About This Blog

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is a vacuum and emptiness and a most disquieting loneliness. -Alex Haley

The best metaphor I found to explain the existential emptiness of my being an adoptee in a consumer-driven society is an empty cereal box. It exists without purpose or reason after it’s been emptied of its cereal. The “cereal,” of course, was the purpose of the box, gave it meaning and fulfillment when the insides matched the outside (identity). So, instead of a soapbox, this is my cerealbox.

For me, being an adoptee is being cut off from existing comfortably in my own body because “I” don’t know who “I” am. It also means being disconnected from the rest of the world because the link to my past was severed and continuity was stolen from me. What non-adoptees experience as integral to their being, I cannot imagine. I am invisible, empty, lost, alone, and anxious, no matter how many people love me. For me, no past means no meaningful future.

My experience as an adoptee has been that all my life I’ve faked my existence. I pretend to be whole and happy in order to function. My lack of identity is invisible. I look like any other person. I could be anyone. I have no identity of my own, so I learn to act, learn to live as a chameleon. There is nothing inside–no roots, no foundation, no continuity, no trust.

The dominant belief of society is that all it takes to be happy is to grow up in a family that provides for you and loves you. What is denied is the elemental and eternal bond that exists between the natural mother and child. When the baby is taken away, both live apart, each missing the other like a severed limb–a severed soul. Continuity has been broken forever. A profound and invisible connection no longer flows between them. Nothing is ever quite right afterward. Ever.

Everyone’s a stranger to me, including myself. Even after a reunion, nothing will ever be as it should have been for me, but life goes on. The lack of history with my natural family members caused a rift that nothing, not even time, can fill, creating a void at the center of my being. My life-long hunger is to go home, but that home never existed, doesn’t exist, and never will exist on this Earth. In my daily life I live in my own private despair that no drug or therapy that can heal, even with the best of intentions.

For as long as I can remember I’ve always apologized for my existence, as if I really don’t belong here. And the literal dialog between having been taken from my mother (my All Self from conception through now) and my gut is that I really SHOULDN’T be here. My very existence was a mistake. I’ve never felt settled, included, at ease. I fear rejection as a form of death.

If you’re not an adoptee, I urge you to read Stephen Fitzpatrick’s seven articles that describe his personal agony as an adoptee. They can take you by the hand and show you what happens after a mother is coerced to give up her baby. Until you read them, your attitude toward “poorly adjusted” adoptees (like myself) will probably continue to be “you can get over it if you try.”

Often non-adoptees who read what I write leave comments that could be summed up as, “Big baby. What a whiner. Grow up and get a spine. Be grateful that you got a good home and parents that loved you. Get on with your life for crying out loud! ” Their reaction is understandable. Adoptees are big babies. We will forever be locked in our infanthood, since the state doesn’t recognize us as adults with the human right (not discretionary privilege) of self-knowledge and identity.

In my opinion, what I call “vanity adoptions” or unnecessary adoptions, are a form of colonization, an occupation, a quiet genocide sanctioned by society to favor its well-off members. And yes, the world probably has more pressing problems than the loss and grief caused by vanity adoptions. But I suspect that vanity adoptions are just another symptom of the sickness that caused the other problems in the first place.; I suspect that if society would climb out of its black hole of denial and unravel the cause, the symptoms would take care of themselves.

The opinions expressed on this blog are based on my own experiences and research. You’re welcome to disagree with any of the content you find here based on your own experience and research. But please don’t just regurgitate what others have fed you all your life. I invite you to question what you’ve been told and to instead consider what YOU feel, think, and know about the subject of adoption.

I wish to thank Rhonda, another adoptee, for bringing the YouTube video “Bury My Lovely” by October Project to my attention. It has special meaning for her because it was filmed in an old Victorian house where she once lived, and her relatives were cast as players. Like many of us affected by adoption, I’ve always found Rhonda and her writing to be special. Although the video may or may not be about the soul death caused by adoption, I must include it on my “about” page because its opening images are the most powerful I’ve ever seen. To me, the images combined with OP’s haunting music capture exactly what it feels like to be adopted.