The Grievance of Being Kept Captive, Adopted to Caretake For My Mentally Ill, Pill-Addicted Adoptive Mom
Dear World Adoption Day, I know this isn’t only my story but the story of hundreds of thousands of adoptees worldwide!
Trigger Warning: Childhood Sexual Abuse. Suicide. Emotional and Mental Abuse.
This is National Adoptee Awareness Month, so I am participating in sharing some very personal pieces of my journey. I know this isn’t only my story but the story of hundreds of thousands of adoptees worldwide! Take note: Adoption can’t guarantee a better life, only a different one.
Consider Reading: She Just Had A Bad Adoption Experience.
I've been writing for well over a decade. I wrote an article on www.pamelakaranova.com called "The Narcissistic Adoptive Mother" in November of 2014, and it currently has over 24.3K views and dozens of comments with adoptees pouring their hearts out about their adoptive moms being narcissists. I share precise details of what it was like growing up in a home with a narcissistic adoptive mother.
It's the most searched-for and read article I have written.
I wanted to re-write that article but add the reality of my adoptive mother not only being a narcissist but addicted to prescription pills and extremely mentally ill as well. I also wanted to touch on her reason for adopting, to begin with. She wanted caretakers. I will share why I know this is so.
I know so many of my fellow adoptees have also been adopted into such conditions, so I aim to shed light on this topic to help raise awareness on what it's like to be adopted by a stranger who isn't fit to parent yet your sole responsibility in this lifetime is to care for them.
This was my life for 31 years.
I don't know what it's like to "just be born." I realize that a majority of people who are born come into the world without their parents planning to have them. When your biological parents plan on having you, it must add a level of wantedness that those people may not even acknowledge because that is all they know. At some point in their lives, they hear the birth story, how they wanted that baby so bad, and they tried to get pregnant. And what a miracle and joyous day it was on the day they entered the world. Everyone feels those warm fuzzies that feel so good.
Or maybe if they weren't "planned," their parents kept them, they left the hospital with them, and life went on. Their birth story and beginnings are tucked away and will return in conversations throughout their lives.
Unlike many adoptees, many of those individuals don't know what it's like to be born as an accident, a mistake, or a burden, and then, for a multitude of reasons, your own biological family, your biological mother, passes you over to strangers to raise you.
I am sure there are a lot of "kept" people who still feel like they were born a burden and unwanted, but their parents kept them instead of passing them over to strangers. I do not wish to diminish what that feels like whatsoever. Being unwanted hurts and not a little, but a lot.
Well, my story is from an adoptee's perspective, and the truth is that my birth mother passed over me to strangers, a woman and a man who married a year earlier and couldn't have kids of their own due to fertility issues.
I was adopted after they adopted another daughter (my adopted sister), who was eleven months older than me. I have no memories of my beginnings before I was approximately five years old. Still, I am sure my body has kept many of them tucked away in my subconscious memory because my body reacts to triggers pretty specifically. Over years of therapy, I can trace many of these triggers to my earliest memories of life.
One of the most haunting childhood memories I have concerns my adoptive mother and her manic-depressive episodes. Let me share a little of the backstory that I have learned by drilling my adoptive dad and others who had information on "my story" as I was too young to remember much of it.
My adoptive parents lived in Waterloo, Iowa, and married in 1972. In 1973, they adopted a daughter. Eleven months later, in 1974, they adopted me. By 1975, my adopted dad hung his hat, threw in the towel, and split, leaving my adopted sister and me to be raised by my adoptive mom.
In his words, "You should have never been adopted because she couldn't take care of the first baby!" He told me stories of her being unable to keep the house clean, cook, care for us babies, be a wife to him, and more. I learned that throughout the first several years of our lives, our adoptive mom was so unwell that we would stay with other people who could care for us. Sometimes for weeks, days, or even months.
Ultimately, when my adoptive dad left, he chose himself. He walked. Not long after, he remarried and raised three step-sons (all older than me) as his own. I would see him every other weekend for most of my childhood until I was a teenager, and I finally stopped going.
I spent the majority of my childhood being sexually abused by my oldest adopted stepbrother, and I kept it a secret as instructed until I reached adulthood. Eventually, it all came out at 18 years old in one of my many therapy sessions. No one listened to me or acknowledged what I was saying. They ignored me. As he grew up into a man, he was also a pedophile who lured minor LGBTQ+ boys off the internet to perform in pornography in exchange for room and board while infecting many of them with HIV. Once I learned this, I went ballistic. They stonewalled me, so I excused myself from the table of any of them. They are not my family. Him harming me is one thing. However, he’s harmed many more children after me, even working at the Boys & Girls Club! They have all turned a blind eye. They chose him, and they can all fu*k off. How many other adoptees were adopted into a home with a pedophile? I am terrified to ask. (I will be writing about this soon)
Once I grew up and pieced my story together, I realized that while my childhood was traumatic AF living with my adoptive mom, my adoptive dad knew she couldn't care for us, and he left us with her anyway. That was a hard pill to swallow.
His house wasn't safe either because of the molestation going on. The only safe place for me was outside in nature, and I would fight like hell to get outside most days because my adoptive mom would keep us captive inside so we could tend to her wants and needs. We were adopted to be caretakers for her. On any typical day when kids could go outside to play, I had to combat my adoptive mom to be able to see a glimmer of what that was like.
Consider Reading: Sneak Life.
Some of the most challenging memories that plague my mind are of my adoptive mom having a manic depressive episode, throwing herself in the street to try to kill herself, and watching from our third-floor apartment window, screaming in terror. I can not get these memories out of my head. I just started EMDR therapy with a hopeful attempt to remove them.
She would also take her box of pills and the house phone and lock herself in her bedroom more times than I could count. She would make sure we knew as little kids that she was going to kill herself, and there was nothing we could do about it but cry hysterically outside her bedroom door, begging for her not to kill herself. Try to put yourself in little Pammy's shoes, being 5-6-7 years old, screaming and crying for your mom not to kill herself, being locked out, banging on her bedroom door for hours.
With her taking the phone, we couldn't call for help, and we would collapse outside her bedroom door after hours of crying, begging, and pleading for her to open the door and to please not die. That terror is stuck in my body. These episodes were frequent, and even when we were in therapy, no one outside the house ever knew. Eventually, she would open the door like nothing ever happened, and life went on until it happened again, and again, and again.
On the lighter days, my adoptive mom drugged herself to the point of sleeping around the clock. Most days, we would wake up for school and get out the door. Thankfully, it was only a block away. Pills were everywhere all the time. She was also sick daily and cried damn near every day of my life. She was on a combination of prescription pain pills and mood stabilizers, and she was getting them from multiple doctors with no one doctor monitoring them or her. She saw a psychiatrist once in a blue moon, but nothing changed.
When I was a kid, I had no idea what mental illness was, let alone how to handle a parent having severe mental outbursts regularly. I had no idea what prescription pill addiction was or manic depressive disorder. I am not even sure she was ever diagnosed with manic depression, but I would be willing to bet money she had it. On one occasion, she chased my sister with scissors, saying, "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."
It didn't help that I never got along with my adoptive mom or my adoptive sister. We would all physically fight like cats and dogs daily. We were like oil and vinegar. We didn’t mix at all! My adoptive mom was the ring leader and would create conflict by using triangulation tactics between my sister and me. I have always said we never stood a chance at being sisters with that lady in the middle of our lives. We never got along, and nothing has changed. There was no peace in the house I grew up in and no love without conditions.
Consider Reading: When Adoptees Know Loss Before We Know Love.
I was in and out of the hospital more times than I could count as a child for stomach-related issues. I remember having countless tests done so the doctors could get to the bottom of what was happening. The only thing they could diagnose me with was lactose intolerance, which was a wild guess. Looking back, I am 100% positive that I was suffering from severe anxiety due to the conditions I was living in with my adopter and the sexual abuse I experienced in my adopted dad's home.
Looking back, there is no doubt in my mind that my adoptive mom had severe mental health issues, and I will never understand how she was able to adopt any children, let alone two. I will never understand how my adoptive dad could leave us with her, KNOWING she wasn't able to parent us. I am confident my baby self was neglected, and my tiny child self was alone. I am confident she couldn’t soothe me, and I learned to soothe myself by rocking myself. Rocking is one of the only things that soothes me to this day.
On any given day, we were left to care for and cater to her in every way imaginable. We would be called to brush her hair, run her bath water, put makeup on her, massage her body all over with lotion, rub her back so she would "feel better," fetch her Pepsis and cigarettes from the store down the street. I learned to iron around 6-7 years old.
We would be in charge of making our beds and keeping our rooms clean and making her bed, cleaning her room, doing the dishes, dusting, mopping, and sweeping, all at very young ages. The wild thing is that everything was still dirty, messy, and filthy, and there was always never-ending work to do. Cartoons weren’t allowed, no friends could stay all night, and we couldn’t stay at any friend’s houses.
My adoptive mom stayed up late when she wasn't in bed sleeping, and most nights, we didn't have dinner at all, but if we did, it was around nine or ten o'clock at night. She was hooked on late-night television shows. I was always a sleepy head, and many times, I found myself wandering off to bed without dinner because I couldn't keep my eyes open. I didn't have a childhood because of this lady, along with her stealing my opportunity to have a warm, happy, loving mother.
Everything with her was always 100% all about her and chaotic all the time. She was always talking trash about my adoptive dad and his wife, sowing discord and division. She also talked trash about everyone else in the family to create division. Her own mother didn’t like her because she caused problems everywhere she went. When my sister and I would go to our adopted dads for the weekend, she would get my cousins to be her servants. Most women would love that alone time and go things with friends. Not my adoptive mom! She always had to have a servant around.
As we got a little older, junior high school age, my adoptive mom started to talk about not wanting to go to a nursing home when she reached her senior years. It was weird hearing about it the first time, but then hearing the same story over and over, it was apparent that her reason for adopting two daughters was because she didn't want to go to a nursing home. Two was better than one. Her talking about it over and over was her way of grooming us into submission that we need to plan on taking care of her in her old age because, after all, she adopted us and "saved us." My sister and I caring for her was the apparent payback.
My daily life for 31 years catered to caring for her, and at 24, I had three kids of my own to care for. I had twins and a 4-year-old, and I was raising them as a single parent, so adding the responsibility to care for my adoptive mom was a significant weight on my shoulders that I navigated the best I could at the time. Keep in mind I started drinking and using drugs at 12 years old, and I created a dependency on these substances for 27 years! My pain was so great that I had to avoid my reality.
I never remember her being well or happy one day throughout my life. She was always sick with something, and she would use sickness as a way to influence people. She was someone who was consumed in the medical industry, and the same doctors who would prescribe her all her medications are the same ones who killed her. She conned churches and individuals into feeling sorry for her so she could get money and material possessions from them.
She was a user, a liar, and a manipulator. I remember her saying her hip pain was so bad she had to walk with a cane. I arrived at her house and glanced through her windows, and she was walking around her apartment like normal. When she heard one of my kids ring the doorbell, she ran, got her cane, and started limping to the door. I can't make this shit up.
In 2003, she had hip replacement therapy, and her doctors would prescribe her huge bottles of Loratab 10s that she carried with her everywhere she went. Once she became addicted to the Loratab 10’s, everything just continued to go down hill.
During one of my millions of attempts at therapy, I was able to evaluate some of her root issues, which were the loss of having a biological child of her own and infertility struggles, as well as the divorce. She also expressed many times throughout my childhood that she had an abortion and, not long after, had a hysterectomy for cancer. These significant losses in her life were never healed, and instead, she decided to adopt two daughters to fill the void in her life from not being able to have biological children. She sobbed frequently and said repeatedly, "I am not worthy of being a mother!"
She pressed in on me being her POA before she was even 50 years old because she wanted it “locked in” that I would take care of her when she got old. I refused over and over again. When she saw that she wasn’t working with me, as I had my hands full with raising 3 kids, as a single parent, she asked my oldest daughter, as soon as she turned 18, if she would be her POA. I was mortified!
Wildly, my oldest sister had no kids at the time, so why didn’t she ask her? She always lived far away, and my adoptive mom had four chances at us taking care of her when she got old (my 3 kids and I) and one chance with my sister, so she was always working on me being her POA.
I remember her being fired from every job she had. Her boss called me because she got fired, and she was on the floor of her manager's office, and they called me her emergency contact. I told them to call an ambulance, as I was not capable of coming to pick her up off the floor. They had no idea this was who she was. This is not new!
All of her unhealed wounds were precisely how she parented us as an unhealed, mentally ill, pill-addicted adoptive mom. We were supposed to fix it all. Sadly, we couldn't, and it cost us our childhoods and the mother we deserved, that never showed up.
I have some significant reserves about mental illness, and to this day, it has a way of scaring me. If people show signs of mental illness and they aren't treating it, I run as fast as I can.
Around the age of 25, I was also experiencing secondhand rejection from my birth mother, which crushed my spirit and broke my whole heart. I was in denial, but I think deep inside, I knew.
While my hands were full with my children, my adoptive mom was still my responsibility to care for, clean her house, cater to, and be on call for the once she calls for every little thing you could imagine. She didn't have friends or hobbies like ordinary people. She had me, and ultimately, she owned me. She purposely trapped me time and time again, forcing me to depend on her and her alone.
My adoptive sister managed to escape when she was in her teens, and she went to live with my adoptive dad. We never really had a relationship, as the way we were connected was out of the chaos that neither of us asked for. At times, she was treated horribly by our adoptive mom, and even when we have never gotten along, she deserved so much better in the mom area.
So, I was the sole caretaker for our adoptive mom until I got brave enough in 2005, at 31 years old, to come up with an escape plan and move away. That is 31 years of my life that I have spent catering to her wants and needs, being her help. The distress, aggravation, and anger this lady caused me my entire life is something I can't put into words. I will never forget all the trauma and agony it was like living in her care and being forced to care for her in some awful, disgusting, and unimaginable ways.
When I turned 17, my adoptive mom moved me across the country from Iowa to Kentucky. I had no family but her, which was part of her plan. She wanted to get me away from 100% of my adoptive family members so she could have me all to herself. I now know she was also trying to get me farther away from ever finding my birth mother, but I never stopped asking about her and pursuing finding her one day. I was stuck with this lady, trapped with no way out.
By the time I was 13, I had already been arrested for burglary and assault. By the time I was 15, I was dependent on drugs and alcohol to cope. I was a full-time run-a-way teen, out in the streets, on probation, fighting in group homes, detention centers, and drug and alcohol treatment, and I found a lot of really disheartening things out in the streets at such a young age. I dropped out of school in the 8th grade and was summoned to go to the school for "the bad kids."
The label "bad" has been attached to me since I was born. First, my birth mother passed me over to strangers. Was I a bad baby? The Christians told me I was born a sinner (bad), then I acted out from my pain and was sent to the school for the "bad kids." I was conceived out of an affair with a married man. Bad. And the way I felt about myself was horrendous.
Consider Reading: She's Bad.
We moved to an apartment in my early teens, and sadly, there was only one door to get in and out; unlike the house, there were three doors to get out, so my chances of escaping were slim to none. My adoptive mom would stand at the door with her arms crossed and say, "You aren't going anywhere!" when I wanted to go outside to play. Once I learned how to escape out of our 3rd-floor apartment bedroom window by climbing down the pillars, it was on.
Society labeled me a typical "troubled teen," and I was indeed. However, the trauma from relinquishment was always brewing at the surface, then add this lifetime of living with a mentally ill, pill-addicted adoptive mom to it. Most days, I wanted to die, and several times, I tried taking handfuls of my adoptive mom's pills in hopes of never waking up again.
Sadly, no one ever noticed, cared, or knew. They also never knew I was in a horribly abusive relationship. But they wanted to judge me for the hell on wheels I was as a teenager. I was hurting very profoundly, and sadly, adoption or relinquishment was never brought to the table, but it was the core root issue I had. I spent the first 21 years of my life as hell on wheels until I found myself pregnant with my first daughter, who is 29 now. I will always say she saved my life, and I mean that. She gave me a reason to live when I didn't want to live for myself. Then, once I had my daughter, everything changed. My premature twins would follow, and at 24 years old, I was the single mother of 3 small children. I brought the twins home from the hospital at 2lb. 5oz and 3lb. 1oz., and my oldest daughter was four years old.
I still had the demands of caretaking for my adoptive mom on my shoulders for many years to come. With absolutely no family in Kentucky, I had no choice but to depend on my adoptive mom for assistance. Who else was I going to ask? I was also the only person available to help her. After all, I owed my life to her.
This twisted, disgusting, toxic, co-dependent relationship was prominent with my adoptive mom, and it was literally all I knew. The more I needed her help, the more she needed from me. I didn't ask for this, but I had no other family to help. I was convinced that I needed her because of my situation, and I had no self-confidence that I could manage to raise three small kids on my own with zero help, family, or support.
In 2005, everything changed. Once again, my adoptive mom convinced me to move to Utah, where my adoptive sister was. I couldn't possibly stay in Kentucky alone, with no family. So, I moved and spent five years dealing with the co-dependent relationship with my adoptive mom in Salt Lake City. Then, I found her doing certain things to my kids that she did to me growing up, and my internal spirit knew it was time to get away from her. Otherwise, I was going to do something super wild to stop it.
She ruined my childhood, caused problems everywhere, and now she was digging her claws into my kids, and I was not letting it fly. I would die or spend the rest of my life in prison for murder first. I am not putting this lightly, nor am I kidding. I am dead serious. Once I started having these thoughts, I knew my time was up, and I had to choose to escape her wrath and flee to a place where she wouldn't be. She was not going to put my kids through what she put me through. I just wanted them to have a happy, healthy grandmother, but that was never going to happen. Now, they were her caretakers.
In July of 2005, I made one of the most complex decisions of my life. After 31 years, I finally built up enough courage and escaped. I packed up a 22-foot U-Haul with my kids and returned to Kentucky. I had zero family help or support with such a big move. There was no family on the other side waiting for me. I was emotionally, mentally, and physically drained, and I found myself in the ER in North Platte, Nebraska, after having a panic attack on the way. I wanted to start my life over with my kids. We did it, but when we arrived in Kentucky, I had no place to live, no house, no car, no car keys, no job, no paycheck, no bank account, and no money.
Let that sink in.
All four of us crammed in my twin's grandma's spare room, and for several months, I slept on the floor between all 3 of my kids until, slowly, things started to transpire in our favor. I will always be grateful for her because we would not have made it without her.
We stored our belongings in her garage for a few months, and I ended up getting a job caring for a stroke patient whom I spent 18 years caring for from October 2005 to June 2023. We moved to our place, I got a car, and the kids all started school.
Imagine that I grew up being a caretaker, and now, in my career, I am a caregiver for elderly people. My specialty is assisting them to live independently in their own homes so they don't have to relocate to nursing homes. Most people have no clue I have been a caretaker since I was a young child to my adoptive mom. Now, I am a caregiver by career—a big difference. One person was taking my care, and now I willingly give it.
Moving into my own place with my kids and not having the enormous burden of caring for my adoptive mom was an experience I can't even explain. She was a huge responsibility; now, I could focus on my kids. Sadly, I have always had to work two jobs, so I haven't spent as much time with them because their dads never paid child support. However, I did what I could to make things happen, like any mother should.
I tried to let my adoptive mom visit my kids in KY and took them to Iowa to see her several times. It was as if the devil was showing up at my door. She was talking bad about me to my kids behind my back. She was still addicted to her pills, sleeping all day, and couldn't pull it together to at least pretend to be a happy, healthy grandma for my kids. I finally told her she couldn't come back.
Here are a few pictures of the last time I was at her apartment around 2010, which give you a glimpse of my childhood. These pictures bring back a lot of memories.
My kids will never know the depths of why I had to make this decision, and don't fully understand it all to this day. They, too, have had to experience the loss of the only family they ever knew, which is very sad to me that I had to make this decision. It was the hardest decision of my life.
I am grateful they don't fully understand it because I hope they never feel what I have been forced to feel my whole life. This lady, essentially a fuc*ing stranger, has stolen more of my life than anyone could imagine. I have spent all these years trying to repair myself due to the damage she has inflicted.
Because I moved away and set strict boundaries with her, her narcissistic supply was cut off, and she died not long after. She died alone in her apartment in 2017, likely from overmedicating herself or possibly suicide, as that was her usual since I knew her. Everyone said, "Well, at least she didn't die in a nursing home, which is what she wanted!"
That's all she wanted.
After she passed away, I was called to help clean her apartment out (pictured above), and I declined. I was called to have a memorial service for her and even help plan it. I declined. I was called to help pay for cremation services, which I did. I was called to drive to Iowa to pick up her ashes, which I did, not for me but for my kids. She stole 31 years of my life, and she was not getting any more.
It was so freaking wild driving across the country with this lady's ashes in my car! Part of me was pissed, and the other part was glad. A tsunami of emotions consumed me. It's such a mixed bag and an out-of-this-body type of experience. She did such a number on me my entire life that she was blocked on Facebook for years before she died, and she’s still blocked many years after she died. I never have and never will have the capabilities and tools to navigate dealing with her or anyone even a little like her.
My kids have some happy memories with her, which I am glad. I want them too. I have never cried a tear that she's gone. More tears have been shed that this trauma is now over, and she can’t hurt me anymore. I have cried every day of my life for the loss of my birth mother, and she thought she was giving me a better life. This wasn't a better life, only a different one. The reality is that I never had a mother, so now I have learned to mother myself, but the mother wound has been the most significant wound I have ever experienced. Healing is possible, but it takes a lot of hard work!
Now that my adoptive mom is gone, I can assure myself when I wake up from nightmares of her lying in the street or trying to take her own life and her trying to steal my kids from me, she can't hurt me anymore.
I was estranged from my adoptive dad for several years before he died in 2022. Reality set in that he abandoned me not once but over and over again when he left us with this woman he knew couldn't care for us. He also chose to side with the family pedophile, who is the same person who sexually molested me as a child.
Finding both my birth parents was the greatest disappointment of my life, as they both rejected a relationship with me and never wanted to be found. I am alone in the world, just my kids and I. It's been a hell of a fight to get here and a lonely one. It's a miracle I am alive, to be honest. I will be healing from the aftermath of adoption and relinquishment for the rest of my life.
Growing up with a mentally ill adoptive mother was undoubtedly one of the most challenging experiences of my life. The constant uncertainty, fear, and emotional turmoil that accompanied her illness had a profound impact on both my childhood and my adult life.
From a young age, I learned to tiptoe around her unpredictable mood swings and erratic behavior. At times, she would be distant, agitated, and withdrawn. It felt like walking on eggshells, never knowing which version of my mother I would encounter on any given day. The effects of her illness extended far beyond her behavior. The financial strain caused by her inability to hold a stable job, coupled with the mounting bills, created a constant state of anxiety in our household. This life was all I knew, and I had nothing else to compare it to.
Necessities were often neglected, and the burden of responsibility fell heavily on my shoulders as I took on the role of caregiver at a young age. Witnessing my adoptive mother's struggles with her mental health took a toll on my well-being. The constant stress and uncertainty left me feeling isolated and overwhelmed. I became hyper-vigilant, always on the lookout for signs of distress or potential triggers that could worsen her condition.
This hypervigilance carried over into other aspects of my life, making it difficult to form trusting relationships and causing me to second-guess my actions constantly. As I grew older, I began to recognize the impact my adoptive mother's illness had on my mental health. As a child, I experienced feelings of guilt, as if I was somehow responsible for her condition or could have done more to help her. As a child, I did everything possible to soothe her, even when it wasn't my job.
Consider Reading: The Ailing Adoptive Mother.
Keep in mind I was a believer when I wrote that article, and I am no longer a believer. I take my forgiveness back. I was pressured to forgive, and sometimes things are unforgivable!
The stigma surrounding mental illness only added to this guilt, making it difficult to talk openly about my experiences or seek the support I desperately needed. Why did social services never get called? I will never know.
Through therapy, self-care, and my Adoptees Connect group, I found solace in connecting with other adoptees who understand the unique challenges of being adopted.
I have learned to prioritize my own mental well-being, set major boundaries, and seek help when needed. I have found healing through self-care practices, creative outlets, and the support of close friends, as well as a few women who have been like mothers to me. Jan, Patsy & Linda, Thank you. I love you.
I have only seen how family should be and how mothers are by seeing it in other people’s families. This shows me what I missed out on and has been really challenging to navigate. While the scars may never fully fade, I am determined to intentionally take back what was taken from me and create a life filled with self-care and the ability to love myself so I can love others better, especially my kids. They deserve a fully present mother, which is something they never had while I was within arms reach of my adoptive mom.
For my 40th birthday, I legally changed my last name, which was a divorce from my adoptive family. For my 50th birthday, I might change my first and middle. This is one of the many ways I have reclaimed what was stolen from adoption.
I hope by sharing this part of my story, other adoptees with similar experiences will know they aren't alone. I also aim to show that adoption isn't always a win-win or a "better life promised." A lot of adoptees are adopted for the wrong reasons, and the selfish desires of unfit adoptive parents, and a lot of us are estranged from these people. A large majority of adoptive parents are narcissistic, mentally ill, and not capable of parenting, but somehow, they adopt anyway.
I knew that to find myself, I had to leave everyone behind, especially the abusers who stole far more than what they gave. I knew in my heart of hearts that my healing couldn’t begin until I moved away from my adoptive mom. She was the biggest trigger I had when she was alive. She taught me that love was conditional, and although I didn’t experience physical abuse in her home or starve, the emotional and mental abuse has taken a toll.
I know from connecting with so many adoptees over the years and spending countless hours building relationships with them that my story isn’t unusual in the adoption arena. It’s actually more common than anyone knows.
Please understand that not all adoptees are adopted into a loving home. Sometimes, when infertility strikes, it’s for an excellent reason. For those who want to say, “She just had a bad adoption experience,” please click here.
The truth is, I don’t owe my adoptive parents anything. I didn’t ask to be adopted or born, just like non-adopted people. I owe nothing to these abusers and co-signers of the abuse. I finally made the choice to choose myself, and after a lifetime of agony, I can now walk in my truth.
Dear World Adoption Day, Please listen to adult adoptees. Finally, at 49 years old, I have found love in life and within myself, but damn at what it cost me to get here.
Q & A
For my fellow adoptees, did you experience anything similar, and if so, how did you navigate through it? What has this experience taught you, and how have you worked towards healing? Please feel free to drop your comments below.
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. You can find it 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 I recommend reading:
100 Heartfelt Transracial Adoptee Quotes that Honor the Truth of Adoption by Pamela A. Karanova & 100 Transracial Adoptees Worldwide
What Are the Mental Health Effects of Being Adopted? By Therodora Blanchfield, AMFT
10 Things Adoptive Parents Should Know – An Adoptee’s Perspective by Cristina Romo
Understanding Why Adoptees Are At A Higher Risk for Suicide by Maureen McCauley | Light of Day Stories
Toward Preventing Adoption- Related Suicide by Mirah Riben
Relationship Between Adoption and Suicide Attempts: A Meta-Analysis
Reckoning with The Primal Wound Documentary with a 10% off coupon code (25 available) “adopteesconnect”
Still, Grieving Adoptee Losses, What My Adoptive Parents Could Have Done Differently.
my mom did everything to seem like I had a good childhood, but it was all appearances, it was always "look good for the church look good for the school" while I was being told I was too much because I had a severely traumatic childhood. Like, my adoptive sibling tried to kill THREE PEOPLE BY STRANGULATION, and got a free pass to be a POS because of "autism" Like, I may be the dim bulb on the tree some days, but autism doesnt make someone attempt to kill 3 people (thier best friend, Me, and a random kid who pissed them off) by the same method of killing. I have an ACE score of 7 which is pretty fricked up and was told my SA I had twice by 2 separate kids on 2 separate occasions was MY fault. Like, no six-year-old should be told that thier being r-ped was thier fault. I am looking into a PO against both my mom and my sibling bc "mom" joked about k1lling everyone at the synagogue I go to. And then when I accidentally bought something with thier card (bc I am legally blind) they said "I'm not gonna kill you yet." I said "Okay, wait what do you mean YET." she said "No firearms have enough range to reach Bloomington" I was like "What the F-CK."