When I Adopted Them

Growing up, I generally avoided thinking and talking about being adopted. My twin sister and I knew we were adopted from an early age. Yet, it wasn’t until I chased down my adoption story at age 48, filtered it through the lens that comes with being middle-aged and a parent, that several realizations crystalized.  

Adoptees like me, from the 60s and 70s, were usually the products of closed adoptions.  We knew very little if anything about our background, which included both health history and genealogy. Most of us didn’t have a clue why we’d been given up.

While I was keeping my adoption hidden from others, I was inwardly suppressing the implications as well.  As a young girl, I couldn’t bring myself to dwell on why some woman would give away two perfectly beautiful, intelligent and creative girls.  Had we done something wrong or was it that two were too many? As a teenager, when boys and sex were frequent thoughts, I didn’t want to think about how I came to be.  I speculated that my adoption was a result of teen pregnancy. Making up that story in my head satisfied me, silenced the internal bantering until I learned the truth mid way through life.

Besides holding out from others and myself in terms of my adoption, I did not fully embrace the idea that my adoptive parents were legitimately mine.  Which is to say, I was waiting for my birthparents to come take me back, and return me to where I truly belonged. This meant that for most of my life I had not been in an honest relationship with myself, nor with my adoptive parents. Sadly, there was a part of me that couldn’t let go of my ‘first’ parents so I wasn’t ever ‘all in’ with Mom and Dad.  

If you asked my adoptive mother what I was like as a child, she’d say I was a reserved, serious, and contemplative child.  I was prone to taking off in search of a quiet spot in the three-bedroom, two-bath home I shared with my five siblings and parents. I was forever on my bicycle renewing library books, or hanging out at the park across the street from our riotous household.  As a young girl, most places I went, my twin went too. I was never in search of a best friend, for I was born with one. It was an advantage in life that I count as my biggest blessing. My adoptive mother was always on the outside of that duality. And because I was holding out for my birth mother to re-enter my life, my heart treated my Mom as a temp or stand-in.  It sounds cruel but it’s an honesty I’ve come to acknowledge later in life.

Somewhere along the bumpy road of searching for my birth relatives, I did adopt my adoptive parents. I think this happened during the course of: my birth mom’s denial of contact, waiting for the judge to order on my behalf for more health history, discovering my birth mother’s lies, and receiving my birth father’s refusal to meet or acknowledge me. The myth of my ‘first’ mother waiting to come back for me evaporated, and I saw my folks for what they were: two honest, decent people who had loved and nurtured me into adulthood.  I don’t want anyone else to be my parents. I feel lucky to have them in my life. They are mine and I belong to them.

It isn’t my fault that I was an adoption holdout.  The system baked that into the cake. As a child if there had been social workers available to me, I did not appear to need them. I had locked away the intrinsic loss and rejection of adoption somewhere deep within, and I’d harbored the fantasy that my other set of parents would someday return. It wasn’t until I was scheduled for a breast biopsy that I decided to meet my adoption head on. As a result of discovering my birth relatives and owning my personal history, I became more honest with myself and the relationships I am involved are more rewarding.

Today, I love to discuss the complexities of adoption on my blog, Touched By Adoption, at http://juliemcgueauthor.com.  I am deep into the edits of a memoir detailing my search for my birth relatives.  I’m relieved that the subject of my adoption is not a taboo. Most importantly, I accept my birth mother’s role in giving me life, and revere my adoptive parents for giving me a life.

No more holding back!

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