At 38 years old, I had already spent 27 years of my life using alcohol as a coping tool to avoid dealing with my adoptee reality. Eventually, I hit what I describe as rock bottom, and I was seeking tools to help work on the deep-rooted issues I ran from my whole life. I stopped drinking alcohol for a decade in August of 2012, and all the feelings I had run from my whole life showed up at my doorstep.
I will never forget this specific Fall day in 2012 when I sat with a small group of women in a support group called Celebrate Recovery in what I thought was a "safe space." I had no tools to navigate my adoptee issues, and this was the first step for me.
Never in my entire life had I spoken the words out of my mouth about how adoption had made me feel, but this day was different. While I sat and listened to other women share intimate pieces of their journeys, I felt my insides boil up with emotions, and soon the words I had never spoken before came out.
Why was it so hard to get these words out of my mouth?
Finally, I can answer that question more comprehensively over a decade later. Back to the beginning, learning that I was adopted at five years old, my feelings were never acknowledged or validated because the emotions of my adoptive mom always trumped every area of my adoption. Me losing my birth mother was her "greatest dream come true." My most tremendous loss was her most significant gain. So I tucked all my adoptee feelings deep inside, and it was a lifetime that they decided to hide.
"I'm Pamela, I'm adopted, and I am really sad about losing my birth mother," I said.
I was in complete shambles as these simple words came out of my mouth, I was sobbing hysterically, and snot was slanging. I honestly didn't understand it all at the time, but I knew I needed to get those words out, even if it was the first time I spoke about it in 38 years.
Crying, I started to share a small portion of my story of being adopted in a closed adoption in 1974. But, before I could get a minute of my story out, I was silenced, interrupted, and shut down by an adoptive mom in the group.
She said, "You don't know adoption like I know adoption! My two kids are adopted, and they have caused me the most heartache you could ever imagine!" She told me about her struggles being an adoptive mom of two adoptive kids who had turned her life upside down.
I withdrew from sharing my story immediately, and after being shut down, I decided my time was up, and I needed to leave. This experience was beyond triggering! It was as if I had to swallow all the words I would share, and it was like someone put duct tape over my mouth. So I left, and my emotions got the best of me.
How many of my fellow adoptees have experienced something like this?
I walked to my car, and tears streamed down my face. I lost hope that I would get the help I needed because even in the safest places, as an adoptee, my feelings were never valid, safe, or welcomed. It was obvious that Adoptive parents would ALWAYS win and adoptee voices would continue to be silenced like mine was.
If I had been suicidal at this time, I likely would have ended my life. It was that heartbreaking. I lost hope. I felt as if I didn’t matter nor did my feelings.
Looking back, I wouldn't change this experience if my life depended on it, and here's why.
Within 24 hours of this situation, I had this innate desire to DO SOMETHING for my fellow adoptees, so something like this would never happen to them. It felt like a spark that ignited a much bigger fire. So I decided to put my pain into purpose and created the How Does it Feel to Be Adopted? on Facebook, which has been going strong for over a decade. This platform was dedicated to allowing adoptees a space of their own, so they could share how it feels to be adopted without being silenced, shut down, or interrupted by adoptive parents or anyone else for that matter.
My fire within that started with this one episode of being silenced by an adoptive mom has turned into a fire that can't be tamed or restrained. Even when life knocks me down, the fire might die down a little, but my passion and dedication to sharing the truth about adoption from the adoptee perspective constantly circles back around. It's been over a decade, and I've accepted it's here to stay.
Little did I know that this fire would continue to blaze for years and this is how I know I am walking in my calling and passion.
I have written hundreds of articles sharing how it feels to be adopted and created Adoptees Connect, Inc. I am the founder of Adoptee Remembrance Day - October 30th. I have been interviewed on countless podcasts, shared my story on many platforms, and built relationships with adoptees and those in the adoption constellation worldwide. I won the Angel in Adoption award on behalf of the Indiana Adoptee Network, and I cherish these opportunities and honor each of them to the fullest.
We all have a purpose in our lives, but sometimes people need to discover their calling, and it takes an uncomfortable or heartbreaking situation to take us to this point. Sometimes we have to sit in pain so deep that we choose to DO SOMETHING, so others don't have to experience the same pain we do. So even when I know I can't fix it for my fellow adoptees, I can do my best to try to create some resources for them that help them navigate the healing process more profoundly.
It’s no doubt that adoptees getting silenced by others is a prevalent piece of the experience of many adoptees, but it doesn’t have to stop our voices. We can redirect our conversations to those who want to listen and learn. We can make the choice to save sharing our experiences and voices for those who have the willingness to try to understand the adoptee experience without silencing us.
Q & A
I would like to know if any of you reading have found a specific experience that has sparked a fire that has created something meaningful in your own life or others?
If so, when did you conclude that you needed to DO SOMETHING by putting action behind it?
What did you create, and how has it impacted you and those around you?
Have you been silenced by others or adoptive parents, and if so, how did that make you feel? How did you navigate it?
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
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Understanding is Love,
Pamela A. Karanova
Here are some of the writing pieces I’m the proudest of:
100 Heartfelt Transracial Adoptee Quotes that Honor the Truth of Adoption – 100 Transracial Adoptees come together to share feelings on how adoption has impacted them by Pamela A. Karanova & Adoptees Worldwide.
Adoptees, Why Are You So Angry? Over 100 Adoptees Share Heartfelt Feelings by Pamela A. Karanova & Adoptees Worldwide
How Adoptees Feel About Birthdays by Pamela Karanova
I Highly Recommend
These Adoptees Refuse to Be Christian Pro-Life Poster Kids by Kathryn Post of Religious News Service
Struggles of an Adoptee: Loss by Cosette Eisenhauer
Hidden Identity Podcast by Lynn Grubb
Reckoning with The Primal Wound Documentary with a 10% off coupon code (25 available) “adopteesconnect”
“Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful.” - Rev. Keith C. Griffith.
Pamela,
Thank you for so bravely sharing both your experiences and how you've been able to move through them.
It's amazing to me how many spaces profess to be "safe." then prove through direct actions that they are not. Have all the members in these spaces undergone trauma-informed training? Have they taken EQ (Emotional Intelligence) assessments that highlight qualities like empathy and compassion? Of course not, because that's an unreasonable expectation of peer support groups. At the same time, we then need to acknowledge that a space is a safe only if each member feels that it's safe, not because the moderators or organizers say it is.
I'm sad that you had the experience of being judged and shamed, yet I'm heartened that you've moved through that dark psychological experience and are leveraging your experiences and wisdom for others.
Thank you.
Fond Regards,
David
Putting Pain into Purpose
My adoption experience likewise lit a fire in me to "do something," though my experience is quite different from yours.
I was manipulated, pressured and given no other options or support than to relinquish my firstborn to adoption in 1967-8 (it took 6 months of cajoling, lying, threatening and arm-twisting to get me to sign). It was most tragic and traumatic and not something one “gets over” or forgets.
I was silenced not by one single adoptive mother but rather by all of society. For many decades, birth parents were called the “invisible” side of the triangle and it was wished to remain so. Our speaking out, after all is bad for business. After succumbing to months and months of brainwashing as to how it would be my daughter’ best interest to let her go, how adoption would provide her with a “better life” and how I would be selfish to deny her that opportunity . . . having finally relented, beaten down and surrendered, I found myself hated by society. I was told “any dog can give birth” and had women telling me that they would mop floors for a living before they would let their child go! I was silenced by judgment and ridicule. And, when I began writing silenced by adopters commenting on most everything I posted about the JOYS of adoption! While they were enjoying their acquisition, I was barraged with society’s attempts to silence me with shame and degradation.
I have suffered PTSD forever after. No amount of subsequent children ever erases the loss. I cope with it with the support of other mothers who have experienced the same heartbreaking loss and separation and with EMDR therapy for PTSD.
But the thing that has helped me the most to survive this tragedy has been focusing the anger toward all the agents of society who conspired to promote the inhumane separation of mothers and their newborn infants instead of helping them. Mothers of newborns who did not neglect, abuse or abandon our babies did not deserve to have our babies taken from us either to avoid the shame of an “out-of-wedlock” birth or to be breeders to supply the huge demand for infants to adopt that bring in hefty sums of money to those who traffic them. I survived by focusing my anger – my righteous indignation - at the big business of adoption.
I made it my life’s work to advocate for family preservation and the rights of those adopted to unfettered access of their birth certificates. Activism, I have found is the best way to go from being a victim to being a survivor. I co-founded the original Origins support group for mothers who lost children to adoption inn 1979 and published my first book, shedding light on . . .The Dark Side of Adoption, in 1988.
My goal, like Pamela’s, is to help others who had suffered the same lifelong pain, regret and grief of the unnecessary loss of their child. I liken my activism to that of the women who started MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) and the parents of Sandy Hook Elementary who lost their children to gunfire. There are many examples of mothers – and fathers - who suffered the loss of child to illness, war, suicide etc. who have become ignited with the fire to save others similar pain because fighting back is empowering!
When one experiences an unthinkable loss of a child – or their mother, father, extended family and heritage – they have four choices:
• Remain forever in shock and denial (what many call “the fog)”. Block it out, compartmentalize it, never think or talk about it. This often requires self-medication with drugs or alcohol to sustain.
• Or, succumb into intractable depression of regret or of feeling rejected and making a successful suicide attempt, (as my daughter did at the age of 27).
• Others (many) cope by buying into societal propaganda that it was “for the best” or that you are “lucky” to have been adopted and should be grateful.
• Or, you can choose to get angry about what was done to you and channel that anger constructively into fighting back and helping others, or working to change the continued mass promotion of adoption as a “win-win”; or working to change laws that treat adoptees as second-class citizens denied their own authentic birth certificate.
I have done all of this by reuniting families severed by adoption, by speaking out publicly and to legislatores, and by writing two books and over 250 articles, quoted in more than 80 professional journals, theses, etc. To see how I have put pain into purpose, as Pamela A. Karanova so eloquently says, Google my name.
Mirah Riben, author and activist https://mirahriben.blogspot.com