|
I wasn't adopted, I grew up in a foster home - the same one - from the time I was a year and a half old until I graduated from high school. Was I glad that I was removed from my birth family? I really have no idea. My siblings and I were removed because of neglect by my alcoholic mother, and I was sent to a foster home (separated from my siblings) and raised by decent people who did their best.
Did I feel as if I belonged? Well, yes, and no. My foster home was the only home I knew growing up, but I always knew I wasn't theirs. My foster mom in particular had ways both subtle and blunt of reminding me that I wasn't her child. I don't think she ever meant to be unkind, but I did live with frequent reminders that I could be uprooted with no more than a phone call.
What wore me down more than anything, however, was having to constantly explain my situation to everyone. It wasn't that the story was painful or difficult to tell, but that it simply got tiresome repeating it over and over and over, and the constant reminder it gave me that I was different from everyone else.
I did have ongoing contact with my birth father (who never did give up parental rights) and my siblings, and later also with my birth mother. In the case of the latter, I never did have anything more than a superficial relationship, due not only to my own sense that I had been abandoned by her, but also due to the fact that my foster mom never passed up an opportunity to tell me how little she thought of my birth mother. All my parents are dead today, but my siblings are all quite close, especially considering the hurdles we had to leap to maintain any kind of contact.
Therapy? Never having tried it, I have no clue. I suppose it might have helped, but I've done OK without it, and I've yet to be convinced that a good percentage of therapists really don't know what they're doing.
Having said all that, I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I've had a better life than I would have had if I had remained with my birth family. You said you've read about "adult adoptee after adult adoptee that felt like they never belonged or ever fit in." Well, I'm not an adoptee, but add me to the list of those who felt they never belonged or fit in. I definitely felt that I never fit in, but that doesn't in any way mean that my situation growing up wasn't a tremendous improvement over what I was born into. I gave up my utopian fantasies of what it would have been like growing up with my birth family a long time ago.
So, pack up your doubts and adopt a child or two or three. Bring them home, love them a lot, read them stories, tuck them in, play with them, and do all the other stuff that parents do with their kids. Just remember that even if they take months, years, or decades to understand what you did for them, and even if they never understand it, you'll always know that you did the right thing.
|