Voice of lived experience: Adopted young people

Growing up as an adopted person, I always knew and felt that there was something slightly missing.

It's not been easy. There's a lot of shame in my story, and I want to inspire people to show that what I've been through, I'm still trying to live a good life. 

When I was adopted, I think my adoptive parents, they actually told me, had only two days of training, and in that time, I don't think they were really told anything. I think it was very much a basic of here's a child, they will have some issues, and that's it. 

Were my parents prepared to be adoptive parents? Looking back, I'm not sure they were.

I think there is a gap between what adoptive families are looking for and what adoptive children bring.

When you start off being an adoptive parent, you go into your training courses and you're taught all this stuff about trauma and loss, the attachment cycle. But I think by the point that you maybe have a child placed with you, a lot of that training has maybe gone out of the window and you're starting off anew, like any parent is. 

When people adopt, there's this blank slate narrative that you are adopting, you know, a brand-new baby, that this baby will be yours and they're gonna act in this way, that way. But at the end of the day, parenting an adopted child is parenting a traumatised child. 

My experience as an adopted person was difficult. Traumatic, it created a lot of anxiety in my nervous system, which I spent a lifetime trying to manage. There were lots of experiences when I was small that were, on reflection, trauma responses to everyday situations that my parents would not have classed as traumatising, but they were to me. But I squashed down all the emotion, all the questions, all the, you know, confusion around adoption, just squashed it down in order to be a super good girl so that I wouldn't be given away again. 

It took me going through two and a half years of therapy to be able to come to terms with my adoption, what happened and where I want to be in the future.

I knew I was adopted from a very, very early age. It's just something you bury deep inside, and you just kind of just go along with your life.

For many people who adopt a child, they can't verbalise their feelings and sometimes they behave really badly and an adoptive parent doesn't understand. “Well, we are doing everything for them. We're giving them everything. We're looking after them. Why are they treating us like this? Why are they behaving like this?” 

I was terrible in my teens. A lot of my trauma was playing out. I had a lot of mental distress, but I didn't realise that it was mental distress.

For an adopted child, there is always some kind of trauma there, although the child might not be displaying that.

So it's, you know, lifelong trauma, really. 

My adoption, I would say it was considered a taboo subject in my house. I think through fear of upsetting my adoptive parent, my mum, by mentioning it, I didn't want to hurt her feelings. In terms of growing up in my teenage years, to be candid, my adoption was swept that much under the carpet I didn't even allow thoughts of finding my birth family or even see that as a remote possibility of entering into my head.

My mum, she wasn't equipped to answer questions about the adoption in the wider world. So we all had to pretend that I was their child because she couldn't face the fact that I wasn't. 

A lot of adopted kids come from feeling like, oh, I was given up, I was abandoned, I'm not good enough. They carry that on. When they hit failures, like I've lost a job. That hit me quite hard. I thought, oh, I'm doomed to just lose everything in life. I think that's partly to do with the shame that sometimes adopted kids can carry from the prior life their, from the past. It was definitely for me. 

You mustn't have secrets with an adopted child. You've always got to be open with your adopted son or daughter. Always. They've got to be able to come to you, but not necessarily to come to you. You should go to them. You should make conversation open for them constantly so they know that, wow, we talk about this openly, you know, I'm adopted. Because if you are ashamed to say that you've adopted a child, if you are ashamed, then you are raising a child who becomes ashamed of themselves. 

When I was told I was going to be adopted and then I was, there wasn't the opportunity to discuss it any further. I had questions, but I definitely got the sense from my adoptive parents that it wasn't the sort of thing we discussed, I was adopted. That was it. No one needed to know. So it felt like I was a big secret. 

I think it's about open, honest communication. So the fact that I didn't have that had an impact on my life and it then made me want to go and search out for the answers that no one was giving me. 

I think one of the things I wish I had help with from my family a long time ago, was the reason that my birth mum put me up for adoption, put me and my little brother up for adoption in the first place. 

But then what you do is you create a fantasy. You know, I had a fantasy birth mother who was gonna come and rescue me one day, and this fantasy mother looked like the lady off the flake advert. She had daisy chains in her hair. She had long flowing white hair. She was like a fairy lady, and she existed in my head as my birth mother. 

The more open communication you can have with your child, the better it can be. You know, I think we underestimate what young people can carry and understand, and hold, and I think the people who are most grounded in their adoption and their identity, who people have a really good understanding of their life history. So, you know, try not to be scared of sharing because at the end of the day, they've lived it, they've been through it, they know it. You know, there's no escaping that. 

I think identity is the biggest thing for an adopted child. I have no sense of identity.

I didn't understand who I was, and I think that's because my birth family wasn't talked about. I didn't, we didn't talk about my Caribbean heritage. It was just never discussed. Perhaps if it was, then it wouldn't, I wouldn't have had as many issues as I did. 

For me growing up as an adopted person, I found it very hard, because identity was a big issue for me. I didn't know my background story, so it was difficult to place life events and how they link back to my history. 

You're going through life not knowing who you are, feeling like a leaf on the breeze because you don't know who you look like, who you resemble. 

I know non-adoptive people don't experience this 'cause your face is your face, but when you've not known where your eyes are from, where your nose is from. But it's just had a profound impact on me. 

At the age of 16, I, I finally got a chance to see my original birth certificate. It was then like a light bulb moment where, aha, now I can understand something about myself. Now this makes sense why I was feeling the way I was feeling as a child, that there was a sense of loss. There was a sense of something missing. There was a sense of something wasn't quite right, but no one was talking about it. 

I found my teenage years very difficult not knowing who I am. My birthdays, the nights before my birthdays felt terrible. 'cause although my adoptive family made a big deal, got lots of presents, there was a sense that there was something missing. No one around me was there at my birth. It was a very confusing time because I still didn't have the opportunity to talk about it. 

I think the major thing that was missing for me was not seeing anybody who looked like me. So I grew up in a white world, and I think it's so important if a child is adopted into a family that doesn't match its ethnicity it's so important that the parents understand how important their identity is. I was transracially adopted at six weeks old. Up until the age of about 15 I didn't, I'd never met a black person.

I had two adopted, brothers and sisters. They're my mother and father's natural kids. They were white. So growing up I was always jealous that I wasn't white. 

I had a lot of challenges in my adoption, given that, A. I was adopted, B. I was then black in that adoption, and C. I had two mothers within that adoption as well, that were both white and had no racial connection to me whatsoever. 

Being transracially adopted has an added layer on top of the adoption. My adoptive parents should have given me access to my culture and my origins, and I should have had role models around me that reflected my race, because it's very difficult for a person who's transracially adopted to grow up in a society where the people around you don't look like you and don't mirror you, and not just the people outside your home, but the people inside your home also. So you grow up with a sense of emptiness and a sense of what's wrong with me and why am I different? 

As adopted children, we're never just the child of the adopted parents because there's a whole load of genetic stuff in here. And mentally, as soon as we know we're adopted, we know there's other people that I'm part of. 

An adopted person belongs to two families. And it's as simple as that. You know, if you're adopting, you have to really accept that you are not just adopting that person, that you're adopting their history and you're taking on that other family. You're connected to their other family for the rest of their lives. And if that's not something that you are able to really take on board, I think that's something that you need to be thinking of. Whether you can really adopt, 

They're born into a family and then maybe that's their one family for life,but sometimes they have to have a second family. But that doesn't mean that they should just cancel out the first family. There needs to be, sort of, bridging. Every parent shapes their child when they have a child. I understand that. But we're also individuals and we might learn slower than you. We might learn slower than our other siblings. We might learn slower than our other peers, people around us, but we need your support in every part of that. 

You are adopting their history, you are adopting that birth family, and that never goes away. 

Parents ask how to talk to their children about their early life experiences. When's the right time? When should I be telling my child that they're receiving letters? When should I get them involved? That's a really common theme. Or parents asking, you know, my child's not really talking about their adoption, so I don't wanna bring it up. 

I think it's very important that adoptive parents are open about birth family from a young age. 

Birth parents will always be a major figure in the adopted child's life. Whether they know a person or not it's always deep in the heart because loss remains with an adopted person. And that's significant. 

I think it would've been really helpful for me if my adoptive mother had said positive things about my birth mother, but she didn't. And so, you know, that then had a negative impact on me and my sense of self. 

When I met my birth dad and his family, I had that instant connection and I spent a lot of time with them and I felt like I'd missed out on so much and I just wanted to be there all the time. And that's something that my dad in particular didn't understand. 

As an adoptive parent, you can have multiple children and love multiple children, but I always feel like there's this block where adopted people somehow aren't really allowed to love two families or two parents.

I was one of five, so I'd come from other siblings and I'd had other siblings around me. And when I went into care at first, my siblings came with me into care, but then we were split up and adopted into separate households. So that was a massive, that was a massive change. 

I'm meeting my birth sister for the first time ever. All I've ever had of her previously is pictures. So to actually meet her like face to face is amazing. And I'm just really sad about the fact that I had older siblings hidden from me for years. 

There are people who have been placed for adoption and lost contact with siblings and it has really devastating consequences on people. 

In total, I've got six siblings. It was difficult knowing that my siblings were in another family and even as an adult, I'm still not allowed to see them. 

I think adopted families should be very open about fostering a relationship between the adopted child and their birth family and their adopted family because it's a massive, massive point in a child's life. 

I had contact, I had letterbox contact throughout my whole life, but it wasn't very consistent. I met my birth family at the age of maybe 12. My adopted parents created an environment where it was very easy to talk about adoption. Around the house there'd be pictures of my adoptive family, me and then also my birth family. Having the pictures around of my birth family and having so much discourse around adoption normalised the experience for me. Even though I knew that, it was weird, I was a bit different. That's how I felt. So from a very young age, I was able to explain to my peers, oh, I've got this family and I've got that family. And it was just kind of factual. 

With my adoptive parents, they've realised how different contacts can really be beneficial. Something that's very important I think they realised is actually how much power they have over contact. I think that's something they realised when I went and met my grandparents and my birth grandparents at 16 was actually, this could have been earlier under our control. I think they had the power from the day I was adopted to actually say, we think the contact plan should change, or we think the contact should be like this. 

So If you are an adoptive parent whose child, you know, they want to make contact with the birth parents to do it in a way that feels manageable and safe to them and to get whatever support they need to do that. Whatever the child may be saying about the birth family, they should assume that their child will be searching for the birth family on social media, even if they're not telling them they are. We, when we run young people's groups and we say, how many of you've looked for your birth parents? Absolutely a hundred percent, every single one of them. 

From my experience, I would've loved to have had the support of both adoptive parents. I had the support of one adoptive parent, which really, really helped. But one parent, adoptive parent, was not particularly supportive of my reunion, which made it a lot more difficult. 

I actually approached my parents about it when I was 18 when I got the initial summary, like, you don't have to have a support person with you. But I chose to and I always chose my mum. I remember, when I got the initial summary, like some of the stuff that I read obviously shocked me, but with her there, it made it easier. It eased my anxiety, emotions. Like, don't get me wrong, I did cry because some things I didn't know. 

If a child wants you to be involved, that's great. Or if they'd rather something they'd like to do on their own. This is gonna sound a bit harsh, but not making it about you, it's really about your child. 

As an adult adoptee, it still stays with me because of so many years of not being able to talk about it. It has, it's affected me throughout my whole life. It still does now. 

It will always be in your life no matter what, whether it's at the back of your mind, heavily in your head, whether you've got your own family. There's always gonna be that extra layer of protection or anxiety. 

Adoption does continue to impact me now and will impact me for the rest of my life, including my children's lives too. 

Adoptees, they tend to forget about their trauma and tackle it later on in life, and it can randomly pop up in the thirties, forties, fifties. Yeah, it can set off a whole lot of emotions. 

The adoption is always part of you. The amount of people that come to us when they've recently had a baby, which is a big trigger, you know, thinking about what they went through as a child. When people get married, it's all those big life changes that make you think about your relationships and who you are in the world. 

Adoption is for life and you know, it doesn't go away. Those issues don't get any easier. As an adult, I'm able to look back and make sense of things, make sense of feelings that I had. So just to remember that it never goes away. That trauma and that loss never goes away. 

There's so much that can go on in someone's mind that you can't actually see.

For adopters, it's really important to recognise that your child will have a memory, a memory that they can't verbalise, of coming from somewhere else. So it's really important to get support for your child, even if you think that they're behaving okay. 

Adoptive parents can access all sorts of different support for their children. I run a group for adopted teenagers, and one of the things that they always say is that it's, how amazing it is to just be with other adopted children. So seek out support groups so they can just hang out with someone else who's adopted and you know, someone else who gets it without having to explain themselves I suppose. 

If you're working with an organisation such as PAC UK, they can help you with it. 

With PAC, I was able to connect with a number of adopted adult support groups. They have been a wonderful support in navigating my life as an adopted adult, which has been life changing for me in the most positive of ways, despite it being difficult. 

Adoption is a lifelong issue, and the needs that adoptive people have continues throughout that life course. But also I think adoptive parents should be aware and prepared to have help with their own needs. 

My parents had unresolved issues around their own worth, so I think my mum had very much thought that having this baby would fix her. You know, that would be her complete. And of course, it didn't do that job. 

Why do people want a child in the first place? And a lot of the reason is because something negative and traumatic has happened to them. 

Often people come to adoption because of loss in their lives, and that needs to have been really fully explored. 

To adopt your child, you have to be really ready in yourself. You have to be settled, emotionally confident and prepared to take on any of the issues or the trauma that comes with the child. 

You can't look after somebody if you don't look after yourself. It's difficult being a parent, and I think it's even more difficult being an adoptive parent. It's not the same. 

As an adoptive parent, the best that you can do is even if you can't relate to it on a personal level, being aware of it, is really important. Listening to adoptive people speak about that and write about it and talk about it. There's lots out there, you know, that's a really good place to start. 

I don't agree with adoptive parents changing an adoptive child's name. I think it comes down to the importance of identity again.

If you're an adoptive parent thinking about changing a name, don't do it. I dunno what more to say. My name was changed. And so when I've come to reunion and I've met my birth mum, I'm now, got a different name and that is a huge, it's, it's another block in one of many blocks. 

They will have your family name, but their first name is theirs. 

If you're an adoptive parent and you've got a birth child and an adoptive child, you do have to acknowledge it within the family home. You can't just say that everybody's equal because actually they're not. And the adopted person won't feel like that is the case. 

I felt guilty that my adopted mother has shown me more love than them, maybe that I needed it and I didn't feel like I deserved it. 

I don't think you're ever gonna feel the same, and that's nothing to do with how you as a parent treat them. But how they as an adopted person feel. 

The adopted child is gonna feel a sense of jealousy as though they're not quite as important. And maybe you'll treat them both the same, but there's always gonna be that sense of, oh, you know, I'm not biologically related to this family. Now they've got their own child. They'll favour them more than me. So they need to do as much as they can to reassure that adoptive child that they are just as important as the biological one and will always be treated and loved the same. 

Another major issue is school and the fact that many adoptive children find school incredibly difficult to cope with.

During my teenage years, I suffered a lot with my mental health and with issues at school, I was bullied quite a lot because I was always the smallest. I was always different from other people.

I did have the support from my family, but it's lacking within the schools. They need to keep talking to the schools about peer mentoring, counselling, art, therapy, stuff like that. 

What they need is a school that's very, very good with children who have additional needs and has lots of resource for that. 

The school has to be right and be able to meet your children's needs. And it's, you know, being an advocate for your child in school is so important. It's a difference in their support. 

Adopted kids come from a home, we're separated. That trust is then broken. And so when we come to you, we're looking for someone to just love us unconditionally. I think if you can do that and if you can foster that trust, that relationship of no judgement, of I'm here whenever you need it. I think that's the most important thing. 

I think I'd like to say to adoptive parents, please do not give yourself a hard time when things are difficult. If you are finding it tough, go and get help. And you shouldn't be ashamed of finding it tough. It is tough. 

When you adopt a child you've just gotta accept the fact that they came from somewhere else, and you've just gotta embrace that and love them for who they are and bring that out in them. 

The one thing that I think will make a really big difference for adopting parents today would be to really accept and acknowledge that this adopted child is a traumatised child and need lots of understanding, empathy, openness and honesty. In order to settle in and really be yours as much as possible. That connection is what's needed. Bonded connection is what we need. 

I would send a letter to my birth parents and, I can't, I can't really remember it but, no um, what happened was, my mum said that I asked if I could stop doing it because it made me feel a bit different. So then mum, yeah, they were like okay, that's fine. So then my adoptive parents, we didn't do that anymore. We just, acted, yeah 'cause I didn't, I didn't think there was any difference, and so there was just no need for it really. 

So you would send a letter, but I didn't get, I don't think I got any replies. So that obviously must, that must have been another reason, for me to stop it 'cause, if they're not replying there's no point in me wasting my time. 'Cause I didn't, I don't like writing anyway, so yeah, it didn't really give me an incentive so to speak. 

We used to meet up with them occasionally just as we got adopted, uh, and that didn't go quite well so they stopped it. Um, most of the time until about 18 we got letters on our birthdays, at Christmas, to say happy birthday, what they've done. Uh, we used to send one back to say what we've been doing and everything. They used to send us gifts every now and then as well so.

We used to talk over a letter and, that way we usually found it a lot easier 'cause I didn't actually have to face 'em while actually writing a letter. So all it meant to me is just, I can still talk to them, but not actually have to face 'em so, it was more comfortable in a way so. I think they would say, well, they used to say what they'd done that year or, what they'd been doing, uh, how many dogs they used to get and, if they had any puppy, puppies. Um, what yeah, and what trips and to see what I was doing through my life at, with my adoptive parents.

Um, it affected me a little bit 'cause there's like, well, why'd you need to tell me what's happening...what all the happy stuff in your life is happening well, you could have had that with me and, it was just a bit confusing on why they were telling me that particular stories and stuff. It's like they were more interested in looking after the dogs than their own kids in a way, so.

Uh, we used to sit down together and talk through what I was wanting to, write back saying and, what I wanted to tell 'em and stuff. So my mum would do, my mum, adoptive mum would do most of the work and, I would just sit there and tell her hopefully what I was wanting to talk about.

A good letter was just them about saying, that they were glad that they've had part, you know, some part of bringing up in part my early life, early life. Uh, and, the fact that there's someone out there actually better looking after me and, they're grateful for that and hope I have a better life.

So it's just knowing that they still cared about you. 

Yeah, so, that way, that was quite positive and I think that's partly what's got me going through, that they still, after all what they've done, they still actually cared about me. I think it'll help me prepare myself for...seeing 'em again if I, if I ever see them. Um, 'cause of, well, 'cause they've actually contacted me and actually been able to talk to me, through the letters up until I was 18, they've, it's given me a little bit of a picture about who they are and what they do.

Um, well if I, I think if we didn't have the contact via letters or sat in the office face to face, I don't think I would've been completely myself. Uh, 'cause I wouldn't have known where I've come from or, understand or have, even have the link to say if in the future I wouldn't go see my birth parents again. I've put a stop on to it when I turned 18 'cause I wasn't sure whether I wanted to carry it on or, not so, yeah. 

I found it quite nice that she was interested in who I was because, um, I'd never had any contact with my birth dad so if she could give me some incentive of what he was doing as well, 'cause I've never seen him or met him or anything like that. So in that respect, it was really nice and it's nice to know that she was wondering what I was doing and how I was as well.

But as I say I did find it, hard to, reply to the letters so I did say to my mum in the end um, I kind of don't know what to say so, would you mind replying to them? But, my mum was fine about it and, so was I so, yeah I liked it in that respect, It was nice. 

And what things would they write in the letter to you?

Um, she'd write just about how my birth dad was doing, what he was doing. Um, about, I think about his kids as well just that, um, and how he was getting on, um, and where he worked and things like that.

And um, did you ever from the letters get curious about your birth father and want to write to him directly?

I never really have. If only recently as I've started to think oh, I wonder where he is or wonder what he's doing. 'Cause it's just, it's funny how you think like, be passing someone on the street, a complete random stranger, and it could be your birth dad for all you know. And I, I think just recent years I have been wanting to explore it a little bit more, 'cause I have been a little bit - questioning about it.