Who do you think I am?

Like most of us, I have lots of significant relationships in my life. Daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, in-law, aunt, friend, boss and now, incredibly, sister. At times I have struggled with them all; not knowing where I fit with them (or don’t) and terribly afraid of potential rejection. I know I have suffered chronic anxiety about every relationship I have ever had and have constantly questioned “am I good enough?”

I am sure that as adults in our relationships and marriages, some issues and difficulties we experience have nothing to do with being adopted but I believe that, as our abandonment, rejection and PTSD issues affect how we see ourselves, isn’t it inevitable that that in turn affects our relationships?

I am sure that there are adopted adults in hugely successful long-term partner relationships. I am in one myself; happily married for 22 years, but as I am sure my husband would testify – it ain’t been easy. My marriage is a work in progress; something we have to work at daily.

You know, wWe live in a world where most people are not adopted. When anyone has lived a life experience that is significantly different than the rest of the population and particularly where a substantial loss is involved, we would be foolish to think that we remain unaffected by our adoption and who we are (or perceive ourselves to be) affects those around us.

I agree that all people at some time in their lives have felt rejection or have felt negativity about themselves for one reason or another but adoptees have a unique issue that distinguishes us from our peers – we were not raised by our biological parents – we were raised by strangers. I know that some relationship issues cannot be attributed to being adopted but if we ignore or side-line our post-adoption issues, it’s at our peril.

Often, we don’t fully understand exactly what our post- adoption issues actually are, so how can others?

Adoptees have a tendency to adjust personality, values & opinion in an effort to ‘fit in’, dependant on who we are with or where we are. We have spent our early lives doing exactly that in our adoptive families – genetically we don’t fit so can never be that person. We are accustomed to it and it satisfies our desire to ‘belong’. I think it’s about the ‘not knowing’ who we really are that is the issue. The not knowing is central to why we may struggle to form long-lasting adult relationships.

When we embark on a new relationship, we can be whoever we want to be as we are still relative strangers. We can be our real self as we have nothing to lose. It’s OK then for us to take the risk of showing our real self – our inner ‘us’. People ‘fall’ for that version of us and it is only when we are in a committed, meaningful relationship that our post adoption fear kicks in. We start to believe that this incredibly important person in our life will leave and abandon us and we display behaviours that may encourage this to happen. We go back to being that frightened, abandoned baby…”You will leave me because it is inevitable. So, I’ll reject you before you can reject me”

It needs to be understood that these behaviours are our coping mechanisms and not our personality traits.

It’s a known fact that as adoptees we usually present well to the world but we score highly on the BDI (Beck Depression Inventory) – does the way we live, not understanding who we really are, living on constant high-alert, watchful of impending rejection, bring on a slow loss of self? So that we deliberately sabotage the good relationships in our lives?

My immediate thoughts around this are yes, we do, so shouldn’t we be educating those around us of what to expect and how to deal with us and our post -adoption angst? We do not want to lose them so we must work on protecting what we have. They fell for the true us, remember that.

However, I do not anyone not adopted can ever really understand. How can they? I don’t understand what it’s like not be adopted, after all.

In conversation about this subject the other day, I said to a fellow adoptee “I can feel pain for someone else’s angst but I don’t know it – how can I? How can anyone? But, you know that feeling of utter loneliness and self-loathing and emptiness you have felt in your life? Remember that I know exactly how that feels. So, whilst people can try to appreciate how we feel; only those who know truly can.

We constantly strive to find connection and acceptance. Although this idea of affiliation is sometimes inherent with those who we are in biological or emotional relationships with, I think we can find expressive connection through support groups and interaction with other adoptees.

I don’t think it’s a failure or betrayal of our partners. It makes sense to do that. It helps us to concentrate on our most vital relationship and accept being loved for who we are.

Maybe we should try to understand the perspective of others better too. They may be supportive of our search to find family and self, but can feel hurt, jealous, resentful or excluded and threatened by the addition of these familial strangers into our lives. So, in turn we need to explain how our life has been surrounded by secrecy, resulting in feelings of shame and inferiority. We need to explain that often we feel different, angry, worthless, confused and suffer low self-esteem.

We need them to know that sometimes they need to try to give us time and space we need to work things out.

But most of all, we have to respect and accept each other’s feelings. Listen to one other and never stop talking. It’s a key factor in avoiding distance.

What we absolutely need to be aware of is that everyone searches for self but for us, our task is particularly difficult.

Am I good enough, then? Probably but my inner adoptee, that relinquished baby, still, even after all these years, can’t quite see it and awaits the next goodbye ❤️

When I was young, I had an imaginary little sister. Her name was Katy and I think she was modelled on Katy Carr from the ‘What Katy Did’ book. My Katy was my absolute defender and ever-present playmate. We shared everything. She was pretty, blue eyed and blonde and she loved me unconditionally. If anyone ever asked if I had any brothers and sisters, I told them about Katy in a very matter of fact way (I also had an older brother called Michael at one point but he didn’t last long – he was modelled on a rather handsome boy who lived over the road from us. Our make-believe siblingship ended rather abruptly when my mum and his mother, Doreen, fell out and I wasn’t allowed to even walk past their house, never mind fantasise about their son)

I used to chat to Katy secretively (often just in my head) as I knew my mum and dad wouldn’t like it or understand it. Unfortunately, my mum heard me one day in my room telling Katy something and she burst in saying “Who the bloody hell are you talking to?”, whilst scanning the room for uninvited guests. Knowing how pious she was and sure that she’d think I was nuts talking to an imaginary sister, I decided to just say “God “. I do believe that was the proudest she ever was of me.

Katy and I parted company when I was about 10, I think. We didn’t argue or anything like sisters do; we just fizzled out but I’ve never forgotten her or what she meant to me. I flirted with other fantasy sisters from time to time, like Jo (March from Little Women) Maria (Sound of Music – but only when she was a nun) and bizarrely Violette Szabo the wartime special operations executive (I was nothing if not diverse and a bit adventurous in my sibling choices)

Having imaginary friends used to be a cause for concern (Cath would have been more than concerned, I can tell you; I’d have been marched straight down the doctors and had ‘talking to herself’ added to ‘School escapee’) and was seen as a symptom of having social and development problems. It was thought that kids like me were probably lacking attention and needed company. It was seen as a way to deal with loneliness, stress or conflict but modern thinking is that children who have imaginary friends have advanced social development and use more complex sentence structure, have richer vocabularies and get along better with people. There’s some veracity in that, I reckon.

So, one Friday in April 2010, I found myself sitting in the North London kitchen of my actual little sister; my birth mother’s daughter.

She was dark and very tiny and seemingly quite nice; she also looked a bit like one of my daughters but nothing like me. She was totally spooked by how much I looked like our mother and I realise now that I know more about her life that it bothered her. We appeared to get along, despite our very different life experiences and the age gap (I’m 11 years older) She made me welcome and was strangely affectionate. I really thought I’d finally got my longed-for little sister – Katy Carr come to life, if you will.

She had asked me to stay for the weekend and as it unfolded, her own issues became more and more apparent. Her dysfunctional relationship with her only child; her apparent inability to form relationships and saddest of all, her drinking. She is an alcoholic. Or maybe a binge drinker, as she never drinks when she’s not at work just on her days off, when she is drunk for most of it. She was not sober for much of my visit. I am not judging her, after all we all make our own life choices.

On the Sunday morning, she walked me to the train station and I felt unexplainably and unbearably sad. I knew I’d never see her again and I was right. She never contacted me again. I tried to reach out once or twice but she never responded. No explanation just blankness.

What she doesn’t realise is she did to me exactly what our mother did all those years previously; saw me, hugged me, then let me go. I wasn’t good enough for either of them.

I am not sad anymore, it is what it is and proves yet again that just because we come back into our birth family’s lives, there is no guarantee we’ll fit in or even be wanted there. That is the reality for many of us and heartbreakingly, we refuse to give up the hope that one day, at least one of them will want us. We keep picking at the edges of our wound because we’re desperate to find bio family who are happy that we’ve come home.

I have discovered that I have a paternal sister now too. Is she my Katy or Jo or Violette? I am undecided yet whether to try to contact her but if I do, all I can hope that maybe, just maybe, this time, my scabbed adoptee wound is given the chance to heal. I think It’s time ❤️

For many adoptees, reunion with our biological family should bring us full circle – from surrendered baby, to reunited adult. Of course, never think it’s the end of the journey when we reunite, it’s only the beginning.

Sometimes and desperately sadly, reunion can leave us wanting, further traumatised and wholly dissatisfied. One thing we have to be is prepared for secondary rejection and if it does happen – what happens to us?

I was rejected by my birth mother after a year of our original reconciliation. The trauma that caused me is irreparable and I don’t believe I’ll ever recover completely from the cruel and heart-breaking way she ‘dumped’ me (for want of a better word)

What adoptees who are rejected twice need to understand (I certainly didn’t at the time) is that we are not rejected because of who we are as people – we are rejected because our mothers simply can’t handle us being present in their lives again. They were told after relinquishment to go on and to forget they had had a baby that their lives would “go back to normal” Some mothers need to protect that belief so much, that they have to repudiate anything that threatens it. “Moving on” & “going back to normal” often means telling no one about the surrendered baby, especially not new husbands and subsequent children. More reasons piled on to protect, deny and reject.

When secondary rejection happens, and despite us understanding on a philosophical level that it isn’t about us, the pain and devastation means that we are never able to convince ourselves of that truth. We can usually comprehend the original relinquishment but to be rejected twice? And this time as a fully grown adult, not a baby from an unplanned pregnancy? It’s something hugely and cripplingly different.

We may never know why our birth mothers choose to reject so abruptly and finally. All I can say is I know how it felt to me. It was so much worse than simply being placed for adoption. It was cruel and heartless and made me feel worthless. The majority of adoptees searching do not want a “new mummy” or expect the slaying of the fatted calf, what we want and deserve are our questions about where we come from answered. What I got was a door slammed shut. Worse actually, as she did see me a couple of times, so she opened the door a bit then slammed it firmly closed. Which only made me feel like it was something I did, something I said, something I must be that made me unworthy of the same basic rights – identity & heritage – that other people take for granted. Tell a rejected adoptee “It’s not you, it’s her” all you like – our ears hear it but our hearts never will. We get it on the philosophical level but not the emotional level.

I am unsure how we ever can – despite over 30 years of trying psychotherapy, drug therapy and reading a mountain of books on the subject, I don’t think I will ever recover fully. Maybe it’s the irreparability of the mother and child bond being broken? Once you break a plate you can use the best glue known to man but you’ll always be able to see the cracks and the repair becomes very fragile.

We have to deal with issues of rejection and abandonment every day of our lives. Being rejected twice by our mother seems to confirm our fears that there is something wrong with us.

I wish I could talk to every birth mother and say “If you are considering refusing contact – please don’t do it. It breaks us”

I guess they don’t realise that all we are looking for is validation of our existence and some questions answered. Showing compassion works both ways in adoptionland.

The good thing is that people can change their minds, my mother did. Mind you only because I contacted my sister after 25 years and she had to admit to who I was. She has told me that if I hadn’t have done that, she would not have looked for me and left instructions for her family to be told about me after her death.

So there has to be some faint hope. But I know a lot of secondarily rejected adoptees don’t hold out any. If a woman is in such a state of denial that she simply can’t accept her child’s existence without her entire world falling apart, it’s going to be a tough one to crack. By pretending that you didn’t have a baby or have it adopted just moves the pain along further and heaps more of it on your child.

I so want to say there is salve to this but there isn’t. We are always at the behest of our birth mother. All we can do is try to prepare ourselves for a negative response and ensure the first contact letter is well written and handled appropriately. But, the birth mother still holds all the cards and we just have to hope that she is as ready and prepared for reunion as we hopefully are ❤️

I had anxiety as a child and it got worse when my mum left me at the school gate; all I wanted to do was run home after her (And I did, at least once a week) I used to say then that I hated school but I know now I didn’t. I was just afraid to be away from my mum and my home. My parents and the school thought I was being ‘difficult’ and disobedient (When I went home once in my vest and navy-blue PE knickers whilst the others were doing skipping or something, I remember overhearing my dad that evening saying “God Cath, can’t they lock her in the classroom or something? What the bloody hell is wrong with her. She’s not normal”) I wasn’t ‘normal’ and what was actually wrong with me has got a fancy name and acronym now – Separation Anxiety Disorder or SAD, which quite suits how it feels.

The school put me on ‘watch’ eventually but it didn’t stop me and the Great Escape continued until I went to grammar school. I was inordinately good at seeing escape opportunities which prompted my dad, during an episode of Colditz, to say “Cath, they want her in there. They’d all be home by next Sunday”

Separation anxiety disorder is not ‘normal’ in a child’s development (ergo, I wasn’t normal). It’s a serious emotional problem characterised by extreme distress when a child is away from the primary caregiver. It manifested itself in me as fear. I was always afraid. Afraid that something terrible would happen to my mum and mostly afraid I was going to be kidnapped or get lost (didn’t stop me running away from school in my pants though, did it?)

I was adept at school avoidance and would do anything to stay at home but sadly for me my mum was even more adept at making me go (“You’ll end up like Lenny” – the grown man who lived with his mother over the road and had to be called in for tea every night. “Here, let me put some holy water on your head; that’ll cure your headache” and other such bon mots) I got physically sick – a lot. I vommed at the drop of a hat. The top of the stairs was a favourite, so much so my dad had to replace a square of carpet and it didn’t quite match the rest. My mum was furious for years about it. The smell of Dettol and the sight of the old orange washing up/sick bowl are forever etched in my memory. She kept it in the spare room in the end for ease of access.

Sleep was a stranger most nights. I was a little insomniac; afraid of being alone, the dark and worried about nightmares about separation. It did mean that I read voraciously though. Enid Blyton, Brer Rabbit, What Katy Did, Little Women, the dictionary, the Bible (!), our previously unread Encyclopaedia Britannica’s …….and, most worryingly, Fanny Hill – Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. I found it in a box in the garage, aged 10. I had no idea what ‘springing bosoms’ or ‘delicious down’ was then and almost caused my dad to have a seizure when I asked at dinner one evening what a ‘mound of Venus’ was. He clearly knew but my mum didn’t. She said “isn’t it a statue with no arms?” My dad just said “yes – eat your tea and stop asking questions”

Separation anxiety disorder occurs because a child feels unsafe in some way but I wasn’t unsafe at home. We had a lovely house in a nice, tree lined suburban street. My parents were always there, however, my mum was terribly over-protective. Obsessively so. I know now that she was afraid she’d lose me, having lost 5 babies before they adopted me. She wouldn’t let me go on slides, in swimming pools, cross roads alone and most bizarrely, allow me to use electrical appliances (I still have no idea why) She once put my Louby-Lou doll on a garden incinerator because she heard that they were flammable if left by an open fire. I tried to explain that we only had a gas fire so the risk was negligible but if fell on deaf ears. It was like she had to prove its flammability by burning it. Brilliantly, it took ages to combust and I recall my dad ‘helping the fire along’ with a squirt of paraffin. I now know that parents and children can feed one another’s anxieties.

What is key in this is adoption. The day our primal wound is opened is the day the attachment bond and the emotional connection formed between an infant and its mother is broken. From the moment an adoptee leaves its mother, the coping mechanisms begin. We add another way of being and forever revert back to those coping mechanisms. They are deeply imprinted in our neurological system. However, there is another expectation which comes from living with a non-biological family. Verrier calls this the adaptive response. The baby searches for genetic cues: Shape of face, eyes, mouth; Colour of skin, eyes, hair; Sounds of heartbeat, tone of voice; Scent of parents; Feel of skin, hair. Everything is unfamiliar so the baby cannot relax and remains highly vigilant.

Whilst I am sure my parents tried to make me feel a secure attachment bond to them, the initial terrifying and traumatic separation from my mother contributed massively to my separation anxiety. It’s the trauma that cannot be recalled but is remembered.

If you read about helping a child with separation anxiety disorder now, parents are given great advice on education, empathy, listening, respect and talking about it with the child. In a 1960’s semi in Birmingham, it was a different story all together.

I was often sent to my room to “think about things” – all I thought about was that I was on my own.

My parents were not demonstrative or great talkers at all (as were many of their time) and found it easier not to talk about anything. My dad went in the garden or shed and my mum prayed to one of the array of statues of saints that were dotted around the house. I went to my room. Neither they or I understood my behaviour and it became something we didn’t talk about (except for the day of the coming home in my knickers, of course)

None of us anticipated separation issues very well, either. I once went on a school trip for 5 days to Ireland and despite me saying I really didn’t want to go, off I jolly well went (It was with the school. You know, the place that caused me most anxiety?) My mum had to fly over after 2 days and bring me home as I was becoming more and more hysterical. Well, I had told them I didn’t want to go. My mum was stoically catholic about it all but my dad was bloody furious. The garden and shed were immaculate for a good few weeks after my shameful return.

I went through my grammar school years in a constant state of anxiety, leaving on the first day I could, with no intention to return for A-levels (Not that my parents encouraged further education – “what you need, lady, is a job”) I still feel anxious when thinking about it and I left school 39 years ago. An old school friend tried to get me to go to a high school reunion with her a few years ago. I had other plans…..❤️

Of course I know who I am….50 something mother and wife, sometime daughter and occasional sister and now adoptee blogger. I’ve flirted with this for years, writing when the mood took me but recent events have prompted me to put my musings down in one place. For tidiness or posterity or something.

Like many adoptees, I’ve read my files (and thrown them away but that’s another story, for later) done my DNA, traced both birth parents and I have met my biological siblings. One might think that that squares the circle and I should be fully tooled up with biological information but it hasn’t and I am still left wondering and confused. It still feels like something is missing and that’s probably because it is. The authentic me. The me who I was for the first 6 weeks of my life. The rest of it has been a glorious mixture of influence, nature and the desperate need to fit in in my adoptive family.

So, who do you think I am? Perhaps this is where someone tells me ❤️