By Sara EasterlyA common mistake adoptive parents make when hearing adult adoptees speak about adoption trauma is discounting their experiences because “times have changed” or their adoptee hasn’t voiced similar feelings. Some parents will straight-up ask their adopted children if they feel the same way and then rest easy when their children deny having similar feelings. Differing details of adoption stories can be used as evidence of irrelevance. Adoptee voices that land as “angry” are often quickly written off as “examples of a bad adoption.”

“Not my adoptee,” is a knee-jerk, defensive response that blinds parents to adoption-related dynamics that may be uncomfortable or painful to consider—especially when everything seems to be going swimmingly in early childhood. This posture, though, discounts the real and proven trauma inherent in adoption, missing an opportunity to fully support adopted children and ultimately benefit from closer, more authentic relationships.

That trauma looks good on you.

One reason it’s so easy to miss signs of adoption trauma is because it can present so well.

Adoptees are unintentionally groomed to be people-pleasers. Once we’ve lost our first mothers to adoption, we can work incredibly hard to win the love of our next mothers. We strive to measure up—doing and saying whatever is needed to keep our adoptive mothers close. This is all unconscious and certainly not meant to be fraudulent. To our brains, running the show, it’s simply a matter of survival. Children need parents, after all, and attachment is our greatest human need, taking priority even over such basics as shelter and food, as explained by child developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.

Of course, “good,” compliant behavior is welcomed and adored in our culture. What parent wouldn’t find a well-behaving child absolutely lovely? As a mother, I confess that my job feels so much easier when my kids behave. Unfortunately, though, the more adoptees are praised for our good behavior, the more our unhealthy patterns are reinforced and extend outside of our family relationships. We’ll ditch our true feelings in a heartbeat if it means feeling treasured and keeping loved ones close.

Other manifestations of adoption trauma are valued by mainstream culture: perfectionism churns out hard-working, dedicated students and employees who’ll always go the extra mile—nobody spotting the adoptee’s frantic need to prove his or her worth. Adoptees often make natural leaders—nobody knowing that we can harbor a desperate need to be in charge that started upon relinquishment when our brains decided nobody was looking out for us, so we’re best served when we’re at the helm. People-pleasers can also be charismatic, supportive, empathetic, and generous … others unaware of the self-sabotage that can be at play behind the scenes. We can seem unfazed in the face of stressful situations, many not understanding that’s because we’ve spent a lifetime diminishing our feelings and disregarding deep pain in order to become masters of compartmentalization.

These are traits we value in society. They serve. These traits aren’t all bad, of course. But they can be inwardly destructive—especially if adoptees aren’t aware of them, and most certainly if the cost is the adoptee’s true sense of self.

Adoption blinds.

Another reason it’s harder to spot adoption trauma is because it hides itself from adoptees themselves. The grief of losing a first family member through adoption is so significant it’s not easily looked at by the adoptee. Like looking at the sun too directly, it will burn. What’s more, our experiences of such great loss are often preverbal, before we learned words like loneliness, isolation, abandonment, and hopelessness to help us understand our overwhelming emotions—so overwhelming, sometimes, they aren’t felt. Our brains protect us in that way, because to feel them just might do us in.

Developmentally, most children won’t even have the capacity to reflect upon adoption loss until much later in life. This is what’s known as “living in the fog”—a state of denial or numbness in which adoptees are unable to closely examine the effects of adoption. When directly asked, in-the-fog adoptees often won’t have the consciousness, or the words, to talk about adoption trauma. We spend years, and possibly decades, feeling more comfortable parroting society’s or a family’s lighthearted interpretation of adoption than trying to articulate our underground, confusing, complex emotions.

When we sense a disconnect between our nuanced feelings and culture’s saccharine-sweet story of adoption, we blame ourselves. When we fail at being “perfect,” we are prone toward additional self-attack. When we’re more three-dimensional than simply “good” adoptees, we can resort to secrecy in order to keep the darker parts of ourselves hidden from those closest to us. In any of these ways, we can end up living a double life, censoring large swaths of ourselves—making it harder to feel fully known and rest in a sense of deep love by those closest to us.

This is why it’s critically important to listen to out-of-the-fog adult adoptees. Adoptees who share their stories aren’t usually doing so for fame, glory, or money, but out of a genuine desire to support other adoptees. We share on the other side of healing—or in the midst of our healing—in hopes of opening adoptive parents’ eyes to our innermost secrets that we wish our parents had had access to in our younger years.

Are some of us angry? Absolutely. Society hasn’t made room for our voices in the story of adoption, despite the fact that we’re its central players. Some of us have been let down by the people closest to us—again and again. Some of us haven’t felt seen or known. Some of us have been mistreated. Some of us have sought to take our own lives to stop the pain without having to shed light on adoption’s darkest manifestations.

“Not my adoptee” could easily be your adoptee—whether you or your child recognize so right now. Like all children, adoptees eventually grow older; hopefully, in the name of their mental health and wholeness as individuals, their feelings around adoption will evolve over time. As your child matures, you’ll want your child to look back and know that you did your best to understand them, to see them, to know them, and to guide them. While all adoptees are different, and each story is unique, listening to #adopteevoices—an array of them—is of utmost importance when raising adopted children toward their full developmental potential.Sara Easterly is an adoptee and award-winning author of books and essays. Her memoir, Searching for Mom, won a Gold Medal in the Illumination Book Awards, among many other honors. Her essays and articles have been published by Psychology Today, Dear Adoption, Red Letter Christians, Feminine Collective, Her View From Home, Godspace, and others. Find her online at saraeasterly.com, on Facebook, on Instagram @saraeasterlyauthor, and on Twitter @saraeasterly.

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By Lisa Ann Yiling CalcasolaDear birth mother and father,

How are you? Where are you? Who are you?

I grew up with two Italian-American parents who have given me the world and more. I had as happy a childhood as anyone, the majority of my time spent running around outside in the grass and sunshine of a small, safe New England suburb. I have had many identities as an athlete, student, traveler and artist. I am in my third year of college in New York City.

From the outside my life looks fantastic, a true American dream. I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted—moving to this big city to fulfill bigger dreams—and I should have absolutely nothing to complain about. I have been so fortunate, physically, financially, emotionally. I have the most caring and supporting family. I have no reason to be sad.

And yet you cannot help how you feel, can you? You cannot apologize for your emotions because you are not in control of them. Or you can have control of them, but only after some time. I’m not sure—I’m still trying to figure that out. But the uneasiness and anxiety over my past is something I still struggle to understand every day. I have no immediate reason to be anxious, but I am.

Few people would guess this, because outwardly I am fairly energetic and optimistic. It is inside my own head, especially when I am alone, that this fog comes over me and I feel an unending loneliness, even with the knowledge that, not too far away, there are people who care a lot about me.

I guess I used to cry about this a lot, when I was four—at least that’s what my mom told me this past winter break. I just learned, after twenty years, that I was not merely put into a foster home; I was abandoned in a park. Forest Park, a truly ironic twist of fate, given that my home in America is a five-minute drive from another Forest Park.

It does no good to dwell on the past. I try not to be sad and think about you, but I am. Sometimes, I am. I miss you, these people I have never met. You left me, I presume, I hope, because you wanted me to have a better life, and here I am, twenty years later, with everything a girl could ever ask for.

And yet I am still not whole. I still miss you. I still feel lonely, especially in this city that is so vast. I still think too much, but I cannot help these thoughts: that for all my outward material comforts I sometimes feel an emptiness that comes out of this dark pit I want to keep hidden and buried within me. It is ugly and thick and I do not want to expose it. Because I am afraid of it.

I wonder if meeting you would make a difference, if the loneliness and anxiety I feel is linked more to the mystery than to the two of you, who seem to me more phantom than real. It is always the unknown that haunts us.

You wanted to give me a better life, but is this better? In one of the biggest most “successful” cities in the world, yet still feeling lonely, still feeling lost? I do not know what life would have been like with you in China, in our city of Fuzhou, of three point seven million people or more. I do not know what it would be like to have a brother or a sister, to see the world through an Eastern rather than Western lens. I have my education here, but what has this education taught me but that the world is far more complex than I’d ever imagined, with more and more terrible things happening each day?

And I do not know if this is related to you, or just to me, and to my growing up. And I do not know anything about you, who you are, what jobs you do or don’t have, if you’re short like me, if you’re athletic, or artistic, or happy. If you are even alive. I do not know, I do not know, and it is the not-knowing, the possibility that I will never know, that whispers to me when I am alone.

I miss you, but I do not know how much. Because my mother and father here are the ones who raised me, who taught me how to walk, and speak, and treat other people. They instilled these values in me. What values would you have instilled? Is it egotistical and nonsensical for me to even ask such questions? Maybe I should just accept what is and move on.

But like I said, feelings cannot be controlled. I can’t help how I feel. I can try to change my perspective, of course, but at the end of the day I still think of you, and I do not know if you think of me.

I hope to go to China very soon. I look forward to it more than any other trip, and of course I want to see the culture, but mostly I want to find you. I don’t know if this is possible. But it’s another distant dream.

Take care,

Your Fu Yiling

福宜玲Lisa Ann Yiling Calcasola is a writer and adoptee. Her work has been previously
published in Hyphen Magazine, Vol 1. Brooklyn, the Asian American Feminist Collective’s
digital storytelling project, and more. She wrote this essay in 2016. Find her @punkelevenn.

Severance Magazine is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

Venmo: @punkelevennBEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy. Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Let us know what you want to see in Severance. Send a message to bkjax@icloud.com. Tell us your stories. See guidelines. If you’re an NPE, adoptee, or donor conceived person; a sibling of someone in one of these groups; or a helping professional (for example, a therapist or genetic genealogist) you’re welcome to join our private Facebook group. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @Severancemag.