Adopted Child Adopted Adult

I keep getting stopped whenever I try to write about this subject. I start to write about psychology and the hippo-campus (the human brains memory chip). I start the process with a huge longing to transcribe for you the theory I have about Adopted people and the reason I feel that we are all just a little off. I use the analogy of the missing puzzle piece. I want to make sure that people know that I am adopted and that the people I am bringing into the the story are either adopted as well or adoptive parents that way the reader will understand that it's like a societal clique, like being gay or being a minority that we can say what we want about our own kind, and still be politically correct.

Every adopted person will tell you they feel slightly self conscious about who they are because of that big missing piece. If they won't own that, they might be neurotic or something. We can know, we can have sought them out, and met some of our biological family members, we can even have become close to one or more of them. We can communicate when we are very young children that we feel we were abandoned by our biological parents. We can have that ever so slight feeling even as adults. We can grasp the concepts and the reasons why we were given up, or taken away by the child protective service or whatever it was that lead us to be adopted.

We can be logical and we don't feel confused or hurt or left out when the Dr. asks for a family history and we tell him or her that we are adopted and therefore are allowed to skip that whole portion of the question and answer period at the Dr.'s office.

Many adopted people grow up to be successful people, and outwardly normal. They have children of their own, and they can see themselves sometimes for the first time in their biological offspring. I can tell you from personal experience that that is truly a miracle kind of feeling. My younger brother is a shining example of an adopted child who has grown into a fantastic adult. He has a great job, and a great fiancee' He graduated from college and is living a pleasant life in the Chicago area.

I am of course not referring to special needs adoption or over seas adoption or celebrity adoption, or adoption due to the person in question being orphaned. These are of course all very different types of adoption, and usually for different reason. However, the common thread still remains, all people who are adopted, that I have ever met have the feeling that they are just a little off.

Even if we find some, or all of our puzzle pieces, our biological family members. There is still something missing. You can complete the puzzle and still not get the picture.

My younger adoptive brother and I, as well as everyone that I personally know who was adopted including by older biological brother was adopted by people who for whatever reason could not have children of their own. In conjunction with that, every adopted person I know was given up for adoption primarily because of one of these reasons, poverty, social services intervention, age of parents at birth.

I have heard of no adopted person nor have I ever known an adopted person who said, my parents just didn't want me, or didn't love me. The absolute most common reason that children are given up for adoption is poverty and or age of parents at time of birth.

I have never met an adoptive parent who said I adopted my child to use as labor, or any other appalling thing such as that. I believe sense about the 1950's adoptive parents had to be carefully screened and be able to prove their worthiness to care for children, at least in the United States, and most other parts of the civilized world. 

I can think of at least eighteen people who I personally know who are adopted including myself, I'm sure I will think of a few more after writing this article.  People who are adopted seem to be able to seek each other out.  Sometimes it is the adoptive parents who seek each other out for comfort and understanding.  I don't think it is easy to raise adopted children.  We all are just a little lost in the world.  I think it is hard for our parents to understand us, more so then typical biological relationships because we have learned values and learned behaviors but we have no genetic encoding no characteristic traits that are spot on with our parents, as they do with their parents and siblings.  We grow to be their children, but do not have the initial bonds from gestation and early infancy, nor do we have those bonds with our biological parents anymore, because they have been legally and physically broken.  Most adopted people I know have no memory of their biological parents because they were adopted in infancy.  (I only know two girls who were adopted in childhood, foreign adoptions).  I and my biological brother are the only adopted people I know who have a sustained and lasting bond, and friendship and I believe in most cases this type of lasting relationship is both uncommon and usually ends the way it started, with neither party knowing who the other is. 

It is one thing to know you are loved, and wanted, and chosen by people who picked you even though their were lots of children to choose from who needed parents to love them. It is a great blessing to be alive and in the bosom of a family that supports and cares for you, and looks after you and accepts you as family.  It is good to know there are a lot of people who call you sister or brother or cousin or niece or nephew or aunt or uncle or mom or dad.  It is good to know that though blood may be thicker then water but that glue is thicker then blood or water and that glue is made of love and family. 

There is still something missing though no matter if your parents are a very sweet smart retired Episcopal Priest and  fantastic selfless Art Teacher from Nebraska or they are and Insurance Salesmen and his wife from Illinois or they are Intellectuals self sustained almost in Amish country who raised two very different little boys or single registered nurses with Peruvian Girls to look after or one rambunctious little kid with ADHD in the Mississippi River Vally. 

When you're adopted there will always be something missing way down deep, and no matter what you do there is an empty place, like a corner in your home with no painting or clock or shelf or plant.  It is just as if on the road to wholeness the sidewalk (to paraphrase) just ends. It's a place that gets smaller over time, age, understanding, maturity, but it never goes away.

On my little brothers birthday, which is two days after Christmas we had a little tiny cake because my brother is very health conscious. (A quality that PROVES he is adopted.) There had been a slice eaten out of it but my daughter had a little Christmas tree ornament that was shaped like a piece of cake.  She filled the missing space with the fake piece of cake. All though it nearly fit it could never be a perfect match. It was a little bit off.

                                                                                      Sarah Hall Minks