Posted by 윤선 in Babies, adoption, identity, life, my birth parents | 11 Comments
I am an Angry Adoptee. YOU Get Over It.
It is no secret that I harbour some relatively angsty feelings towards my biological mother. For most of my life, that’s “all” she’s ever been to me – “just” the person who gave birth to me. Furthermore, that’s what I was always told – that I was born for someone other than her. In even considering starting a search for her, I’m aware that I need to overcome any angry feelings I may have toward her. And I’m trying. In the past few weeks I’ve been reading a few biological mothers’ blogs, in order to try and understand their POVs and to understand the “pain” that my mother may have experienced. For me, it’s always been easier to believe my biological mother had/has no feelings toward me – that she gave me up, turned her back on me and never looked back. And part of me hates her for that – for taking away the simple, basic human need of a mother’s love/warmth/whatever right from the very start of my life. Regardless of what her situation in life may have been in 1983, I’ve always still felt that I was rejected.
In reading some biological mothers’ blogs, I was shocked to see the anger turned back on us adoptees. In some ways, this angered me even further. However, in reading these mothers’ past histories and stories, it’s made me understand just a little bit of what my mother could have been going through when I was born. Does that mean I hate her less? I’m not sure. In my mind, still, no matter what her situation in life was, I still feel rejected by her, and I’m not sure whether anything will really make up for that.
People often associate us adoptees with being angry and emo. Lots of people seem to think/say: “gosh, just get over it and be ‘thankful’ for what you have now”. This makes me even more angry, though! Although I wouldn’t say I’m ONLY angry in regards to my adoption, I’d still say I have some angst over it. And here’s why…
One biological mother said very eloquently:
And yet, on the other end, she is diminishing everything she is as a human being. Denying, as was done to her while pregnant, her own qualities and abilities. She places herself in a position of being “less than” for her own child, her own flesh and blood. Not being good enough, smart enough, educated enough, right enough to deserve to be a mother. Every time she declares that the adoptive parents are better than her for her child, she lowers herself to a level she doesn’t belong, or deserve.
In reading biological mothers’ blogs, it never really occurred to me that my biological mother was a simple, basic human need that I as a baby probably needed. In thinking about that, I think to her: ‘how dare you take that from me. I enter the world, and you take away the first and foremost thing I needed’. Why shouldn’t I be angry about that?
Adoptees grow up as children stuck between worlds ruled by adults and “adult decisions”. And being adopted means you’re stuck between two completely opposing “forces”. In reading blogs by both biological mothers and adoptive mothers, I have come to think: ‘no wonder it’s so hard for us to grow up stable! We’re stuck between opposing beliefs, thoughts, emotions…’. On one side, we have the adoptive parents: the adoptive parents and their happiness for becoming parents. To them, we’re like a gift. A miracle. An answer to their other reasons for perhaps not being able to bear biological children of their own. In “getting” us, they can live the lives they’ve been wanting! Yay! For them, all is good. Yet on the other hand, there are the biological mothers out there who seemingly never get over the loss of their child. Until recently, it had never really occurred to me – the negative and lasting effects adoption has on them. That even though one side is all happy, the other side is grieving, becoming depressed and thinking about the child they lost 24/7:
She takes the punishment of her sins, her mistakes. Allows herself and others to see her as “undeserving” of her child because of her failures while casting a glowing light to that couple who did everything right and so deserves the “gift” of her son or daughter.
She was viewed as a failure as a mother before ever being allowed to try and is then encouraged to acknowledge this and praise it. And if she does . . . if she repeats the script, says what is expected, continues to deny her own worth and ability to parent her child while giving all the glory to the couple who had what she believed she could not offer, she is regarded as a saint. Respected for her selfless act. Hailed as a hero. Given love and praise by others in the adoption world for being so brave and wonderful.
As long as she continues to deny her own self worth and proclaims such a traumatic loss was worth it, she remains on the pedestal she was so methodically placed on while she was pregnant.
Where does that leave the adoptee? What are we left to believe about ourselves? How are we meant to feel about ourselves? Our birth parents? Our adoptive parents? The world…? How do we reconcile the huge myriad of emotions sweeping through the adoption triad? How is a child supposed to bear the burden of the world of adult emotions? Adoptive parents may like to believe that we, as young children, aren’t aware of these things. But we are – more than anyone could understand. We are aware that we were rejected by one side (even though they might be grieving and yearning for us. Who knows???), but we’re loved by another: we may not have been “good enough” for one side, but “we’ll do” on another. I say “we’ll do”, because for many adoptive parents, adopting was their second choice – they “tried to have their own children, but couldn’t”, so turned to adoption instead. So we are loved… but we were still second choice. And we were just something to get rid of by our birth parents.
…and people tell us not to be angry… to “get over it”… to “be grateful”.
In taking on the emotions, the histories, the stories of the adults around us… where’s the space for us to simply… grow up? To grow up to be adults, to make our own decisions… to be stable? We’re constantly told to think about the others’ sides. But… what about us? Is that selfish to ask people to think about what it’s like to be between two very opposite sides/worlds?
…but I should just get over that, right?
In ending this post, I will quote The Simpsons – something my husband does a lot:
Won’t someone please think of the children?!
Related posts:
Damn.
This is one freaking good post.
I’m with Mei-Ling. There’s hardly a thing I can say because this is so well-written.
I’ve wondered before if my biological mother thinks about me every day, or if I come up less frequently in her thoughts. I’d prefer that I come up less frequently in the event that it’s a painful memory for her (which it probably is?).
i guess I’m blissfully ignorant or naive because I don’t really care or think about the fact that I was a “second choice”. In fact, I think that for me, it would be really counter-productive to dwell on these negative thoughts. It’s not as if I could go back and change the circumstances of my adoption, so constantly reminding myself that I was “rejected” by one set of parents and taken on as a second choice by another would just depress me. I don’t see it this way at all.
Someone asked me once if it was weird thinking that my adoptive parents wouldn’t be my parents if they could have children on their own, but honestly, I don’t really care. I could just as easily ask myself, “Is it weird to think that I could have been aborted as a fetus and never existed at all?”
Bottom line: I guess I’m not an angry adoptee, but I’m trying to figure out why some people are.
Wow! This was very powerful and moving and I find myself struggling with how to respond to you.
I hope you know, I never intended for this post to hurt you or any other adoptee. Or make you feel as if your emotions and experience don’t count.
I have a hard time saying I “understand” how you are feeling, because in reality, I don’t. I haven’t walked in your shoes and I haven’t lived what you have. The closest I have to trying to understand is stories of you and other adoptees and my oldest son’s experience.
But with that there are things I do know. I know adoptees have every right to be angry, to feel stuck in the middle of all of this. To wonder where their feelings and experience are important when so many from both sides have their own and can, very often, expect an adoptee to consider their feelings, make a choice between sides, and completely disregard how much pain and hurt we cause by such actions.
And I say we because I know I’m not innocent of any of it either.
I also know that when others say, “you should just be thankful” or “you should just be happy” they are, in reality, denying you the right to your feelings. Trying to silence you instead of allowing you the right to speak out about how you feel.
So becoming even more angered by that makes complete sense. How could it not when it feels as if everything you are feeling is being so quickly brushed aside and disregarded as unimportant.
I don’t know if there is anything I can say to help you, though I wish there was. But I do hope you will know that speaking out like you do on your blog does make a difference. For me, in your post here, it makes me aware that all too often adoptees are caught up in the middle and expected to just “deal with” the many varying emotions that come at them from both sides.
Umm….wow!!! You said it all and you said it well. Hope you don’t mind if this get shared. I don’t remember the last time I saw such a good explanation that wraps it all up neatly like this one does. Fantastic!
Thanks everyone for the comments.
Mica: I don’t really consider myself an “angry” adoptee. Although I have been at times, I simply wanted to put down WHY adoptees often feel angry/frustrated. And I wouldn’t say I “dwell” on myself being a second choice. But it is something that’s always been at the back of my mind, and something that I have found rather difficult to comprehend.
Cassi: I don’t expect people to UNDERSTAND what adoptees go through, per se. I’ve explained all this stuff to my husband millions of times, and I’VE come to understand that HE’LL never UNDERSTAND things I’ve gone through/felt, but it simply means a lot to me knowing that he CARES somewhat, and HAS thought about how I might be feeling, despite the fact that he’ll never actually understand. This is a huge generalisation, but after reading the blogs of quite a few adoptive parents, I generally feel that many of them still don’t REALLY think enough about how their children are feeling. They SAY they do, but I’m a great believer in actions speak louder than words, and although they say they think about how their adopted children feel, I often read their blogs and think ‘what are you doing about it?’. Sometimes I think many of them need to get over their happiness about having a child in their lives and think more about the triangle they’ve gotten themselves involved in.
LChica: I don’t mind if this post gets shared.^^ I wouldn’t have posted it if I minded!^^
I have never understood the abortion comment:
“At least my mother never aborted me! I’m grateful on that basis!”
So shouldn’t biologically-related kids be thanking the gods above that their mothers did not abort them? Or is this abortion issue predicated on the simple statement that the person was adopted?
I mean, some adoptees are so ready to get down on their knees and proclaim how grateful they are for being saved from abortion, but how do they KNOW their mothers considered abortion?
This baffles me in so, so many ways.
Mei-Ling: I guess it’s because “most” biological children weren’t dreaded when they were conceived. That’s a huge generalisation, but I guess it’s because in our instance, our birth mothers probably they felt they only had a choice between adoption and abortion – keeping us probably wasn’t even an option…
[I guess it’s because “most” biological children weren’t dreaded when they were conceived.]
One cannot make the claim their very existence was dreaded from birth simply on the basis of adoption.
Adoption does not change the ‘natural’ content of child development biology books about birth.
I am friends with an adoptee. When I asked her if she had any lasting “issues” with it, she denied them. However, her comments and statements after that showed me that she struggles all the time. I said all of the wrong things to her and I can’t stop thinking about it. Please know, I didn’t tell her to be grateful and to get over it. That was honestly not on my mind, but I am embarrassed by what I did say. Thanks for teaching the ignorant people.
Brilliant.