Words to adoptive parents and others touched by adoption

Love is a very powerful word. It can be beautiful, it can touch your heart and soul, or it can be the most hurtful and misunderstood word ever.

Why is it that our natural parents are supposed to have given us to someone else out of love? Many of us adoptees have been told this since we were children. Adoptive parents said, “They chose us, it was a part of Gods plan, they saved us from a life in poverty or other rotten circumstances. They gave us a place to live, food on the table, education, clothes, bought lots of stuff to make us feel loved. We are their golden trophy, we fulfilled their dream when we arrived. We are the lucky ones, and we owe them from the moment  we entered their home, throughout our lives. There is no end to how grateful we must be, since we are the ones they worked so hard to get.” But at what cost for the natural parents and for the adoptees?

We are called ungrateful, hopeless, immature, angry and difficult if we suddenly one day, as children, youths or adults, wake up from the fog, from our denial and your brainwashing, because we stay true to you as long as possible. The day we start asking questions, wanting to know why the things in our lives happened the way they did, that is the day all hell breaks loose at home. Why? Is it not because we then rip up a wound, at the core of the truth? That we were never really your children, that we never came from you, that we don’t look like you, that we have different personalities that we inherited from someone else. We carry a price tag, and you helped the adoption business to flourish, and to hide the fact that we may have relatives, families somewhere. Still you choose to make us the guilty ones, teach us to be ashamed for thinking about our natural families, making it a big taboo, not to be mentioned, or we hurt your feelings, and we shouldn’t do that because OMG! we owe you so much, and have to stay true to you all of our lives.

Why do you think it is that so many of us, when we’ve grown up, cut all ties with the adoptive family? Because the barriers were too high to climb. The cost of trying to fit in and live up to your expectations was too great. We suffered so much that we couldn’t take it any more, and now it’s too late to be reconciled. Many adoptees really suffer in so-called loving homes. Some are driven to taking their own lives, and some turn to drugs or alcohol to escape the truth, our reality.

And then the pretence that we are loved “as if we were your real daughters and sons”: We are loved only because you could not have a baby yourself, so we are welcomed as a substitute, to take someone else’s place, or you take us in out of misguided charity, a poor child to be saved from a terrible fate in a distant land and brought in to become just that one more family member which you thought you wanted.

How I hate these lies. And how when the hard times come you cannot pretend to love us any more because we no longer live up to your expectations, if indeed we ever did. When out of frustration we act out and rebel against you because we see that we can’t fit the pretty picture of a perfect family that you are trying to paint, and we never will. No doubt you have heard about the Russian boy¹ whose American adoptive mother put him on a one way flight back to Russia because she was fed up with disappointment and no longer wanted to parent him. Truly an act of love, don’t you think? If he was indeed adopted out of love, it certainly wasn’t out of love for him! Adoptions happen because of the adoptive parents’ love for their own ego. It’s a selfish need for which we adoptive children are provided as merchandise to satisfy. We are sold to the highest bidder, mainly rich people of the Western world.

Stories of adopted children are heartbreaking to those who hear them, but are also to the children whose hearts are broken while they live them. My life is one of those stories, my heart was broken over and over, and I’m learning more and more how my entire existence has been built on lies. My records are full of them, and my adoptive parents did nothing to help; today I know what I suspected for so long: that they can never have truly loved me.

And my natural father didn’t give me away out of love; he turned me over to the children’s home out of despair and poverty. Yet, aside from my natural mother who died before I was taken away, he is the only one who ever truly loved me, and he paid for it dearly, with pain, tears and suffering, until he died, blessed be his memory. Many natural mothers, and some fathers, suffer even today, all over the world, after having their poverty and need exploited by the adoption agencies, their precious children taken away never to be seen again, and they will never get over it. That is the truth.

So I ask, what is so beautiful and loving about adoption? The world chooses to believe the lies that adoption is such a blessing for the children, and for their parents. The world wishes to stay in denial out of old habit, refusing to see the pain and suffering that is part of this, content to keep feeding the lie, that adoption is a ticket to Heaven for saving a poor child. Adoption has existed for so long now, that we think it’s the only way to help out of love.

The adoption agencies still paint the picture that adoption is noble, beautiful and honourable, that it is for the best for mother and child. They tell us the mothers will forget, and that we the children will benefit from it all. It’s a web of lies, period! How much longer, for how many years to come, will the agencies be able to keep this up?

Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.
—Ruth E. Renkel

Real love is suppose to be good, something beautiful and powerful. Let us all take this word love and cherish it in our hearts, and give it its rightful place again. But leave it out of the entire adoption business; it has no place there.

For adoptive parents, both those who already have and those who plan to adopt, I recommend reading the books by Nancy Verrier² and Joe Soll³, and other books that are written about us, or by us, we the adoptees, we who have lost so much, just because you need to satisfy your egos, to make your dream come true, at our cost. Read them so that you can understand us better.

If you are thinking about adoption, please reconsider. Why not instead help a single woman keep her baby? It will be more rewarding to see both their faces smile at you, because they can be together, instead of ripped apart for ever. This way you could save two hearts from breaking. This is my recommendation, my request and my prayer to all future adoptive parents. Don’t adopt, don’t feed the adoption business. If you truly wish to help, then help the mothers and the poor families keep their children. You can be benefactors by way of remote adoption, donating money to children’s homes or young mothers’ collectives, or to children of poor families or poor single mothers, or find other ways to help. The main thing is, do not rip children away from everything that they know. Instead let them keep their heritage and their mothers, relatives, their culture, and their names. Use your hearts and souls and go for the real love.

Adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem at all times.

The following video carries the words of a mother who lost her daughter to adoption. Young mothers-to-be ought to watch it and consider what they let themselves and their children in for if they choose adoption. Adoptive parents-to-be should watch it and consider what they take part in, how they contribute to the pain and grief of someone who has lost, or been forced to give up, the most precious thing they had.

Before you comment, please also read my post Shades of Grey. Thank you 🙂

Namasté

~ Khara

Footnotes:

1. Adopted Russian boy, 7, returned by US mother on one-way flight to Moscow… alone
2. Books by Nancy Verrier: “Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child”, “Coming Home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up” and “Coming Home to Self: Healing the Primal Wound”
3. Books by Joe Soll: “Adoption Healing … A Path to Recovery”, “Adoption Healing … A Path to Recovery for Mothers Who Lost Children to Adoption”, “Adoption Healing … A Path to Recovery – Supplement”