For adoptees, birthdays are often a source of dread.
I circle my birthday on the calendar every year.
As the date draws closer, its approach feels increasingly like warm, heavy breathing on the nape of my neck and I begin to think about it daily, as much as I don’t want to. The breathing on my neck intensifies. I work hard to bottle up anticipation that bubbles up from my soul. When it is a week away, anxiety skyrockets. Try as I might to banish all birthday thoughts and emotions from my mind and body, I’m unable to. The more I try not to think about it, the more I do. Thank you, irony.
Then it arrives. It’s here! The big day! Time to celebrate! Celebratory texts and Facebook posts begin rolling in. Regardless of what’s planned for me on this most wondrous of days, I don’t need to guess what this day will be like or how I will feel. It’s my birthday after all. October 10th is here. Yippy.
Anxiety levels now reach all-time highs, or, to be precise, match the same highs set each preceding year. I don’t know what to do with myself. There is one certainty with my birthday: I will find a way to sabotage it. As sure as the sun rises each morning, my birthday will somehow become a fiasco.
For most of my life it has been like this. I wish it would stop, but it won’t. Like a family of pit vipers slithering over each other in a dark den, something buried in my subconscious moves, waiting for a chance to strike. I’m riddled with emotional pain and loneliness even though I’m blessed to be married to a superhero and am a father to two wonderful children who go out of their way to do nice things for me. I feel as if I am seeking something that cannot be found.
Regardless of whether we have a party, go out to dinner as a family, or do any of the other good ideas my wife comes up with, I try my best to be happy. Yet that happiness is as elusive as sleep is to an insomniac. The celebration and presents are never enough to quell the pain, and then the sabotaging kicks into high gear and I turn into a monster in the presence of people doing nice things for me. I snap. I peck at their nests. I bark. I am fussy. This is not me in entirety, but it is who I unfortunately become on this day.
Some form of trauma boils up from the depths of my being. It takes charge as much as I fight it not to. It’s in control, not me. All I truly want is for the day to be over. Please, can it be October 11th? I am not good enough for my birthdays, and they are not good enough for me. It wasn’t until very recently, when I turned my gaze within and introduced myself to the core of my being that I finally could grasp the source and depth of this angst.
You see, I’m adopted. Born a bastard, I was separated from my biological mother at birth. The woman I spent nine months preparing to meet was gone in an instant. In my most vulnerable state, I was motherless. Without mother. At the time, I was overcome by a high degree of trauma, a trauma that cannot be undone. Worse, this trauma is precognitive. I, like millions of my adoptee crib mates, do not know what life is like without trauma, as we were introduced to life in such a traumatic state. Due to recent scientific studies, we know this to be true. Babies are born expecting to meet their mothers, hear their voices, smell their scents, taste their milk. When their mothers are not available, they become traumatized. If puppies and kittens must stay with their birth mothers for a few weeks before being adopted, why is it okay to separate a newborn from her mother at first breath?
After reading and processing this research, I could finally grasp the source of my annual torment. It’s my adoption trauma raising its ugly head and expressing itself.
My actual birth day was not a happy day. There were no relatives there to hug me and fawn over me. There were no flowers and balloons in the hospital room. No one was smoking cigars anywhere. I was moved into the natal ward to be cared for by nameless faceless baby handlers. I cannot account for the first few weeks of my life. There are no photos. There are no family stories. I do not know who bathed me. Who fed me. Who swaddled me. My biological parents did their best to forget about me and move on with their lives while I was swept into the system as a ward of the state. It is hard for me to imagine how a human being could be more vulnerable.
I have been reunited with my biological family, including my birth mother, since early 2017. She and I have become very close since our reunion. We routinely explore our feelings about my adoption and have deeply emotional conversations about my issues. We become extraordinarily vulnerable in the process, and she wants to take all that pain from me. She never knew the depths of trauma adoptees are exposed to, and she suffers in guilt as a result.
As much as adoption agencies and society at large claim one can paper over this separation with love, there is no amount of love that can fix this vexing situation that arises through the act of adoption.
She was not without trauma, either; it has riddled her since my birth. We cannot forget that birth mothers suffer too. I listen and help her unpack her suffering and sadness. We promise each other that we aren’t going anywhere. One separation is enough for her and me.
Recently, my birthdays have improved. It has helped to learn the science behind what a newborn knows and yearns for and how the absence of those things results in trauma. This has truly aided me in my quest to understand myself. Added to that, several biological family members love to celebrate my birthday with me too, as they hold it in high regard and see it as a monumental day that absolutely needs to be celebrated. Some want to celebrate all the “lost” birthdays we didn’t get to celebrate before our reunion. Further, I have found solace with adoptees on social media and in a local adoptee group I run. I’ve learned that there are many other adoptees who find birthdays equally painful and anxiety inducing.
With time and healing, my birthdays are becoming less toxic and angst-ridden. I am more relaxed and I smile more than frown. Birthdays are meant to be happy days, and I am on the path to making sure that my birthdays are happy before they run out.
— Adrian Jones, an advocate for adoptees and heart health, lives in Marin County, California with his wife and two children. Visit his blog, An Adoptee Shares His Story. Look for another of his essays here.
