I Am Not Who I Thought I Was

Even though the month of November has drawn to a close, there is one more voice from the adoption circle that I must share. 

I met Ande Stanley through our FB group Female Adoption Writers and she hosted me on her podcast, The Adoption Files, on November 8th. In our conversations, I was privileged to hear Ande’s gripping personal tale about when she learned she was adopted. I couldn’t wait to share it with you.

I Am Not Who I Thought I Was

By Ande Stanley

The truth may hurt for a little while, but a lie hurts forever. 
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Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

Once a month, the priest would sit on a folding chair in the little room next to the principal’s office at the elementary school I attended, preparing to take our childish confessions. Being face to face with this authority figure and revealing my offenses made my chest ache and my palms perspire.

 I lied to my mom.

I was taught that liars have no place in the kingdom of heaven. To lie was to sin. Once the lies were discovered, would anyone ever trust you again?

Twenty-five years later, I discovered that everything I thought about myself was a lie. A lie that I had unwittingly perpetuated every time I introduced myself to someone. Every time I filled out a medical history form at the doctors’ office. I passed the lies down to my children, a false inheritance. Countless legal forms were signed under false pretenses. A falsity approved by law. 

I have been asked many times what being a Late Discovery Adoptee means. I can’t speak for everyone, though I believe we share many similarities. Betrayal and lies burn scars into our very being. They cause us to question everything we have ever been told, who we can trust, and whether or not we can trust ourselves. Our instincts have been twisted, bent. We have been taught to ignore the evidence provided by our senses. To conform to a shape not originally intended. 

I didn’t know what to do with the information that I am adopted. I was thirty-three years old. I was an adult with a husband who worked up to one hundred hours a week in a stressful, dangerous job. I had two young children; one of whom was already displaying signs of the mental illness that I was unaware ran in my paternal family. I had a house to maintain, lunches to make, a dog to walk, obligations at school and to my church, and responsibilities involving the volunteer positions that I held. I was busy. 

I was busy. I was busy living a life that had always felt like a costume I had been forced to wear. Every day I put on my mask and joined a dance that felt foreign, whose steps I did not know. I tried and I tried, but I was always a few steps behind. My adoptive mom told me that she and my adoptive dad had planned to tell me when I was sixteen. Or twenty. Or never. I could have lived my entire life not knowing, feeling wrong, feeling Other. 

And then this bomb went off in my living room, on a normal day in a normal April, changing my life profoundly. 

Many of us discover our adopted state at significant developmental points in our lives. We are dealing with school, work, families. When and how do we have time to process what should have been part of our awareness since the beginning of our adoptions. The pain and grief are overwhelming. Is it any wonder that so many of us shut down?

Controversy exists over the right age to tell a person that they are adopted. What is late? When a child turns five, or fifteen, or twenty? I don’t think there is an argument here. A person should always know. Adoptive parents should never lie. Imagine being in an intimate relationship with someone, only to discover that they have been dishonest your entire time with them. Is it unreasonable that late discovery adoptees feel angry, betrayed, anguished, afraid? A non-adopted person would not be expected to feel grateful after being treated this way.

I have discovered that being a Late Discovery Adoptee means being tired. Tired of the lies, the betrayals, the disruptions, the questions, the rejections, the never-ending nature of adoptee reality. Tired of parsing truths from lies, tired of the on again-off again relationships with people I have little faith in, tired of being denied, tired of being invalidated, tired of having to justify my feelings and observations. Tired of the pain, the frustration, the isolation. 

Tired of playing catch-up with my own life, my identity. Tired of waiting for answers, some acknowledgement of the damage that has been done, from the people who participated in deceiving me. Tired of being the supplicant, the identified patient, when the family system was to blame, not me. 

So, we are done. I do not talk to them, and they do not talk to me. 
There is no amount of Hail Mary’s that can fix the damage that has been done. 

Follow Ande Stanley at
theadoptionfilescom.Wordpress.com
Twitter @andestanley1
Facebook @adoptionfiles.
Anchor fm and Spotify under The Adoption Files

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