NAAM
November—when I originally wrote this post—is National Adoption Awareness Month! As an adoptee, whose siblings are also adoptees from different families, this month is very close to my heart. Once you've been touched by adoption, its impact is there for life-you can never go back and not be impacted by it. And adoption can be an absolutely wonderful, beautiful, life-changing thing—but there's also a lot the mainstream narrative misses about adoption.
For example, so many people miss (or forget, or fail to fully grasp) the truth that adoption is born of trauma, grief and loss-there is no type of adoption that escapes this truth. Domestic infant, international, older child adoption, foster care adoption, kinship adoption—they all begin with loss and disrupted attachment. Of course, the circumstances of each adoption vary greatly, but this truth applies to all of them. Birthparents lose kids (sometimes without ever telling anyone about it), kids lose birthparents, foster parents and kids lose each other, kids lose siblings and extended family members. Adoptees—especially older ones who may have moved around over and over again—can lose friends, communities, social workers, therapists, teachers—the list goes on and on. The common, layperson narrative tends to jump immediately to how 'lucky' adoptees are to have been adopted—especially older adoptees, who may have spent years waiting for permanency in the public foster care system. And while some adoptees do indeed feel lucky, like myself, that mainstream narrative ignores the complexity of adoption in a wholly problematic way.
These are not losses which can be healed, either—we carry them throughout our lifetime, touched by them in the same way we were touched by adoption. We will never be untouched by these losses again—though they may get easier to carry and hold over time, with the right support (and usually with a good adoption-competent therapist, too!). My own adoption story was far, far easier and happier than so many are—and I'm still working on processing all of the pieces. It’s natural, to want answers, and resolution, and closure—and since many of us may never have those things with respect to our adoption stories, it’s also natural to grieve that truth, and to need support in processing it.
If you've been touched by adoption, I hope some of this resonates with you! It's important to acknowledge all of the complexities and truths about adoption, this month and always.