Being an Adoptee

Adoptees are odd to the outside world -- the whole concept is hard for them to grasp....they can't imagine how they would feel because they have no point of reference. Shoot, it's an odd thing for the adoptees too.....we don't know how NOT to feel like an adoptee but I'm quiet certain it's not that much different from what biological children feel about their parents. They are our parents....period.
Okay, so there are a few differences in our looks perhaps....so? Our nationalities may even be different.....so? We feel the same about our parents....they're ours.

If I was disfigured but biologically related to my parents....would there be questions? Would my parents wonder why I couldn't look just like them and vice-a-versa? Absolutely not.
If two biological blond haired, brown eyed parents give birth to a child who is red headed and blue eyed...would there be a question that the child didn't love them as much?

So, being adopted means we have a more interesting past, more people that care about us --- they care enough to give us a future. Are we loved more than biological children then? Maybe.... It really is luck of the draw isn't it? - so is being born and living with your biological parents....you get what you get.....

I'll never forget talking to the lawyer who "filled in" when our adoption lawyer was out of town. We were just there to sign some preliminary papers before we brought J home but he was an adopted father. I don't know how we got on the subject but he somehow intimated that he was fearful that his daughter would grow up and want to find her biological parents and he would lose her. I assured him it really didn't mean that and he should let her/help her. I told him how much I love my parents but felt a need to find my biofamily. I told him how I felt about it all - with my husband sitting there hearing me talk about what I don't think I had actually voiced in his presence before. The man was so grateful to talk to me about it. He said he had only helped out for this adoption lawyer a few times and it always made him think about it. I was the first adult adoptee he had met.

If you are not adopted you don't understand the feeling of just being curious and wanting to know things about your biofamily. It doesn't mean you're going to run off and join their family when you find them. Your parents are always your parents. The biofamily are strangers. It's almost a matter of closure. You feel you can move on after you find them, know the back-story, know why things happened the way they did....then back to your life.

My neighbors have a son and he is adopted. When we adopted J he was 15 and it brought the whole subject up in their family again. (It does get pushed to the background as life goes on). They talked about it then a little but now he is a senior and he is writing about it in English. The teacher talked to the councilor who talked to his parents....and suggested counciling. Counciling? I think that's funny, but if it will help him I guess....
It's just that coucilors have textbook answers, textbook reasons why and what for....
I had a long conversation with his mom in the grocery store and she and her husband were so upset that maybe they had done something wrong and it made him feel this way and question. I assured her that it had nothing to do with them and he still loves them and they are his parents. It's what many adoptees feel....curiosity, the need to know. It doesn't change their relationship. I told her how much I love my mom and dad and I would never want them to be hurt. That's why a lot of adoptees don't talk about it with the Aparents - they have such loyalty to them.

**Another thing is this boy's birthmom made a memory book of pictures from when she was little until his birth but when she talked with my neighbor she made her promise she would not give him the book or tell him about it until after he was out of high school. She hasn't told her son it exists because she promised but now she's afraid if she gave it to him he would think she held that back/lied and he would be angry. I wish he would talk to me about it.

I guess if I were an Aparent and wasn't an adoptee too I would be a little afraid. I wouldn't understand when my child wanted to know more about their birth family - I think I would be scared and wonder what I did wrong....

Don't worry Aparents..... we are just nosy creatures, we humans....