When it comes to an adoptive parent or other authority figure (social worker, pastor, Sunday School teacher, friend of family, etc.) the child is rendered powerless to tell them to stop telling their story. Or, to stop telling it their way.
So, most times the adoptee smiles and nods, or they are quiet.
Or they meekly stuff it down and go on.
Some adoptees may tell their parents that it's okay to share their story, if they ask them.
Or they may act out in different ways to let them know it's not okay.
When they act out, the parent might say, "I have no idea what's gotten into him/her! Why are they acting this way? They've been just fine for a while, and now all of sudden..."
Many adoptees long for approval so much they won't ever tell their parents they
aren't okay with it. They might even agree to testify in church -- publicly sharing the story with others. (Every time I encounter this, I cringe, imagining how their 40-year-old-self might feel about it one day. "What if they are still happy and agreeable to it at forty?"those who disasgree might say. Well, great. Wouldn't it be reasonable to give them time and space to sort out their feelings and beliefs with the benefit of time, wisdom and experience?)
Recently I heard of some adoptive parents who shared stories, referring to their adopted children as "radishes." (Children with RAD.) Yes, I was horrified.
When the adopted son or daughter becomes of age, if they have not come out of the fog as it is known in adoptee-world, they might not have the courage to tell their parents how they felt about this, it is so ingrained in them to not
disappoint their parents.
Others may get brave enough to share their story, with the benefit of adult reflection when they are of age. And the adoptive parent may think or say, "Wait! Wait! It wasn't like that! That's not our story!"
That's part of the problem -- it's not their story -- it's their son or daughter's story.
The rebuke over a changed script happens to many adoptees when they don't spit out the same story they were given for all those years...that same one the adults in their lives have already been telling everybody, forever.
For instance, although my adoptive parents never did this to me, many other people did use the old, "Be grateful you weren't aborted," or "Aren't you glad your mother chose life?" script for me when I was younger. I never questioned it -- and just went along with it. This was before I had really processed my adoption and beliefs, well before reunion.
Before my maternal reunion, I often got up in church services where I sang or spoke and testified that I was so grateful my natural mother didn't abort me, or that she chose life. The first night of our reunion, I thanked her for choosing life, and she looked at me in total bewilderment, and said, "I never even considered otherwise."
Suddenly my script didn't make sense.
I had a lot of processing and re-writing to do.
Abortion wasn't part of my story -- at all.
Come to find out, it's not part of a lot of adoption stories.
Abortion wasn't legal when my natural mother was pregnant with me. Strangely, I hadn't even made that connection in my mind for the first 27 years of my life because I was so conditioned by the "she chose life" script that so many adults had handed me. I just kept repeating that script and testifying my little heart out, never questioning it.
Processing one's adoption is a lifetime journey. Presenting a child with a pre-fabricated story -- telling them how they should feel and not giving them space to process it for themselves long term, is not right.
It also saddens me that some adoption agencies and organizations get testimonials from under age adoptees and use their photos to advertise, sharing what they [the agency] consider to be the child's story. Parental consent or not, it's unethical -- not in the best interest of the child.
The child will process things as they get older and if they no longer identify with the story their were given by others, there will be nothing they can do to get rid of the information that has circulated, that they may not consider their truth anymore.
Rarely is an adoptee's truth the same at 20, 30 or 40 as it was when they were a child. This should be understood, even from a non-adoptee standpoint. If you are not adopted, do you still believe all the same things at your age now as you did when you were five? My husband is not adopted, yet the man I married at 19 years old is very different from the same man in his forties.
The anger present in some adopted children may stem in part from the inability to own their story.
But they don't know how to tell you that.
Logging you in...
Elizabeth · 626 weeks ago
marykateryan7 75p · 626 weeks ago
What gets me most as an adult, out of the fog, is thinking of another adoptee I know and how his story was shared between the adults when we were kids -- the speculation and discussion about the unknown details. It nauseates me now, and made me very uncomfortable then. There was just something not right about it.
chet jackson · 626 weeks ago
Alicia · 626 weeks ago
I had been in the fog until about 2 years ago, and now that I'm de-fogged, I'm surprised that this story actually happened and that it has been repeated to me for 40 years on my "adopted birthday". What is that anyway? A term used before "gotcha day"? Either way, it has messed with my head. I was a commodity similar to produce- to be inspected and declined if needed.
Thanks for putting this out there!
Ruth · 626 weeks ago
We recently learned some new and very significant information about our children's past...it affects them equally. We shared it with them last week and I think that went all right; they have things to process, for sure, and they have talked about it with my husband and me very freely since that conversation and they (so far) are coping healthily with it.
The challenge (and what I'd love your thoughts on) is that our daughter (who is the younger of the two) is highly extraverted and relational and told this new piece of information to a little friend or hers a few days ago, and the friend's mother also overheard. Our son is very reserved about most aspects of his earlier life when it comes to talking to people outside of our immediate family and he was angry that she had shared this news.
We've had several conversations about it since, but I'm curious to know which route you would go in this case. We've talked (recently as well as for the past 2.5 years) about privacy vs secrecy, we've talked about respecting each other's sibling before sharing news, we've talked about how to tell one's own story without impacting others, we've done a lot of role playing (for a long time already, but also about this new information), we've talked about how once something is shared it can never be taken back, we've talked about how we need to assume that once we tell someone something about us that it will be shared by that person with other people....on and on. They've been good discussions and the kids have both had lots of opinions and asked lots of questions, and we've asked our daughter not to share this news with anyone else until we've talked it all out and until she and her brother both feel of the same mind. (We had asked this of her when we initially shared the news with them, but she talked about it anyway)
The problem is that our daughter is only six and simply doesn't have the maturity yet, despite participating in the discussions and seeming to understand the issues in the MOMENT, to really understand the depth of the issue and the consequences of what she says to others. Our son is eight and is better able to process what he shares and understand the implications...he's a bit of an old soul. I don't want to squelch our daughter from being her natural exuberant self, and I respect and honour the fact that this is her history to share with others just as it is her brother's history; and simultaneously I'm very conscious of the impact that her natural willingness to talk about her past might have on her brother. We contemplated not telling the kids this news quite yet but that didn't seem right; we also wondered whether we should tell our son and not tell out daughter quite yet, but felt that felt wrong, too; etc. We actually sat on the information for about two months before telling them, in order to have some time to introduce them to conversations that would help them understand the new information, etc etc.
Anyway, I'm kind of muddled about this and would appreciate any insights into how to help the two siblings manage their private stories in the context of having a sibling who feels differently about sharing it with others. I don't want to mess this up and worry that I may have already.
Thanks.
Ruth.
Mom to three...two born in the beautiful country of Ethiopia.
Noelle · 626 weeks ago
Surina · 626 weeks ago
tchaiki 49p · 626 weeks ago
When I do adoptive parent education, I always, always stress this line.
You may not tell anyone's story but your own.
You may tell how you wanted to have a child, how you went through fertility treatments, and how you wanted to be a parent.
But you may not use adoptive parenthood as a way to write someone else's story.
My recent post Love and loss, adoptee style
kaye · 626 weeks ago
Still, for 40-something years (until she died), one in-law continued to whisper this fabricated story (including how absolutely awful I was) to other family members. She also mentioned my appalling lack of *gratitude* at having been adopted by this (supposedly) wonderful and amazing person.
Does that sound familiar? o.0
A-parents need to just MYOB. Seriously. :@
My recent post The beginning of the end .....
Fiona · 626 weeks ago
Rose · 626 weeks ago
Earlir tonight a lady from church rang to say thank you to me for sharing my story. She specifically mentioned me being adopted (she hadn't known) and then went on to speak of several of her friends being adopted and how it's impacted them.
In the next breath she then rolled out the, "but we're all family because we've all been adopted as God's children and He is our Father" spiel that I hear frequently from other Christians.
I actually spoke up and asked the lady not to say that to me as it made me feel sick. She was quite surprised at my comment and I explained to her that adoption in the Bible is not the same as adoption as society knows it.
She said she was aware of this but then went on with the, " we're all brothers and sisters," story and then told me of another friend who had adopted a girl from Korea. They held a Thanksgiving service at their local church when the adoption was finalised (blech) and everyone was crying because the amum prayed for the first mum. The aparents have taken the child to Korea about 6 times and "there are two mums raising this child."
She then reiterated to me that God was my real Father. I told her that I found it hard to understand the whole concept of a dad as I had never known mine. The "brothers and sisters in Christ" story was again touched on and this time I just wearily murmured some placating agreement as I was really triggered by then.
Even passing acquaintances find it quite acceptable to tell our story, especially when we're not telling it the way it should be told, apparently!
Thank you for your blog, Deanna, you are a Godsend.
Amy · 626 weeks ago
RLDavies · 626 weeks ago
And now that I've found my natural families, I know that the story my adopters told all those years--to me and to others--was inaccurate. Nothing about it was true. Nothing.
I'll never know if they were told that fictional bio/history by the agency or if they just made it all up themselves. I tend to think they made it up, because the written info in my adoption records (which I finally got to see two years ago) was pretty accurate. But who knows? That same agency has lied to me plenty, so it's no stretch to assume they lied to my adopters.
Sometimes, thinking that they knew nothing about me makes me laugh.
But sometimes, thinking about all the lies; the inaccuracies; the appropriation; the inappropriate, indiscreet, self-serving behaviors makes me really angry. And that anger is justified. They had no right to tell my story. Especially when THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT.
That's one of the things I find so appalling about adopters telling their adoptees' stories. Not only is it wrong )on a number of levels) for them to do it, they don't even know whether or not the story they're telling is accurate. In international adoptions, it's ***very*** unlikely they have the whole, true story. The same goes for closed adoptions. But even in open adoptions, who knows? People lie, and if you weren't there, you don't know.
You. Don't. Know.
Period.
My older (adopted) brother always refused to look for his natural mother. We couldn't even bring up the subject with him. He despised her. Why? Because of the story he was told. A month or so before I identified my mother, I identified his. Complete accident. I didn't know what to do, so I sat on her name for a while. I gave myself time to think about the best way to approach the situation. Finally, I wrote him a letter. I let him know that I had reunited with my mother and had learned that everything "our parents" had told me about my original family, my history, my circumstances was untrue. I told him that it was likely that he'd been lied to, as well. I shared his mother's name, told him I'd be happy to help him if he ever changed his mind about looking for her, and enclosed a copy of The Girls Who Went Away.
People don't know how much pain they cause. They can destroy lives.
Mom · 606 weeks ago
Holly · 593 weeks ago
Ann · 593 weeks ago
people wonder why I doubt every thing told to me concerning my adoption. So needless to say. I won't know for sure certain things until I find her.
LCC · 593 weeks ago
cathyofjapan 0p · 593 weeks ago