Thursday, November 6, 2008

Isolation

I was thinking about my "Curiosity" post from a few days ago. I really don't know what being an adoptee is like.

I mean, I know what it's like to be me.

But growing up, I didn't know anyone else who was an adoptee. (Or, if I knew someone, I didn't know that they were an adoptee.) So I never talked to another adoptee about what their experiences were like. So I don't know what about my experiences are unique to me, and what are common to other adoptees.

I have since met many wonderful adoptees on-line, and I have had some reassurance that my experiences aren't all due to something weird about me.

However, I still feel some uncertainty about my own views about adoption. I still feel isolated from others around me. They aren't adopted. And I don't feel certain about my own views of my experiences. Did adoption do this (whatever "this" is) to me? Or is something peculiar about my own psychology?

I think this is one of the real harms of adoption (one I hope has improved since my time): by encouraging adoptive parents not to talk about adoption, by keeping the secrets, adoptees don't talk about what's going on. And they don't talk to other adoptees. So they wind up feeling all alone.

Of course, I don't know if that's just my experience or not. *sigh*

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this is one of the real harms of adoption (one I hope has improved since my time): by encouraging adoptive parents not to talk about adoption, by keeping the secrets, adoptees don't talk about what's going on. And they don't talk to other adoptees. So they wind up feeling all alone.

yeah i totaly understand this, also the fact that we live in a society where secret=shame makes alot of adoptees feel ashamed about being adopted.

There was a really weird thing going on in my house growing up in that our adoptive parents would talk to people outside the family about us being adopted but we werent alowed to,as if it was their information and not ours

phil said...

Thanks for that. It really does help to know that it's not just me.