I’m sitting alone in the back seat of a van called “Adoption.”
For many years, I was either driving or in the passenger seat, but now, in my
“golden years,” I’m in the back, listening to front-seat conversations of forty-something adopted and foster kids who are dealing with adoption’s complexities.
They’re discovering what I discovered at their age….that being adopted or surviving foster placements hurts like hell and that there are complexities that must be faced if one wants to come out whole and healthy on the other side.
The primal wound that Nancy Verrier articulately describes is all too familiar, for they live it 24/7. Some are waking from a deep sleep, like the late Betty Jean Lifton described. Some are flailing around and can’t see anything good about adoption.
Yes, it’s normal fare as an adoptee or foster kid to experience:
- Having two sets of parents (or more, with multiple placements)
- Identity–who in heck am I?
- Reunions–facing someone you’re related to but have no relationship with
- Numbness–being transferred to home after foster home
- DNA–learning where your life began here on earth and being shocked and disappointed
- Rejection–suffering what no adoptee or foster kid should ever have to suffer
My fellow-adopted and foster kids are struggling, like a caterpillar, undergoing a metamorphosis in it’s chyrsalis.
This chrysalis is indicative of an adoptee undergoing a tremendous change. For the caterpillar within, it’s painful and the poor caterpillar can see no end to it. But there is a beautiful ending, which Sherrie points out to struggling fellow adoptees.
As a senior in the adoption arena, I want to communicate this thought that prompted me to write this blog…
IT WON’T ALWAYS HURT THIS BAD.
I promise!
YOU WILL MAKE IT.
Adoptees and foster kids will emerge from the chyrsalis of suffering as a beautiful butterfly. Even when they can’t hope for a positive outcome, it is there and in time, they will emerge from their hard places and see it.
Take it from this old adoptee!
Just as the caterpillar changes into a beautiful butterfly, so will you.
You really will.
Take heart.
I love you!
See the incredible emergence of the butterfly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt-5lS9hJFA.