My mother was an adoptee - she spent all her life aching to see her mother.
By anonymous on 27/03/2007
My mother was an adoptee - she spent all her life aching to see her mother. All my growing up years I had to live around adoption which no child can understand. A childless couple would not order another person's limb if they lost an arm or leg. Trust me, if people really love children, then help parents keep their kids, for the child's sake. The adult adoptee rarely gets past adolescence without psychological problems - do read ''Adoptee Trauma'' by Heather Carlini, and, of course, ''The Primal Wound'' by Nancy Verrier before making your decision on what to do with the baby you are having but ''don't want''.
My grandmother lost 4 children to the state in Britain. All were split up, there was no reunion, and none went home. Mother was the youngest of the four who she did not know existed until she was 47 years old. Why did she have to lose her siblings just because her parents' marriage broke up? Please, please consider that your baby is going to grow up and never know its older siblings. I think it cruel that brothers and sisters are allowed to grow up apart - how will they feel if there's an accidental meet up? Every day you will think of the baby lost to adoption - trust me, you will. Every day the adoptee will search in their minds as to who they look like. Every day the older siblings will be wondering where their lost family member went to - every day is a long time.
My friend is a male adoptee. Three years ago he decided to search for his mother. She won't tell him anything of his father which is sad as he has a medical condition and needed surgery in the past. I worry about him, but his real mother just seems to worry about the embarrassment of her first born that she kept a secret from her husband of 40 years and the subsequent children she had when she married a year after giving up her first born for adoption. She was persuaded by social workers that her baby needed material things the real mother could not give her son. How wrong they were. Her son was adopted by a TB survivor, and the adoptive parents were too engrossed in sickness to care for the baby they took for adoption.
I don't know of any happy adoption stories. I have 3 children. My middle daughter is adopted. She found her birth family as soon as she could. I never had a problem with that. I wish I could say that it worked out, but it did not. Her birth father sent her evil worded text messages, and her mother robbed her. She moved in with her birth father's sister and became pregnant with a birth cousin - genetic sexual attraction is a fact that no one wants to talk too much about. They only want to talk about the glossy picture of adoption - babies and stuff.
It's worth googling ''adopted people in prison'' - spare a thought for them. They did not ask to be born, and gave some people the chance to be parents, then the psychological problems kicked in. The crimes some of the adopted people are serving time are horrendous, but they did not terrorise themselves.
Some men have problems with women - who is their real mother after all? I know that some of the adopted men have killed their adopters, some went on to be sex offenders, some believing that their mothers were gutter females, and that they, the adopted babies, were in great need of being rescued from such working class women. The negative images of women sprang up and so did relationship difficulties. Don't take my word for this; look on the adopted person in prison website.
Like I say, my mother found it difficult to love any of her children. She was always psychologically searching for her own mother and who could blame her? It's no good anyone saying that the characteristics of adoption have changed as the older adoptees are still left in limbo having suffered under the old practices. As a consequence I have had difficulties with motherhood, and difficulties with relationships - the legacy does not go away. In fact, a birth cousin I found some years ago got married a few months ago, and she put me on a table at the reception with her next door neighbour. The family she was lucky enough to grow up with all sat on family tables, of course. The cruelty gets easier, but that does not excuse it in the first place. Apart from being born, what did I do wrong? Yes, it's been a lonely and not very good life and the main blame factor is adoption, not that I can order a different past, but this is mine so far. I'm almost 53.
Editor’s note: Thanks for writing in with your story. The sad thing I notice is that you seem to feel your life is lived by your past – and not just by your own past but your mother’s and grandmother’s too. Because of this, it sounds as if you feel that adoption is to blame for all the pain in your own life. None of us can change the past, but the one thing we can do is change how we respond to it. It’s how we choose to relate to our pasts that is the key. If you have not sought counselling for yourself, then perhaps it’s a good time to consider it and break the chain of pain that is being perpetuated in your family, for your sake and for the sake of those in your family’s future.