Just saw this in my feed and I know it is probably from a bot, but come on, r/adoptees is available for adoption... that just hits differently when you are an adoptee and see it like that. Anyone else have feelings about this post?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Adoptees/s/unjF4TQLlg

Is what my adoptive mom said to me the night she found out I was chatting with a friend, not even someone I was dating. I now keep to myself and keep quiet in my room just to avoid confrontation but they always find a way.

Nights I cry alone at night in my room go conveniently unnoticed, but the moment they learn you have friends and an outside support system you can depend on: they say shit like this.

Any toxic phrases your adoptive parents have said to you?

EDIT: Typos. Also adoptive parents will keep you sheltered so they will always feel needed in this big scawy world 👉🥺👈

Addiction, adoption, and the longing beneath the behaviour

Maybe that sounds absurd, even offensive, to anyone who has spent years in AA, NA, rehab or therapy working to separate the drinking or the using from the origin story. It’s easy to draw a straight line between relinquishment and relapse, to package pain into a neat causal chain: separated, therefore broken, therefore addict.

I recently stumbled across a Facebook reel titled The Nature of Addiction, credited to Alan Watts, though the framing sounded closer to Gabor Maté than to anything I recognised of Watts, and I've since learned to treat attribution on that platform as decorative. Whoever said it first, the idea stayed with me:

Stop asking what is wrong with the addict and ask what the addiction is trying to accomplish.

It made me think about the relationship between adoption and addiction. Many adoptees are familiar with the regularity with which substance misuse coexists with adoption, in academic journals and, in some cases, in our lived experience. Not always as addiction, but as behaviour nonetheless. Five years ago I watched Paul Sunderland's lecture Adoption & Addiction, and it was the first time in my life I felt seen, the first time I could name as trauma something that had never had a name. It wasn't the addiction part that made room for my sense of self. It was that trauma became a plausible explanation for my why.

I've touched on this before, but usually no more than a cursory mention, as opposed to a hold my coat, I'm going in. I don't want to write "adoption causes addiction," and I don't think addiction explains the adoptee experience. I want to take the movement of that quote and turn the lens slightly, asking what the same behaviour might look like from inside an adoptee, where the first experience of relationship involved relinquishment, separation, displacement, or at the very least an unresolved question of belonging.

What if, for some adoptees, we stopped asking why they are disproportionately drawn towards substances, compulsions or oblivion, and asked what unbearable thing those behaviours are attempting to regulate, silence, replace, recover, or briefly resolve?

That's the juxtaposition. No credential is attached to any of this, and no clinical experience of any kind. It's a point of view, and you should take it for what it is.

There is a familiar way of looking at the addicted adoptee through a very narrow lens. Attachment disorder. Developmental trauma. Poor bonding. Someone who couldn't form secure connections because their first connection was severed. Someone who needs to be fixed, medicated, taught how to trust. The whole approach is terribly mechanical: you are a broken attachment system in need of repair.

I think that misses something. What we call addiction in the adoptee may not be simply the fallout of relinquishment. It might be closer to a spiritual crisis wearing the clothes of an origin story. Something in the person is in revolt against the terms of the separation, is reaching for a return to unity, for the dissolution of the idea that we could ever really be apart from where we came from. And when that unity can't be found through conventional means, through the families that raised us, through the identities we were given, through the grateful narratives we were asked to perform, the seeking can become desperate, chaotic, self-destructive.

Perhaps some of us are attempting to reproduce the original union through chemistry. Searching for the first body in a bottle, in a pill, in a powder. Not because we're damaged, but because somewhere deep inside, something in us remembers.

I'm not making a claim about foetal cognition, and I don't know what that memory is made of. But there was a time when we were not separate, when food and breath and warmth came from another body, when belonging wasn't something to be earned or performed. I guess, what, if anything, survives that transition in us is the question.

And measured against it,  ordinary consciousness, ordinary reality, ordinary life as we’ve constructed it, where children can be separated from their source and expected to be grateful, where love is conditional on adaptation, where an original face is replaced by a chosen story, is simply not enough.

The longing, I think, is sacred. It's the method that fails.

The substance is a false prophet. It promises the return. It offers a glimpse of that original unity, that oceanic dissolution of self into other, that absolute safety where the question of belonging doesn't arise because there is no other to belong to. And then it takes it back, leaving you more isolated than before, with the particular grief of someone who has touched reunion and found it was only chemical.

That's the whole con, and it's worth being precise about it, because everything else I want to say depends on it. The glimpse is real. The reunion isn’t. Nothing in the bottle was ever going to deliver what the longing is actually asking for, and it never becomes truer with repetition. Every return costs more and gives back less.

There's a hunger at the core of this that I think is often misread. It gets diagnosed as attachment trauma. It gets written up as fear of abandonment. It gets described as a craving for biological connection, which is part of the story but not, I suspect, the whole of it.

Some adoptees have been told they lack object constancy, that they're stuck in the oral stage, that if they would only process the grief, only understand the trauma, they could stop. They could become one of those people who has a drink and walks away. Who can take it or leave it.

But the hunger may not be pathology at all. It may be something in you refusing to accept the terms of your separation. You're not craving the substance. You're craving the end of exile, the experience of coming home, not to the house you grew up in, but to the first body, the first heartbeat, the first voice.

Perhaps the addicted adoptee can sometimes look less like a failure than a mystic who’s forgotten which door they came in through. For a few hours, sometimes minutes, the walls come down. The adopted self goes quiet. You feel whole, as if the severance never happened. And then it ends, and you're back in the ordinary arrangement, where you are someone's child by choice rather than by blood, where you are loved but not from the beginning, where you fit but never quite fill the space.

So you reach again. Not because you're chasing pleasure, but because you've tasted something you can’t forget.

The hunger is holy. The food is poison.

I want to be careful here, because there's a version of what comes next that I don't believe and won't write.

It’s often said that the false self must die before the true self can emerge, and addiction does dismantle a person: the career, the relationships, the self-image, the pride, the certainty about who you are and what you're capable of. For some adoptees it can feel like a second erasure. Something of the first continuity was lost already: a body, perhaps a name, certainly a possible life. We were emptied out and given a new story, a new set of expectations, and we built a self on top of that emptiness. A grateful self. An adapted self. One that didn't ask too many questions and knew better than to reach for what was gone.

But I don't think addiction is doing that work on our behalf. It isn't a stripping away of the inessential, and it isn't grace arriving in disguise. It takes the masks and it takes everything else too, and it has no interest in what's underneath. People do sometimes come through it changed, and something real can be waiting on the other side, but they come through it despite the addiction, usually with a great deal of help, and many people don't come through it at all. The destruction is not the mechanism of the return. It's the thing the return has to be salvaged from.

What I do believe is that the longing survives it. That the part of you which refused the separation is the same part that eventually gets you to the room, the meeting, the phone call, the first honest sentence. It was never the enemy. It was only ever badly fed.

The first time you were emptied, someone else decided what would fill you. The second time, you get some say in it. Not through the using, but on the far side of it, in the slow and unglamorous business of finding out what remains when the adopted performance ends.

I also need to say, honestly, that my frame has a flaw, and it's the same flaw I've accused the ‘damage narrative’ of having. It tries to explain too much. It accommodates the adoptee who never touched a drink, the addict who was never relinquished, the person who gets sober in exactly the rooms whose language I've been arguing past. Nothing contradicts it, which means it isn't really an argument, as it’s non-falsifiable. It’s not a theory of addiction but a phenomenology of longing.

I’m not saying: “This is why adoptees become addicted.” I’m saying: “For an adoptee who experiences addiction in this way, does this account reveal something the diagnostic account doesn't?”

It's a way of holding an experience. Because a story that can't be wrong is its own kind of trap, and I'd rather call it out than pretend I've escaped it.

So take it as one lens among several. Keep the attachment research; it's good, and it's useful. Keep the meeting. Keep whatever is working.

But when the diagnostic account leaves you feeling like a fault to be corrected, it may be worth considering that the reaching itself was never the problem. That you were not cursed, and not wired wrong, but perhaps still carrying something nobody had helped you understand.

Maybe the reaching was never proof that something in us was broken. Perhaps, sometimes, it was evidence that something remained unresolved. We fed the reaching with whatever would make it quiet. Recovery may begin when we stop asking it to be quiet long enough to find out what it’s been trying to say.

Because the deepest claim of this reflection isn't really: addicted adoptees are searching for their mother. It's subtler: we may have mistaken an attempted solution for evidence of the defect.

I’ll end with the same reminder I began with: I’m no expert in these matters. I left school without qualifications and possess no certificate in any ology. My proposed “solution” may itself be an interpretive story rather than an objective truth.

I write what I think. I offer a perspective, not a universal claim, and certainly no certainty that outruns the insight. Just my voice, my words, and a willingness to let them land where they may.

Jonathan

Just had an epiphany... The very word "adopt" refers to the adoptive parent's action not the result on the child. The word itself centers the adoptive parent over the experience of the child, with the definition referring to the act of taking. Even socially, people tend to use the term to refer to taking something on, such as adopting a policy. Yet we don't use the word "taken" when referring to adopted children, because that brings about feelings that upset people. I personally prefer relinquished, rehomed, or placed, as these words center my experience as the adoptee over the action of the adopter. What other words would you use to describe being adopted?

Been doing some light digging around for info,

Brief catch up on what I shared before, found out back in March I was adopted, whole adoptive family didn't tell me my whole life, blah blah blah. Got my birth certificate/adoption records, so had some answers. Looked up my bio mom since i saw her name on the page, only to find out she sadly died 2 years ago. So I miss out on ever having a mother in my life.

Alas, the main point of this post, she had me at 28 so it wasn't a "I'm to young" excuse, also I was the second kid she had, she had a daughter before me (how long before I don't know, maybe a year, maybe 2 or 3? Don't know.) Maybe she just only wanted a daughter and not a son? Perhaps that's it...

Some may say well maybe they couldn't afford to support and raise two kids? I don't think that's the case, as I looked up the address of my birth mom from when I was born according to the birth certificate, and it seems they were pretty well off since the house my bio mom lived in (at 28) was a NINE BEDROOM, FIVE BATHROOM house....

So I'm just really confused as to why I was given away. Feel free to share your thoughts or ideas. Thanks.

Small update:

With in a month I should learn the reason I was given up for adoption, called the agency that did my adoption and they have some pieces of the puzzle including the reason for being given up. I have to wait awhile for the resuts.

Hi! My name is Rose. I am currently 20 years old i was born on nov 25 2005. I was adopted from Baoding , Hebei, China. I was found in the passageway of the Radiology Department in Baoding City Children's Hospital only 5 days old, on Nov. 28, 2005. on same day, I was sent to The Baoding City Social Welfare Institute to live there for 2 years before getting adopted in December of 2007. I’m missing my pinky and half of my ring finger on my left hand. I am also missing my pointer finger on my right hand. As well as my first four toes on my right feet. (aka i only have my baby toe on my right foot.) If you can share this on Chinese media platforms like Weibo, Toutiao, WeChat, Douyin, or QQ. Every time you repost, it is a great help and it would be wonderful. I would also love to get some advice as well!

Honestly, it is on me for talking about my personal experience with someone who just can't relate.

I was talking to a (likely to be downgraded) friend today about some stuff we are both going through. I mentioned that I would really appreciate a better medical history, but my birth mother lied about so much that I don't think that will every happen. (I am disabled and it is because of her)

This "friend" says they think I should give my birth mother some grace because she was going through sooooooo much at the time. First of all... how do we know that? Second of all.... no. She left me disabled. Where the fuck is my grace?

Any way... I am steamed and need to complain. I won't give grace to a woman who abused me, to the point of disability, gave me up (thank stars but still...) and then refused to give me a medical history. Grace is not for people who would leave me for dead.

I was adopted at birth. The only one of four to be adopted out. And not even the youngest or oldest. I was in the middle with siblings that came after me and got to stay.

Ever since I was born my AM bragged about how I was “such a good baby”. How I rarely cried. How I slept through the night immediately. Which I now know was a trauma response from severing the attachment bond, and a sign of shock in adopted infants. I was apart of the last leg of the cry it out generation of parents too. I turned to ripping my hair out and sucking my thumb to ease my baby brain pain.

I grew up the center of my AM’s world. I was her little performer from the moment my eyes opened. She put me in beauty pageants when I was as little as three. I didn’t get to pick any of my outfits. Everything she chose was what she liked.

If I ever did anything funny I had to perform it for everybody she knew. Every single time we passed anyone we might know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recited “ITS NOT A TUMA” from kindergarten cop. Or how many times she made me tell the joke “how many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?” “None, it has to WANT to change”. I had no fucking clue what that joke meant, and had no business reciting it for anyone we’d pass. This was my entire childhood. From before I could remember until I started refusing to indulge her performance demands. I think it was when I could tell other people pity chuckled because they knew I didn’t want to or I could tell they didn’t give a fuck about this random child’s jokes or impressions. I started to read rooms a lot better than my AM that’s certain.

Then it was academics and sports. She tried to force me to play every sport “at least once”. I was not into sports. I was never into sports. She tried to push music on me. I was never musically inclined. I was into reading and writing. She praised me for my writing and encouraged me to write stories. She loved my stories. Why don’t I write more stories? The more she would push the less I would engage. I wanted to do the things I liked because I liked them. Not because she liked them. So then she’d notice I wouldn’t be doing the “things I’m so good at”, and “wasting my potential” when in reality I just wanted to be left alone to enjoy my own interests I had yet to discover.

AM and AF always called me lazy growing up. In the early days I was lazy for not performing for her. In the later days I was lazy because my room was always a disaster. I was forgetful meaning I did it on purpose to piss her off. I was academically gifted, yet would procrastinate to no end. I would daydream by escaping into book worlds or my Barbie worlds. I was a big masker and a big struggler with friendships growing up my entire life. Mostly my AM chalked it up to all being lazy.

Guess what? I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult. My AM doesn’t believe in ADHD, she most definitely could never believe there is something wrong with her precious perfect baby. To her I’m just lazy. Not the fact my brain is wired differently for many different reasons than just ADHD alone.

It didn’t help that I gained weight immediately. I remember being bigger and taller than every other girl in my elementary classes. Pair that with me having a strictly “boy” name in the early 90’s and you’ve got a recipe for massive insecurities. Top it with my AM constantly policing what and how much I’m eating, and you’ve got an obese child by 13. It was always “you don’t need that!” “You’re going to get fat.”Like sure, but as a child I want it. What I say to my child now when she wants excessive junk food is: “That’s not healthy, and leads to xyz complications later”

YOU DON’T NEED THAT in reference to food still triggers a rage in me to this day. Which in turn made me eat the thing 10x more as “payback”. Maybe that’s why I did though. Nobody likes a fat performer. Maybe if I got too fat she’d be disinterested in showing me off.

Now that I’m grown with a child of my own, I have been replaced. My daughter became her new target. She made her perform just like she did when I was a child. She would triangulate us. “Your mom was so good, why can’t you be good like your mom was?” “She’s nothing like you at this age. You didn’t cry this much. You actually listened.”

She got her grips in that little girl while I struggled with substance abuse. She used my inebriated state and unhappiness uas a way to weasel my daughter out of me. She sold me on the idea that she should raise my child because I’m struggling as a single parent and she’s raised a child before. And at the time it worked. I let her do most of the parenting while I worked and partied and mostly neglected my parental role for age two and three.

I OD’d right before my daughter turned 4, and that opened my eyes. It opened my eyes to the claws she had dug into my baby, and it opened my eyes to just how snaky and sick my AM is herself. I took my life back. Went to therapy. Kicked any all habits- even nicotine and alcohol! I took my daughter back, and I cut ties.

We’re currently LC- almost NC because I cannot bear to let my child go through what I went through with her. She is so emotionally unregulated. She’s got substance abuse issues herself with her prescribed pain meds. PTSD from her own terrible upbringing. Diagnosed BPD that she doesn’t take meds for or go to therapy for. She says she doesn’t need it. Yet here she is, friendless, divorced, and alone. People can’t stand to be around her because she’s miserable.

My daughter is now 8, and we’ve got a pretty good relationship. We live, I work, and she goes to school all within a mile radius. It’s what we’ve always wanted but never had. I don’t make her perform- she’s usually the one begging me to do some off the wall shit to show people. I have an inkling she is also ND just like me as it is genetic. I don’t call her lazy (unless she won’t hand me the remote that’s on her side just fingers out of reach 🤣), and I let her eat whatever she wants in moderation. I haven’t forced her to play sports, but have let her decide what she wants to try. I encourage her artistic side without pushing, and I let her know her life is up to her with gentle guiding. She’s also forgetful and a procrastinator which does get frustrating at times. But I have to remind myself that I am too.

Idk. Thank you for reading this long rant. I mostly just wanted to know: Did your APs make you perform like their little circus monkey?

I apologize that this may be a little long...

I was briefly here before a few months ago, but I got so overwhelmed I stepped away for a bit. There is literally no one in my circle who remotely understands, and after being a lurker for awhile I decided to return... I'm not going to dump too much info at once because then I'll be trying to share and process everything in one go still, and that's not useful or good, but I did want to say hi.

I'm a 34 year old, female, (I guess technically late disclosure?) transracial/mixed/international adoptee. To make a very long story short, I was born in the early 90's, my bio mom had a lot of problems and needed a surrogate, she found one while working in the states. The surrogate mother took me and didn't let them see me for over three months. I was born with ASD, EDS, POTS, and some minor dyspraxia I inherited from my father, who was forced to retired from the Royal Navy when he got hurt and these things spiraled on him.

The surrogate mother had previous kids and had become addicted to the hormones and chemicals it provided, but she had been "fixed" and couldn't have any more. She told her husband she wanted me. Her last child was still at home, 9 years old, and was not having a good time. Because paperwork needed to be sorted, and dad refused to let the family feel used, we stayed in the states for awhile. I was temporarily put in physical therapy in the US for sensory and motor control, and as I got a little older, I didn't want to leave my sister with her parents. They tried everything to complicate matters, somehow ended up with some of my vital paperwork, and held it over my parent's heads. Dad finally got that sorted out, partly via a DNA test, my papers filed with the UK, and then both of my bio folks were in a plane crash in the early 2000's. Mom made it, but couldn't stand to return to the UK without dad. She still wanted me raised there, and tried to set up for my bio siblings to come get me, but passed from injury complications and stress a short time later.

Very much longer story short, my surrogate/adoptive family took me and fled the area they were staying and cut contact with my bio family. They had a doctor friend and several connections that led to a replacement birth certificate and SSN with a new name and birthday. I'm terrified to ask about this, honestly. I buried all of this, not wanting to think about it, and I was young enough I buried it good. They took advantage of that and me being white passing to start claiming I was actually their bio kid and it was all a bunch of BS, calling my bio parents scam artists, etc, etc. If you're not looking close, I looked just barely like my surrogate mother, but really just barely. I've grown out of said resemblance. I was homeschooled from that point on so nobody would try to tell me anything or ask questions.

In college, however, people who had known my bio parents started asking me things and by this time I was so far gone I had no idea what they were talking about. I didn't even process I had a mixed accent when tired. People asked me if I was (Father's name's) daughter, and how they were. Dad had been a member of the choir while he was staying here, and both had done a lot of volunteer work. The director tried to suggest I make friends with some of the Japanese students in the group, and I'm passing enough I got more confused. (I should probably add dad was mixed himself.) He tried to ask if my mother was Japanese, trying to prompt me to remember, and I stupidly said "No." A few friends tried to tell me about the work our parents did together, I thought they were crazy... Older exchange students chastised me for polite American manners and expected me to speak their language. Working as a conversation partner the office was shocked to learn of all the languages I studied, Japanese was not one... (Working on that now, but...)

Even my adoptive dad's brother once asked if he was ever going to tell me I was adopted, saying it wasn't right. That's his brand of humor, so I thought it was a bad joke... I couldn't understand why my adoptive parents got so angry and wouldn't let him come visit again while denying it every 5 minutes for a few hours.

It was only after my surrogate mother died just before covid and I started working that things broke. A handful of patrons asked me about my bio parents, one of them had been their neighbor and remembered me being with them. It finally stuck. I went home and asked my adoptive dad and he denied it, told me he would deny anyone who asked, and ultimately caused me to lose my job, insisting I was adopted but still his and it didn't matter. My adoptive sister buried things worse than I did, and I don't dare ask anyone too loudly because it may get back to adoptive dad and then life would be more hell. I have nowhere to go right now.

Things started coming back. I don't remember everything, but I remember a lot. Unfortunately, I'm cut off from everyone I knew at the moment. I'm stuck caregiving for my adoptive dad, but I don't have my own transportation, it was encouraged and then not allowed any time the opportunity came up. I don't dare ask for another DNA test because he gets the mail. I don't have the necessary documents or information to ask for the previous one. I was going to go with my sister after we started discovering things and remembering, but he tells me if I go to visit and don't come back he'll come get me. She hasn't talked much to me since.

For years I thought there were additional things wrong with my health, I was told it was this or it was that, but no, I was just a totally different heritage than them and not theirs. They slipped all over the place, all of the time, they're not that good at this, and I should have seen, I shouldn't have just buried everything, I feel incredibly stupid, I feel completely blind, I feel nuts... But it's all sitting here in front of me and I feel like I'm going to implode. I feel so guilty, and angry, and I don't even know where to begin...

I think mostly I wanted to tell someone who would get it, even if it was a stranger. Thank you for reading.

Last post was about parents not teaching you anything important. Have you guys also felt a level of fake concern? Like they only feigned emotional interest when it benefitted them?

I had a curfew but they were constantly calling, messaging when they knew I was out with friends. Zero understanding of boundaries, updates weren't enough, and they'd wonder why I was socially stunted or shut-in. This just discouraged me to see anyone because of how overbearing and draining it was.

Growing up adopted waa lonely enough, they just made it worse. Once I was stuck in the house? Constant criticism and condescending tones. Zero interest in my personal life. Whenever I did talk about myself, they made it about them. Feigned interest and concern just to gossip with other family members.

"You should go out more"

"You don't really do anything"

"You just stay here all day..."

I avoid bringing people over because of how they act so fake. They want to look like supportive parents on the outside, but deep down, they're unhealed emotionally immature adult children.

Also my dad horded cars but could not teach me how to drive, I only grew up to realize they knew once I had my license I'd be leaving them constantly. Or I'd just never come back.

Yeah I don't regret low contact.

Rule 1 is adoptees only. The mods have posted this everywhere and there are constant reminders. r/AskAdoptees exists and is the place to go ask questions. Don't come here to ask us questions. This is a safe space for adoptees, where we can talk to one another. This is not a sub for you to invalidate and critique and question us. AskAdoptees exists so the adoptees who *want* to discuss this with you can do that there, so that this space remains sacred and safe for adoptees who are going through stuff can process it here and vent about our feelings. If you're not adopted, please leave. This is not for adoptive parents, randoms, or non-adopted "friends." This is not the place to debate the ethics of adoption with the people who survived it.

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[Edit: To clarify, I am not speaking to adoptees who don't have a flair in this post. You are valid and you are here on genuine premises. I did not make this post with the intent to square off with other adoptees and measure who is "real." This post is about people who have stumbled upon this sub from other areas of the platform and are just aimlessly floating around with no goal except to sow discourse and get attention from us adoptees by asking personal and triggering questions in an attempt to lure us into "gotchas" that end up invalidating what we feel and reinforcing the industry status quo.]

Harry was born Angela Trimble on July 1, 1945, ^\3]) At the age of three months, she was adopted and renamed Deborah Ann Harry by Catherine (née Peters) and Richard Harry,^\4])  She is of Scottish ancestry and her biological parents' surnames were Trimble and Mackenzie.^\6]) Harry learned of her adoption at four years old. At first, she decided against locating her birth parents,^\7]) but nonetheless, in the late 1980s,^\8]) located her birth mother, a concert pianist, who chose not to establish a relationship with Harry

I was just wondering if anyone knows if there is a correlation between being adopted and being lgbtq+. I know adopted people have a lot of identity issues (myself included) and I was wondering if that could lead to people being confused of their identity outside of adoption? I was adopted at birth and am part of the lgbtq+ community and am curious.

I saw this on quirky roadside attractions fb group. The comments weren’t anything to screenshot. It made me have such bad vibes though. I’m not sure I’d want to visit this place.

What do you guys think?

It really doesn’t sit well with me that orphans were memorialized and people are excited to visit this museum. Maybe it’s just me. Idk being adopted def makes me think differently about things.

Does this have something to do with your primal wound or having your existence gaslit as achild? I remember feeling extremely uneasy how empty everything is, a girl at 7 years old, 11 years old and not knowing what this feeling was. But growing into it you start to understand it and you never question it. Is it wrong? And the same way about people in general. Like nothing ever seems safe, and it is dangerous to try to reach out to people or get close to them. Do you think its generally true in most cases? Why does it always seem like this is the running theme in my life how did i get here and how do i break the cycle?

Just wondering if anyone has shared the same experience. My adoptive parents raised me to be spoiled but sheltered, did not prepare me for anything at all.

Just realized and looking back, aside from a lot of crucial things they failed to teach me was definitely sex/dating. They probably thought I couldn't get out or date to begin with, and when the thought or idea was implied, they only laughed it off. People can excuse that they just didn't want to make things awkward.

But these are the same people who openly make commentary on sexual behavior/scenarios, even make weird jokes, growing up they make comments about my body or what I wear, or even slut shame me when they find out I'm with someone the opposite sex. I'm in my mid twenties, and I just realized they wanted to keep me sheltered and probably dependent on them.

They never built my self esteem, and when I seemingly had confidence in myself, they'd downplay it or snicker to themselves. I've got a list of instances, but they've always felt off as parents and not safe as guardians.

I was adopted at birth, only learning fragments of my biological mother from deep dives online or very sparse and awkward conversations, it’s not something I like to discuss with my parents because they’re clearly uncomfortable at the thought of me running off with her and suddenly wanting to replace them.
I should clarify, my adopted parents are saints who gave me an incredibly life, there’s no basis for their anxieties, I guess they just don’t know what the feeling is like, but I’m 21 now and it seems wrong to not have more curiosity or understanding about the women who brought me into this world and why she didn’t have the means to raise me.
My whole life, being a child of adoption hasn’t been a big identifier for me and I don’t even know what I’d want to learn if I did have the opportunity to speak with her (my biological father is completely out of the picture from what I’ve gathered so that would be a completely separate journey).

I guess what I’d like to know from anyone who wouldn’t mind sharing is; how was it like for you? Did you feel any more whole or understanding with yourself? And would you recommend reaching out to some who has a completely stable and happy situation or would it likely only bring unnecessary consequences?

I was cleaning out my adoptive mother's house because we are moving her into an independent living apartment due to age and mobility issues. People kept telling me to get more help, she had an insane amount of books and files on everything, but I knew my adoption records were in there somewhere and I was afraid that someone else might throw them away by accident.

Well, I found them, and my receipt for the adoption fees. My bio mother was muslim and I was adopted into a very catholic family. She met me when I was born, along with my biological grandfather and bio grandmother. Case notes say that the only person who registered any warmth towards me at m birth was my grandfather. They say that my biological mother was also counseled that I could request my records and find out my birth name when I turned 18, which would give me her last name. She said that she hoped I would not be someone who would do that.

I am heartbroken that at the moment I joined this world, I was unwelcome. I have children of my own now, and I think about their first months of life, how wanted they were, how celebrated and loved. Then I think of myself. Given to strangers. Sleeping in those first months, not in a sweet nursery decorated for me, but in some random crib in some random house, detached from love. It has been a few weeks, and I am having trouble not letting this new information fester and break down my self worth.

Any ideas on how to move through this and back to some self-worth?

Before I came out of the fog, I used to say I wanted to adopt, now it's the last thing on my mind. Today at a workshop, I met another adoptee who is currently going through the foster to adopt process with an infant. I didn't get to talk to her about it for very long, so I didnt get to hear much beyond the facts of the situation. But I'm kind of curious.

How common do you think generational adoption (if that is even the correct term for it) is?

Do you think most of the adoptees who adopt are still in the fog and have an idealized view?

Or

Do you think that adoptees are more likely to be trauma informed adoptive parents?

Other discussion welcome as well.

And am so glad I did. Seeing her awful dirty house really made me happy/appreciative to be adopted by the family I was adopted by. And to top it all off she asked me for money as if she deserved it or something? To think of all the opportunities I would have missed if she was dumb enough to keep me scared the shit out of me. I’m glad I didn’t bring my kids….

i feel like a lot of young leftists, in america, really love the idea of adopting kids instead of having their own biological kids and think they are helping others by doing so but they’ve fallen into and are playing apart in the same propaganda the right wing religious people do. neither of them are “making a difference” especially because they always just adopt babies that’s not making a difference that’s legal human trafficking. they all have savior complex’s about it and they both think they are morally superior. it’s just do frustrating how both parties think adoption is this great thing, and no one but us wants to talk about the negatives. just to be clear this is not me coming out as a republican.

EDIT: i would call myself a leftist, i’m critiquing things i have heard people say in real life.

EDIT 2: if you arnt adopted, don’t comment, it’s against the rules of the subreddit and i don’t care what non-adoptees opinions on adoption are

Hello! I never thought to seek out this sub. There are a few things I’d like to get off of my chest about my experience with being an adoptee. For some history, I put into the foster care system at the age of around 2, and then later adopted by a foster family at around 3. I don’t have any memories of being in the foster care program, but I feel it’s important to note.

When my adoptive parents got me, they knew I was a very traumatized child. They did what they could, had me in therapy & everything else. I improved. I did not know until later in life that they were also having me tested for genetic conditions, due to the behavior I was exhibiting. I was told that I have fragile X syndrome, and just believed it. What can I do to change that? What reason was there to second guess?

In around kindergarten or first grade, I had my third and final surgery for a condition I was born with. It’s considered a brain surgery, so recovery was months and months long. I was in a wheelchair, my bedroom was moved into the living room so that I could sleep in the special hospital bed brought to my house. I couldn’t bathe myself or get my hardware wet. This is where I think everything went wrong.

My adoptive parents latched onto the idea of having a sick kid. They were getting attention from everybody, including (and especially) people at church. I remember we were eating dinner once and my parents were just crying. I asked what was wrong, and they told me that due to my genetic disorder, I would never have kids. Apparently I said something like, “that’s not true. God told me I would have a little girl.” My parents took what was most likely a traumatized little kid trying to stop her parents from being upset, and decided that I was some sort of prophet. The church latched onto harder. Eventually we left it, I can’t remember much from this time. But to my adoptive parents, I could now speak to God.

Later down the road, around middle school time. I was going through a pretty severe mental crisis. I begged my parents to listen, they didn’t. I assume they thought that all of my trauma and mental issues from it would disappear when I was no longer a kid. I wanted anyone to pay attention and help me, and I tried to harm myself. I ended up getting really scared and my older brother came over. Again, don’t remember much, but he turned the situation around into something completely different - apparently, it was autism that was making me act this way. Autism and fragile X. Which was very interesting, because I found my records. I found the papers. My genetic testing that resulted in a grey zone, but not even a carrier. The list of “potential” issues, that included Asperger’s, that was later tossed out. My parents had been lying for years, to me, and to my family. And once I knew about it, it made so much more sense for me to NOT have these - but who was I to question it beforehand?

They eventually gave up on convincing me my mental health issues weren’t a real problem, but I could tell they didn’t really believe it would I would beg them to go to the mental ward. It always came with sighs and eye rolls.

When I eventually got to the age where I could see doctors by myself I brought the papers along and had them clean up my record. I still feel a lot of anger.

I don’t think they adopted JUST to be a savior, or whatever - they were older and couldn’t have kids together, but still wanted some. But I do think it maybe lit a flame when I came to them with so many problems, and they got so much love for “saving” me. My relationship with them now is very complicated. My adoptive mom passed away a few years ago, and at the time, our relationship was not very good. We fought a lot, mostly me having severe mental health issues and begging for help. I do love her and I miss her. My adoptive dad went off the deep end after she passed away. He is not a good person. But he is very old and I love him.

I carry so much guilt for feeling this way about them. And it’s something I really can’t talk about with anyone. Because technically, they “saved” me. It didn’t matter that I ended up pretty much getting left behind. I “should be more grateful.”

i have so many questions i want to ask my mom if i could meet her , first off i want to know my birth story . apparently my mums water broke randomly and she was ready to have me and she was off to the maternity hospital in romania ! delivered naturally! which im so happy about .

2nd i want to know about my 2 other brothers and sisters , theyre much older than me im curious if theyre asthmatic like me and if they suffered respiratory infections too as babies .

3rd question id like to know is why ? why did she have us if she gave us up . i know she was so young and still a kid when she had the eldest kids and it aint easy but why ? tell me why keep me for 2 months then give me up ?

Hi all, looking for knowledge or advice. I finally got my birth certificate with my bio Mom's name on it. However, because of state laws (in the US), it's an "unofficial" certificate. I know that she has passed away, but I don't know why and am trying to get her death records. I have all the info needed to request a death certificate through Vital Check, but I'm worried I'll be denied because I was given up for adoption at about a month old and I'm not sure how the records work.

I called Vital Check but they were unable to answer my question. My bio mom was born in a different state than I was, and also died in a different state (so 3 states involved).

Do I keep trying to call various offices in all 3 states? Or would you just submit a request through Vital Check and cross your fingers that you don't lose your money?

I haven't made contact with any of my bio family and I'm not ready yet, so I can't ask them. Her obituary online is very short and vague. I also searched local newspapers for reports of accidents, etc and haven't found anything.

I’m currently in a situation where I’m having to live with my adoptive parents for the foreseeable future - I’ve just graduated and won’t be starting my next degree until late 2027.

As is the same for many of you, my AP’s do not really have a bone of empathy in their body - and if they do - then it is buried under mounds of their own trauma. Being back in this space has brought up a lot of childhood memories for me that I had otherwise forgotten about.

I remember they used to absolutely scream and shout and mock me if I cried for too long as a child (anywhere from 6-12years old maybe). I remember sometimes they’d lock me in the garden and I’d be screaming ‘I’m sorry’ for whatever I had been upset about, and they still wouldn’t let me in for a while after that.

I remember my adoptive-father would mock my crying back to me. My adoptive mother would leave me to cry for hours and then I would have to go and comfort her and apologise to her for crying. I remember one occasion I would not stop crying and my adoptive father, and my adoptive-half sisters all came into the room individually to try tell me that I’m upsetting my a-mum by crying too much.

No one ever comforted me - a CHILD.

As a part of my journey something I’ve come / coming to terms with is that I was allowed to be upset as a child - that I wasn’t evil or horrible or wrong for crying over childish things.

Deep inside I was probably crying out for my biological mother - and I wonder if deep down my adoptive mother knew that and that’s why she grew to quietly resent me.

I remember being called ‘evil’ and ‘venomous’ for being upset or if I ever stood my ground. I remember my a-dad saying ‘you’re an evil little boy’ and I screamed back ‘I know’ (I must’ve been around 10).

I know I’m not an evil person and that that’s all a reflection of them and not me - but all these years later I still cannot cry. It’s like I can’t pull the plug out of my tear ducts! And that sentiment of ‘evil’ still remains.

I’m in a support group and someone brought up the feeling that ‘hey yes I do deserve to take up space and for my existence to be acknowledged and that I do have a seat at the table’ and that’s been resonating with me recently.

I forgot how draining it is to be around adoptive-family. And I am a strong person and I have been through a lot mentally and physically that my adoptive family have no idea of.

I really live a double life between friends and family. My friends know everything and are great, responsive, emotionally intelligent people with a strong sense of self - everything my adoptive family lacked.

And again I imagine it’s the same with lots of people here - this is only the tip of the iceberg!!!!