Adoptee Story: Anonymous Fellow Adoptee

November 11, 2019

Adoptee Story:

Intro: This is the story of a fellow adoptee who is choosing to remain anonymous. A domestic adoptee in her country, one where international adoption often gets the spotlight, she is sharing her story to raise awareness around adoption and to include domestic adoption in the conversation. Her story is heartbreaking and can be triggering, but absolutely worth reading. The fact that she chooses to remain anonymous does not make her story any less valid, or her voice any less valuable. On the contrary, the fact that her story contains parts that make her feel unsafe sharing them with her real name, is all the more reason for us to read it, to listen to her and to validate her courage for opening up and sharing her story with us.

“I was born in February 1981. My mother had just turned 16.

My grandmother had a brothel where my mother had to work as a ‘waitress’ and got pregnant with me when she was 15.

Anyway, the situation became dangerous for her. Her mother and my ‘father to’ be wanted her to have an abortion, but she refused, so my father molested her, so she would have a miscarriage. His plan didn’t work out and my mother ran away to a shelter for teenage mums. She later told me that my father was 18 at that time and that he had been in youth custody for an attempt to murder when he was younger.

I was born and lived with my mother in that shelter until she became 18 years old. During those two years I was sent to different foster homes and when she became 18 they made her sign the papers to give me up for adoption to the last family where I stayed.

This isn’t a story about an international adoption, it all happened in Belgium. I have a Belgian birth mum and was adopted by Belgian people. But even in our country things can go horribly wrong.

So, I was adopted when I was 2 years old and got an older brother (8 years older) and sister (9 years older) who were also adopted. But nobody spoke about it. It stayed a secret until, one day, we were looking at old pictures and I was old enough to realize that there weren’t any baby pictures of me. I think I must have been 5 or 6 at that time. My adoptive parents had to admit that they had adopted me, but they made me swear to never talk about it. It had to stay secret. Even asking questions about what happened before I was adopted, wasn’t allowed.

I was a happy little girl, always playing outside, but also a bit a of a loner, shy, and scared to do things wrong. At school, I always had the best grades of my year, but when the teacher asked me something and I wasn’t sure what the answer was, I wouldn’t answer, because I was too scared that my answer would be wrong. I was always trying to please the people (especially my adoptive parents) around me. But even though I was a smart girl, I was always scared to fail. One day I had to recite a poem at school for an inspector and I was struck with fear. I couldn’t say a word. I totally froze. Everyone, even my adoptive parents, were mad at me. They didn’t believe that I was scared, they said I was stubborn.

All went pretty well until I turned 8, maybe 9 years old and my brother started to abuse me. No one noticed it or pretended they did. 2 years later, the abuse stopped, when my brother went to the university.

But I struggled with myself, with my identity, with my past. Who was I? Where did I come from? Why did my mother give me up for adoption? I wasn’t mad at her, just curious. I was sure she must have had a good reason. But the subject was a taboo. When I tried asking questions about it, my adoptive parents pretended that I hurt them with my questions, that I made them think that they weren’t good enough. So, I didn’t dare talk about it anymore, because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

My whole time as a teenager, my adoptive parents abused me in a psychological way. Because of my frustrations, my difficulties with social contact, my inferiority complex, my lack of self-esteem… my results at school went down every year. It didn’t help either that my adoptive parents kind of locked me in a ‘gilded cage’. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, so I didn’t have a lot of friends, which again, triggered my inferiority complex, and so on. It was a downward spiral.

When I was 17, I had went through depression and thought about suicide. My adoptive parents gave me antidepressants and that was that. No talking, no therapist, just medication. You don’t talk about your feelings, you keep them for yourself, I was taught. My teachers saw that things were going wrong, but no one even cared. And the other students thought I was the perfect person to laugh with, or, in the ‘best’ case, just ignore me. I didn’t exist for them.

And then, when I was 19, I got to know my husband and when I was 20 I broke with my adoptive family. My adoptive sister and brother never contacted me, my adoptive parents tried to contact me only twice. That’s how ‘far’ their love for me went. They adopted a smart girl, who, in their dreams, would become a doctor, but instead I turned into a big failure to them.

A few years later I started to search for my birth mother and I found her. She told me what I wrote down in the first paragraphs, but also told me that I had a half-sister and half-brother with a very serious disability. (they both died when they were 20-21, I got the chance to get to know them before they died) My birth mother was a wreck and she had the idea that we could act as if nothing ever happened and we were one big happy family. For me, it was more difficult. I wasn’t mad at her, but I needed time. Plus, she saw me as her saviour and leaned on me. The roles had turned around. She wasn’t there for me but claimed me and demanded me to be there for her. One of her demands was that I had to give her grandchildren so she could finally see a ‘normal child’ grow up (her words). I said that she had to give me some space, but she wouldn’t understand. She felt rejected and started to blame me. Since I had come back in her life, everything was a mess and she said she knew I would always blame her for giving me up for adoption.

I can assure you; I NEVER did. The number of times I have explained to her that I understood why she had done it, that she had no choice, that they forced her to sign that paper, that I was NOT angry at her,… are countless. But still she kept telling me what a selfish person I was for being angry at her and not understanding her. And finally she told me she never wanted to see me or hear from me again and broke with me.

And here I am, 38 years old, and recovering from a huge depression last summer. During the years I knew things weren’t going well with me, but I didn’t know why. I survived all those things, I had a wonderful husband, what more could I wish?

But I suffered from anxiety, panic attacks, fear of being around people. I got fibromyalgia and CFS. I had difficulties trusting people and making friends. And when I made friends, the friendships didn’t last long. I also had difficulties with letting things go. I was a control freak and I always put the other person first. I volunteered for 10 years, very intensively. I now know, that I did this to compensate my inferiority complex. I still wanted to please people, to make OTHER people happy.

So, because of my depression and attempt to suicide last summer, I went to a therapist. (I had already gone to some therapists the past years, but that didn’t go well) She is specialized in trauma therapy, childhood trauma, bonding issues,… and she diagnosed me with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, adhesion disorder, hypervigilance and hypersensitivity.

I have still a long way to go, but with the support of my amazing husband, my sweet dogs and my therapist, I know I will get better. And maybe I will never get rid of this C-PTSD, but my therapist will help me learn how to cope with it, and even though I have this chronic illness (fibro and CFS), I will fight back and I will be able to have control over my panic attacks, anxiety, bonding issues,…and maybe even a bit over my chronic pain.

Before this summer I really thought I am not good enough. I don’t belong here.

But now my therapist has taught me that I DO matter and that I AM good enough the way I am and especially I DON’T HAVE TO BE PERFECT. And I certainly don’t have to please everyone, because, that is impossible.

I hope that not many adoptees have had the experiences that I had, but I am afraid that my story is not an isolated case. So, it is really, really important to create more awareness about adoption. And not only from the side of the adoptive parents or the birth parents, but also, and especially from those who are adopted. We don’t get heard very often. So, let us all come together, adoptive parents, birth parents, adoptees,… and listen to each other and try to understand each other, so we can avoid stories like mine in the future.”

Written by: Anonymous Fellow Adoptee

Amanda Medina

I was adopted from Medellin, Colombia to Sweden in 1985. I was about a year and a half when I started my life as an adoptee, and it would take 32 years until I was ready to face what that means, what that has always meant, and what that will always mean.