Through most of my adopted life I thought that all my difficulties were rooted in the single issue of being an adoptee. Therapy helped me to uncover the aspects of adoption that created the insecurity, the anxiety and the people-pleasing strategies I’d used in a subconscious bid to stay safe. All done I thought! ‘I get it – adoption is childhood attachment trauma, I understand – we’re all done here……onwards and upwards!’

Except……..it wasn’t all done at all. I know now that the adoption itself does indeed create a set of painful wounds that adoptees share and may come to recognise as a common ground.

We come to understand:

• The loss and grief that being separated from a birth mother generates.

• The fractured identity.

• The sense of not really belonging to our family because we can’t see ourselves in any of the faces around us.

• Genetic differences.

• The messages we received and the messages we didn’t receive - and what our younger self made of those messages in the form of beliefs about our self and our relinquishment.

• The damage to self-perception and our sense of secure attachment.

• The impact on relationships of all kinds.

And many more nuanced impacts that we could add to this list.

However – I know several adoptees who seem to be largely OK with being adopted, who seem to have been less disrupted by the adaption that can come with adoption.

On further enquiry, these less disrupted adoptees report:

• Very loving parents who were consistently affectionate and warm.

• An openness to conversations around their adoption so adoption didn’t become a taboo subject.

• Parental attunement to emotions and a willingness to understand feelings about adoption.

• The delivery of enough reassuring messages and behaviours to develop a sense secure attachment.

• Good enough parental management of teenage turbulence to sustain a loving, family connection.

These were just a few aspects of growing up adopted that had allowed the ‘OK adoptees’ to feel less disrupted by adoption than some of us have, and maybe still do.

The adoptees I work with and talk with, generally don’t have that experience – there wasn’t ENOUGH attuned, loving or consistent parenting to outweigh the wounds. There weren’t ENOUGH loving behaviours or demonstrations of safety and security to quell anxieties and make us feel that we belonged. There weren’t ENOUGH open conversations about adoption, feelings or questions so identity was fractured and ephemeral.

Maybe we:

• Were transracially adopted – so obviously ‘didn’t belong’.

• Were adopted from another country or culture so felt a bigger sense of not belonging.

• Were a lonely, only child adoptee.

• Were adopted into a mix of adopted and biological children and felt a difference.

• Experienced ambivalent attachment with distant, withdrawn or stern parents.

• Had parents who were not loving or affectionate and did not discuss feelings.

• Experienced a Father Wound or Mother Wound on top of adoption.

• Experienced parental conflicts, divorce, death, addictions, abuse, violence, indifference, unpredictable behaviours, narcissism or other further adverse experiences.

• Were just different and felt like we didn’t belong.

• Any number of other additional difficulties that were heightened by being adopted and have a big impact beyond the original adoption wound.

Naturally – children who grew up with their biological families can experience some of the above, but my personal feeling is that being adopted makes these further, additional issues heavier, more impactful and more difficult.

My feeling is that if we want to heal so that we can grow into our best selves, we need to tease out the painful feelings so we can distinguish which bits are about being adopted and which bits are about something else. Once we’ve identified which difficult feelings come from which source, we can access the right repair tools and start our journey of positive growth. I share this because for many years I laid all the blame for my problems on being adopted until I explored ‘The Father Wound’ and understood more accurately why my relationships were so extra tricky.

And still, despite it all – my true self – as she has come to be revealed is generally rather happy, delighted by the simple things and content ….or maybe that’s just getting old!

Photo by Erik Dungan on Unsplash

You can meet Gilli at the How To Be Adopted online mini-retreat on Jan 20th 2024.