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Starting to search
Just started searching for my birthfamily. I'm starting to have all kinds of feelings about this search. My aparents don't know that I've started this search or even that I was considering it...So there's guilt. I also have a fear of the unknown...what if I find someone that I'm related to by blood? Sometimes I'm so excited about finding someone that I can hardly think of anything else. No one that I'm close to understands...I'm the only adoptee that they know... How do I gather all of these emotions together and make them work for me?
Response from Marcy:
Dear Deborah:
You are completely normal--not just normal, very healthy!--to be feeling such powerful emotions in anticipation of your search. This shows that you are more connected to yourself than I was, since I regarded it as "no big deal", much as I'd always considered my adoptive status itself. It was always "no big deal". This was how I handled all those feelings--be completely discounting and dismissing them.
Search and its implications ARE awesome--I don't think there is anything else in human experience quite like it. All into the complex mix tumble such feelings as guilt toward adoptive parents, undeserved but understandable; excitement/trepidation about what your search may turn up; fears of being rejected--again; confusion about what a reunion relationship will mean, what will be expected of you, and how will the relationship(s) affect your existing relationships.
Another challenge with searching is the tremendous distraction it poses to your current life, wherein your focus on work, your attention to your spouse or partner, your availability to your children may suffer greatly, so consumed you are by the powerful experience of the search.
Betty Jean Lifton, one of the most eloquent writers about the adoption experience, talks about search as the time to become a warrior. I agree--the time that search takes gives you a chance to begin exploring some of the profound issues and feelings that attend the adoption experience, things that might not have been explored earlier in life. It is an important opportunity to take, for once reunion happens it will stand you in good stead to have begun getting a "handle" on some of these deep-seated, often primal feelings, which can really buffet your reunion relationships, not to mention yourself.
I recommend finding a local adoptee or adoptee/birth parent support group, where you can attend regularly and have ongoing support and feedback for your experiences as you proceed in reunion. (A good place to start in finding one is to find the chapter of CUB--Concerned United Birthparents--in your nearest major city. They are an excellent source of information and referrals.) Individual or group counseling with someone who is sensitized and experienced with adoption issues is also a good idea.
A couple of excellent books to read are:
Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness by BJ Lifton
Birthright: A Guide to Search & Reunion by Jean A. Strauss
Another book to read, which isn't about reunion, but rather the profound primal feelings that adoptees may experience is "The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child" by Nancy Verrier. It can help explain some of the more "inexplicable", "irrational" feelings that come up as one begins exploring their adoption experience. Question:
Well I just have a question. I was adopted at birth and by adopted parents are wonderful. I just have always had that need to know where I came from and what happened. 2 years ago I found out that a friend of the family who is a doctor was the one who hepled to arange the adoption and that he could get in touch with the family. Well he did and the grandfather said that he didn't think that it was a good idea for me to have contact with my birth mother. My question is what if back in 1973 when she was 16 he made the choice for her then and is now making it again. I don't know much and I don't want anything. I am 24 and planing a family and would really like to have some answers to medical questions and closure for myself before starting my family also I want her to know that I am fine and always have been. If anyone has some advice I would like to hear it. Thank you
Response from Marcy:
I would suggest that you respond to this situation on two fronts: the "outer" front and the "inner" front.
On the "outer" front I would write a letter to your birthmother telling her all the things you want to tell her, asking the questions that you want to ask her, etc. Put in into an UNsealed envelope. Then write a note to your birth grandfather, giving him your permission to read your letter to his daughter, and assuring him that all you want is some information, answers, etc. I think it would also be appropriate to include how you feel about his "roadblock", without letting it slip into anger. A good way to do this is to begin sentences with "I feel". As in "I feel really frustrated/hurt/helpless..." about his response to you, his grand daughter. (A suggestion: Don't let an "I feel" comment deteriorate into an accusation, as in "I feel that you're being very..." That won't get you anywhere, and will only "validate" his worries, as unfair and invalid as that perception of his would be.) Put it all into a big envelope and send it to him.
On the "inner" front, I would invite you to really sit with this and allow yourself to feel the feelings this situation elicits in you. This probably wouldn't be your first response--most of us do whatever we can to "distract" ourselves from these very basic, deep, "negative" feelings. We work overtime, we shop, we eat, we do everything perfectly, we obsess about whatever. But I offer that it would be of great benefit, ultimately, to you to allow yourself to feel whatever hurt, anger, sorrow, rage, might be stirring inside you at this implicit rejection by your own grandfather. This is deep stuff. This is likely going to begin calling up the primal experience of rejection, separation, and "out-of-controlness" that an adopted baby endures at birth, and also the lack of acknowledgement, the refusal (or simply inability) of those around you to really "see" you.
If you have any counseling resources with someone sensitized to adoption or pre- and perinatal issues, I suggest taking advantage of that. An adoptees' support group is always a good place to start. I also suggest that you take a spiral notebook and simply WRITE. This is nothing that you ever need to show another person, but it's a way to keep the feelings moving, to keep from getting stuck. Just write and write and write, especially when you're "in a feeling", that is, when you feel so gripped by a particular state that you can't seem to shake it. That's when you sit down and just write, without thinking about what the next words are going to be.
You see, as important and valid as "outer" reunion is--that is, physical reunion with birth family--I believe that another crucial piece is "inner reunion": The reclaiming of our essential selves, which often have been banished along with many of the "negative" feelings that can go along with the experience of being adopted--sadness, anger, confusion--feelings that we may not have been allowed or encouraged to express in our adoptive families.
Good luck on both the inner and outer fronts!
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