Adoption
Some Truth about Adoption
Adoption is as old as humanity. You’ve heard of God-parents, no doubt. That tradition, at least in England, came from the practice of establishing, at baptism (which was ASAP), who became your parents if yours died before you were old enough to fend for yourself. It was setting up your possible adoption at the get-go, and God-parents were typically not extended family members. So, when you hear “God-parents,” it was a Medieval safeguard for adoption in the event of a grief.
I wasn’t adopted, but my Mum was born in a strange time immediately after World War II in Europe. She spent her first 3 years in a children’s home before her mother was able to take her back. She wasn’t adopted, but on the level of Attachment, she experienced a lot of the same. I’ll talk about Attachment somewhere else. It’s too big to fit here.
My wife wasn’t adopted, nor was her mother, nor was her grandmother, but her great grandmother was after her parents died in the 1918-1920 so-called Spanish Flu epidemic (it didn’t start in Spain). For those of us who aren’t adopted, if you go back a few generations, it’s there. It can be hidden, but it’s there. Sometimes people discover this stuff with those genetic ancestry tests.
So it’s old and not at all uncommon. But that doesn’t say what the experience is for a person who is adopted. As much as you are not alone, you may feel that you are when you look around you at people you know. If your adoption was across race, that can have particular dynamics. If your adoption is not obvious, that can have its own dynamics. If your adoption was international, that can have particular dynamics. Both closed and open adoptions have their own dynamics. Each person is different, so each experience will be different, and the meaning and feel of that experience changes in time as you grow and live your life.
The big thing to know is that Adoption is a specialization within therapy. It’s a highly varying experience that tends to be significant to a person’s development. If you’ve never worked with a therapist about what this experience means in your story, do yourself the favor of checking it out. The transitions of life in between Middle School and the end of College are times when all that becomes particularly relevant. Marriage, choosing to have your own children,... all these major transitions will reverberate your unique narrative. And know there are other people who are adopted and looking to connect too. The short story is that you’re part of an experience that is as old as humanity. And even if that experience has difficult feelings, like the song goes, you’re not so alone in being alone. Come and find more of yourself and others on similar journeys.
