Adoptive Parents And Adoptees
Read in Journey of the Adopted Self that a child has fantasies about what her parents are really like, in order to feel good. However, the adopted child has to do this double-times, because he does not KNOW his adopted parents at all, especially at the way adoptive parents do not tell him enough and hide it because they feel threatened, especially the ones who could not conceive their own children so they need to pretend that the adopted ones are theirs.
I feel like this is true with me, I always felt un-grounded and unreal as she describes, like imagining being in my birth mother's womb will cause me to disintegrate. There is a sense that I was never born, as she calls it- the unborn feeling. there are studies about how children do inherit their ancestor's intelligence, and need to see it reflected to know who they are. That is why I want to move to where my birth parents live, so I can get to know who I am based on where I originated from.
What is really interesting is also how up until the 1940's, after WW2, people who raised other's children kept in touch with the real parents, and made sure to let the child know who he really came from and his customs and lineage because they believed that it was the essence of the child, rightly. The reason it became sealed was because of the shame of mothers out-of-wedlock, and they kept it that way in order to protect the adoptive parents who had shame about their infertility, thus not considering the rights of the adoptee at all. They had no problem cutting off the adopted child's heritage, while pretending that they were their own. It is sickening.
As she says, adopted children who are denied their identity do not acknowledge their loss, and lose their authenticity to the loyalty of their adoptive parents. They hide their inner feelings and emotions, knowing somewhere inside that they have a wounded self that may not be seen. It is only when this hurt gets in the way of their living that they begin to face it.
I guess I have faced it because I was never fully living, and knew it. My feelings were too powerful. The more I face, the more alive I am becoming. I no longer feel a need to cater to my adoptive mother's wishes, which never include my true interests. What is interesting is that Lifton writes that the adoptee often feels like their parents throwing them out of the house is akin to killing them, because for them abandoning means death because of the first implication of it in their life. I feel that a bit, that if I separated from my adoptive parents in a big way, it is like death in a psychological sense.
I feel like this is true with me, I always felt un-grounded and unreal as she describes, like imagining being in my birth mother's womb will cause me to disintegrate. There is a sense that I was never born, as she calls it- the unborn feeling. there are studies about how children do inherit their ancestor's intelligence, and need to see it reflected to know who they are. That is why I want to move to where my birth parents live, so I can get to know who I am based on where I originated from.
What is really interesting is also how up until the 1940's, after WW2, people who raised other's children kept in touch with the real parents, and made sure to let the child know who he really came from and his customs and lineage because they believed that it was the essence of the child, rightly. The reason it became sealed was because of the shame of mothers out-of-wedlock, and they kept it that way in order to protect the adoptive parents who had shame about their infertility, thus not considering the rights of the adoptee at all. They had no problem cutting off the adopted child's heritage, while pretending that they were their own. It is sickening.
As she says, adopted children who are denied their identity do not acknowledge their loss, and lose their authenticity to the loyalty of their adoptive parents. They hide their inner feelings and emotions, knowing somewhere inside that they have a wounded self that may not be seen. It is only when this hurt gets in the way of their living that they begin to face it.
I guess I have faced it because I was never fully living, and knew it. My feelings were too powerful. The more I face, the more alive I am becoming. I no longer feel a need to cater to my adoptive mother's wishes, which never include my true interests. What is interesting is that Lifton writes that the adoptee often feels like their parents throwing them out of the house is akin to killing them, because for them abandoning means death because of the first implication of it in their life. I feel that a bit, that if I separated from my adoptive parents in a big way, it is like death in a psychological sense.
Comments
Post a Comment