This is an edit of something I originally wrote back in 2013 after an interaction with my mom’s cousin, Warren. I wanted to share it again (with some tweaks) because I heard from my mom last night that Warren passed away. I want to honor his contribution to my extended family’s idea of adoption. I’m thankful that before we ever considered adoption, there was a concept of adoption in my family that involved the understanding that sometimes a woman isn’t in a position to parent and her child can be a loved and valued member of another family, just the same as someone biologically born into that family.
I believe adoptees. I believe them all. The ones who are hurt. The ones who feel rejected. The ones who say they aren’t curious about their bio family. The ones who wish they hadn’t been adopted. The ones who feel they were always meant to be in the families that raised them. I have learned that each adoptee’s feelings about adoption are created by a very complex interaction of the circumstances of their adoption, the supportiveness and love of their adoptive family, how adoption was explained to them, their beliefs about God’s sovereignty, the facts about their bio family, and their own personality.
It’s not that someone has “right” beliefs about adoption and somebody has “wrong” beliefs about adoption, it’s that each of us has a view of adoption that is nearly impossible to distinguish from our experience of adoption. I realize that I am an advocate for adoption because it has been a really beautiful thing in my life (as an adoptive parent), but I also realize my kids may have very different feelings about it. One may be thankful while another is resentful. I can do my best to love them and help them understand adoption in positive ways, but ultimately their feelings belong to them. I want to be respectful of however they come to feel about their adoptions even if I disagree. Of course, I will always speak truth to them about their adoptions, which I hope will help, but how they feel about that truth isn’t up to me.
I spend a lot of time in the online adoption community, especially adoptee-lead groups. I have learned a tremendous amount in those spaces. They have shaped the way I talk about adoption, the way I understand the potential struggles of my kids, and they help me have realistic expectations. They are an invaluable resource and I’m thankful for the opportunity I have to learn from adoptees– an opportunity that didn’t exist for the generations parenting adoptees before now.
But sometimes I have to take a break.
I know I need to take that break when I start looking at my kids as time bombs. I imagine it won’t be much longer until they hate me, or hate adoption or disown us in favor of people who look like them or share their DNA. I feel a sense of fear and think about proactively detaching myself so I won’t be as hurt when they inevitably reject me. Objectively, I know that response doesn’t help anyone. I need to continue to invest in my kids and I love them so very deeply, there’s no way I won’t be hurt if they do eventually reject me. And I want to make that outcome as unlikely as possible. I have to, want to, get to love them, even when that comes with risks.
Part of taking that break for me is also connecting with adult adoptees who are actually involved in my life and the lives of my kids. These are the people who have been honest with me about their reality– the good and the hard. The bottomline from each of them is that they are deeply connected to their adoptive families. They are not the worst case scenarios I imagine. I can see how their families worked to create that connection and I learn so much when we talk about their experiences.
Yesterday I was able to visit with a relative of mine. He’s my mom’s cousin and joined her extended family through adoption as an infant. He’s in his 70s and his adoption was handled much like all adoptions were handled back then—nobody talked about it. In fact, he wasn’t told of his adoption for quite a long time while all the extended family members knew and just didn’t discuss it in front of him. Not AT ALL how anyone would recommend you handle things in today’s adoption world.
So yesterday I introduced him to my children for the first time. I wasn’t sure if he’d be comfortable talking about his own experience of adoption since he is from a generation where those things are kept private, but he didn’t shy away from it a bit. When he met Josh (my six-year-old) he said to him, “Did you know we’re very special people? We’re the same in a special way. We’re both adopted. And we were both adopted into the best family in the world. This really is the greatest family. And do you know why else we’re special? Because somebody wanted us.”
I was speechless.
I do so much reading about adoption. I do so much prep work for the days when my kids may reject me or may feel anger about the choices made for their wellbeing that they couldn’t control. I have been so buried in research and articles and blogs that I forgot there was another way to look at this.
“Because somebody wanted us.”
There are two distinct parts to the adoption journey. Somebody had to say they weren’t in a position to parent. Somebody else had to say they wanted to parent that child. In a room full of my relatives that were created by accident or a parental plan for pregnancy, this cousin wanted to draw the distinction that the commonality between him and my children through adoption was that they were WANTED in a special way. They are wanted specifically for who they are. When you say “yes” to adopting a child, you are expressing your desire and commitment to love that person, much the same way as you do in a marriage. It isn’t a commitment to a pregnancy process or a commitment to care for a “surprise” blessing, it is a commitment to this specific child you are meeting for the first time in that hospital room or social worker’s office or orphanage. You are expressing your “want” with every document and homestudy update and fingerprint and reference letter.
My kids will have a choice to make. They can look at their adoption trauma and focus on what they have lost and how they feel abandoned or they can look at how wanted they were. Or most likely, they may have to hold those ideas in tension. We prayed daily for them to be permanent parts of our family from the first moments we knew that was possible. My children never spent a day “unwanted” and I hope they are able to focus on that reality. But if they aren’t, I have to believe them. Their personal experience of adoption and how they interpret that experience is what matters. A statistical analysis won’t tell me what’s going on in their hearts and all the research in the world can’t predict the outcomes for my kids. And when I look at the adult adoptees in my life, I am surrounded by people who love, value and are deeply bonded to their adoptive families. Who have seemed to internalize this idea that “somebody wanted us.” I pray my kids will be able to see that reality, too.