"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.
love what you say here. I do hope people are not accusing you unfairly of “abandoning” your son.
The decision (frequently coerced) to give a child into adoption has been called surrender. As Paul Sunderland said, it really doesn’t describe it very well, since adoption is a legal term describing the permanent change of parents; it bestows ownership of the child — transfer of ownership —from the first/original/biological parents to the adoptive parents. Perhaps a better word to describe what actually happens is relinquishment. The birth parent(s) relinquish the child to the adoption system and ultimately, to the adoptive parents.
Many first parents believed they had no other good options, and some literally had no other option. Most adoptive parents are overjoyed at this answer to their prayers.
From the infant’s perspective, however, relinquishment can only be described as abandonment, the experience of being abandoned by the only person the child knows, since the child knows the mother’s voice for many months. Since the infant is preverbal, this is a searing experiential instinctive experience. Without language to describe it, it us an experience imprinted in the brain. Sunderland explains that although the experience of being relinquished cannot be remembered, it is recalled. The new A parents — no matter how well-intentioned and loving they are — are completely foreign to the child.
In my view, we cannot accuse the first mother of “abandoning” their child. Thankfully, I was able to attend CUB meetings during the years I was searching for my own first mother. My heart was broken as I listened to the birth mothers talk about all they had suffered and continued to suffer from the agony of losing their baby (usually because of being an unwed teen, with their parents/church making that life-altering decision), and of never being allowed to know what ever happened to their child.
I searched for my first mother, despite anger and harsh criticism from my adoptive family/relatives. I believed I have the human right to find her, to let her know I’m alive, things turned out, and hopefully put her mind and heart at ease.
It ended up a joyful reunion, for years, then got complicated, and we no longer communicate — at her request. Still I’m grateful I was able to find and meet her, and my birth brothers.
Sigh. I tend to use the words "relinquished" and "surrendered" interchangeably, to replace the common phrase "gave away." AND I tend to romanticize reunions where a daughter is involved, because my perception is that females are more adept at and more attuned to human connection even in emotionally-fraught situations. Of course, sweeping stereotypes like that ignore the factors of individual needs, personalities, life experiences, etc.
First, I am so sorry that your reunion is on hold, and I hope that the two of you can find a way to bring it back to life in a way that works for both of you -- challenging as that will be. (I'm in a similar situation.)
And I am also sorry that your adoptive family had such a negative reaction to your need to know more -- to find out who you were! I wish they had wanted to go on that journey with you and support you and open their arms to the person who created you. (Why not wish for the moon when one is wishing?) Believe it or not, I know at least one first mother who, when her son found her, his a-parents invited her to come visit them!!! And she did, and they were all okay.
The preponderant narrative is that relinquishing mothers of the 50s/60s wanted to keep their babies, but were prevented from doing so by societal norms. But here's the thing: in my individual case, I was a severely depressed, emotionally ill person whose ONLY success in life came from my experience in college. For the first time in my educational career, I was making good grades and achieving recognition. I had a career path in mind, and an abusive lover.
So I did not want to be pregnant. I did not want to be a mother because I had no idea how to go about mothering, nor did I have a job, home, car, income, etc. Pregnant girls/women back then were not allowed to stay in school. My lover was already married to someone else and supporting their children. And of course, abortion was illegal, and it was illegal for doctors to provide contraception to single women.
The only choice offered me was by my father -- and that was a home for unwed mothers. (In later years I was told that my mother said she would've taken care of the baby, never mind that she was an active alcoholic raising two other teenagers as a single mother in 1967.)
As my baby grew in my body, I did everything I could think of, including taking long daily walks alone, talking to him, telling him everything I thought he'd need to know once he was out there in the world. So yes -- he definitely knew my voice before he was born, as I talked to him all the time. And I was certain he would be a boy. I showered him with love in the only way I knew how.
It's impossible to explain to a relinquished person that they were (a) unwanted and (b) loved and cherished. How does one explain that awful conundrum? The only thing I can come up with is that there's a difference between a collection of cells growing in the body and a small person -- and once I was certain there was a small person growing inside me -- everything changed.
Or, I could say simply that I did not want to be pregnant. It was going to wreck my life and change it forever (which is true). But once I was certain there was a baby -- a person growing inside me -- then those other feelings were swept aside and replaced by love.
My son would never believe this, and I am shocking myself by writing this in an open forum. My son prefers to think that I "threw him away," a thought that fills him with rage and anguish. His a-parents told him it was okay for him to meet me (I searched - big mistake); but at his wedding, when he asked them to say hello to me via Skype (they Skyped in, I was there), they refused. So much for supporting our son in his need to connect with ALL his parents.
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.
love what you say here. I do hope people are not accusing you unfairly of “abandoning” your son.
The decision (frequently coerced) to give a child into adoption has been called surrender. As Paul Sunderland said, it really doesn’t describe it very well, since adoption is a legal term describing the permanent change of parents; it bestows ownership of the child — transfer of ownership —from the first/original/biological parents to the adoptive parents. Perhaps a better word to describe what actually happens is relinquishment. The birth parent(s) relinquish the child to the adoption system and ultimately, to the adoptive parents.
Many first parents believed they had no other good options, and some literally had no other option. Most adoptive parents are overjoyed at this answer to their prayers.
From the infant’s perspective, however, relinquishment can only be described as abandonment, the experience of being abandoned by the only person the child knows, since the child knows the mother’s voice for many months. Since the infant is preverbal, this is a searing experiential instinctive experience. Without language to describe it, it us an experience imprinted in the brain. Sunderland explains that although the experience of being relinquished cannot be remembered, it is recalled. The new A parents — no matter how well-intentioned and loving they are — are completely foreign to the child.
In my view, we cannot accuse the first mother of “abandoning” their child. Thankfully, I was able to attend CUB meetings during the years I was searching for my own first mother. My heart was broken as I listened to the birth mothers talk about all they had suffered and continued to suffer from the agony of losing their baby (usually because of being an unwed teen, with their parents/church making that life-altering decision), and of never being allowed to know what ever happened to their child.
I searched for my first mother, despite anger and harsh criticism from my adoptive family/relatives. I believed I have the human right to find her, to let her know I’m alive, things turned out, and hopefully put her mind and heart at ease.
It ended up a joyful reunion, for years, then got complicated, and we no longer communicate — at her request. Still I’m grateful I was able to find and meet her, and my birth brothers.
Sigh. I tend to use the words "relinquished" and "surrendered" interchangeably, to replace the common phrase "gave away." AND I tend to romanticize reunions where a daughter is involved, because my perception is that females are more adept at and more attuned to human connection even in emotionally-fraught situations. Of course, sweeping stereotypes like that ignore the factors of individual needs, personalities, life experiences, etc.
First, I am so sorry that your reunion is on hold, and I hope that the two of you can find a way to bring it back to life in a way that works for both of you -- challenging as that will be. (I'm in a similar situation.)
And I am also sorry that your adoptive family had such a negative reaction to your need to know more -- to find out who you were! I wish they had wanted to go on that journey with you and support you and open their arms to the person who created you. (Why not wish for the moon when one is wishing?) Believe it or not, I know at least one first mother who, when her son found her, his a-parents invited her to come visit them!!! And she did, and they were all okay.
The preponderant narrative is that relinquishing mothers of the 50s/60s wanted to keep their babies, but were prevented from doing so by societal norms. But here's the thing: in my individual case, I was a severely depressed, emotionally ill person whose ONLY success in life came from my experience in college. For the first time in my educational career, I was making good grades and achieving recognition. I had a career path in mind, and an abusive lover.
So I did not want to be pregnant. I did not want to be a mother because I had no idea how to go about mothering, nor did I have a job, home, car, income, etc. Pregnant girls/women back then were not allowed to stay in school. My lover was already married to someone else and supporting their children. And of course, abortion was illegal, and it was illegal for doctors to provide contraception to single women.
The only choice offered me was by my father -- and that was a home for unwed mothers. (In later years I was told that my mother said she would've taken care of the baby, never mind that she was an active alcoholic raising two other teenagers as a single mother in 1967.)
As my baby grew in my body, I did everything I could think of, including taking long daily walks alone, talking to him, telling him everything I thought he'd need to know once he was out there in the world. So yes -- he definitely knew my voice before he was born, as I talked to him all the time. And I was certain he would be a boy. I showered him with love in the only way I knew how.
It's impossible to explain to a relinquished person that they were (a) unwanted and (b) loved and cherished. How does one explain that awful conundrum? The only thing I can come up with is that there's a difference between a collection of cells growing in the body and a small person -- and once I was certain there was a small person growing inside me -- everything changed.
Or, I could say simply that I did not want to be pregnant. It was going to wreck my life and change it forever (which is true). But once I was certain there was a baby -- a person growing inside me -- then those other feelings were swept aside and replaced by love.
My son would never believe this, and I am shocking myself by writing this in an open forum. My son prefers to think that I "threw him away," a thought that fills him with rage and anguish. His a-parents told him it was okay for him to meet me (I searched - big mistake); but at his wedding, when he asked them to say hello to me via Skype (they Skyped in, I was there), they refused. So much for supporting our son in his need to connect with ALL his parents.
Ah, well.
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.