By Kristen SteinhilberI had just moved, with only a couple weeks in my new apartment under my belt. I had very recently begun to emerge from the fog, so as you might imagine, this particular moving process was my most hectic yet. Reunion with my biological mother had fallen through about five years prior, and she hadn’t spoken to me since. But I knew, with the new insight I’d gained about the impact adoption has had on me, that I had to write her a letter.

First, with every muscle in my body clenched so hard it hurt, I wrote to push her away; to tell her every horrible thing that had ever happened to me, and to vehemently convey that it was all her fault. I finished a few interpretations of that letter, each time with my finger hovering above the send button, unable to press down. I didn’t understand; I’d thought about the closure sending it would bring me for a while. But then I remembered the time The Dixie Chicks’ Wide Open Spaces came on the radio and we sang along together and how her embrace felt like home. And I realized I didn’t want to push her away. I finally admitted to myself that not only did I need her, but I also wanted her in my life. I finally admitted to myself that she is my mother.

I went back to the drawing board; this time with hope and a sense of relaxation in my shoulders. I started to write the letter that I just knew would fix everything and get me my mother back.

Dear Ava,*

I don’t know how to let you know about a lifetime’s worth of feelings without bombarding you. So I’m resorting to doing just that. Please try to keep in mind that I only intend to help you hear, acknowledge, and understand me, and that I entirely lack the intention to attack, shame, or berate you.

I don’t know if you think that I’m the same as a peer or another family member with whom you have a more conventional and grounded relationship. Or that disagreements followed by years of radio silence is fine. But I’m not a peer or a family member who always knew you. I’m the daughter who was raised in a family that wasn’t my own because of bad timing and circumstance.

I acknowledge all of what you had to weigh and that the decision you made was pure, out of love, and made in order to give me the best chance at the best life possible. I’ve had admiration and respect in multitudes for it. But I had no choice other than to accept and forgive since the day I was born. As I got old enough to decide for myself, I still chose to accept and forgive. The moment I was given a chance to meet you, I chose to accept your presence in my life. Eventually, I chose to give you pieces of myself, and finally, I even chose to give you my trust. Acceptance and forgiveness regenerate with ease, but when your life starts the way mine did with a broken bond and no choice in the matter, it also starts with a massive deficit of trust. I actually never got out of the negative space; something always happens to keep me there. The amount I gave you, I got it on loan.

I have given more to you throughout the course of my life than I realized until all I got was your disregarding absence. That absence continues to further break something in me, and I don’t deserve it. Candidly, I’m running out of tape and glue.

I know you suffered an unimaginable loss when I was born and that a part of you died when you couldn’t take me home to raise in your family. I know that the very subject of me causes you pain and grief. I also know the world doesn’t make room for the particular kind of pain you’ve felt and that opportunities to talk about it freely and without filtering are rare. I know that causes the pain and grief to turn into anger, guilt, shame, and numbness.

I don’t know the lay of the landmine on your end, but I do understand that’s what it is. A landmine of 33 years’ worth of explosive affliction underfoot.

I know this because unimaginable loss was my birthright.

Again, I respect it. You were mature and capable beyond your years. You didn’t leave me on a doorstep with a note and an extra bottle. You placed me responsibly into the hands of professionals whom you knew had found me a home and fit parents. I think I remember hearing that I was physically healthy, so at some point you must even have started intaking more nutrients than the average teenager. You left your friends, your pom poms, the boyfriend who knocked you up, your home, your family, and everything else about your adolescent life behind to take care of me. You were up north at your aunt’s house preparing to give birth to a child you knew you might never meet while you should have been having senioritis.

You did good, Ava. Maybe it’s weird to say that I am proud of you, but I can’t think of a better way to say it. You did everything you could have. You didn’t just become a mother that day; you outdid yourself in your role as my mother.

The moment your role was to relinquish regimentation and have faith, I inherited a massive role and responsibility—to adapt. The world’s lack of acknowledgement that I experienced that unimaginable loss as well was what dismally became my inheritance.

Science shows that infants have instinctual awareness and memory. The loss of you was a trauma my brain doesn’t recall, but my body does. Apparently, I wasn’t knitting a sweater in there; I was bonding with you.

Fighting my biological awareness and memory of that broken bond as if it were natural was expected of me from the start. I was told losing everything with my first breath was something to be grateful for. I was saved. That never clicked with me as quite right, because it wasn’t. Now I know that attachment disruption is acknowledged as relinquishment trauma, and not being given a chance to grieve is acknowledged as adoption trauma. How well I adapted to surroundings that didn’t reflect me became how I understood my value and place in the world.

When I was in 3rd grade, my best friend who lived down the street was at my house and we were playing with sidewalk chalk. We were arguing about who gets to choose what game to draw and play. I went with the typical nine-year old’s stance: My house, my sidewalk chalk, my choice. Keep in mind that she was a sweet kid, just thoughtless in the moment (yet impressively calculated) with her rebuttal, “Yeah but your parents aren’t really your parents, so it’s not really your house or your sidewalk chalk.”

“What a relief, thank you for saying that out loud,” I remember thinking. “Now please do me a solid and go ask my mom to explain like, all of it and then come back and tell me what she said. Word for word. Do. Not. Paraphrase.”

Instead, I stormed away angry on behalf of my mother. On behalf of myself, I felt nothing but numb and confused. I knew that I was supposed to be mad, so I was. I stayed fake mad because it made my mom happy, and I thought maybe I would be mad mad if I tried hard enough. I couldn’t, which I felt guilty for. So much that I almost confessed to my mom so she could punish me appropriately. But I didn’t think telling her how I really felt was worth hurting her feelings, so I just made myself sick with shame. And to punish myself, I didn’t talk to my best friend for almost the entire school year. I caved on the last day of school. Self-sacrifice is a very strange instinct for a third-grader.

My whole life I’ve been consumed by trying and failing to maintain a sense of self because I’ve been trying to exist in two worlds; one that doesn’t accommodate my longing for the other, which is filled with mystery and ghosts. It’s relentless discomfort, anxiety, phantom pain, and hiding.

I was listening to a TED Talk by a social worker whose work focuses on adoption. It was about the unnecessary obstacle course along the path to reuniting with birth family and the need for change in this process. She said something that seemed to stop my heart for more than a few beats: my original birth certificate is state property, and I have no legal access to it. But if I were able to see it, I would see on the side of the document that it had been stamped with one of those ink stamps used to save time. Like the original birth certificates of adoptees in many states in the country, the document was stamped with the word “Void.”

What I have instead is an “amended birth certificate.”

I have always relied on the language of symbolic comparison as a way to explain and relate, and a stamp that invalidates my original identity is the most perfect symbol to explain why. I rely on anecdotal relatability because my access to a real sense of belonging is void. It’s never been tangible.

I am an amended version of myself, and that’s a very hard way to live. I am defined by the loss of you I didn’t grieve for, and the rest of me is made up of dissonance.

I have lived my whole life in fear of the fact that I could lose my seat at the table in an instant. I come by it honestly. I know you feel many of the things I feel and that the very subject of me causes you pain. But I finally am able to have compassion for myself after 33 years of thinking I’m not worth the trouble. Only now can I definitively say that your pain is not a good enough reason for you to treat me as if I’m unlovable. Your fears are not a good enough reason for me to let them amplify mine.

I thought reunion was supposed to fix me, but I’ve learned that isn’t how it works. I always enjoyed spending time with you all, but I think I just went through the motions and ended up feeling more alone. I know now reunion could never be that simple. Meeting you would not have repaired my traumatized brain, and it wouldn’t fix yours either. There’s absolutely no way you don’t have PTSD in some form as well. Giving up control over everything that will happen to a child that you gave birth to is unnatural and goes against every instinct a mother has. It’s not something you just move on from with only faith to hold you up.

As for me, I’ve blamed everyone and no one at the same time for the wreckage. I’ve gone down the list and been angry with pretty much everyone I know for at least a little while. Doctors who throughout my childhood attributed clear cut signs of manifested trauma to stress, but shrugged them off and said I was “just a little tightly wound.” The therapists and psychiatrists who misdiagnosed me after I spent countless hours on their couches. My parents, of course, for not helping me find my own truth, which would have helped me obtain a proper diagnosis a long time ago. I landed on “everything” for the most amount of time. The ignorant, narrow, and damaging speak surrounding the whole topic of adoption. A reductive narrative that takes a process where most everyone involved is either nobly intended or an innocent newborn, all of whom have lost something so significant that they will never be the same, and wrings it out until it’s a shitty, low-budget Hallmark film. I blamed the fucking thing it’s called. “Adopted.” If that was intended as some form of shorthand, they should not have been in charge of naming things. It’s too fucking short. It’s a denial of enormous grief, and erases everything except what goes on some legal documents that end up sitting in a file cabinet. It takes away the story and, more importantly, the voice of everyone involved in one way another.

As I said before, I don’t know the lay of the landmine on your end. But in the midst of all the anger I felt when trying to figure out who was to blame, it occurred to me that whoever named it the thing it’s called—“adopted”— it seems like it had to be a birth mother.

The whole thing about the adopted child being chosen by the loving adoptive family and saved by them to go live a happily ever after life—it sounds like a hopeful birth mother who felt she should keep herself out of it just in case it would cause her child pain. Or she was made to go away because of stigma, but requested that her child be told they are the main character in a real-life fairytale.

That got me thinking about what happened to you. The fact that you were expected to leave your home and move to a strange place to endure one of the most traumatic experiences a person could have, at 18 years old, because others might shame and stigmatize you instead of supporting you. I always recognized that as a load of fucking horseshit, but you had told me about those circumstances so casually that it never sunk in how horrible that really was. There is nothing about that you deserved, and it never should have happened. You never should have had to go through that. You never should have been burdened with shame and rejection on top of loss. You were a child.

I’m not convinced that the situation would be a whole lot different today. Definitely not as different as it should be. So that’s my answer. The only thing to blame is “the way things are.” I have never had goals or very much direction in life until now, but I know I want to help change this garbage version of “the way things are” for as many adoption triads as I can. I don’t know what that means yet, and I have a lot of work to do on myself before I can start to figure it out.

I don’t know who I am, but I do know what I stand for. I wholeheartedly believe everyone deserves to heal and that they should. Especially from the things they went through as kids. And I know there is no way that you have. Adoption-competent mental health professionals are like unicorns even today, so there is no way in your situation that you got the support you needed. The fact that we don’t speak is proof of that. And you have to stop pretending that the problem is me. I don’t deserve it at all.

I’m a good kid. I have a larger than life capacity to provide a safe space for people to feel their pain, especially the kind the world does not make room for. I have been through enough. I lost you before I could ever know you at the beginning of my life. I lost my mom before I could ever know her at the beginning of my coming of age story. All of that was so hard on me that I tried to die. Then immediately after that, as I was trying to want to live, I lost you again. Give me a damn break, man. Stop treating me as if I am the problem. I can help, and you can have some time, but this is the last time I will be reaching out.

I don’t trust easily, but I sure as shit don’t scare easily either. We are not a conventional mother and daughter. Our shit is very extra by nature. Trust me, I had a much different letter written just last week. I had a right to every teenage angst-influenced word, too. It’s natural to idealize your mother and be disappointed and furious and crushed by her when she doesn’t live up to that ideal. I have gone through a lifetime of emotions, naturally childlike, when it comes to you on a very strange and inconvenient timeline, and I have had to parent myself through every bit of it. I have reached an adult resolve without even writing emo song lyrics on my Converse with a Sharpie. I am a proud-ass mama.

You have a right to all your feelings too. I am hurt by open-ended silence, but I don’t think there’s anything you could say that I wouldn’t understand to some degree. I’m a subject that’s caused you 33 years’ worth of pain. You don’t need to slap a pink bow on that shit. You could have wished I was never born, and I would understand that.

Try me. I will absolutely surprise you. Just don’t deflect and avoid and leave me alone in the process. I can’t even act tough and stand up to it. I have never had the luxury of not knowing exactly how fragile I am every moment of my life. So, please. I deserve persistent acceptance and kindness.

Anyway, about everything else, I am a bit of a psychological breakdown junkie, and I have read a ton lately about the adoption triad in general. I am happy to send links and resources. And to listen.

Btw, seeking community has helped me a lot. There are plenty of online adoptee support groups, and I would imagine that there are also birth mother support groups out there. Hearing other people’s stories is healing, even if you don’t have the desire to interact with the group.

Xoxo, Kristen

It’s been 9 months, and she hasn’t sent any sort of response. I imagine this is still sitting there, swarming in on her, perceived at a glance to be the indictment of the ages. Misunderstood and avoided like bad news. My unsung apocalyptic longing weighing down her inbox.

*Name changed for privacy reasons Steinhilber is a private domestic adoptee with a passion for adoptee rights and mental health advocacy. You can follow me her on Instagram and Twitter: @girlxadapted Severance 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.

On Venmo: @sandrafckingdee

Severance speaks with Gina Daniel, DSW, LCSW, whose personal experience—her discovery that she’s an NPE (not-parent-expected)—has redirected her professional goals, putting the spotlight on the challenges and needs of individuals with misattributed parentage experiences. She recently earned her doctorate, her dissertation a study of the NPE experience, and she’s working to help create awareness among mental health professionals and improve their knowledge about the specific needs of people who’ve discovered misattributed parentage.Did your upbringing influence your desire to be a social worker and if so, in what way?

I expected to become an elementary teacher growing up and had no idea what social work was until I was in my 20s. However, once I discovered social work, I knew that was what I needed to do. My upbringing was full of moments when I was a little social worker (counseling, advocating, and educating) but I did not know it until later. I was raised by a single father who worked hard to be sure we could pay the rent. All the moms in the neighborhood helped to raise me.

You were already a social worker and well into your doctoral studies when you decided to change the topic of your dissertation. Can you explain why you chose to align your scholarly interests with your NPE experience?

I was. That was quite the detour. I trust my gut with most everything I do. I could not find a way to study school social work (my profession) in a way that felt interesting to me. Once the NPE event happened, I brought it to my committee and they helped me determine that this was the path that fit better for me. Knowing there was little to no scholarly research at that time was a huge attraction to me as well. I agreed and was willing to do the extra work.

How, specifically, did you design your thesis—what were you looking to discover and how did you propose to accomplish that?

I knew I would do interviews for qualitative research. The idea of secrets kept was fascinating. Also, the impact that this discovery had on me and how off balance I felt at middle age got me interested in the impact on identity. The obvious path was discussing the impact on family of origin relationships—living or deceased and on the new family relationships—living or deceased.

You interviewed 51 people. Can you describe those interviews—how you selected subjects and what the interviews involved?

I was a part of one of the private NPE Facebook groups that agreed to work with me then backed out. Another Facebook group offered assistance then stalled. Finally, a woman who was starting another NPE Facebook group offered to assist. I was a member but did not participate for a long time. The process was an advertisement of the study and a link for those interested. The criteria for interviews included having discovered paternity through a direct-to-consumer DNA Ancestry test, living in North America, being over 18.

The first round of interviews was in the fall of 2019, the second round of interviews was in the fall of 2020. Unfortunately, the first round interviews were not used in the final study. It’s a complicated story but every one of those interviews mattered significantly to me and, interestingly, my findings were the same. The interviews were incredible. People were so willing to share their personal stories, so interested in helping other NPEs, and were so vulnerable and lovely. I feel incredibly lucky to have shared some time with all of these amazing individuals.

Can you summarize your overall findings?

To summarize my research, there appears to be a significant psychological blow to participants discovering paternity/family secrets through a direct-to consumer (DTC) DNA ancestry test. There’s a struggle to incorporate the new information. Half of the participants in my research sought mental health counseling in order to cope. Personal identity is changed as a result (incorporating new family, concerns with previous family, health issues, and ethnicity changes); resemblance to family is a significant component within this experience; participants prefer the truth over not having the truth (despite the emotional difficulty); and social supports (e.g. Facebook groups) are helpful and after a certain point appear to become a ‘pay it forward’ place. In my research I called this ‘healing through helping.’

You’d already had an NPE experience, and although it was relatively new, you’d had some time to process your emotions. Was there anything revealed in the interviews that surprised you?

I had time to process and discussed with a therapist as well. The similarities in the emotions that most people shared mirrored my experience. I was surprised at the sense that some of this felt universal—deception, lies, shock/surprise, understanding, hurt—and all mostly at middle age.

What, if anything, would you describe as universal in the experience of your interviewees?

Similar emotions that erupt suddenly when the discovery is learned and then occasional eruptions of the same emotions, maybe less intensely, over time. Also, the idea that almost everyone feels alone at the beginning of this process—as if they are the only ones going through this.

If you had to choose the top three most difficult challenges or most difficult emotional issues experienced by NPEs what would they be?

Shock/surprise, anger, and feeling alone. Also the rejections from new family that happen for many.

Can you give an overview of the kinds of issues NPEs have with respect to identity and what are some strategies for dealing with them?

To be completely honest, I don’t feel I went as deeply as I should have for the identity questions. When I asked questions about if identity changed, the vast majority said yes. When I pressed the “yes” responses further with “how,” I was often met with pause in thought. However, ethnicity and health information were the most often described areas where identity shifts occurred. Seeking information about new family was necessary in order to understand more about self. I included resemblance into this section as this topic came up so often in interviews as related to not looking like family of origin, then looking like new family, children looking like new grandfathers, etc.

As far as strategies, I don’t think I have any to offer based on what was provided through the research outside of have a professional genetic counselor or mental health professional to talk with while processing these complex shifts.

This is a complex, multi-part question. I’ve noticed that for many NPEs, this experience seems to become central, becoming almost the centerpiece of their identity and front and center in their lives in an ongoing way. Is there a danger in that—in lives being overtaken in a sense by this experience?

Like with many things, it depends on how much it impacts your functioning in your typical life. I’m not sure how it can not become a central feature of a life when so much of what you’ve known about yourself is upended while doing a recreational activity. For some, how do you reconcile trust again after this occurs?

What can individuals do to help integrate the experience so it’s not overwhelming and doesn’t come ultimately to define them?

So, it can be overwhelming and create a new definition of themselves. However, the idea is that it is now an expanded definition. You are what you were and what you now know. It’s realizing that piece, I think, that’s helpful as people process the losses and grievances along the way with this experience.

Is there an end goal of assimilating this experience, or will it always be front and center? 

In my opinion, assimilating is the goal. What we cannot control, we cannot control. People may not choose to have us in their lives, and we have no option but to accept that. People may be deceased, and we get no answers to the questions we have about our existence. We again have to find a way to accept that. These are not easy tasks, but to remain in a place of anger and sadness only steals your life from you.

Many NPEs belong to support groups on Facebook and perhaps elsewhere. Can you comment on the benefits and also the limitations?

There are significant benefits belonging to a healthy group of people sharing similar experiences with something brilliant to offer us in the way of hope, support, or suggestion when needed. This is what it is to be a social human finding your ‘tribe.’ However, the limitations are when professional help is needed and people use Facebook—or when people on Facebook want to be professional mental health professionals doling out advice and are not qualified.

You wish to help educate mental health professionals about how to better treat NPEs. What are the biggest needs in that education?

Awareness of this experience to start with.

Therapists are trained to work with clients with issues related to grief, loss, shame. What are they lacking that prevents them from being able to better help NPEs?

We all hope the therapists we work with understand how to work with grief, loss, and shame, but judging from my research, many NPEs seeking mental health help were met with flippant comments minimizing their experiences. That tells me that perhaps they are not viewing this experience from the lens of grief, loss, and shame. The impact of secrets on families is an area to understand more, as well as all the ways an individual can become an NPE. This isn’t as simple as ‘mom had an affair’ in a lot of situations. I also think we are still learning the best ways to help NPEs therapeutically, so I am not in any way indicating this answer as a full and complete response to your question.

Until therapists are better trained or until there’s truly a network of therapists specializing in these issues, what advice do you have for individuals who are seeking mental health care?

Just meet with a professional you’re comfortable talking to, who is listening and seeking to understand and help. If the first one doesn’t fit, move on until you find one that clicks for you.

What should people look for in a therapist and how might they be able to tell when a therapist will not be right for them?

Someone who is not minimizing your experience. It’s completely ok to interview a therapist prior to meeting them. Ask them if they have heard of NPEs, ask if they have worked with someone who has been adopted, ask about their experience with family therapy and family secrets in therapy. If you don’t like them on the phone, move on. I suggest if you’re on the fence with a therapist (after meeting once), try them three times. If after three times it’s not helping anything, move on.

I understand you’re interested in doing research on siblings who are discovered by NPEs. I’m wondering if you have a sense yet of what reasons might keep those siblings from being accepting of NPEs?

So this is personal. I did not indicate my interest in this in my research study and am not 100% I am going to do this, but I think about it a lot. Siblings, at this age, are typically peers and have information that can help us better understand the new parent and health information. We can potentially grow old with them and have that extra layer of familial connection. However, they’re not always willing to accept the new sibling no matter what the situation was, and this can be very difficult for an NPE to cope with. Inheritances, sibling positions within the family, and loyalties to other family appear to be reasons to keep away. Like I said, this is a personal one for me so I will tread lightly as I move forward. It may also be a challenge to find siblings willing to open up unless I were to go through an NPE, so I imagine the information would be skewed toward acceptance. Still, it could be interesting to get their perspective. Maybe I am totally off base and am taking my rejection of two younger siblings too hard!

 Can you tell me about the support guide you’re working on and your hopes for it?

Well, it’s currently evolving into a blog I believe. Perhaps the blog will develop into the support guide in paper form one day. Another NPE and I are working on it currently. Our hope is that it is a helpful tool for everyone—NPEs new and existing, family members, mental health professionals. You’ll hopefully be hearing about it soon. We hope to get it really moving this summer.

 What are the most important aspects of this experience that researchers need to explore?

Well, I just completed someone’s study questionnaire from West Chester University in Pennsylvania that looks like quantitative research, so that makes me excited thinking we can get some of that info out there. Within my study, I suggest future research considerations to include qualitative research with biological mothers, longitudinal studies with NPEs, and consideration of if/how the new medical information changes behavior once misattributed paternity is uncovered.

What haven’t I asked you that you think people should know either about the NPE experience or about the work you’ve done related to it?

This experience has a spectrum of response. NPEs are many in our world, always have been, and will continue to occur. Learning about your NPE status through a direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry test is perhaps an unintended consequence to a recreational test for a most popular hobby. This is also a first world issue accessed primarily by Caucasian individuals who can afford to test for fun. The impact on identity is significant.Gina Daniel is a licensed clinical social worker. She has worked in public education as a school social worker for more than twenty years and also works in her private practice in central Pennsylvania primarily focused on individual and family work. Daniel discovered her NPE status in June 2018 and subsequently completed her doctoral dissertation with a focus on unexpected paternity discoveries through direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry testing.BEFORE YOU GO…

Look on our home page for more articles and essays about NPEs, adoptees, and genetic genealogy.

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By Brad EwellThere are many NPE/MPE (not parent expected/misattributed parent experience) stories with one if not multiple layers of abandonment. It seems as if for many in this community it’s a fairly common part of the experience. I don’t believe my story is different from many others, but I only recently realized how much it’s still affecting me.

A week ago, my wife and I were sitting in the living room talking about a problem I was having with my adoptive mom. My adoptive dad had passed away about six months ago, and my mom has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She’s still in the early stages, but she calls multiple times daily wanting me to come over and help with various things or just keep her company. When I tell her I can’t, I often hear her sad voice saying, “I just wish you could help me.” As I was telling my wife about the latest call, I said, “All I really want to say is, ‘do you mean how you helped me after I found out that y’all adopted me?’”

My wife looked up at me and asked, “Do you know how bitter that sounded?”

“Yes, because I’m still bitter about it.” But it really wasn’t until that moment that I realized how it’s been eating at me for the last few months.

About a year and a half ago, after having taken an Ancestry DNA test, I learned from a biological family member that I’d been adopted at birth. I reached for confirmation to my mom and dad, who only then I realized were my adoptive parents. When we met to  talk though my discovery, they offered the standard responses most of us have gotten at one time or another: “Nothing has changed; we’re still your parents; what mattered is how much we loved you; we didn’t tell you because we didn’t want you to be hurt”—all of the things NPEs/MPE’s love to hear. I told them as far as I was concerned they still were my parents because they were the only parents I’d ever known, but that literally everything had changed. We talked for a while longer but never moved past the “nothing has changed” point.

After this conversation, things took an unexpected turn. I left believing our talk had opened the door to the truth and that now we could talk about it openly. Looking back, I see this was naive on my part; my parents had been secret keepers most of their lives and they managed to keep a pretty big one for 48 years. My parents decided after I left that they’d had enough of that unpleasant conversation and we would not be talking about it again; the only catch was once again they’d forgotten to tell me.

A few weeks later I began communicating with some of my biological family through text and Facebook Messenger. I typically talked to my parents about once a week, and whenever adoption came up they changed the subject. I did my best to not bring the topic up, but discovering I’d been adopted had been a life-altering experience, and keeping these contacts secret from them made me feel as if I were being unfaithful or disrespectful to them. I wasn’t trying to replace them, but I was feeling the strong, inalienable pull of biology; I wanted to know where I came from. So in order to keep the peace while I continued on my journey, I continued avoid the topic when talking with my parents.

A month later I made arrangements to meet a half-brother I’d discovered. As I was on the way to see him, my dad called me and asked what I was up to. I told him I was driving to meet a friend for dinner. When he wanted to know what friend, I told him it was someone he didn’t know. When he asked again, I mistakenly thought he’d changed his mind and wanted to know things. So I told him the truth. There was a pause, and I waited for any questions he might have now that we were going to talk about things. But all he said was, “Man it sure was hot today.” That really stung. But I agreed it was hot and told my dad I was almost at my destination and had better get off the phone. I still had a ways to go, but I just wanted to end the conversation.

That was first time I felt abandoned in my adoption journey. It wasn’t when I’d learned that someone had given me up as a baby and wondered what led to that choice. I’d learned the complicated story of my conception, and at 48 years old I could see the logic of and necessity for the decision. Instead, I felt abandoned by my adoptive parents when they refused to have anything to do with helping me navigate the mess they’d created. I know many NPEs and MPEs have had their parents reject them or their biological parents refuse to acknowledge them when there was infidelity in the story, but I didn’t anticipate that type of abandonment in my case. My parents just adopted a baby. One of my closest friends growing up—our whole families were friends—was adopted, and his parents felt no reason to hide it. To this day I just don’t get why my parents did.

My wife was wonderful and continues to be my rock through this journey, while my parents—who did a great job raising me—completely bailed on me when I needed them most. The hardest part about this was that it left a dirty feeling every time I met a biological relative. Since my parents and I weren’t going to talk about it, each time it felt like I was sneaking around and betraying them. Then, when we would get together, it was the elephant in the room. For months, I carried the guilt along with all the other new feelings.

Fortunately, this story has a somewhat happy ending. About a week before my dad passed, he’d been in the hospital. My mom and I would alternate nights staying with him. Once he woke up in the middle of the night and told me he thought he was dying. I asked if he meant soon or now, and he said now. I asked what he wanted to do, and he said “let’s talk.” After we talked for a few minutes he asked, “So what ever happened with the whole adoption thing?” I was completely caught off guard and told him I thought he didn’t like talking about it so I did my best not to bring it up. But now he wanted to know everything. For the next hour, I told him stories of the meetings, showed him pictures, and answered his questions. He seemed genuinely pleased and at peace with the information. At one point, after I talked about meeting my biological dad, he said, “Well you finally got to meet your dad … that’s good.” Hearing that broke my heart a little, and I told him I would always consider him my dad. After a while, he became tired and dozed off.  After that, we never talked about it again, but I finally had what felt like his blessing to continue on my journey and I was relieved of the huge burden I’d been carrying for months.

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Joyful reunions have become a television staple. Less frequently told are the stories of the unsuccessful searches and unhappy reunions. Adoptees, donor-conceived people, and NPEs (not parent expected) risk being spurned when they reach out to biological family members, and rejection may cause significant distress. We asked Lisa Bahar, a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional clinical counselor in Newport Beach, California, about how rejection may influence and interfere with interpersonal relationships, how individuals can help soothe themselves, and how therapy might help.Yes. If individuals ruminate and fixate on the thought of rejection, they may find they’re setting themselves for up interpersonal interactions that fall in line with their core belief that they are rejected and will be rejected. On the other hand, in a therapeutic environment or process, it may be a way to work through rejection and explore it for the purpose of gaining acceptance of self.It can produce general anxiety symptoms, depression, feelings of disconnect, and fear of intimacy.  Anxiety is a symptom of avoiding the discomfort of deep emotional pain that has not been worked through.Fear of getting hurt can set up you up for hurting others before they hurt you—a conflicted desire to get close, but then pushing away, rejecting other people’s love due to not feeling comfortable being loved. Sometimes it’s easier to be rejected. It’s known and familiar. A running theme in intimate relationships is looking to someone to accept you, and that may and most likely will turn into deep need, which can manifest in rage-like behavior when you’re left or not reassured that the person will return.Belonging would be about feeling accepted and willing to take a chance to make efforts to belong. It takes a lot of courage to work through the feelings of rejection. Learning how to let go of people is a significant step toward being accepted and belonging. Practicing that sense of freedom helps with interpersonal relationships and lets you create a connection that’s healthier and more fulfilling versus controlling, demanding, insisting, or guilting people into having you feel like you belong, which ironically sets up the cycle to be rejected.I would say try professional therapy relationships versus friends and family. It seems reasonable to turn to family and friends, however, starting with a therapist or maybe a trusted religion or spiritual practitioner may be a more effective alternative. Friends and family are well meaning, but they may not understand the depths of the disconnect that is at the core of the trauma of being rejected.Be willing to address it by noticing when you are feeling rejected. Set up a self-soothing kit that will calm your mind when you feel rejected, for example, warm clothing, soothing refreshment (not mood altering), sensory experiences that are comforting to the 5 senses to help you feel more connected to life. Creating a sensory experience might involve putting in your room flowers or a painting or work of art that’s pleasing to the eye, candles or atmospheric lighting, comforters that are attractive and warm, and bed linens that feel nice. It might mean having hot tea or another warm and soothing beverage for taste. For sound, it might mean playing music that’s calming, versus thoughtful or stimulating. Put together a list of books that will help you improve your feelings of acceptance, such as loving kindness or spiritual books. Learn about imagery so you can envision a place when you are feeling rejected. The comfort of a pet may help. If your pet appreciates being petted, you benefit and the pet does too. Practicing a loving kindness and compassion practice can help calm the mind. You remind yourself that you are safe, you are content, you are accepted. When practiced regularly, it trains the mind to accept yourself versus the negative negative self-talk. The mind is powerful and will accept what you tell it if you practice.Depending on the severity, most likely psychodynamic therapy will work with severe symptoms of abandonment. Object Relations and Gestalt therapies can be helpful. Psychodynamic therapy is a form of treatment that explores how an individual experiences symptoms of distress based on what is unconscious, and therapists work with clients to bring the unconsciousness into the conscious. This is important when working through jealousy due to the abandonment and the fear of rejection associated with this. This therapy focuses on childhood experiences as a way to understand current symptoms that are seemingly unhealthy. For example, a child rejected by his mother may set up an experience of rejection from others or even go so far as to reject his mate before she rejects him to avoid the discomfort of jealousy. And since many of these individuals have experienced trauma, EMDR and other trauma-informed therapies might also be helpful.I have had clients experience this. Rejection is a trauma and it deserves to be worked through. Therapy is essential, and the desire to find some kind of meaning from the experience would be the goal. Existential therapies can be helpful for this experience. Existential therapies look for meaning and purpose—why you are here. They also look at anxiety as an opportunity to be creative and face fears to create new experiences. Anxiety is seen as a launch to new beginnings.Learn to practice a willingness to turn your mind toward accepting that rejection is related to further acceptance of self. If you can love and accept yourself in whatever method you choose, then you will be equipped to deal with others who may reject you. The reality is, rejection is part of being in the world, and the key is not to try and avoid it, but rather to see it as an opportunity to explore parts of yourself you want to accept, change parts that don’t fit with your meaning and life purpose, and discover ways to be gentle with yourself when this inevitable experience occurs. Someone one told me, “If everyone likes you, you have a problem.”Lisa Bahar is licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional clinical counselor. She specializes in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and provides psychotherapy to individuals, couples, and families. She’s an adjunct faculty member at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Education and Psychology Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology program with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy.

Read more about rejection here, and return to our home page for more articles on genetic identity issues.