Every year there are over 100,000 adoptions in the United States alone. While this is clearly a common way that families grow, there are a lot of misconceptions and assumptions about the experience of adoptees. As a way to celebrate National Adoption Month, and as an adoptee myself, I want to clear some of those up.
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Misconceptions About Adoptions
To say my life was changed after I was adopted would be an understatement. I was suddenly the center of attention. To my delight, I was held all the time, ate all kinds of food, had my own toys, my own bed, and I felt comfort for the first time. Little me was thrilled and truly embraced this new life. My mom always said that I owned Second Avenue when I was little. I knew all of the shop owners and would almost strut my way down the street. People would come and give me small gifts and snacks. I loved the attention!
When I think back, I wonder how much of that generosity was out of pity. While ultimately I embraced this new life, as I got older, the misconceptions and assumptions of others did take a toll. Let’s dive into what those challenges can look like for other adoptees and the potential impact on mental and emotional well-being.
While probably not meant to be malicious, these are a few of the things I’ve heard people assume about me when they discover I was adopted.
adoption and mental health story
What matters is the excitement of raising a child, teaching them right from wrong, balancing out inherited impulsivity with taught patience andstillsupporting your child when that impulsivity —yourimpulsivity — shines through. Buying them hair dye when they want to bleach their beautiful brown hair over the bathroom sink, and then taking them to the salon when it goes terribly wrong. Encouraging them to play basketball even though they’re short and cheering them on from the sidelines at every game. What matters is seeing your child learn and grow into the person that you helped and encouraged in the right direction; the child thatyounurtured.
That’s the job of a parent — regardless of what traits a child inherits or doesn’t, whether the child is adopted or birthed from your own hips — they deserve the same messy, joyful, imperfect, and loving parenting.
“Children who are adopted are extremely traumatized and can never attach properly, they’ll have abandonment issues their entire life.”
I won’t joke about this, though — it was not easy to get to this point.
My goal right now is to dispel myths and clear up common misconceptions about adoptees. This is one of those assumptions that has some truth to it. I have experienced a lot of attachment trauma on both a subconscious and conscious level. Throughout my life I’ve always craved stability and consistency. It could have been the frequency that I saw my dad after my parents divorced, the way I approached friendships, or the amount of food that I had access to. I needed toknow,I needed to be able topredicton some level, what would happen next.
I approach life with measured practicality and logic rather than with emotion and impulsivity. I never make big decisions without thinking through every possible outcome, every pro and con. I always try to think 10 steps ahead to ensure that I know what my future will hold. I never run, always walk, looking down at the ground — as far as I can see — before taking a step forward.
Each Story is Unique
Reading this from an outsider’s perspective, it might be easy to see that this was tied to my adoption, that my patterns and calculations were all part of a reaction formation to not knowing what would happen after I was dropped off on those damp steps in the dark of night many years prior. I always fought against assumptions, my goal always to disprove them.
It took years and a lot of deep self-reflection to understand that I did and still do have some intense trauma around being abandoned that night. That physical connection was severed and it left a hole deep in my core. This pit of a feeling was almost like a shadow over my big life experiences and it influenced my actions in ways I never realized; at one point I feared the shadow and the way it had control over my life.
Nora in crib
With time, care, patience and a lot of help from mytherapist, I don’t fear the shadow anymore. I learned to be thankful for it. I’ve learned to turn my trauma and pain into something positive. My practicality, logic, and planning used to hold me back; they would prevent me from ever taking action for fear of rejection. I believed they helped me avoid making the wrong choice or influencing the future in the wrong way, but in some ways these traits just stopped me in my tracks.
While I set out today with a goal to clear up some of the misconceptions and assumptions around adoption, I also think it’s important to remember that — while adoptees might have very similar life experiences in common — they each have unique stories.
Often, life is easier if you can categorize people. The brain absorbs so much on a daily basis, it wants to organize and systematize, and find commonalities between different pieces of information so it can file everything neatly away. The downside to this easy categorization is people then end up pathologizing an experience. And really, what good does that do us? Always challenge the way you see people, question the sources from which you draw information, and resist the instinct to put people into a box.
I am an international adoptee who fully embraces my adoption as part of my identity. At times I put too much weight on that experience and at other times it’s faded too far into the background.
I choose to share my story and experiences but others might not. I choose to study how I fit into the world, while others might not. I choose to self-reflect and dive into therapy to work through my trauma and pain, but others might not. My life is both incredibly unique and multifaceted, but I believe there are aspects of human experience that everyone can understand and where we all find commonality. I do not claim to represent the thoughts and lives of other adoptees around the world. Each of them has their own story and set of experiences. If you ask, nicely of course, they may choose to share them (or they may not); if they do, be sure that you are ready to listen with open ears and a clear mind.
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