My Adoption Story part 2

I asked my mother to share all the adoption documents she had, with me. She had always told me she had the documents and would share them with me whenever I wanted. Even so, it was a delicate area to venture into as an adoptee. It felt like walking out onto a minefield of guilt and rejection. As if I was rejecting them for asking for this information. Should I feel guilt? No. Should I feel like I am rejecting them? No. But that is part of the adoptee experience, the contradiction of emotions at any turn. And some of my fellow adoptees don’t get a hold of their documents as easily as I did. My heart truly goes out to them. We already live with such an internal struggle, that when people around us add to it by suggesting we should be grateful, or questioning why we want to know, many of us tell ourselves we don’t need to know. We push those feelings deep down and bury them there. We chose to live with our questions burning inside, and we tell ourselves that it’s just the cards we were dealt. Because if we stay true to ourselves and our feelings, we risk being rejected, and alone. Again!

When reading my adoption papers for the first time, it felt very unreal. I was reading about how I was found, handed over from one place to another, and about how my picture was put in the newspaper. I was trying to feel any connection to the words I was reading. I was looking at the baby girl in the picture in the newspaper article, trying to feel myself being her, but could not quite feel connected to the story I was reading. Yet, this was all about me. This had all happened to me. When I first found out about my adoption story, from my documents, my focus went to the woman who claimed to have found me. I was wondering who she was and if she was lying or not. Was she, in fact, a stranger who had found me, cared for me, tried to find my mother, and then handed me over to the police? Or, was she someone who had known my biological mother, who was helping her get rid of me, by handing me over to the police? Was she my biological mother, who was not able to care for me, and now handed me over to the police, and would not state her name or who she was? I still did not question the story itself.

I didn’t know how to feel about the information I had found yet. I was not able to access those emotions yet. I didn’t feel sad or angry. I didn’t feel abandoned or rejected. I hadn’t opened the lid yet, to Pandora’s box of adoptee emotions. I was still working on finding the key to unlock it. And that key was hidden well, deep down inside. I was scared to find it. I even told my husband, at one point, that I had not decided to start searching. This was new territory for me, and I had absolutely no idea what would come out if I did decide to go there. I understand how someone who has full access to their entire family, their biological background, and their history, could be confused by an adoptee not wanting to find out. In my case, I was too scared to dig into any of it because I feared I would break down if I did. And then, who would be able to pick me up, carry me, and be there for me if I did? I felt like I was alone in handling my own emotions and internal struggles, so I buried it deep. I did not let it come to the surface, because I didn’t know if I could remain in control if I ever did let any of it out. I always had a very hard time crying in front of anyone, being vulnerable, or opening up about things that bothered me or made me sad. I did not talk about these feelings with anyone. I was the only person I knew who was adopted, except my brother, and in my mind, our adoption experiences had been nothing alike, so we didn’t relate to one another. 

I was what’s called a compliant adoptee, deep in the fog.

Compliant because the fear of rejection that came from having been abandoned as a baby made me feel unloved, unwanted, and rejected to the core if someone would be angry with me over something that I had done. However, apologizing meant admitting to being wrong, being wrong meant there was something unlovable with me, and if I was unlovable, I could easily be abandoned again. So, I kept myself and my emotions in check. Of course, I had people around me who loved me and wouldn’t abandon me, but these were my emotions. These were the signals my brain had received at one point early on in my life, and anything happening after would be shaped by that. And logic does not always apply in the world of adoptee emotions. I was in the fog because I could not see how being separated from my mother could have caused my fear of abandonment, which would have naturally led to a fear of rejection. Instead, I told myself that I was fine. That adoption had saved me, and I was unaffected by it.

It would take joining a Facebook group with people adopted from Colombia, numerous hours of reading about the industry that is adoption, re-reading my adoption documents countless times, and watching an episode of a show on Netflix dealing with the dark side of adoption, to throw me into the process of coming out of the fog, and opening the lid to Pandora’s box. I will share about that with you in my next post…

I thank you from the bottom of my heart, for spending this time with me, and reading my story.

If you would like to share your story, I would love to connect with you and help you share it here alongside mine.

Own your story, share your story, write your story.

All my love to all of you.

— Amanda Medina

PS. We are all in this together!