u/ajwachs17

If so, what was it like? Did your peers know you are adopted?

If not, was there a particular moment when you realized that your peers wouldn’t accept, welcome or befriend you?

I didn’t have meaningful friendships in elementary school. Even though I had several friends in middle school, I didn’t feel like I actually belonged. I didn’t try to be myself, I tried very hard to conform.

I think it was around 9th grade when I realized I really didn’t feel seen by other peers unless they’d also been through some form of childhood trauma (friends who experienced a death of a parent, abuse and/or neglect, incarcerated family member, etc.).

Sometimes I wonder what meaningful friendships would have been like without having to bond via sharing traumatic experiences.

Do you ever feel depleted of or without empathy entirely if non-adoptees are experiencing hardship for the first time in their life (especially as adults)?

ie 30-somethings losing a grandparent, aunt, uncle; having to celebrate a birthday alone for the first time; moving out of your childhood home as an adult, etc.?

I (31f) remember when I lost my dad when I was 25, I had a roommate at the time (she lost her own mother at 10 years old) who responded “oh, have you never lost someone before?” and of course, I’d lost great aunts, great uncles, grandparents, and pets but I didn’t consider the loss of a parent to be the same as the loss of someone/anyone. I wondered how she could be deprived of empathy, certainly she’d understand the pain if she’d experienced something similar?

Now I know that losing parents are a way of life, it’s just what happens.

I now also understand that once you’ve been through a plethora of bullshit, it can honestly be hard to muster sympathy for someone else losing their grandmother or something.

I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way, I am just curious how being adopted has affected the empathy you give to and receive from others.