Adoption

I'm reading a book about adoption. It was recommended by a friend quite a while ago but I wasn't ready to read it then. It's one of the most brutally honest books I've read and I'm having a number of responses to it. Sometimes I get frustrated by people who give the "thumbs-up" to adoption. I can't even count the number of times that I've been congratulated on our kids' adoptions. Or the people who tell me, "Bless you! You are doing such a great thing for these kids!" I know they mean well. But we aren't doing these kids any favors. We are trying to make the best out of a already bad situation. From the first time Adam and Eve sinned, the world wasn't perfect anymore.

Do you really think, even after all these kids have been through, that they prefer to be with us? They know, somewhere deep down, that somewhere out there is someone (a mother) who didn't think enough of them to do everything possible to try to stay with them. Realistic or not, that is the thought. Babies know. Kids know. They know more than we realize. We try to play God by manipulating children's lives and then expect them to be happy about it. I'm not saying that there aren't lots of positives in adoption but there is so much more emotional baggage than most people would like to realize, especially adoptive parents. People believe that once you take these kids and put them into a good home in a loving environment, it outweighs anything and everything in the past. Trust me. It doesn't.

Excerpt from The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier

Adoption, considered by many to be merely a concept, is, in fact, a traumatic experience for the adoptee. It begins with the separation from his biological mother and ends with his living with strangers. Most of his life he may have denied or repressed his feelings about this experience, having had no sense that they would be acknowledged or validated. He may, instead, have been made to feel as if he should be grateful for this monumental manipulation of his destiny. Somewhere within him, however, he does have feelings about this traumatic experience,  and having these feelings does not mean that he is abnormal, sick, or crazy. It means that he is wounded as a result of having suffered a devastating loss and that his feelings about this are legitimate and need to be acknowledged, rather than ignored or challenged.

What adoptees need to know is that their experience was real. Adoption isn’t a concept to be learned, a theory to be understood, or an idea to be developed. It is a real life experience about which adoptees have had and are continuing to have constant and conflicting feelings, all of which are legitimate. Their feelings are their response to the most devastating experience they are ever likely to have: the loss of their mother. Just because they do not consciously remember it does not make it any less devastating. It only makes it more difficult to deal with, because it happened before they had words with which to describe it (preverbal) and is, therefore, almost impossible to talk about. For many of them, it is even difficult to think about.

So hang in there with me as I wade through the first book that I've found that expresses what I've felt about adoption.