[Continued from HERE.]


So I have just one favor to ask of you. It’s not really a favor to me. It is a favor to your self.


Go to a quiet place, both physically and as much as possible, mentally. Think about each of the things that make you angry about being adopted, the things that have plagued you and made you feel so alone your whole life. I mean REALLY think about them. Break each one down to their essence leaving the emotional response aside for just a second. Contemplate: is this a thing that could happen to someone not adopted, and if so, would it also make them angry or upset them in some way? If it would, chances are the bottom line for the particular problem wasn’t, isn’t, that you were adopted.

Maybe it is that racism is horrible and wrong and all too (ironically) present in our polyglot culture. Maybe the real cause is that being from a mixed background is always confusing until you learn to accept both parts of yourself, whether the ‘mix’ comes from blood or marriage or adoption.

Or maybe it is that child abuse is disgusting and predatory and inexcusable no matter who is doing it, no matter how the child they are abusing came into their lives. Maybe, if it happened to you, no one ever convinced you that you didn’t deserve it, you didn’t ask for it and it wasn’t your fault. Maybe you convinced yourself it wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t adopted … but maybe it would have.

Maybe being deceived by the very people you trusted the most, your parents, is always devastating, no matter what the lie is. Maybe when the lie is huge, it is impossible to trust your parents again, even if you understand why they lied. Maybe you can forgive but not forget. Maybe that is all you can do.

Maybe it is that some people move to the beat of their own drummer making it very hard to fit in anywhere … (again, ironically) it is usually those people considered a bit bizarre, ‘out there,’ eccentric even, that do something (or simply are) extraordinary. Maybe that is you!

Maybe you can never truly understand why you were adopted and the fact is, no one, including you, has any “say” in the family they, you, are born/adopted into as a baby.

Once you have sifted through your thoughts and pain, and really tried to get to the roots, THAT, I believe, are when your healing can really make leaps and bounds instead of spinning in place. If you have been victimized by abuse and/or racism and/or lies and/or societal alienation of some form, AND you can separate the feelings these situations caused in you from those feelings that are directly related to being adopted, you can get the help you need, from friend or support group or professional, to find a way to move on, to let the past stay the past rather than take over your present as well.

And whether you address adoption-specific issues or the deeper issues above first, it is time to turn you inner laser onto them and burn the rabid cells out of you as much as possible, shouting, “We don’t need no water let the *%!?* *&?)#@ burn! Burn, *%!?* *&?)#@, buuuurn!” Then do a dance, shakin’ your money maker as you go (I miss you already, James Brown.)

Fear of abandonment may be deep seated in you if you were adopted, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be debilitating.

If you search and find one or more of your birth parents but they won’t meet with you, remind yourself that it isn’t about YOU… they don’t know you. Their feeling unable to meet with you is all about them. It is a hard thing to accept, but it isn’t the hardest and, at some point, it just has to be accepted, since it can’t be changed.

The list goes on … the reconciliation with each problem/issue on the list also goes on … and on…. and on… but only for as long as you let it meander through the river of your life.