[disolveme]

Thank you for your reply. I'm lucky, I've always had good friends and have been able to get away from the adoptive family. You are right, it is shame on her, but at the same time I pity her and folks like her, as they must miss out on so much love.

I love your sig..lol

[Dickons]

I come from the great adopted family side and cannot imagine the horrors you grew up with. I have nothing but good things to say about being raised by my adopted parents and they will always be my parents.

Having said that, to me being adopted and growing up not knowing where and who I came from is wrong and is totally different and separate from being adopted and raised by my adopted family. It is wrong how society, in it's superiority created "closed non-family adoptions", the secrecy, the guilt and shame. It is the inhumane act of removing a child permanently from it's mother and therefore, natural family.

Sometimes it is difficult to be able to look at it as separate entities, and find it hard to say anything bad about adoption. Simply because they had a wonderful adopted family, yet at the same time, were deeply affected by being adopted.

Hopefully that made sense and helps you find ways to word your interview questions to get honest answers.

Kind regards,
Dickons

[doug43223]

I was not aware of a stigma attached to adoptees, more to the birthmothers. I dont know how much help I can give, I am just coming to terms and figuring things out about myself since I have begun to search. I am reading "The Primal Wound" which may help you with your research, it has a lot about interpereting feelings and adoptee research.

[BrockBaby]

Dickons...I just wanted to say that I totally understand where you are coming from. I always had mixed feelings about being adopted. I loved the fact that my family was my family...even in it's dysfunctional days..lol...but at the same time, I hated the lack of information, ect that I had. I couldnt' imagine my life without the families and friends that I have, and think about how random adoption can seem at times, I could have easily been a "Jones" or "Smith"...but I am who I am. The thing that finally allowed me to have "peace" with being adopted was realizing that there was a difference between the relinquishment and my adoption. The relinquishment is what hurt and still can, even though I KNOW without a shadow of doubt I am where I am suppose to be and am WAY better off. But my adoption, and my adoptive parents were NOT the cause of my being placed for adoption, so I can look at that through a different lens. Does that make any sense?! Sometimes I think we think too white or black with adoption...there are a lot of areas that are grey!

[Dickons]

Brockbaby, thank you. You made the distinction better than I did, and the black and white is so very true, there are so many shades of gray. Sometimes I sit back and try to imagine my birth families views and why they would be that way, and sometimes I end up feeling selfish for not feeling their pain. It is very hard to actually walk in another's shoes, even for a moment.

Kind regards,
Dickons

[longingtomeetyou]

interesting to read this