There is a lot that the adoption community has right, but there is one thing they have wrong. The blogs, the videos, the websites, and the books all refer to adoption as trauma. In my opinion, this is wrong (at least for most of us).
Here’s my thinking; adoption begins with a judge issuing a court order assigning parental rights to a particular set of ‘parents’ and authorizing a name change. This is not when the trauma happens; in fact, this is where the healing begins. The trauma occurs long before this, during pregnancy and relinquishment. By the time we meet our adoptive families and get paraded before the judge we are already a mess, but because the adoption community continues to frame adoption as the trauma, everything prior to the adoption is disregarded. We alienate our adoptive families because we blame our problems on them, we empower our legislators to keep records sealed because what occurred before our court date is framed, by us, as irrelevant. Mental health professionals focus on adoptive family dynamics, and why wouldn’t they, if the adoption itself is framed as the problem.
Look; I am not a person who gets concerned about language; I don’t care if we refer to birth families, first families, real families, or families of origin. To me, most terminology comes down to semantics. However, if we want to heal pain, we need to accurately identify the pain, and except for the unfortunate few of us who ended up in truly abusive homes, our adoption is not the source of our pain; our RELINQUISHMENT is!
So, I suggest that the first step in your healing journey be to consider that before you were an adoptee, you were a relinquishee, and that is the source of pain.
Adoption is not trauma; relinquishment is trauma. Adoption was little more than an unsuccessful attempt to heal the trauma of being relinquished.
Now, does relinquishment actually cause trauma? Yes, it absolutely does. Research has consistently shown that a fetus does bond with its mother. During pregnancy, the fetus is constantly exposed to the mother’s voice, smell, and movements, which helps to establish a connection between the two. The mother’s hormones can also affect the fetus’s emotional and cognitive development. For example, the hormone oxytocin, which is released during maternal bonding and breastfeeding, can also be detected in the fetus’s blood. This hormone is associated with feelings of love and attachment, and it is believed to play a crucial role in the bonding process between mother and child.
The bond between mother and fetus can have important implications for the baby’s long-term emotional, cognitive, and physical development. A strong maternal bond during pregnancy can help to promote healthy brain development, better emotional regulation, and improved cognitive abilities in children. It can also lead to a positive and secure attachment between mother and child after birth.
The separation of a child from their primary caregiver, particularly their mother, can be a significant source of stress for an infant. Infants rely on their mother to meet all their physical and emotional needs, and separation from that caregiver can lead to feelings of abandonment, fear, and confusion. Studies have shown that infants who experience early separation from their mothers are more likely to develop emotional and behavioural problems later in life, such as anxiety, depression, and attachment disorders. Therefore, it is important to provide support and resources to subsequent caregivers during and after the relinquishment process to minimize the potential trauma.
For most of us, our adoptive families were convinced that they were saving us from a life of misery. Very little attention was given to the idea that the child comes already traumatized, and as long as we focus on adoption as the problem, we will never zero in on the actual trauma that needs to be healed.
Yes, you are, and always will be, an adoptee. But first, you were relinquished, and THAT is the source of your pain, the root of your trauma. Disconnection was your first life lesson, and you arrived in your adoptive home with highly developed strategies to deal with the threat of separation, fear of attachment, and relational loss. You came to the relationship wounded, and your adoptive parents were also likely wounded (by infertility or loss of a natural child).
If there was one thing I could beseech you to consider as you begin your healing journey it is this; consider that your trauma occurred prior to your adoption. Your environment failed you and you developed strategies to overcome that failure. Those strategies saved your life, but perhaps they have outgrown their usefulness. Be gentle with yourself. Strategies can be modified, new coping skills can be learned, and relinquishment trauma can be integrated. This experience provided you with great gifts like resilience, empathy, and attunement. You have overcome awful circumstances and have survived; you will continue to heal and thrive.