5 More Things About Adoption and Attachment
5 More Things about Adoption and Attachment
Thing no. 1 - Alienation is a normal feeling: In the teenage and young adult years, most everyone feels that their family are freaks and there’s, like, no way they could possibly be related to me. When we’re adopted, that story can have a stronger spin because we’re not genetically related. Realize that the alienation experience is a normal thing to feel. The fact that you’re adopted may, perhaps, intensify how true that feels, but facts and feelings operate under different laws of physics. For example, the facts of my own upbringing have stayed the same, but my sense of what it all means and how I feel about it changes. Feelings change. Understanding changes. They’re allowed to. If we grow, they will too. Sure, they’re freaks, but how you feel and how you understand does not have to be set in stone.
Thing no. 2 - Imagination happens: Whether you’ve met or know, haven’t met, or will never meet your biological parents, imagination of what would or could have been, or what was or wasn’t play a role in how we conceive of ourselves and what our prospects and even destiny is. It can be a process to realize what these thoughts are: who I would have been, what my life would be now instead, where I would be now, what about me is like my biological parents? These ideas can be pre-conscious: you can be thinking them without fully realizing you are. Making this stuff conscious helps you decide who you are going to be. It gives you choice. Choices are helpful. And, yes, even if you know your biological parent/parents, this can be a thing worth sorting through.
Thing no. 3 - Transracial and transcultural adoption: You’re allowed to sink into the race or culture of your biological origins. You’re allowed to not have to, as well. You’re allowed to change your mind. It’s not even “changing your mind:” you’re finding your way through your life and making decisions based on who you have become. A girl was adopted from South Korea to a white family in the US. When she was under 12, her family had her engaged in Korean language school and Korean cultural activities in her city. In her teens, she lost interest. When she got to the part of life where she wanted to have her own children, she started to engage in pan-Asian and Korean communities like she hadn’t since she was a child. That’s all good. She was deciding. She got to reassess as she moved through her life. No decision you made or didn’t get to make in the past determines what you’re allowed to do now.
Thing no. 4 - Brain construction in utero: Our brains were built from scratch while we were in the womb. There was a genetic code, as a starting point, but that code came to life based on what it was exposed to through sounds, hormones, stressors, toxins, and nutrients. The foundations of our brains would have been different were our bio-mother’s life markedly better or worse. We were being prepared for the life our bio-mother was living. We can be adopted to a very different kind of life than we were originally being built by. And so, we can be living in peace and stability and our brains are geared towards survival, stress, and strife. Are you still surviving a world you escaped at birth?
Thing no. 5 - Attachment. The first years of a baby’s life lays a foundational balance of trust versus mistrust of the world. Attachment is the combination of a baby’s temperament, their connection to a primary care-giver, and the combination of things that happen or don’t that set the balance of security and hope versus insecurity and despair. Attachment, whether adoption or not, is built and affected by whatever the context of our first years is. As we move through life our overall attachment experience is further informed by the things that we experience. It’s possible for anyone to develop attachment injuries at age 7 or age 57. It’s possible to heal aspects of those injuries and earlier ones too, but the process that happens in the years before we can speak are harder to reach directly because there may be no episodic memory to explain why we feel certain ways. Attachment also forms the context through which we will engage in both romantic and platonic relationships. Attachment doesn’t determine what happens in our love life and friendship life, but it informs where we’re initially coming from.
All this is to say we are super complex beings. Your story is unique and this story is a living thing that you determine the meaning of. The facts may stay the same, but the meaning will alter in significance and emphasis as you discover yourself and actualize your life.
