The Emotional Truth About Adoptees Grief & Invisible Loss

Being adopted, I've noticed in general we are hardly ever taught how to openly properly mourn & grieve our first greatest initial loss, that ends up dictating & effecting our entire emotional life afterwards.  Human emotions are built in stages during infancy, childhood & adolescence registering & governing the emotional information into our adulthood.  This foundation becomes apart of our entire emotional network, narrating how we think & feel from here on afterwards.

While one person might perceive us as a gifted blessing, another like an adoptee could FEEL absolute unresolved trauma that silently goes unnoticed & misdiagnosed the rest of their lives.  As babies, these essential life forming emotions of our biological connection are ignored with the dynamics of the mother/baby switch acting as if there was no severing of an attachment.  If someone losses their mother at infancy from death, it still emotionally/energetically is all the same thing for an adoptee experiencing this same traumatic biological loss.

I personally believe that for many adoptees being a replacement baby for someones pregnancy misfortunes comes as a loaded gun on the emotional wellbeing of the adopted child.  Often times our need for grieving is bypassed by the adoptive parents need for fulfillment, family & happiness.  Im not suggesting that adoption is wrong, what i'm conveying is that adoptees must know that there is no shame/guilt in mourning their most sacred initial loss. It is the most natural human form of behavior that isn't being met or handled properly that ends up showing up emotionally in every other avenue of the adoptees life.

I used to cry myself to sleep at night, silently whimpering into my pillow the unexplained grief I felt yet couldn't see.  I craved a connection to this woman I couldn't physically feel yet knew flowed threw my entire being that I searched for in ever woman I saw.  Science can now prove a cellular theory of the mother/ child energetic connection by scientifically showing that the fetal cells stay in circulation within the mother body for 27 years after birth.  This is proof that we exist in our mothers so much longer than that of the initial disconnection.

Did you know that the suicide rate for adoptees is 4 time GREATER than that of non adoptees.  Our coping skills become so undeveloped because we are not ever taught from a young age how to manage the feelings of this first traumatic loss & heal from it.  Instead we learn how to suppress & modify our authentic emotions to survive in the world that hasn't begun to address, acknowledge & notice this personal tragedy.  This is apart of the burden that comes from being a delightfully wrapped present.

Psychology now a days has become more informed thank god with this deep rooted problem.  For years many adoptees under psychological supervision were labeled with emotional/ behavioral issues because of their unexplained anger.  Anger is an action form to pain, which often times has deep roots in the feelings of undiagnosed sadness & abandoment.  The lasting effects of our adoption can also lead many children to become disassociated, as a way to regulate themselves & the unknown feeling of something lost.  The psyche of a child & their sensory system can be a big recipe for disaster when the emotional wounds & scars are left untreated & not healed.

Some of the basic emotional skills that are required in being a growing human are sometimes lost in translation when it comes to adoptees.  We are often times left to navigate these inner feelings & thoughts alone throughout our entire life,  especially if the adoptive parents haven't done their own form of healing triggering a response that shuts the topic down.  The shame that is felt for feeling these deep wounds are often met with guilt, unknowingly becoming concerned & worried about the adults emotional state of wellbeing instead of their own.  The "loving" retaliation often will diminish the basic needs required from the child that nobody seems to have the proper skills to cope with.

It wasn't until 45 years after my adoption that my husband sent me for healing that I was given the permission to mourn the loss of my biological mother.  No one ever told me that what I experienced & suffered from was a traumatizing tragedy that I carried mentally, emotionally, physically & spiritually with me my entire life.  This had stunted the maturity of my inner feelings & how I formed & viewed attachments afterwards.  I had no clue I could mourn the loss of someone that was deemed irrelevant in my life, that was the source of all my pain & sadness showing up everywhere else in my relationships.

This small effective sacred space began to heal all the years of layers that went into covering up a simple healable truth nobody ever felt was relevant.  Sometimes in general out of own fear & pride we ignore in others the basic human emotional skills that otherwise would be the key to a likely recovery.  Peace Love Faith Hope

Updated April 2017