ADOPTION MAY NOT BE THIS GREAT FAIRYTALE: THE CHILD’S PERSPECTIVE

      I recently wrote a blog about surrogacy and egg donation after spending a lot of time with children who are the products of this. It also led me to look more into the issues that arise from the child’s perspective when they are adopted, not just through surrogacy, but through the traditional way as well. I write this as someone who wasn’t adopted, but due to a very traumatic childhood, ended up with all the same issues that adopted children have. I know that there are a handful of other children who weren’t adopted, but also ended up with these same psychological, mental, emotional issues that adopted children have, due to usually very severe trauma in their childhoods. Through my own healing I’ve also spent a lot of time healing past lives, and I’ve had more than one in which I ended up being an orphan. Needless to say, I write this from a place of a lot of love and compassion for all adopted children, because I understand how hard it is to experience that separation from your mom before it’s the right time. I also understand how hard it is to heal from this, and the lack of acknowledgement about the pain that adopted children go through. Probably, because the narrative is like a princess trapped in a castle finally being rescued by the prince. I mean you guys were adopted right? So you’ve already been rescued, which I guess means everything should be perfect?

     My planetary work all revolves around energy, so in cases like adoption I simply just follow the energy to see where it gets out of alignment. When a child is taken from their mother whether at birth or at too young of an age, it causes this very strong energy between them to be shattered. It’s almost like if someone put a bomb there. Given that the first relationship you will ever have with another human being is the one you have with your mom, you can imagine the implications that will result from that bond being shattered. In a normal healthy relationship the mom and child gradually, on an energetic level grow slowly apart. So by the time the child is about a teenager and can at least somewhat survive on their own, the energy between them is pretty far apart, and then this only increases the older the child gets. However, that strong connection you have with your mom will always be there, I mean she did create you after all, didn’t she? It’s just that there is this whole rhythm as to how the mother and the child are suppose to grow apart and become two independent individuals instead of just one continuation of each other like they are when the woman is pregnant.

     I think it’s also important to note that in the eyes of a child their mom is God. She is the reason they exist, she is what will either determine that they survive and thrive or end up starving to death. Separating a child from God is going to have a huge impact on their psyche. That child will never see anyone as being as great as they see their mom, and no person can take her place. They will also most likely see anyone who tries to take her place, as the enemy, the person who is the reason that she was removed from their life.

     There is a loss that takes place between the adopted child and the mother. I imagine that most adopted kids are desperate to feel that connection to their adopted mother that they feel towards their birth mother, but they just can’t. The energetic bond they share with their birth mother can’t exactly be passed onto another woman. I imagine there will be another huge sense of loss on the part of the adopted child when they realize that. I also imagine there’s a lot of pressure put on the child to play into the narrative of being the “unwanted” but now saved child. Maybe even a lot of fantasies around playing out that role for themselves, because it’s probably easier than maybe realizing the truth of the situation surrounding their adoptions.

     I also can imagine how much harder adoption is for children who are of a completely different race than the adoptive parents. I know as someone who is racially mixed, but wasn’t adopted, there were definitely times when I was out in public with my dad, who didn’t look like me at all, that people definitely would think that he had kidnapped me. Every racially mixed child has a lot of stories exactly like this, and how difficult it can be at times when you are around the parent who doesn’t look like you. I can only imagine what it must be like to be adopted, and therefore, not only not biologically related to your parents, but then being of a completely different race from them. I would think it would only make you feel even more like an outsider, especially if they have biological children who do look like them. I feel like it would be a constant reminder that you don’t exactly belong there. I honestly really worry about these parents who adopt non-white children, because I don’t see how they are going to be in a position to handle issues like racism that they’ve personally never experienced. It seems like in a lot of those cases there’s all this pressure put on that family to just pretend like the child isn’t of a different race, and if everyone just doesn’t actually face reality and live in a constructed utopia bubble it will all be okay.  That’s really unfair to the child, who is then going to be expected, to just pretend that they are white. It will also be hard on them if they are living in an area that isn’t diverse and they aren’t able to have any friends who look like them.

      I also feel like with international adoption there seems to be no recognition of how much these children are really giving up. First off, they’ve given up their mom, so that someone else could be a parent, which is probably the worst trauma a human being could ever go through. On top of that they’ve also had to give up their country of origin, their culture, their language, their foods and all the familiarities those provide like certain smells, sights, people, etc. No one seems to be talking about how much that will affect these kids. I know how difficult it can be to live in another country for a few months, let alone moving there permanently and giving up everything that you’ve ever known and all without your consent.

     Then people will probably say, but they’re just a baby or a small child, they won’t notice. Which would be great if babies didn’t notice, but we know that they do. They also experienced all that time in the the womb in which lets say their Chinese mother, who lives in China, ate only Chinese food, and heard sounds, smelled smells, and touched fabrics that are unique to her specific culture. That is what the child experienced while she or he was being created.  In addition to losing their mom, they are also losing all those other things which might provide them a lot of comfort. A traumatized child, needs as many feelings of comfort as is possible. I think if people want to adopt a child from another country, it’s not unreasonable to ask them to move to that country and raise the child there. The child has already given up their mom so that the adoptive parents could raise them, there’s no reason the adoptive parents can’t give up their country and all the things familiar to them, to meet the child halfway. It would also allow the child to still be raised in their own culture, around people who look like them, and hopefully they could then still see their birth mom and have her in their life. I can’t stress how difficult it is to be raised in an environment in which people don’t look like you, I know that people of color in this country who were born here, struggle with this a lot, because in a sense you are always an outsider since most people are white and Christian. It makes it harder to feel like this is ever really your home. Even if this is the only home you’ve ever known.

     As far as kids who are adopted, the best things you guys can do for yourselves is to find healers who can help you heal from that trauma of being separated from your mom. In addition it would be nice to hear more from adopted children. I know that the donor conceived kids, and kids born via surrogacy feel completely silenced, and like no one is acknowledging them and their experience. I think there is also this underlying sense of loyalty towards the adopted parents, and that makes the kids feel like they can’t say anything negative about adoption. However, the only person who ends up suffering in that case is the child who is then silenced. It almost reinforces the whole “unwanted” child thing, because it’s like they're almost put in a position in which they aren’t even considered important enough to be listened to. To have their feelings acknowledged and their thoughts around this experience they had heard. I think actually a lot of these surrogate and birth moms who put kids up for adoption feel silenced as well, since people might say they chose to go through that, without having a genuine understanding of the complexities behind all of this. The only way something like this will stop or change, is when those who have been hurt by it come forward and tell their stories. Because otherwise the narrative will continue to play out as is. Allowing the next generation of children to go through this. Just remember that although you may have been an adopted child at one point, you are no longer that child who had no say in what happened to you, you are now a strong adult who cannot be silenced. Maybe you couldn’t stand up for yourself then, but you can certainly stand up for this next generation of children, and help everyone move into a new paradigm that gives mothers and children the best possible support that they can have.

     I hope that everyone who reads this will take another look at the world of adoption. Is it really something that is a great big fairytale? Or is it the end result of class, socioeconomic backgrounds, poverty, misogyny, racism, lack of reproductive rights, war, violence, the AIDS epidemic, and human trafficking? I mean after all how many wealthy couples, or even single wealthy women put their children up for adoption?