Illuminating the Adoption Love Myth: The Truth Behind the Trauma
In the adoption arena, love is wielded like a magic wand that's supposed to fix everything. But the truth is, love isn't enough, and it never has been.
As an adoptee, the very idea of love is a mental paradox that has plagued me for much of my life. I've been told, like many others, that my birth mother "loved me so much" that she gave me away. On the surface, this statement is meant to offer comfort, a balm to soothe the deep wound of separation trauma. But for me and many adoptees, this assertion doesn't heal—it confuses, complicates, and even damages the very essence of what love is supposed to be.
Consider Reading: Head Logic Won't Heal a Broken Heart: Emotional Gaslighting & Why Emotions Matter in Adoptee Grief & Loss
The concept of love in adoption is deeply flawed, twisted into something that feels more like gaslighting than genuine care. Society pushes this narrative that adoption is an act of love, but for those of us who live it, the reality is much more complicated. Love, as it is portrayed in adoption, becomes a weapon, silencing our pain and forcing us to gloss over the fundamental issues we face. It is used as a cover, masking the deep, internal wounds that come from the trauma of being separated from our biological roots.
Love in Adoption: A Cloak for Pain
In the adoption arena, love is wielded like a magic wand that's supposed to fix everything. "Your birth mother loved you enough to give you a better life." "Your adoptive family loves you, isn't that enough?" But the truth is, love isn't enough, and it never has been. Adoption trauma and separation trauma are not things that can be healed by love alone. These deep wounds cut into our very identity, sense of belonging, and understanding of who we are.
We have to stop conflating love with adoption as if love is some all-powerful force that can make the pain disappear. In reality, the love we are told about doesn't erase the questions, the loss, or the feeling of being unwanted. Instead, it often glosses over the core issues that adoptees face, turning a blind eye to the emotional, psychological, and identity struggles that accompany adoption.
What Love Won't Fix for Adoptees
Here's the hard truth: love, no matter how abundant, won't fix the wounds separation, trauma, and adoption trauma leaves behind. We are told that love will make everything okay, but in reality, it simply doesn't work that way. Here's what love won't fix for adoptees:
- Identity Struggles: No amount of love can erase the confusion of not knowing where you come from. Adoptees often grapple with a fragmented sense of self, unsure of their place in the world. The loss of biological roots leaves a void that love can't fill.
- Separation Trauma: Being separated from a birth mother, even as an infant, causes deep psychological trauma. This primal wound leaves lasting scars on an adoptee's mental and emotional health, manifesting in anxiety, depression, and attachment issues. Love doesn't take that away.
- Feeling of Abandonment: Even in the most loving adoptive families, many adoptees struggle with feelings of abandonment. We are told we were given up out of love, but the action still leaves us questioning: If they loved me so much, why wasn't I enough to keep? Love can't resolve that paradox.
-Emotional Turmoil: The feeling of being torn between two families—one biological, one adoptive—can be emotionally exhausting. Love cannot ease the sense of divided loyalty or the fear of hurting one family by wanting to know the other.
- Loss of Biological Connection: The loss of biological family isn't just emotional; it's also physical and genetic. We are cut off from our medical history, our cultural heritage, and a biological mirror. Love cannot restore those lost connections.
- Grief and Loss: Adoption is inherently tied to loss. Love cannot remove the grief that comes with the knowledge that you were separated from the person who gave you life. It is a loss we carry in the deepest part of our being, no matter how much love surrounds us.
- Societal Gaslighting: "We loved you, isn't that enough?" This is a phrase so many adoptees hear, and it serves to silence us, to make us feel guilty for expressing the pain that comes with adoption. Love becomes a tool of gaslighting, shutting down our voices when we speak out about the trauma we carry.
- A False Sense of Obligation: Adoptees are often expected to be endlessly grateful. After all, we were "chosen" and "loved." But this creates a pressure to ignore our pain and focus on the supposed gifts we were given. It forces us to bury our trauma as if love could simply overwrite the authentic emotional struggles we face.
Love as a Mental Mind Paradox
For adoptees, love isn't just a feeling—it's a paradox. We are told that love is why we were given up, and love is why we were taken in. But what happens when that love feels more like a burden than a gift? What happens when love is the very thing that silences us, that makes us feel like we're not allowed to express our pain, our anger, our grief?
For me, love has always been tangled up with loss. It's hard to understand what love is supposed to feel like when the first experience of love I was told about was my birth mother "loving me so much" that she let me go. How do you reconcile that with the feeling of abandonment, the hole it leaves inside you?
Love, in this context, becomes confusing. It becomes a source of pain, not comfort. And this twisted version of love doesn't just affect our understanding of adoption—it bleeds into every area of our lives. It affects how we form relationships, how we trust others, and how we view ourselves. It makes it difficult to know what real, unconditional love even looks like because, for so many adoptees, love has always been tied to loss, pain, and sacrifice.
We Have to Stop Pretending Love Is Enough
It's time we stop pretending that love is enough. Adoption is complicated, painful, and traumatic, and the emotional and psychological wounds it leaves behind cannot be healed by love alone. Love cannot erase the trauma of separation. Love cannot fill the void left by unanswered questions and broken biological ties. And love certainly cannot silence the voices of adoptees who are trying to express their pain.
We need to start acknowledging that adoptees carry deep, internal wounds that go far beyond love. We need to stop using love as a way to gloss over the real issues and start addressing the trauma, the identity struggles, and the feelings of abandonment and loss. Love, while important, is not the cure-all it's made out to be.
My Lived Experience with Love.
For as long as I can remember, I've known that people love me. They tell me, they show me through their actions, but the feeling of love—the ability to truly feel it—has been almost nonexistent in my life. It's like a broken connection inside me, a receptor that doesn't work.
I believe a massive part of this comes from the broken bond between my birth mother and me. The primal connection, the one that forms before birth, was severed, and with that break came a lifelong struggle to truly connect emotionally. It's not that I don't understand love intellectually, but emotionally, it doesn't reach me as it should. This gap between knowing and feeling creates a mental paradox that's exhausting, a kind of mind-fuck that leaves me questioning what love is supposed to feel like at all. Adoption has never felt like love to me, not even for a minute. More like torture.
Science tells us that when a baby is separated from their birth mother, it disrupts the most fundamental bond humans are wired to experience. The mother's smell, heartbeat, and voice are imprinted in the baby's brain, forming a sense of security and safety. When that bond is broken, it can lead to attachment issues, anxiety, and an inability to trust or feel loved deeply. This broken bond has left a void in me, making it hard for love to feel like anything other than a distant concept, no matter how much I'm surrounded by it.
In the name of love, adoptees are often subjected to emotional manipulation and abuse that is cleverly disguised as care or concern. We are gaslit into silence when we express our pain, told that "we should be grateful" because "we were loved enough to be chosen." The narrative of love becomes a weapon used to shut us down, to deny us the space to express our trauma and grief. In the name of love, we are thrown out of family wills for not conforming to the image of the “grateful adoptee,” sent away to boarding schools under the guise of needing structure, or even given away to new families when we don’t fit the mold our adoptive parents expected.
Love is twisted into a justification for abandonment, isolation, emotional neglect, and keeping us from our biological roots. We are told, “We loved you; that should be enough,” while the reality is that this "love" is often conditional, expecting our silence, obedience, and emotional suppression. It’s a love that harms, not heals, and it’s used to disguise the deep cracks in the foundation of how adoptees are treated.
It's time to recognize that love is complicated for adoptees. Love is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling—it's tangled with loss, pain, and confusion. And until we stop using love to silence the real struggles we face, we will continue to suffer in silence. Adoptees need more than love—they need understanding, they need space to grieve, they need their voices to be validated and to be heard.
I want to be clear—I’m not saying that 100% of adoptions are devoid of love. However, we have to stop portraying love as the magical solution that fixes all the deep-rooted emotional and psychological issues adoptees face. Love, while important, does not erase the trauma of separation, the identity struggles, or the lifelong grief that often accompanies adoption. It’s not a magic wand that can heal everything; we need to stop pretending it is. Real healing requires much more than love—it requires understanding, support, and space for adoptees to process their complex emotions.
Love, in adoption, is not enough, nor is a house full of stuff. It never has been, and it never was.
Q & A
As adoptees, how has the concept of love impacted your experience? Do you ever feel like love has been used as a way to dismiss or silence your pain? Have you struggled with understanding or feeling love, as I have described, because of the broken bond with your birth mother? What are your thoughts on the idea that love is often presented as the ultimate solution in adoption when, in reality, it falls short in addressing the deeper emotional wounds? I’d love to hear your personal experiences—whether you’ve felt supported, misunderstood, or something in between. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Let’s open up a dialogue about the real issues adoptees face and challenge the narrative that love is the answer to everything.
I see you; I feel your pain for all the adoptees who feel forgotten, lost, and alone. Please don’t give up, and know you aren’t alone in feeling like you do.
I have compiled a list of recommended resources for adoptees and advocates. It can be found here: Recommended Resources for Adult Adoptees and Adoption Advocates.
Thank you for reading and for supporting me and my work.
Understanding is Love,
Pamela A. Karanova
Here are a few articles that highlight the intersection of adoption, grief and loss I recommend reading:
The Essential Role of The Grief Recovery Method in The Adoption Constellation.
Still, Grieving Adoptee Losses, What My Adoptive Parents Could Have Done Differently.
Acknowledging Immeasurable Adoptee Grief, The Real Mother.
When Adoptees Know Loss Before We Know Love.
Bewildering Adoptee Grief on Infinite Repeat.
30 Things To Consider Before Adopting From An Adult Adoptee Perspective.
Adoptee Holiday Grief, The Gift That Keeps On Giving.
Adoption Hasn’t Touched Me. It’s Ruthlessly Kicked My Ass.
Adoption: Mislabeled, Medicated, & Diagnosed Adoptees Could Be Grieving Profoundly.
Adoption: Deconstructing Harmful Myths We've Learned About Adoptee Grief.
Grief From Adoption? Most People Think Of Death and Dying When They Think of Grief.
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OMG, this is one of the absolute best descriptions of how adoption has affected me and my ability to feel love. Thank you!I was adopted almost 68 years ago at the age of 4 months from catholic charities in Shreveport Louisiana. I was such a sick baby, they weren't sure I would even be "adoptable". I was adopted by an affluent, successful father from Shreveport and a mother who was raised in California in a broken home with an alcoholic father who died when she was 15 and her mother died later in an "insane asylum". I was the baby who was supposed to fix their marriage. I had an adopted brother 5 years older than me. I was told by my adopted mom that I was "spoiled" when they got me and that it took me 2 years of crying myself to sleep. She also told me that she often had to miss all of the "holiday parties" because I was sick! I was told later in life by a trusted aunt that my a-mom didn't want to adopt another child but my dad wanted a daughter. She also told me they adopted me to fix their marriage. Needless to say, I never bonded with my a-mom, she never hugged me or said that she loved me and my emotions and feelings were discounted, discouraged and ridiculed. My a-dad, showed me love and affection but he didn't protect me from my a-mom who soon became a violent, abusive alcoholic. I could never have friends over because of her rageful behavior when drinking and if my dad was home, he would just send me to my room and ask me to "keep the peace". I suffered also with learning difficulties in reading comprehension and math specifically and was considered lazy and not "applying myself". Later as an adult I was diagnosed with ADHD and am still on medication for that. I never felt really loved, or good enough, I felt defective and unwanted, abandoned by my birth mom and I always felt my a-mom judged me because my birth mom was an unwed mother. She even called me a slut a couple of times when I was a teenager. I began to smoke pot at the age of 13, was sent to boarding school at 14, got kicked out of there for having 2 diet pills to help me study for exams at 15. My sweet dad came to pick me up when I got expelled and told the headmaster he was ashamed that he was a priest in the same religion my dad was and that I had gotten rid of the pills as soon as my roommate (who turned me in) told me she was now a narc and would tell if I didn't get rid of the pills. I flushed the pills so no evidence, but I was still kicked out. My Dad said on the way home that he used the same kind of pills in WW2, and that they used to sell them over the counter. He also said he used them to help him study for his law exams. He never shamed me or belittled me. My a-mom said absolutely nothing to me when I got home. She often simply ignored me unless she was in a drunken rage.my Dad was very involved in city, state and national politics, fighting for equal rights for all, decent housing for the poor and for honesty and integrity in our elected officials. He was a brilliant and sought after attorney, independent oil man and civil servant! This meant he was seldom home and my brother was away at college and I was left home with my drunken mom. One night, I came home from eating at my best friend and cousins' house and the door was locked and no lights Left on for me. I knocked and she finally came to the door. I could tell she was wasted, she opened the door, raised her arm and had a butcher knife in her hand coming towards me. I pushed her away, she fell on the floor, I grabbed the knife away and called my aunt. My aunt and her boyfriend came over and he took me back to my aunt's house and my aunt said she would put my mom to bed. I stayed with my aunt and cousins for several weeks, then she asked if I wanted to stay permanently. I did, but my dad wanted me to come home. So I went home. Nothing changed. I barely graduated high school and moved out at age 17. I ran off with my boyfriend for a year, my dad disowned me during that time. But after a year I asked if I could come home. He agreed, took me with them on a trip to Europe, mom still drinking heavily, I was my Dad's companion every night. I had fun with my dad, he treated me as an equal, always with respect but it made my mom even more resentful of me. When we returned home my dad got me an apartment by myself and I would either be in school or working. I am going to stop my story here because I've already taken up too much of your time. But that was what it was like for me. There's much more to my story and maybe I'll write it all down at some point. Thank you for listening.
Thank You, Pam.
Great Article, You nailed this one.
We idealize LOVE as a result, opening us up to a world of exploitation.