This article is from a year ago, but I just saw it today.
Be careful with your words about God towards your adopted children.
I have so much to say about this, but I’m not strong enough right now to have it all picked apart…so I’ll just keep it in my heart for awhile.
Sheri Eldridge has shared Chapter 4 of her book Twenty Life Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make on her Facebook page.
Find it here.
I like her take on the mixed feelings and things people *shouldn’t* say to adoptees. Not sure I agree with her take on “Moses” or the part about “How can one help an adoptee feel like she belongs?” To me, both things she mentions are lies. To each his own, though!
Huffington Post has a great article on the complexity of two fathers…
On Father’s Day, Thinking of the Dad Who Raised Me, and the Father Who Might Not Know I Exist
My biological father (yes I’m using “biological” instead of first, natural, “father” whatever… it seems to fit in this case) should know I exist. He was told my mother was pregnant, and then broke off contact. He doesn’t know I’m a girl, may have conveniently forgotten all about me in wishful thinking. I’m not exactly happy to figure out my bfather was probably not the greatest guy. 😛 I know his name, we think we’ve located him. I’m too chicken to write. Just don’t want to know *for sure* he’s a jerk, or doesn’t want to know about me, etc.
Pacer-adoption.org posted a short synopsis of Betty Jean Lifton’s work in this article: The Inner Life of the Adopted Child: Adoption, Trauma, Loss, Fantasy, Search and Reunion.
I could quote the whole thing, but this part resonated with me right now:
… Early on [the adoptees] get the message that they cannot grieve for their lost kin, that they must commit themselves to the adoptive clan if they are to keep their adoptive parents’ love. Already abandoned by the birth mother, the child feels no choice but to abandon her. By doing so, he abandons his real self. This early potential self that is still atteched to the birth mother is often unacceptable to the adoptive parents and, therefore, must become uacceptable to the child.
Karen Horney (1950) stressed that there is no more consequential step than abandoning the real self. The child forced to give up the real self cannot develop feelings of belonging. There is instead a feeling of basic anxiety, of being isolated and helpless. For this reason, adopted childen often try to shut out the subject of adoption. This means that they are separating one part of the self from the rest of the self – a pattern known as dissociation, disavowal, numbing, or splitting.
…
The artificial self looks like the perfect child because he or she is so eager to please. These children are compliant, put everyone’s needs before their own, and suppress their anger. But deep inside they feel like a fake and an imposter, feelings that may overwhelm them as an adult. Having cut off a vital part of themselves, they sometimes feel dead…
I’m like many adoptees – I feel like I don’t have a “self”. I’m middle aged now, and have been trying to “reinvent myself” – to actually come up with a “real self”, but due to my family’s needs and personalities, it seems impossible. Maybe I can work through some of that here.
Reblogging:
The title of this post was inspired by that of an article published in 2013 in BBC News Magazine, The adults who suffer extreme homesickness, which describes the struggles adults have coping with homesickness. Spanish footballer Jesus Navas, for instance, suffered from homesickness so severe it induced panic attacks that kept him away from training camps and pre-season tours. It is said he has overcome his homesickness through counselling.
I found the article while searching for “homesickness, depression & suicide”. I was led to search on this subject because when you belong to an adoption group you cannot avoid the subject of suicide and while reading the study according to which adopted offspring are nearly 4 times more likely to attempt suicide than nonadopted offspring, I recalled the story of The Little Prince and the word hiraeth.
The Little Prince is one of my favorite books. Little Prince…
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Baby Girl B. 