Abandoned
Ungrateful
Silenced
Dismissed
Misunderstood
Rejected
Unlike
Disconnected
Deserted
Different
I started the list as a way to organize my thoughts for this post. But the more I looked at it, the more it looked finished the way it was.
It’s how I feel. And I get so tired of having to justify how I feel.
My husband, my children, have no idea how to respond to my feelings of abandonment. They’re kind and sympathetic, certainly, but I can see the puzzlement behind their eyes. “You have us now. You’re not alone.”
Yes, I am.
I will never be whole, no matter how much I try to fill the hole. The first, most important person in my life rejected me. Gave me to strangers “because she loved me so much.” (THERE’S the lie that burns worse than all others.)
I’m tired of staying silent to protect the feelings of my adopted family. I’m tired of trying to explain unexplainable feelings. I’m tired of smiling when you ask me if I’m Grateful for my adoptive family. (I actually am grateful. But wanting to know who I am does not mean I am Ungrateful. It means I am human.) I’m really, REALLY tired of “experts” telling me that the separation from my mother at birth cannot possibly still affect me, that it’s utter nonsense that I’d have those memories and remember that trauma.
Lesli Johnson wrote a piece for the Huffington Post earlier this year that articulates this truth better than I can. I’d love to print this on a card to hand to anyone who asks me about adoption.
So it’s probably better if you don’t ask me about adoption, unless you’re prepared to hear the truth. My truth.
My
Abandoned
Ungrateful
Silenced
Dismissed
Misunderstood
Rejected
Unlike
Disconnected
Deserted
Different
Truth.
Speaking In Pictures, Hearing in Color 
This is wonderful heart-gripping writing. I’m so sorry for your sadness.
Thank you for your kindness. I’ve found that the older I get, the more intense these feelings become. I was totally unprepared for that; I thought they’d dissipate with the growth of my own family. I guess it just proves the old saying that the heart has its reason, whereof reason knows nothing.
Thank you for reading.
I wasn’t given up for adoption but I feel a lot of what you describe. My mother raised me but she was emotionally unavailable and my daddy left when I was a little girl. Abandonment haunts us and I believe it takes a lifetime of processing our issues, being compassionate and kind to ourselves, and being present to what is to bring us to a place of healing and wholeness. I hear your sadness and want you to know you are not alone. As far as the experts saying you should not feel what you feel, I have to wonder if they have given themselves the gift of feeling what is there. Thank you for empowering others by sharing your truth.
Ah, if only I could master that “compassionate and kind to ourselves” part. Why is it, brendamarroy, that we are hardest on ourselves?
Thank you for standing beside me. It means a great deal.
I have a sense that being hard on ourselves is part of the pathology we develop when our basic belief is something must be wrong with me. It’s one of the ways we can continue to prove to Self that we do not matter. Does this make sense to you?
What a brilliant flash of insight you’ve just provdided for me, Brenda. That makes perfect sense.
My current resolution is to recognize my sadness and discouragement for what it truly is: a need to pay attention to my spiritual needs and to be kinder to myself. I have always (well, not *always,* but in my adult years) believed that *I* am in full control of my attitude and outlook, and that if I don’t like the way I’m feeling, I must choose to feel differently. I just lose sight of that truth every once in a while. Thanks for your help.
I am usually put off by lists… but this one sounds like a poem. To me it seems that the best way to deal with being abandoned or lonely, is to make the best of what I find in this world alone… with no expectations from anyone else. The first years of my life were completely alone. It was terrible. But now in old age, I find that I get a lot of strength from being alone. Sometimes I seek out solitude, when I have problems in life.