trauma informed therapist to help me, to remove my silt layers, and I am starting to break free and change these ancient habits and reactions. I am questioning my need to be quiet and pleasing, I can now choose discernment and embrace the freedom of preference; I can release the quietness that went along with the need to supress my true feelings and I am learning how to speak my truth; I am discovering more about my biological and limbic systems, and how I can learn to self-soothe and to self-regulate my emotions so I don’t remain hypervigilant and “on” for ever.

Now, I strive to keep a level of awareness that enables me to question myself and my motives for acting. I still fail spectacularly sometimes. I will find out halfway through an activity or event when I notice that I am feeling resentful. I know it’s a red flag that a part of me doesn’t want to be there.

Sometimes I will notice - a plan will be made, and I feel scared or anxious about it, then I know I am triggered by the thought of the plan somehow, and I look to spend some time reviewing what is my wish, how do I work with my anxiety and, what do I want to do? This is a work in progress.

Only now, into my fifties, can I begin to see what I need to do to honour my own wishes and move beyond my alien chameleon part. Now I can start to ask myself, “What do I want me to be?”

Image credit: the artist Becca Smith

Finding My Way Out Of The Adoption Fog - guest post by Gilli Bruce

Sometimes fog is thick and dark and cloying, and you know fine well that you are in it. Sometimes it is invisible – as in the kind of fog that can wrap itself in and around adoptees. 

The term ‘being in the fog’ is often used to describe the way adoptees feel, think, operate and relate before they come out of the denial, conditioning and ignorance that cloaks the impacts of adoption. When we don’t realise that the emotional pain, and many other difficulties that arise, are a result of being adopted, we blunder around in the fog not understanding what’s going on or why. We grope around in our lives, feeling somewhat lost, trying different directions but unable to find our way. Feeling alone in our situation – because no one else can see our fog or even knows it exists. 

The impacts of adoption are at best unknown and at worst denied. But thanks to new understanding around childhood trauma and neuroscience, what many of us have experienced is now being acknowledged, understood and validated.

We each have our own experience of adoption – some seem to manage to come out of it completely unscathed, some deny the impacts whilst wondering why they are alone, addicted, co-dependent, over-weight, angry, fearful, or overwhelmed with shame. Some come to realise that their patterns of disastrous relationships, their pull towards adrenalin-inducing danger, their whole life strategy in fact – stems from the early wounding. Often it is not until adoptees reach mid-life or beyond that the patterns can be seen, and the denial no longer works. This is when the fog comes into focus – sometimes all at once and sometimes a bit at a time.

My realisations came out a bit at a time – so my journey out of the fog happened at a snail’s pace, in stages and with periods of inertia as I came to terms with the latest insight or realisation. There are still little things coming to light. Here’s how I crept out of the adoption fog…

I was lucky enough aged 34 onwards to work for a company that invested in its people and working in the 1990s was a great time to be provided with personal growth and development training – there were still budgets for that kind of thing! We were exposed to personal growth work that showed me aspects of myself that were hidden in the ‘blind spot’ – that were unknown to me - yet were plain as day to those who knew me well. We used a model called ‘Johari’s Window’ where some of my blind spots were revealed to me and my self-perception was shaken up. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was manageable. 

We were given book suggestions and workshop recommendations and, armed with a new curiosity and a will to learn, I embarked on a period of self-discovery. The timing was right too, had this all occurred ten years earlier I would not have had any patterns visible enough to be noticed yet. 

As I began to come out of the adoption fog, I learned that:

• I was not authentic, I manoeuvred and manipulated things instead (to risk being ‘real’ was too risky)

• I led my life on the run, to sit still for a minute might mean feeling the pain

• I was frazzled with anxiety - but I hid it from myself with denial

• I could not say ‘No’ to anyone for anything; I was a people-pleaser

• I was a serial monogamist jumping from one relationship to the next in the search for attachment, and much more

Initially I DID NOT attribute any of these aspects of myself to adoption, but a start at clearing some of the fog symptoms had been made. 

So, I read some more and went on retreats and made some headway during my 30s and early 40s. With a dear friend I went to retreats at Cortijo Romero (a retreat centre in Spain), attended local workshops and national events and learned more about the human condition, growth and coming to a place of peace.

• I learned about co-dependency and what that means and that I was co-dependent (still working that one). I vividly recall reading Co-Dependent No More by Melody Beattie with horror and shock as I saw my own behaviour described in her pages.

• I read Women Who love Too Much by Robin Norwood in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down and was compelled to finish it as I was in those pages too.

• I learned that I had a very fragile sense of self. I was pervaded by a feeling of being ‘a leaf on the breeze’, with no ancestral lineage I knew of, no sense of ‘roots’ and a fractured identity – not knowing who I was, not knowing which bits were the ‘real me’ and which were the bits I thought I ought to be.

• I learned that I wore an upbeat, jolly persona as a shield from negative emotions through learning about The Enneagram. The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso & Russ Hudson has become my bible.

• I took a two-year NLP Master Practitioner programme and learned about all my unconscious drivers and how much I was filled with fear.

I attended spiritual workshops with Tony Robbins, Louise L Hay and Brandon Bays and learned that underneath all of this lived a shiny, joyful heart that I could access and grow. 

I still did not quite understand that my need for all this learning and activity was driven by the childhood trauma that is adoption – but the fog was loosening its hold on me and I was getting stronger and clearer.

Being made redundant and becoming a self-employed training consultant and coach really helped me to grow into myself as I had to become more solid; more real and more self-reliant. It was super scary and shaky at first, but after a few years I had developed enough inner strength to consider finding my birth family. I was 46 and realising that if I didn’t act soon it might be too late.

It took two traumatic years to find and meet all my birth family and that’s a huge, different story – but the expectations that I would be transformed into a pain-free version of my former self due to being re-united, were soon corrected. It wasn’t to be as easy as that. Still, I underestimated the impact of adoption. I was somewhat out of the fog, on my way through – but it was still misty.

In my early 50s, I added a few more onto the string of failed relationships, having lost my Dad, now I lost my Mum and – in a desperately lonely place – moved to a new house for a new start. 

A concerned friend asked if I would try online dating to find a new relationship and my answer from the gut was ‘No! There’s no point!’ – this visceral reaction was a turning point, a key question at the right time. I pondered on the question and the response – what was wrong with me? After all the damn work I’d done on myself, why could I not do what everyone else seems to do without too much trouble? It couldn’t be THAT could it? I didn’t want it to be THAT; that adoption thing. With my resistance to there being any problem in being adopted acknowledged, I decided to meet it head on. I rolled my sleeves up and got stuck into this psychological skeleton that I’d stuffed right at the back of the emotional cupboard.

Sitting with a cup of tea, munching biscuits and searching the internet for anything about adoption (I’d got to 53 having never looked at this before) I found a You Tube film entitled A Lecture On Adoption with Paul Sunderland. It was like being hit about the head by a very large mattress! Within 30 minutes the fog was revealed, blown away and the truth revealed. Adoption IS A PROBLEM!! It messes you up – you’re not weird after all. You’re adopted – and this is what it can do. Wow. A strange mixture of relief, elation and dread swept through me. I felt like a little mole who’d been tunnelling away underground – popping out into bright day light as I learned about the impacts of adoption for the first time. Within a further few minutes, I knew I needed to work with this man who knew, and could explain and help. 

I know now that you cannot really come out of the adoption fog, or indeed anywhere – unless you know where you are to start with. The missing piece in my growth journey had been the insights about the impacts of adoption and the work I did in therapy to clear that fog away.

Over three years I worked with Paul Sunderland (an addictions psychotherapist) and attended 12 Step programmes. The work entailed doing lots of healing work I didn’t want to do (and that’s another huge story). I resisted, denied and went emotionally kicking and screaming into dark places amongst the truth – to become aware, clear eyed and sane, with a solid sense of self. Now I’m out of the fog, although there are a few wisps still hanging around, but I can spot them and manage them! 

I share this journey in the hope that any adoptee reading this will take a shortcut and have a faster recovery than I did in my 20-year journey. God speed.

Searching for Truth guest blog by Yuna Silverstein

I always knew I was adopted—not because I thought I looked different from my parents (because I really didn’t think so), but because my parents always read me stories about it. I was part of the first wave of Chinese adoptees, a mass exodus beginning in 1991 (I was adopted in 1998) characterized by mostly female infants who were filling China’s orphanages due to the One Child Policy in effect from 1979 to 2015. It has been estimated that about 110,000 children from China have been adopted internationally, with most adoptees now living in the United States like me.

From the very beginning, Chinese adoption had a very strong sense of community, centered around the almost religious belief that Chinese baby girls were unwanted and abandoned by their birthfamilies. This had been the adage the world news had been spreading, echoed from every corner of the globe. Indeed, the stories that my parents read to me at night, written specifically for Chinese adoptees, told of the night that my birthmom needed to sneak out of the house and place me in a public place so that I would be found by a nice policeman and taken to the orphanage in the morning. My parents could not with a child get into the details of why exactly my birthmom would need to do all this in secret, but they tried to place any blame on the Chinese government and the law, wisely deciding early on that my birthparents should be given the utmost love and respect, and should not be painted as the villains. There was never any reason to doubt this story as all Chinese adoptees, including me, were given official abandonment documents that said when and where we were abandoned.

Growing up around Philadelphia, there were plenty of Chinese adoptees in the area. I absolutely never felt that my family was not normal because we were a demographic in our own right with our own get-togethers. The neighborhood I grew up in and the public schools I attended were extremely diverse—something I appreciated much more as I grew older. Because of this, I was not bullied for my race or for being an adoptee. Being adopted was normal for me and I was always a little surprised when my friends’ parents looked like them. I don’t recall any friends ever seeming surprised that my parents were white and most often when I told someone I was adopted they didn’t blink an eyelash because it was just so normal.

The Chinese community welcomed us adoptees with open arms. At Chinese school, they made a special language class just for us adoptees and our adoptive parents. Someone in the neighborhood made an all Chinese adoptee traditional dance troupe and there were plenty of Families with Children from China (FCC) events to go to. I mention these experiences because when I tell people that “I am a transracial adoptee with white parents,” I think there’s an automatic (and rude!) assumption that I’ve been “starved for culture.” Yet, for all of these programs, some of which I enjoyed more than others, I drew my largest sense of identity from growing up with other Chinese Americans. I very confidently identify as a Chinese American woman and I’m just as Chinese as any of my Chinese American friends.

Given that I didn’t think being an adoptee was particularly special, for years I had no doubt in my mind that adoption was not affecting me. While I was always very open about wanting to find my birthmother in particular, I was also very aware that China was the most populous country and that under the circumstances of the One Child Policy it had been made impossible to track her down. My birthmother was not allowed to give birth to me, or allowed to keep me, or allowed to bring me to the orphanage—hence the only option was to abandon me in secret. This meant I had no names or addresses to go on! I was also always very sad to believe I was abandoned, because that is such an ugly word that carries with it unwanted, with absolutely zero context of what my birthmother had to go through. I also had to make peace pretty early on with the fact that I had no idea what my given name was, as my Chinese name was assigned to me systematically by the orphanage, as was my birthday.

But I was still “in the fog.” I had no idea about pre-verbal PTSD, separation trauma, or hypervigilance, why I sat by the exits for a quick escape, or why I had panic attacks when I felt my safety was threatened by seemingly ordinary things. I also had no idea that I had insecure anxious attachment, meaning that I was really, really close to my parents. It was what made it particularly difficult my first year away from home at college. Cognitive behavioral therapy really helped me to sort through many of these very early thoughts and feelings, because it is very powerful just being seen and understood.

I came “out of the fog” after my first year of college and my journey of self-discovery quickly accelerated, especially when I learned that my orphanage, like most others, had actually forged abandonment documents and actively prevented birthfamily reunions. (I highly recommend watching One Child Nation to understand more.) To make a long-story short, though it had been pounded into our heads that we were abandoned, the truth in the majority of cases was that our birthparents relinquished us to individuals who could be trusted to bring us safely to the orphanage. This changed everything. Yes, there were abandonments, but they were forced abandonments because the law gave birthparents no choice. There were also police confiscations of infants and children for families who violated the One Child Policy. So many things actually happened in China that I’ve tried to document. So many women were forced to undergo abortions and were forced to be sterilized. Because of censorship in China, much of this was only known in pieces to the outside world, and now because of DNA matches, we are finally getting the truth about what happened.

Looking back, I suppose it could be fate that I was adopted from the Dianbai orphanage in Guangdong province, because this was how I knew of the Stuy family who organized a few Dianbai reunions. For years, Lan and Brian Stuy have been working to unite birthfamilies and adoptees via their organization DNA Connect. Suddenly, the impossible was unbearably possible. Adoptive and birthfamilies were coming together and the lies each side was fed were finally being scrubbed away. It is so painful to want something so much, but I can’t help but hope that I’ll get a match someday too. Even if I never get a match, there is something liberating about knowing the truth about what happened to us collectively so many years ago in China. It may not seem like it should matter to my current everyday life in America, but it does, because I am so much more solid in who I am. I cannot begin to express how much lighter I feel to finally, finally learn more of the truth.

——————————————————
You can read more and connect with Yuna at her blog, Hello Noble Soul

Photo credit: Rawdyl at Unsplash

I am not grateful to my parents for adopting me

When I started my blog in 2017, I used the strapline: “Just your average angry/grateful adoptee here in London, UK.” This was to convey the dichotomy of emotions I, and many/some other adoptees, feel. I was coming out of the fog when I started this adoptee blog, and many of my early posts are full of anger, sadness, grief and confusion.

I made a conscious decision not to include any expressions of gratitude in my blog or my tweets. This is because as adoptees many of us have been (subconsciously?) conditioned to preface any comments about being adopted with grateful acknowledgements such as:

 “I love my parents but… one day I’d like to find out more about my roots”

“I’m grateful I was adopted but… it has brought certain challenges”

“I had a great upbringing but… one day I’d like to have a relationship with my biological parent/s”

The reason I choose not to use prefaces such as the ones above is not because I don’t love my parents or have a good relationship with them. And it’s certainly not because I want to hurt or upset them. It baffles me that because I don’t use these prefaces people assume I had a “bad adoption” (whatever that means). However, the reason I choose (not) to do this is because I want to make the point that we shouldn’t have to preface our thoughts and experiences with these platitudes and – surely – if we don’t feel the need to use them, that could mean we have a really strong relationship with our adoptive parents? I’ve noticed that some people, including APs, only choose to listen to adoptees who have had a “good adoption” (whatever that means) and I do not want to contribute to that problem.

I don’t think it’s healthy for adoptees to feel they have to add these caveats. I myself used them in the past and this must have started at such an early age that I don’t remember, but I do remember the conversations always went more smoothly if I took the time to acknowledge my parents’ feelings before my own.

Having made the decision not to use these caveats in my (at this stage anonymous) writing was the easy part. Sticking to it was difficult. I had to edit and triple edit my blogs and I held my breath every time I pressed publish in case somehow my mum would instinctively know I’d written about adoption without including my caveats ‘like a good girl’.

I meet lots of adoptees as a result of the groups I help run and events I attend, and I can tell you that adoptees of all ages from 20 to 80 are using these caveats, as well as ones like, 

“I had a happy upbringing but…” 

“I don’t want to upset my lovely parents but…”.

We don’t even realise we are doing it most of the time!

I suspect one of the reasons we use these caveats could be that somehow deep down we believe we are ‘less than’ and our needs are secondary (to those of our adoptive parents).

This speaks to a deep insecurity that if we do not show a level of deference or gratitude we may be rejected or ‘sent back’ because we are not honouring the unspoken agreement. This unspoken agreement comes from the shame narrative around (often young) unwed mothers and illegitimate babies. As illegitimate babies, we were seen as ‘lucky’ to get a home and a family, particularly if this was a two-parent heterosexual Christian family. Presumably to save our souls from the sins of our mothers (never our fathers, of course).

So we grew up with the spectre of the children’s home looming over us, familiar with phrases like “languishing in care” (which was used only recently on Twitter). With the unspoken inference being, if it wasn’t for us “taking you in” bringing you up “as our own” who knows where you would be. Maybe in an orphanage, left on a doorstep, or even dead…? Whilst our parents themselves may not have said or thought these things, we were exposed to popular culture, playground taunts and comments from extended family, neighbours and teachers. In fact, when my sister hit a crisis point in her adolescence, our uncle – incidentally also her godfather – was quick to suggest my parents “wash their hands of her.” And many of us can tell of experiences where we have been urged to show gratitude and avoid upsetting our APs after “all they’ve done for you” by acquaintances and even strangers at dinner parties and on aeroplanes.

I wish I could say that only older adoptees such as myself heard things like this, but I know of one teen adoptee whose parents said they will “put her back into care” if she doesn’t toe the line. I told a close friend I was nervous about appearing in Grazia magazine talking about being adopted and having post-natal depression. I said I hoped my mum would be supportive of my choice to appear in the magazine. My close friend urged caution, reminding me of everything my parents have done for me.

My parents have done a lot for me, yes. But no more and no less than any of my non-adopted friends’ parents have done for them. Again, the inference I hear here is that they have done something extra to be commended, given that I am an unwanted baby who would have “languished” in the raggy doll bin if my parents hadn’t come along and “saved” me. The thing is, my parents didn’t wake up one day and decide to offer a family and home to an unwanted baby. They tried to have a baby for ten years and then decided to adopt. They don’t campaign for support for adoptees; they don’t advocate for birth parents’ rights; they simply wanted a baby. Preferably one that they could pretend was their own. (*Forces self not to add “That’s just the way things were in those days.”*)

And I am theirs. I am very happily their daughter. However, I am also genetically someone else’s daughter too, and I have a complete and total right to:

• all and any information about my heritage

• embark any relationships that are open to me, if/when I feel strong enough to pursue these

You have these rights too. We all do. No apologies, no caveats.

Photo by Amadeo Valar on Unsplash

I asked my mother when she met me

I asked my mother when she met me.

She couldn't remember.

"It was either day three or day five," she said, as though she was talking about going to the cinema.

I said, "Not to worry mum, it was a long time ago!"

Then I went for a drive in my car and shouted at some other drivers.

I parked my car, got out and kicked a bin.

I walked to a cafe and snapped at a nice lady serving cream teas. 

This is my story of a lifetime of treading on eggshells in order to keep my precarious place in my "forever family". My family may argue that my place has never been in doubt, but my nervous system says otherwise. The curious dichotomy an adoptee lives with is that of being "very, very wanted" and yet at the same time totally unwanted.

Until I had my first baby I was very much, "Oh yes, she did what she had to do. She was eighteen; this was the late 1970s for goodness sake!"

This is an example of what many adopted adults call 'being in the fog'. Once my little boy was placed in my arms, the truth lay heavy on my chest as I had never laid on my first mother.

----

Thanks for reading. Would love to hear your comments below x

I was in Grazia magazine talking about being adopted and having post-natal depression

Last month I was in the UK edition of Grazia magazine talking about post-adoption grief aka post-natal depression.

Here is the full Grazia piece

Here are a few things that have happened since then:

1. My parents read it and didn’t disown me ;) I was shaking like a leaf until my mum had been to be newsagent and texted me! (Of course we should feel free to express our truth, but it’s still scary. And I’ve come a long way since I was too frightened to start an anonymous blog.

2. My birth mother read it and said she has been thinking about writing her story down for a while and might give it a go. I said I can’t recommend it enough. She is also an adoptee.

3. I got trolled by someone saying I am in the fog. Obviously they didn’t read the piece properly as in it I state that I was in the fog before I had my children, but now I’m very much “out”. This was a rare opportunity to get a piece about adoption BY AN ADOPTEE in a mainstream publication and so I trod more lightly than I would in this blog, for example.

   And as Brené Brown says:

   “It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is in the arena.”

4. So many adoptees have got in touch to thank me, a section of their comments are pasted below. Thank you to everyone who took the time to write to me, I appreciate it and it helps me to feel less alone too, so it’s a virtuous circle! I managed to signpost a few people to services such as PAC-UK.

5. Thanks to my adoptee friends for all their encouragement with this including Joe, Matt, Haley from Adoptees On and Anne Heffron - who said to me we are only really alive if we are living our truth (she also said “fuck anonymity” which is a more pithy way of putting it!)

6. I’m no longer anonymous. As I told Al Coates when he interviewed me after The Open Nest conference 2019, there are so many others sharing - and if it helps people, I can be brave too. So, hi. I’m Claire and I blog about being adopted! :) If anyone from 7AF at my school is reading this, yes I’m still “on my soapbox”!!

7. A few old contacts came out of the woodwork including an old boss who is now an adoptive parent and suggested we meet for coffee. I’ve been asked to speak to adoptive parents before and declined but many adoptive parents with youngsters seem keen to get input from (older) adopted people, so let’s see. Either way it’s a positive step that older adoptees narratives are seen as valuable as I have heard adoptive parents say adoption has changed so much that adoptees from the closed era are like a different species.

Excerpt from Grazia magazine October 2019

Lovely and heart-breaking messages from adoptees

“I just wanted to send a message to say thank you for writing this blog. I'm a 33 year old adoptee (adopted as a baby), mum of one and pregnant with my second, and I identify with so much of what you say and your experiences. I'm not as far on as you are with dealing with all my feelings around being adopted, but having someone discuss it so openly and clearly has made me think about it more deeply than I have in a long time. So thank you, and I hope you are able to continue writing for a long time to come.”

“Hello, and thankyou very much for your article on post adoption grief. It explains everything I have felt on becoming a mother. I could go into great depth over what it felt like for me, from the point of wanting to conceive, telling my adoptive parents I was pregnant, feeling the physical connection with my daughter growing inside my body. The loss you speak of is something I have always felt and tried to explain to people. It's a sense of loss that travels with you through your whole life in everything you do. That loss of the natural connnection with a birth mother. My little girl who is now 2, absolutely loves me telling her how she used to be in my tummy, and when ever I tell her of my life before she was born, she says when I was in your tummy! It makes me think of how there is no thought of life without mummy. That even before birth she was with me. I think of the loss of this connection adopted people have with their birth mother. Thank you for your website.”

“I have yet to have a baby of my own but am already emotional at the thought of those first few hours/days/weeks when I didn’t have a mum... I can’t help but feel so sad for myself and thank god I wasn’t able to remember it. I remember when my biological mother told me she hadn’t held me and I had to fight the lump in my throat and the tears from falling. Even though she said it was because she never would have let go I still felt she should have.”

Please leave your comments below on the piece, I would love to hear from you if you are adopted and have experienced any challenges around becoming a parent.

Sorry these seats are taken: a short reflection on adoption reunion

As some of you will know my reunion hit a bit of a stumbling block earlier this year after being fairly rosy for a good number of years. I’ll go into this in more detail when I’m done processing everything as it’s all still pretty fresh. It has a lot to do with coming out of the fog, I think.

In the meantime, this is just a short reflection that came to me after journaling the other evening before bed.

Imagine being invited to a small party and when you arrive the host greets you warmly but doesn’t offer to take your coat. Confusing, huh? This is how reunion felt to me.

Imagine you arrive to meet friends in the pub and they don’t shift up to make room for you at the table. They seem pleased to see you; they are smiling. But no one offers to make room for you. Afterwards you realise they were only smiling with their mouths.

I really wanted them to shimmy up to make room for me at the table, even if someone’s bum cheek was hanging off the edge of the bench. Reunion felt like the whole table just shrugged and said it’s lovely to see you but these seats are taken.

I would love to hear about your experiences with reunion, and if you have found journaling to be useful in managing the feelings around adoption. It’s great to be able to share what’s in our toolkits.

What does it take to love an adoptee?

Do you have endless patience, nerves of steel and the ability to withstand constant attempts to push you away? Congratulations, you may apply to be the spouse* of an adoptee!

Being an adoptee is difficult, as I’ve outlined in my blogs about the adoptee fog and adoption triggers. Spare a thought, however, for the partner of an adoptee. Falling in love with an adoptee is no easy ride, as Anne Heffron hilariously relates in her book You Don’t Look Adopted. Most of us have more baggage than Heathrow Terminal 5 on the August Bank Holiday, yet what we crave most is unrelenting, unflinching, unconditional love. And reader, I think I’ve found it…

So what does it take to love and support an adoptee? When I asked my husband, he said: patience, nerves of steel and the ability to withstand frequent attempts to push you away. Despite all my defensive (and offensive) actions, which often come out of nowhere, he has yet to turn around and said, “Yes you’re right, you ARE unloveable and I’m walking out – just as you always thought I would.”

How to be an awesome partner to an adoptee:

1.    Never play games

After we met via friends on a night out, he texted me the next morning asking me out. No ‘four-day rule’, no games. He’s never made me wait for a text or an email and whenever we’re holding hands and I give his a squeeze, he always squeezes back. Not nearly always. Every. Single. Time.

Never underestimate how important trust is to an adoptee. I’ve found from experience that any sniff of lying or cheating and the relationship is dead in the water. Once trust is gone, it can never be rebuilt. Knowing in my bones that he loves me frees up my mind to focus on other things. My hyper vigilance can take a well-deserved break.

2.    Help me understand my triggers

My previous long-term relationship ended with my ex shouting, “Good luck finding someone to put up with your shit!” Oops. I don’t think either of us realised how much I was supressing that was leaking out in other ways. Now I think I know almost all of my triggers, so I can either avoid them or put strategies in place to cope with the fallout. This level of self-awareness is partly because my husband sits with me as I painstakingly sift though events, trace causes and find patterns.

3.    Accept my non-traditional family

Because of adoption and my subsequent reunions I have three families. I also have an additional strand due to contemporary adoption and kinship care. It’s complicated, and we’ve found that a whiteboard comes in very handy when explaining who everyone is and how they all link up!

When I told him my family was estranged from my sister, but I was powering on, I think he loved the idea of my compassion and loyalty. I know that since then he has despaired with my single-mindedness, bordering co-dependency and superhero complex where I just can’t give up on her. He’s urged me to look after myself and put my mental health and our children’s needs at the forefront, but at the same time, he’s travelled the width of the country for visits, two of which were in prisons, and helped me support her financially. And all of this with absolutely no judgement about her situation and choices.

4.    Encourage me to look after myself

Sometimes I just don’t think I’m worth looking after. In fact, most of the time. I fill up my diary, don’t go to bed early enough, and eat like a penniless student. This man doesn’t tell me off; he fills the fridge, runs me a bath, and places me in bed with a hot water bottle and some earplugs. 

5.     Support me through pregnancy and birth

After a traumatic first birth followed by post-natal depression, I was terrified when I became pregnant second time around. I think I was in the process of emerging from the fog, and suddenly – finally – realising how massive it was to have been given away as a baby and to have to bond with a new mother to ensure my survival.

Because I was so anxious, he agreed we could use our savings to hire an independent midwife to get me through the second pregnancy. It meant I didn’t have to start from scratch building trust and rapport with every new midwife, and could focus on staying calm and bonding with the baby.

6.    Help me emerge from the fog

What a journey it’s been coming out of the fog. I’ve been mentally quite absent as I’ve submerged myself in podcasts, books, blogs, conferences and a lot of social media. There have been tears of sorrow, howls of rage and very tentative baby steps into being authentic with those I love. He’s supported me through the delayed bereavement as I finally mourned the loss of my birth parents, extended families, bloodline and identity. He was there for me after one of the hardest conversations I had, where I told my mum that adoption had caused trauma even though I came straight from the hospital into her waiting arms.

7.    Indulge me when it comes to family resemblances

If you ask me, both my children have my eyes, ears, mouth and nose. They also walk and talk like me. My daughter even sleeps like me and wakes up like me. I am obsessive about this stuff; I love it so much. I clap my hands like a seal when I discover another expression or gesture we share, and never once has he said, “Oh no, actually I think that’s from my side of the family.” He lets me have every single one, because he knows how much it means to me.

8.     Be open-minded about what makes a family (clue: not blood)

My husband is from a traditional family but there is no judgement applied to my higgledy piggledy assortment of relatives. He earnestly learned my preferred labels and corrects others when necessary, so for example that’s first names for birth parents, and definitely no use of the words “real” or “natural”.

Yes, he criticises my family if they’ve been a bit rubbish, but no more and no less than he does his own. When we recently made our wills and had to consider guardians for our children, my siblings were considered as equally as his, despite them not being blood relations.

9.    Back me on parenting deal-breakers

Controlled crying and ‘crying it out’ were absolute no-nos for me when we had our babies. I just couldn’t stand the thought of them feeling abandoned for even one second. He supported me on this, despite pressure from family members and many, many (many!) months of broken sleep.

In all honesty, I know I have a problem setting boundaries because I am probably, deep down, afraid of rejection from my kids. I know this isn’t ideal for a parent. I am working on it every single day to be the best parent I can be. Amazing resources I have tried include (adoption-competent) therapy, books such as The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary and Brené Brown's wholehearted parenting course.

10. Rub my back until I fall asleep

Some nights (most nights), my mind is racing with all the things I’ve said to potentially offend people, or all the things I’ve forgotten to do to make sure people still love me. It’s a belt-and-braces approach to friendships and relationships.

This can range from sending an email to the school PTA, to forgetting to send a birthday card, to offending a next-door neighbour. I am hyper-hyper vigilant, and sometimes – like a baby – I need help calming down and soothing to sleep. If you find someone who wants to rub your back until you fall asleep for the next 50 years, marry them quick.

*Of course, much of this applies to parents and close friends of adoptees too. And one day, if I'm brave enough I'd like to explore what it means to be the child of an adoptee. 

Six things I've learned since coming out of the adoption fog

Wow it’s been a tough year. Coming out of the fog started slowly in my early thirties, then it accelerated massively when I had children. If you don’t know what the fog is, it’s a term used to describe how you feel about being adopted.

Here are six things I’ve learned since coming out of the fog:

1.    I’ve been lying all my life

But I didn’t know I was lying – at least not consciously. Every time I told someone I didn’t feel any different, or agreed with them that as I was adopted as a baby it “didn’t count”, I was lying.

If you had asked me at any point up until my early thirties how I felt about being adopted I would have said “absolutely fine!” then gone out and drank three bottles of wine and slept with a random.

Even post-reunion I was still in the fog. Yep. It’s pretty foggy in there.

2.    You can’t force anyone out of the fog

The first rule of adoptee fog club is: people only come out when they’re ready. You cannot force another adoptee out of the fog, however gently.

My own journey out of the adoption fog went something like this:

• have my own children

• read the Primal Wound

• start listening to Adoptees On and other podcasts

• join a local support group for adoptees

• wake up one day shouting “Holy sh*t!”

At the point everything hit home, I wanted to gather all other adoptees in my arms for a communal cry and a big cuddle. But it doesn’t work that way; people are only ready when they’re ready.

3.    I hold adoption trauma in my body

What are you talking about? What trauma? You were adopted as a baby! Even I subscribed to this attitude until recently, but now that I know differently I can literally feel it. And it’s always been there.

My adrenal system has always worked overtime but I didn’t know why or how to calm it down (apart from the aforementioned wine and bad sex). 

The burden of being adopted weighs heavy. I hold it in my heart, but also in my hips and my throat. It may never go away, but things that have worked for me include:

• yoga

• massage

• therapy

• meditation

Things still to try include:

• reiki

• EMDR

Anne Heffron has talked about the vagus nerve with some tips on what worked for her. I’d love to hear about what worked for you.

4.    Being adopted has made everything harder

As much as my close friends joke that I have ‘special needs’ because I’m adopted, I really do. From what I know about the way adoption is currently supported in the UK, adopted children do now have a protected status at school and can access additional support. (If this is not the case, please get in touch so I can amend my article!)

Because this wasn’t in place when I was growing up, I struggle to allow myself any additional concessions, when actually sometimes I need to give myself a break, or ask others to be more sensitive and/or supportive. I know there is a school of thought that says by being brought up this way I’m now more resilient, but I’m starting to disagree.

5.    Being adopted doesn’t get better with age

I wish with all my heart I could say it did, but I’ve found these ‘middle years’ so far the hardest. That’s not to say it just gets progressively worse, it definitely fluctuates and I hope I’m simply in a trough rather than a peak right now due to my recent emergence from the fog. Did I mention the fog? Man it’s good to be out, but I do sometimes miss that comfy blanket of ignorance.

I do however know that being an adoptee is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life, rather than something that eases off and eventually vanishes.

6. The adoptee community is awesome!

Oh how I wish I’d found them sooner. But better late than never. The online adoptee community is fantastic, so supportive of one another and encouraging us in our baby steps to speak out and cope with the daily strains of adoption, search and reunion, etc. Thank you so much to you all.

And the support group I attend has been so powerful for me in my journey. There are adoptees from many walks of life, with different stories to tell but one fundamental thing in common. I look into their faces and I see acknowledgment of the primal wound, and that is something I didn’t know I needed so badly. I heartily recommend other adoptees to seek out an adoption support group near you, or start one of your own!

There are some people doing incredible work both online and IRL including:

Adoptees On

Lost Daughters

Out of the Fog podcast

Six-word adoption memoir project

The Open Nest

Anne Heffron's blog and book You Don't Look Adopted

I Am Adopted.net