Betty Jean Lifton, one of our most psychologically penetrating writers on adoption, believed in ghosts. Not “respectable” ghosts, perhaps, who are “unambiguously dead,” but the ghosts that haunt everyone in the so-called “adoption triad:” These ghosts spring from the depths of the unresolved grief, loss, and trauma that everyone has experienced. They represent the lost babies, the parents who lost them, and the parents who found them. Too dangerous to be allowed into consciousness, they are consigned to a spectral place I call the
"Talking about this with my therapist, I got to rattling off names until she asked for a pause and said, “Don’t you think this is an adoptee’s defense mechanism?”'
I had a similar conversation about, as I put it, my flakiness about maintaining relationships with a great therapist I was seeing about 25 years ago. I wasn't connecting things to adoption back then but we were working through (I now know secondary) abandonment issues over my adoptive mom. The memorable comment she made to me was, "Donna, the phone works both ways".
A big part of my defogging process, as emotionally fraught as it is, is understanding it through a social lens. Not just how I perceive the world and other people through the lens of being an adoptee but, more importantly, how they perceive me. I'm no mind reader but non-adoptees engage in common behaviors toward us - which as we know run the gamut from jokes about us, bullying by classmates, hostility we get as adults when we dare to tell our own stories about what being adopted is to us, H/APs demand emotional and social labor from us, etc. - and these are the people we're expected to be able to develop normal, healthy relationships with? No wonder I ghost early, and often.
A society that *celebrates* me being separated as a newborn from my mother, severed from my entire roots, and forced to adapt to strangers is not a society wherein I was ever going to find people I could trust enough to stick around and get close to easily. I am truly grateful I have found such people. I am also glad (and the jury has been out on this awhile) I did find the whole bio family because it wrenched them out of the ghost realm into the real one. No longer phantoms, projections, or possibilities. Real people who have been given the social opportunity of knowing me and most have chosen not to. That has certainly hurt but I genuinely appreciate them letting me know I need not even make the decision to ghost them.
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights, Tony. As an LDA, I got to have 2 ghost families -- the one I thought I had, and then my blood family. I didn’t ghost people; I cut them off, sometimes with a good bit of venom, even realizing it was probably related to adoption abandonment.
Thankfully, I found my first mother’s family just over 30 years ago, when I was 34, and got to experience unconditional love with half sibs and extended family. It was an easy reunion, probably because my mother had passed away, so there was no guilt or blame, and it has taught me about connection. So far, I haven’t cut any of them off. : )
Tony, I met Betty Jean Lifton a number of times. A couple of times I even met her clinical assistant -- a full size, fullly present white Standard Poodle. BJ was tiny in stature but huge in impact. Her early death was a terrible blow to those of us in the "adoption constellation" who gained so much from her wisdom.
Thank you for writing about her, and for using her insights to enlarge and enliven more of your own.
I'm writing from the last morning of the CUB retreat in LA. My throat is sore. Is it from talking nonstop for 48 hours? From the tears, the laughter? Your name was mentioned more than once and I, for one, hope you will join us one day.
But in case my throat is sore for other reasons, I am dreading going downstairs for the closing comments and the longed-for hugs that I should probably avoid - just in case, even masked.
And your blog has given me much to think about -- like my fellow birth mother who rejected me, for example -- someone I thought was my best friend -- and for the birth mother whom I have rejected because I thought she used me ill. And then, of course, there's my "abandoned" son...
I am grateful for your insights. Please keep them coming.
I used to follow you in Twitter and I appreciated learning about adoption -I am not in Twitter anymore. Thanks as always for being so open. My husband lost his mom at an early age, and was raised by his very loving step mom. He also lost a sibling in an accident. He also ghosts people, or I should say he never, ever, ever lifts a finger to keep in touch with dear friends and extended family, although he is happy to hang out, as long as somebody else takes the initiative and organizes. This always shocked me and puzzled me. So I can see how this happened to you and this helps me understand my spouse better.
Tony, there is so muchhere I'll be re-reading. What you've said about a tendency toward ghosting particularly resonates. As an adoptee, deeply knowing people will sever from me, so cutting the cord before they have the chance to. Unless they come back to me. The one instance that this didn't hold was in my search for my birth mother. I must have taken for granted she would want to see me; I so fully and innocently ran to her after 40 years of knowing nothing about her. I didn't permit myself to be rejected by her again, I suppose.
Adopted by a military couple, I was accustomed to goodbyes, so there's that, too. Thank you.
"Talking about this with my therapist, I got to rattling off names until she asked for a pause and said, “Don’t you think this is an adoptee’s defense mechanism?”'
I had a similar conversation about, as I put it, my flakiness about maintaining relationships with a great therapist I was seeing about 25 years ago. I wasn't connecting things to adoption back then but we were working through (I now know secondary) abandonment issues over my adoptive mom. The memorable comment she made to me was, "Donna, the phone works both ways".
A big part of my defogging process, as emotionally fraught as it is, is understanding it through a social lens. Not just how I perceive the world and other people through the lens of being an adoptee but, more importantly, how they perceive me. I'm no mind reader but non-adoptees engage in common behaviors toward us - which as we know run the gamut from jokes about us, bullying by classmates, hostility we get as adults when we dare to tell our own stories about what being adopted is to us, H/APs demand emotional and social labor from us, etc. - and these are the people we're expected to be able to develop normal, healthy relationships with? No wonder I ghost early, and often.
A society that *celebrates* me being separated as a newborn from my mother, severed from my entire roots, and forced to adapt to strangers is not a society wherein I was ever going to find people I could trust enough to stick around and get close to easily. I am truly grateful I have found such people. I am also glad (and the jury has been out on this awhile) I did find the whole bio family because it wrenched them out of the ghost realm into the real one. No longer phantoms, projections, or possibilities. Real people who have been given the social opportunity of knowing me and most have chosen not to. That has certainly hurt but I genuinely appreciate them letting me know I need not even make the decision to ghost them.
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights, Tony. As an LDA, I got to have 2 ghost families -- the one I thought I had, and then my blood family. I didn’t ghost people; I cut them off, sometimes with a good bit of venom, even realizing it was probably related to adoption abandonment.
Thankfully, I found my first mother’s family just over 30 years ago, when I was 34, and got to experience unconditional love with half sibs and extended family. It was an easy reunion, probably because my mother had passed away, so there was no guilt or blame, and it has taught me about connection. So far, I haven’t cut any of them off. : )
Tony, I met Betty Jean Lifton a number of times. A couple of times I even met her clinical assistant -- a full size, fullly present white Standard Poodle. BJ was tiny in stature but huge in impact. Her early death was a terrible blow to those of us in the "adoption constellation" who gained so much from her wisdom.
Thank you for writing about her, and for using her insights to enlarge and enliven more of your own.
I'm writing from the last morning of the CUB retreat in LA. My throat is sore. Is it from talking nonstop for 48 hours? From the tears, the laughter? Your name was mentioned more than once and I, for one, hope you will join us one day.
But in case my throat is sore for other reasons, I am dreading going downstairs for the closing comments and the longed-for hugs that I should probably avoid - just in case, even masked.
And your blog has given me much to think about -- like my fellow birth mother who rejected me, for example -- someone I thought was my best friend -- and for the birth mother whom I have rejected because I thought she used me ill. And then, of course, there's my "abandoned" son...
I am grateful for your insights. Please keep them coming.
This was powerful and pertinent to me.
I used to follow you in Twitter and I appreciated learning about adoption -I am not in Twitter anymore. Thanks as always for being so open. My husband lost his mom at an early age, and was raised by his very loving step mom. He also lost a sibling in an accident. He also ghosts people, or I should say he never, ever, ever lifts a finger to keep in touch with dear friends and extended family, although he is happy to hang out, as long as somebody else takes the initiative and organizes. This always shocked me and puzzled me. So I can see how this happened to you and this helps me understand my spouse better.
Best to you and family.
Yes, this resonates for me, too...
Tony, there is so muchhere I'll be re-reading. What you've said about a tendency toward ghosting particularly resonates. As an adoptee, deeply knowing people will sever from me, so cutting the cord before they have the chance to. Unless they come back to me. The one instance that this didn't hold was in my search for my birth mother. I must have taken for granted she would want to see me; I so fully and innocently ran to her after 40 years of knowing nothing about her. I didn't permit myself to be rejected by her again, I suppose.
Adopted by a military couple, I was accustomed to goodbyes, so there's that, too. Thank you.
This post made me feel a little more seen and a little less ghostly. From one banished child to another. Thank you for sharing.