Guilt and Shame in Adoption

With me, I know guilt and shame has been a big battle in our adoptions. I severely underestimated this element. Keep in mind that the core issues in adoption (control, guilt/shame, loss, identity, intimacy, grief, rejection/abandonment) affect not only our adopted children, but also us as adoptive parents, and the birthparents of our children.

Guilt

Over twenty years ago, we felt called to adopt. We certainly were not ashamed of that, nor did we feel guilty about it. There may have been some not so nice comments about what it may do to our other children and whether it was fair to sacrifice for the purpose of adoption, but I honestly just blew off those comments. It was not a sacrifice to adopt. Yes, our first adoption cost more then our annual income, but we were on fire for the Lord and knew without a doubt that we were walking with the Lord in the direction He was calling us. Never once did it feel like a sacrifice until.....

The small sacrifices began to add up and add up and the degree of trauma had to be dealt with on a daily basis. Guilt began to seep in and shame came hand in hand. When our daughter was diagnosed with a blood borne disease we began to be treated differently. When we adopted more and more special needs children, the treatment began to change as well. And adopting a black child (regardless of the fact that we had adopted transracially) brought forward new challenges. We began to respond not so much in shame, but in a fear of response based on treatment by others. I was honestly unaware of the underlying core issue of guilt for many years.

Slowly and surely, elements of guilt began to plague us.  I had to continually tell myself that these things I was feeling "guilty" about were superficial things. Just things like not being able to take X number of kids somewhere because it would cost a small fortune.  It was different when we had 2 or 3 kids. The larger our family got, the more we cut expenses in order to afford so many children. I  remember standing in the butter isle at the grocery store distraught around the holidays because I wanted to buy butter instead of margarine, but we couldn't afford it. That was a pretty minor thing looking back, but it hurt nonetheless and added to the feeling of guilt.

I also remember just four years ago experiencing once again a distinct feeling of shame at Sonrise Church. I was about the only English speaking person in line for free food at a church where they have a food panty. I felt a little bit out of place. It was a humbling experience. There was an amazing person that would oversee their program. I wish I remembered her name... Anyway....she checked me in one day and as I was filling out all the information, she made some comment on us having so many children, and I burst into tears.

For me, to be emotional was shocking because I'm not a person to wear my heart on my sleeve.  I'm sure hormones contributed. Our daughter was born three months early and spent two months in the NICU. She proceeded to need heart surgery and the reason we were getting the "free food" was because we had a 28K hospital bill above and beyond what our insurance would pay and above and beyond the 20K we had already put into that particular adoption experience. In that moment, I didn't feel guilty. I simply felt really, really sad. I do not regret our adoptions, but there is grief over some of the details that have come with the adoption experience.

There have been moments that I have felt guilty for the financial sacrifice on the entire family unit. All of our children joined our family privately or internationally and it has been an expensive process in so many ways. But....so many people have gathered around and supported us. We even went to our mailbox one day when our other daughter was rushed to the hospital to remove her kidney due to a tumor and discovered close to 2K in cash. There's just been blessing upon blessing with this whole process. Our oldest son would joke that we were the local charity because there would be bread at the door when we arrived home. It's been a relatively common occurrence for people to think we're an orphanage. After all, we drove a bus around town and have a HUGE family.

But...the biggest guilt factor has been the baggage/trauma that we've inadvertently exposed our other children to. It is not something we originally raised our hand for. I don't think anyone in their right mind would raise their hand for this junk. I think people are often raising their hands for adoption, but not realizing what they are getting into. In fact, sexual abuse in particular was one of the items we considered ourselves "not up for" before beginning the adoption process. I realize now, it was naive to go into the adoption process without being prepared for this element. The vast majority of children coming out of orphanages have a sexual abuse history. The vast majority of children in foster care have the same element. Many, many toddlers and very young children also have this history.

On one hand, I believe bringing in this degree of trauma has made our entire family unit stronger. We have all learned skills in working with kids from hard places and it has strengthened our compassion for others. It has also protected our kids in some ways from abuse by others. Abuse does not only come through adoption. A high percentage of individuals, just in the general population, have an abuse history on some level. This fact alone impacts how adoptive parents respond to the trauma elements of our children. The adoptive parents themselves may likely have an abuse history. If there is one thing I would advise, it would be to start taking a really close look at ourselves and our own history.

On a positive side, our kids have, by necessity, been educated on grooming behaviors, the need for appropriate boundaries, recognizing predatory behavior, and a range of other things in order to protect themselves. On the other hand, I'm sad that they've had to grow up quickly. They've learned some tough things that no children should ever really have to learn.

Don't get me wrong, we don't have imminent danger in our home currently and we actually have not been in that place for many years now. There was a VERY tough season in our lives many years ago and I honestly pray that we never go back to that place, but it has shaped the way we operate our entire family unit. Our kids do not play in bedrooms together. Actually, no two children are alone together in our home at anytime. They all do activities in the living room out in the open. We have schedules and rotations on where people are at in the home. If someone wants private time/alone time, that is scheduled and we need to know about it. Basically, kids do not just walk off to their room or even just walk off to the bathroom. The girls' bedrooms are on one floor and the boys are on another. The girls and boys have separate bathrooms, etc. There are just logistics (house guidelines) that we have changed in order to have a firm safety plan in our home. I wish I had taken these precautions 15-20 years ago, but I did not realize the risks we had in the home. Thankfully, it became apparent before anyone was seriously harmed, but there were so many scary years during that time frame.

I look at our youngest and I am so incredibly thankful that she has not experienced what our older kids experienced. Many years ago, we lived in crisis management. We have since adopted children with even more significant issues, but it has not been nearly as traumatic simply because we've been more prepared with a strategy in place.

Understanding the core issue of guilt and shame has been helpful in this process. Not only do we experience guilt and shame, but our children that have joined our family through adoption also feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame. This can display in a whole range of ways.

Ways to lessen guilt and shame in your teen:

Find ways to connect with your teen. I know this is much easier said then done, but I cannot emphasize this element enough. At one time we had seven kids under 12 years old and I thought that was time consuming. I have memories of pushing a cart in the grocery store with a baby in the cart and three on each side holding on. Those moments were nothing compared to parenting teenagers. We now have 6 teenagers (and a bunch of older kids and younger kids) and our time together is much more complex then simply pushing a grocery cart in the store. I can't ask them to simply "hold on" while I move along. They are not a captive audience. Teens are at a stage of development where they are breaking away from parents and establishing their own identity.  Individual time with your teen or child is essential in this process.

Acknowledge the reality of adoption. Look at some of the tough things that adoption has brought into your lives and acknowledge the reality. That doesn't mean I believe we should live there, but don't be afraid to step in the mud and swim around for a while. I relate working though core issues in adoption as going to those expensive spas I have never been to. People pay big bucks to have mud smeared all over them and apparently then they come out on the other side "better" then what they were before. I think this is true with our kids that come from hard places as well. We have to schedule our mud spa time where we will delve into some messy core issues such as our child's past, our past, and really look at how it has affected us. Many teens (or even most in my experience) feel shame surrounding the circumstances of their birth. They may feel guilty because they "should" feel happy~ after all, they were chosen. Allow your teen to feel sad. Just because adoption was a happy experience for us (at least initially), does not mean it was a happy experience for our child.

Initiate conversations about birth parents. I mentioned this in the last post and I'll mention it again in regard to guilt and shame. They may feel guilty for wanting a relationship with their biological family. There is so much guilt that teens express in my office revolving around questions about their birth family.  They may have been a baby when they were adopted, but have an underlying belief that if only they were a better baby and didn't cry as much, maybe they would not have been adopted.

They may swing between wishing they were never adopted to being very thankful for their adoption. They may understand logically the reasons surrounding their adoption, but still feel like they really don't understand why this happened to them. They may very likely say that they are just fine with their adoption. They may also say that they never think about their birth family and do not want to talk about their birthmother. BUT....Many teens hold a common belief that something is intrinsically wrong with them that caused them to be placed for adoption. This belief is intertwined with thoughts of the birthfamily.

Be sensitive of your teens possible need to connect with their past. I remember years ago helping out with Chinese heritage camps. One of the coordinators wanted to do an adult adoptee panel and they were looking for a participant (adult adoptee) that was doing well in life and had not done a homeland tour or search. I connected them with a person that I had grown up with that had been adopted from Korea as a toddler. She was doing very well in life. She did well throughout high school. She graduated with honors. She went on to college. She had a successful career. She had married a nice guy. She had a good relationship with her adoptive parents. There really was no "drama" to be seen in her life. She was on the surface a perfect adoption story. She stated she was completely content and had no interest in doing a "search" for her family or to even go to Korea to visit, but yes she would be happy to share about her amazing adoption experience. I thought she would be a good balance to the other participants that had chosen to search and did express turmoil surrounding their adoption. Keep in mind, just because your teen does not express a need to connect with their past, does not mean they aren't thinking about it.

Listen to adult adoptee panels. Learn from them. What my friend thought she would express to adoptive parents and what she ended up expressing were two entirely different things. She had basically always told herself that she was happy and thankful to be adopted. She had never allowed herself to go to the grief, to the shame, or to the pain that was involved in adoption. The core elements of adoptions continued to eat away at her, unbeknownst to her friends or family. One interesting element when listening to adult adoptee panels is we will often hear very similar thoughts and feelings from adult adoptees regardless of whether they were adopted at birth, at 2 years old, 10 years old, or at 16. The core elements are there regardless of the age of their adoption.


I see many clients that are 20 years old, 30 years old, 40 years old, or even 60+ years old that come to me because they finally begin to realize that adoption is a piece of what is going on in their lives. They begin to see the impact of adoption on their relationships. They realize adoption has affected their interaction with others.  Basically, there is a degree of unrest in their lives and they want to change that fact.

Know the core issues in adoption and discuss them with your teen. Maybe your teen will say, none of these things matter to them. They may believe this to be true in the moment. On the other hand, that same adult that was on the panel did an interview with her adoptive parents. The parents said, "We tried to talk about her heritage and talk about her history, but she wasn't interested, so we didn't push" After all, she seemed to adjust just fine in life. This is a common response. The adult adoptees response is often, but I was a child or a teen. Of course I said it didn't matter. I didn't know how to talk about what I was feeling. I didn't even know why I was feeling the way I was feeling.

Allow a format to talk. I'll talk a little more about "special time" and how to outline it in a future post. But, for now I will say that we often are not allowing undivided time to talk to our teens. Many clients will say to me that their parents never spend time with them or talk to them. The parents on the other hand will say they spend all kinds of time with them and the teenager doesn't want to spend time with them. The parents take the teen to events or to all kinds of sports of activities. They may have one or two kids and spend hours alone with them in the car, but the teen does not view that time as spending time with them. Teens will basically say to me, "Yes, but they have to take me to that event or they had to take me shopping or they just want to buy me stuff or they don't really want to spend time with me". What we are doing and what our teen interprets as the reasons for what we are doing may be two different things. This why the way we outline our special time is so important. More on this in the near future.......

What ways do address guilt and shame in your adoption? Do you as a parent ever feel a sense of guilt? Do you have strategies that help lessen guilt and shame in your child? Please feel free to comment and share your experiences as well! I hope that we can all learn from each other on this incredible journey of adoption.

These trials will show that your faith is genuine. 

It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold--

though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. 

So when your faith remains strong through many trials, 

it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day 

when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. 

~1 Peter 1:7

Loss....Loss...and More Loss...

When we contemplate loss in general, we usually think about loved ones that have passed away and broken relationships. We also may think of the day to day losses of losing our iPhone or all the contacts in our phone that may impact our life greatly in the moment. We do not often think about loss that is seen in adoption from the adoptive parent's perspective. We don't often think of the loss of a life not lived for our child or for ourselves.

“Adoptive parents often say about adoption day: "It was the happiest day of our lives!" While most of us are happy to be adopted, our own hearts tell us that adoption day was the most painful day of our lives, for the person with whom we shared deep intimacy suddenly disappeared from our world.” 

― Sherrie Eldridge, Twenty Life Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make

I never really contemplated the loss you see in adoption until we were years down the road in adoption. I never thought of adoption being a loss for me. I knew our child or children had significant loss. I also probably categorized that loss and even reduced the importance of that loss in my mind with certain children, such as our children that joined our family at a very young age. I simply did not realize the significance of this core issue on the entire adoption triad: birthparents, children, and parents. 

“You realize you've never walked in another person's shoes. Never have. Never will. The same is true in adoption. There are three sets of adoption shoes sitting at the end of the boardwalk. The adoptees...the birth parents'...and the adoptive parents'. Each is unique and each has a story to tell.” ― Sherrie Eldridge

Loss

Adoption is formed through loss.  There is no escaping that fact. There is no running from that detail. No matter how wonderful adoption can be, there is significant loss seen throughout the process. This loss filters through adoption in a range of ways. When we are in the midst of challenges within adoption, we often think of the logistical details. Our life is out of control, our kids are out of control, we don't know how to get "back on track" to wherever it is we think we were going. We're not always identifying the core issue of Loss within that process.

Often adoptive parents will talk to me about the person they have become. They may be distraught over that transformation. They have lost who they once were and now they are this "other person" that they never wanted to become. They never saw themselves as such an angry or upset person prior to adoption. I have felt this way as well. I once had a "normal" life and now I have this other life. Yes, it is what I wanted, but my vision of what adoption looked like and what it has become are two very different things. My idea of what adoption would feel like is night and day different from what it actually feels like.  For me, much of adoption has been incredibly heart wrenching.  There is a continual pain that goes on and on and on....

If you read my last couple of posts about crazy making behaviors and control, you probably realize that we've had some tough things in our family unit. I want to encourage others that there is hope! We are not currently in crisis mode and have not had significant drama in our family unit for many, many years. Instead of having a gashing wound, we now have scars that are sometimes bothersome and certainly still noticeable to us, but we're not on our way to the emergency room each and every day. We have five grown children that are actually all doing quite well.

But when we were in crisis, I wish I had a better understanding of what was triggering the episodes of crisis. What parents gain through the adoption process (a child) is generally understood, but there is very little talk about what is lost in this process. There are so many things lost in the process of adoption that I don't know where to begin. I'm going to speak from the heart and outline some of the things that we personally have lost. The biggest one for us is the loss of innocence. It's devastating not only for our children that have experienced trauma, but for our children that have experienced secondary trauma. They have the loss of a relatively innocent childhood existence. Our kids do not have that and we ourselves do not have that. To a great extent, we've lost the idea of the "perfect" family (whatever that may be). Some of our kids have not experienced the extent of trauma (such as our youngest child) and so the comparison can be hard on the other kids. There were many things we simply could not do in certain seasons of life.  Our choices become severely limited when we are in crisis mode.

Our vision of a family outing....

Maybe we had visions of family outings, but our outings end in someone peeing on the floor at 10 years old (or worse yet, peeing on someone else). We've lost visions of a quiet family evening at home drinking hot chocolate and watching a Christmas movie. Our "quiet" evenings may only come after 3 or 4 hours of rages where everyone just collapses from sheer exhaustion. Or maybe we do have a relatively quiet evening and things are going well, but then somewhere along the way it turns into something different. Or the next morning, there is something that happens to sabotage the whole thing and make us not want to have fun ever again. If "fun" leads to this, we want no part in it.

The reality of our family outings..

I remember quite a few years ago my husband asking me to come out to build a snowman with the kids. My instant vision was not of a "fun" family time. My vision was (with one particular child) of what will happen if I do that? How will she sabotage the situation and when?  She was at a certain season in her life that if I backed away a bit, she would do ok with others, but as soon as I tried to connect with her or do fun things with her (me in particular as the primary parent), she would react in a not so good way.  My mind already went to the fact that if I go out there, she will likely be fine, but then she will put a bunch of that snow in her coat and bring it in and set it on my bed or I'll have to stop her from doing something inappropriate and I just don't even want to go there. There was this huge loss revolving around simply acting as a normal family. We begin to have to evaluate every single choice that we make moment by moment in life. It is beyond exhausting to live that way.

We've lost the vision of birthday parties. Some of our kids can't handle the sensory stimulation that comes from "having a good time" and may either shut down completely or haul off and punch the person that we "thought" was their best friend. And they often cannot handle that much direct attention towards them. We moved into having large quarterly parties for a range of reasons. Our kids did better when they shared their party with some of their other siblings vs. the focus being exclusively on them. Then on their actual birthday, we would just have our immediate family and no huge celebration. After all, the day they were born reminds them of all kinds of loss.

We may simply have this vision of contentment, but NOBODY is content and there is NO fun to be seen for miles around. And when we do get a glimpse of the "fun" it quickly disappears to where we don't even want to look for it anymore. We've lost HOPE and that is the saddest part of the whole experience. The hope that we will love this child that we have longed for and prayed for and that love will make a difference. The PRAYER that we can help a child in need. We don't feel like we're helping anyone. And the LONGING that that this child that we love with all of our hearts will feel something for us in return outside of absolute hatred. And when they don't, it's one more heartbreak.

We begin to protect our hearts due to the heaping pile of loss. We may begin to not like this child and in many cases, we begin to wish this was not our life at all and even wish at times that we had never adopted the child. The pain is simply too much to bear.

If you are at the place where you dislike your child, you are not alone. If you are at the place where you truly believe that not only do you not like your child, but you really do not love your child, you are also not alone. If you are at the place where you absolutely hate this child that you are supposed to love, believe it or not, you are also not alone. I have been there. I have felt that deep despair. It's not a place that anyone wants to be, but what do we do if we end up there nonetheless?

I wish there was one specific answer, but it's more complicated then that. There are many tools and resources to help us, but it is a process and it begins in our mind. Identifying our own loss will help us be able to identify loss in our child. Then we can begin to grieve that loss (I'll write a whole post on that core issue alone). We have to be able to look at the various issues and see how they impact us and cause us to respond in a certain way.

In order to help our child process the loss seen in adoption, we must first identify some of those losses. A few of these are the loss of history, loss of identity, loss of birth family, loss of siblings, loss of birth order, loss of control, and loss of connectedness, and on, and on, and on.....

So, what can we do with all of this loss surrounding us? The first thing is to be gentle with ourselves. Take care of ourselves. Acknowledge that there is loss. Don't expect to be happy all the time or even strive for happiness as the answer. This is some really tough and sad stuff.  Acknowledge that pain, gather people around you that get it, but also be cautious of gathering people around you that "get it" but are on a downward spiral. Take steps to move forward instead of living there in unhappiness for the rest of your life. Recognize that our vision was not reality and then begin to embrace the new life with all it's jagged edges with a new and positive perspective on what your life now looks like. Can you begin to be happy even if nothing changes but your attitude about it? We often have it in our mind that we'll be happy if the child stops doing this or we make more money or we lived in a better area or we had more resources or whatever else would make us happy.

For our teens in particular, what can we do to help turn this scenario around? We can help by:

Remind them that they are valuable, they are wanted, they are loved, and they belong. Simply spend time with them without it being based on their behavior.  By request, I will write a whole post specifically about special time, so stay tuned. But for now, we must tell them how valuable they are with words and actions even if we do not feel it in the moment. Jesus loved the unlovable. Find unique ways to love your teen even if they are demanding, ungrateful, and entitled.

Talk about their adoption. They are thinking about it! Even if they say they don't want to talk about it, be persistent. So many adult clients say to me that their parents never talked to them about their adoption. When I talk to the parents, the response is that they always tried to talk about adoption, but received some form of pushback. The parents stopped talking about it because the teen wasn't receptive. We need to find creative ways to continue to bring up adoption even if we receive a less then favorable response.

Talk to your teen about their story. The whole story;  even the unpleasant facts. So many teens come to me and feel like pieces or details have been hidden from them. This is generally not deliberate. It may simply be details that the parents may not think are significant. They may also be afraid that the details are too difficult or painful. Parents try to protect the teen by simplifying the details, but in the end, the teen is hurt even more. For the teenager, it can feel like one more person that cannot be trusted in their life.

Coordinated time with other adopted teens. Spending time with others that understand the loss they have experienced is incredibly important. I have had the great blessing of assisting at teens camps with Chosen International over the years. It is amazing to see what happens when teens come together that share this common bond. Many will express pain in that they never really spent time with others that know what they're feeling. "Something extraordinary happens when adoptees connect with one another, a reassurance of being understood, an unspoken bond, a sense of belonging." ~Sherrie Eldridge author of Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew.

Allow our teens to fail. Be cautious of rigid expectations. Teens in particular are going to make mistakes. Allow for mistakes, forgiveness, and grace. Parents will often ask me about texting or social media and my advice, as much as possible, is to be a part of what our teens do instead of setting extremely rigid guidelines. Many, even most, are doing all kinds of things behind their parents' backs. Many parents I work with are running after their teenager trying to stop them from making mistakes instead of coming alongside the teen and being there through the mistakes. Of course we need boundaries and expectations, but help your teen be an integral part of these boundaries. The more you can set boundaries together, the more likely they are to follow them. Be cautious of rules that push further towards rebellion.

Be a safe place to fall. What will you do if your child steals a pie from the local convenience store? What will you do if they charge thousands of dollars on your credit card? What will you do if they "borrow" your car to take a girl out they are not supposed to date? What will you do if they call you from a party they were not supposed to be at and they are drunk and the police have arrived? Talk about these things with your teen before they happen. Often we are responding in crisis mode. Our teens are terrified of what we will do or say, so they hide as much as possible from us. Be that safe place for them to fall. Can they call us if they've messed up and expect love in return? That doesn't mean we work on eliminating consequences for them. We must help them to understand that consequences will follow their behaviors long term, but are we the people they would call for help or have we become the last person they would ever trust?

Join our teen in the search for their birthfamily. Don't be afraid of biological family. If their birth family is on drugs, messed up, dysfunctional, and basically a big hot mess, and therefore we completely separate ourselves from them and separate our child from them, what does that say to our teen? The vast majority of teens that come to me think they are a big hot mess themselves. They believe their parents simply do not know the extent of the mess they are, but if the parents actually knew them, they would have nothing to do with them, just like the birthparents. They often think they will end up just like the birthparents. My kids that have some sort of connection with even a dysfunctional family unit are so much more complete as a person and the last thing they want is to end up like their family. I see the same thing with my clients. It is not always possible, but if there is a way to have connection with the family on some level, be a part of that connection instead of being another barrier. Most of my clients do search out their family on Facebook. Most are afraid of the parents response if they were to contact them. Many do have contact with birth family behind their adoptive parent's back. Connect with your teen through this process instead of allowing it to be another separation during some tough growing up years.

Pray, pray, and pray some more. I know there was some response on a previous post basically saying to pray is simplifying this entire dramatic experience of adoption. hmm....I'll disagree with that. If we do nothing else BUT pray, we have done the greatest thing of all. Often in times of trial, we are left with our hands tossed up in the air saying, "Well, all we can do now is pray". Maybe, just maybe, this is where God wanted us in the first place. Accept the fact that ultimately we are not and will never be in control of the outcome with our teenager. It is not your fault. Good parent or bad parent, do not carry the weight of the world and the world's problems on your shoulders. Allow the Lord to carry the burden of all your mistakes and be confident that He will continue to carry the burden of mistakes yet to come. Believe me, you will make more (as all parents do). Release it to the Lord and allow Him to be the ultimate healer of unrest. It is incredibly difficult and it becomes a day by day or even moment by moment decision. We don't always or even often get the response we may desire, but our God knows what He is doing. He can make even the most horrific events that happen in our lives a beautiful blessing. There is pain involved, but glory on the other side!

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, 

nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 

nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, 

will be able to separate us from the love of God 

in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~ Romans 8:38-39