u/legswithsnake

if so, do you actually feel like that ended up being true for you?

i was adopted at birth by a great family. they have cared for me deeply and gave me stability, but even with a good adoptive family, there are still a lot of emotional struggles that come with being adopted, such as the loneliness, identity issues, grief, feeling disconnected, etc.

my b-mom placed me for adoption when she was in high school because she felt like she wouldn’t be able to give me the same opportunities she had growing up. i understand why a pregnant teenager would feel that way, and i don’t blame her for being scared.

what’s been really upsetting for me specifically is that she had a son only a couple years later, around 18 or 19, and kept him. my bio brother seems to have had a really good life and honestly had more opportunities than i did growing up. my bio mom has a great job and is loaded with money now, so he even got access to experiences i wanted but my adoptive parents couldn’t afford.

so now i’m left with this complicated feeling of, “if she was able to make it work for him only a couple years later, why wasn’t i worth pushing through those challenges of teen parenthood as well?” my b-mom was in college, so she still had school when my b-brother was born.

i know that sounds harsh. i love my adoptive parents, but sometimes i really think i would’ve rather gone through a couple shaky years with a young mom in high school than spend my entire life carrying the emotional weight that comes with being adopted.

i guess i’m just wondering if anyone else struggles with the idea that adoption was supposed to give them a “better life,” but emotionally it doesn’t really feel that black-and-white

for me, it’s 21.

i’m writing this from the perspective of somebody who was adopted at birth and had a great upbringing. it was never a secret that i was adopted because my a-parents told me as soon as i was old enough to understand, so i grew up thinking it was no big deal.

now, as an adult, i got curious and decided to dig into my genetic background. learning about my bio family and how similar we are is what really triggered so many suppressed and unlabeled emotions within me. my status as an adoptee used to rarely cross my mind, but now it’s the ONLY thing i can think about. i’ve just been able to connect so many dots regarding my loneliness and identity struggles to being adopted. i’ve recently found myself feeling enraged and crying about it almost every single day. it’s like all of the complexities surrounding my adoption hit me all at once on a random tuesday.

I’ve posted on here a lot lately, so I’ll just restate that I was adopted at birth by a genuinely amazing family. They love me so much, have always supported me, and objectively gave me a really good upbringing. I was raised as an only child and had plenty of affection growing up. However, I’ve always felt this intense embarrassment around showing them who I actually am.

One of the biggest examples is music. Music is probably my biggest passion, but for some reason I feel SO uncomfortable letting my parents know what I listen to. I only listen to music through headphones when I’m at home, and when I went to a concert a few weeks ago, I weirdly dreaded telling them who I saw. Part of it could be that my taste is more alternative/heavy while theirs is more “safe,” but the feeling goes beyond just different tastes. I feel almost guilty or vulnerable sharing my interests with them. I even have band shirts that I only wear while I’m away at college because wearing them around my parents makes me feel “exposed.” I’ve been interesting in learning guitar, but I’ve never tried because the thought of my parents hearing me practice makes me cringe with embarrassment so much (and I’m in college, so I don’t really have privacy to practice there either).

As I’m writing this, I’m realizing this doesn’t only apply to my parents. I’m so private about my interests with almost everyone. I oftentimes hide what I’m listening to from my boyfriend and friends too (though not nearly as much as I do with my family). All my Spotify playlists are private. I think part of me just finds comfort in having things that feel entirely “mine,” where I don’t risk vulnerability, judgment, or feeling ashamed.

I’m also not emotionally open with my parents in general. I’m away at college, and I don’t naturally call them just to chat or update them about my life the way a lot of other people seem to. I don’t really tell them what’s going on with me, even though I know they genuinely care. That makes me feel like such a bad daughter, because I know I should. I just don’t have that instinct like other people do, which makes me forget to check in. The part that makes me feel the most guilty is that saying “I love you” to my parents is incredibly hard for me. I do love them so very much, but expressing affection toward them just feels unnatural and uncomfortable.

I think some of this could be a result of the identity struggles that stem from adoption, because I naturally just don’t have much in common with my a-parents. Because of that, I may subconsciously feel like I’m doing something “wrong.” I found out that my b-dad is also a music lover and I had no problem bonding with him over that. I just hate that I can’t do that with my a-parents, because I know they’d love to hear me chat about that stuff, but for some reason it’s like a freeze up in those cases.

I want to be able show my real self to my a-parents, but it’s like it’s physically impossible for me for some reason. With how closed off I’ve been throughout my life, I know that if I randomly become super emotional around them it’ll be like a “big event” to them, which I don’t want. I just feel guilty not being able to demonstrate to them the same affection and openness they gave me, and I know it all stems from me being adopted.

For me, it’s been my appearance and self-esteem issues. There was never really a “reason” for me to feel so insecure. My a-parents are the same race as me, so there was never that ethnic dissimilarity. I was also never bullied or teased for my appearance, and throughout my life people have actually told me consistently that I’m attractive or pretty. My bio mom even did modeling, and I look just like her. However, no matter what anyone said, I’ve NEVER been able to truly believe it myself and genuinely feel confident in my appearance.

I’m 21 now and I still hate posting on social media or having my picture taken because I know I’ll immediately start nitpicking and criticizing every feature on my face. For the longest time, I thought I was just overly insecure or self-critical. However, lately I’m starting to realize that some of it may be tied to adoption and growing up feeling subtly “othered.”

I look nothing like my adoptive family and I think that affected me more than I understood at the time. Growing up, I never saw my features reflected back at me in the people around me. Because of that, I guess I developed this feeling that my features were somehow “wrong” or abnormal. Like, “nobody else I’ve met has a chin like mine, so there must be something off about it.”

Recently I saw photos of my biological mom and brother, and holy shit, they are my twins. I felt a weird sense of validation just seeing my own features on other people. Like, “oh, these features aren’t random or wrong. They belong somewhere. I belong somewhere.”

At the same time, it’s also emotionally complicated because it made me think, “These are my people. I look like them.” There’s grief in realizing I grew up disconnected from that resemblance and sense of familiarity.

I’m curious if anyone else has had experiences like this, or if there were parts of your personality/self-image that only started making sense after you began unpacking your adoption.

I’m very lucky to have bio parents that live near me and are super interested in getting to know me. We haven’t met yet (it’s in the works), so I was wondering what those positive reunions were like for some of you guys and how often you kept in touch.

(for added context, bio mom and dad aren’t in contact, so the reunions would be entirely separate)

Me personally, I’d love to be a consistent figure both of their lives—like, very consistent. I want it to almost be like we’re friends who hang out on a regular basis. I want to meet all of my bio grandparents, uncles, aunts, and siblings. Basically, I’m an open book and don’t have any boundaries of my own. My bio parents seem to be pretty open as well, but I’m just wondering how realistic this closeness is in the long-term. I also don’t want it to be like I’m intruding.

Is there like a honeymoon phase where the contact and excitement eventually fizzles out? Does anyone meet up with their bio parents/siblings on a regular basis? If so, how often? Do you text them regularly?

I just wanna hear other people’s experiences just in case I’m setting my hopes too high haha

My adoptive parents are great people and my upbringing was really good, but somehow I’ve been struggling with my mental health since middle school. I never knew why, but now that I’m older, I’m starting to realize that my depression and social struggles likely stem from potential autism and a primal wound from adoption. My a-parents are the definition of neurotypical and have always been mentally healthy, so they’ve never really understood what I felt. To illustrate, my a-dad is the type to dismiss depression as laziness and deny that I might be autistic.

Now, I found my b-dad not too long ago, and I can sense that he’s had some mental struggles of his own. He got into some legal trouble in his early 20s, and while he’s a very friendly and open guy, he seems to be a little bit emotionally unstable in regard to our reunion.

Two out of four of his other kids (my half-siblings) are diagnosed autistic, and based on his behavior, I strongly suspect that he is autistic himself. He’s also really into alcohol; I’m unfortunately drawn to drinking as a coping mechanism myself, which is interesting because my a-parents NEVER drink.

It feels like a weird thing for me to say, but I find comfort knowing that my b-dad has experienced mental instability; I guess it just feels validating for me. Clearly he wasn’t in a good place to raise me at birth (which is why I feel weird saying this), but sometimes I really do wish he was with me growing up so that I could have a parental figure to understand and relate to me.

hi! i’m not sure if this type of post is allowed here, but i’m wondering if anybody knows of a therapist in the area that is knowledgeable or experienced with adoption. i’m an adult who was adopted at birth, so i’d like to talk to somebody who can really understand my story. thank you!

Hi again! I’ve posted quite a bit over the past week, so thanks for bearing with me lol. I’m new here and I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.

I was wondering if anyone else here has struggled with being drawn to alcohol or other forms of self-medicating. I turned 21 a couple months ago, and I’m starting to realize how much drinking is impacting me both mentally and financially. I find myself solo drinking 7% ABV drinks just to play a video game. It’s getting hard to ignore how much money I’m spending on alcohol, and I’m trying to understand why I seem to gravitate toward it so strongly.

What’s interesting to me is that my adoptive parents NEVER drink, so it’s not something I grew up around or was environmentally influenced by in my household. I’m very petite, but somehow seem to have an unusually high alcohol tolerance, which makes me wonder about the genetic side of things. My bio dad has pictures on Facebook of himself when he was my age chugging whiskey, as well as a ton of memes about alcohol on his page. Both him and my bio grandfather have management positions at a beer company, so I really do suspect I got some type of genetic predisposition from that side.

It’s made me question how much of my relationship with alcohol could be genetic or tied to adoption-related issues/identity struggles in ways I don’t fully understand yet. I don’t want to reduce everything to genetics or make excuses for unhealthy habits, but I do find myself wondering how much nature vs. nurture plays into this stuff.

I’m curious if any other adoptees have had similar thoughts or experiences with alcohol or self-medicating behaviors.

I was adopted at birth by a genuinely loving couple who were always honest with me about being adopted. My adoptive family and I are all white, and we even live in the same city as my biological parents, so I’m grateful that I never had to feel like I was disconnected from my ethnicity/culture.

However, despite having good adoptive parents, I still feel a lot of anger and grief over not getting to grow up with my biological family. My biological parents were high schoolers when I was born, and from what I understand, they actually wanted to keep me; their parents heavily pressured them into adoption. That part especially is hard for me to process. I understand the challenges of having a baby in high school, but it makes me wonder what my life could’ve looked like if such pressure hadn’t been involved, especially since my bio brother was born just a couple years later when my bio mom was 18 or 19.

My adoptive parents truly did their best raising me, and I don’t hate them whatsoever. But emotionally, I’ve always felt like we weren’t the right fit. They’re an older couple and much more cautious and conservative in lifestyle (“boring” for lack of better words). They’re good people, just very “safe” people. We never traveled much, explored much, or really had the kind of adventurous, emotionally open dynamic I craved growing up. I’ve spent most of my life feeling fundamentally misunderstood by them.

Another thing to note is that my bio mom actually had a name for me (and it’s what appears on my original birth certificate). My adoptive parents didn’t like the name she chose, so they changed it ASAP. From what I heard, that really hurt my bio mom’s feelings, and it kinda upsets me too because I feel like what she chose should be my real name.

Then I look at my biological mom’s life now, and it kinda hurts. She travels constantly with my biological brother, takes him hiking and mountain climbing around the world, and lives the kind of life I’ve always dreamed about. I was raised as an only child, which felt incredibly lonely for me, so knowing I missed out on growing up with a like-minded brother adds another layer of grief.

I feel guilty admitting this, but I think I resent my biological brother. Not because he’s done anything wrong, but because it feels like he got the life I was MEANT to have. He even attends the school I desperately wanted to go to, but my adoptive parents couldn’t afford it. Seeing him live out experiences that align so naturally with who I am makes me feel weirdly displaced, like I ended up in the wrong life.

I know adoption gave me stability and love, and I know many adoptees have objectively worse experiences. But I also feel like there’s this expectation that I should only feel grateful because my adoptive parents were “good.” The reality is that I feel both grateful and deeply angry/sad at the same time.

i contacted my bio dad on facebook earlier this year and he was absolutely ecstatic that we found each other. he told me how emotional he was and that he has spent years thinking about me and wondering what he’d do in this situation. at first, he was VERY open with me: he asked how i was doing almost every day, sent me memes, sent a video of him playing a song that was “just for me,” and even invited me to a concert sometime this summer (which was never mentioned by him again, so idk what the deal is with that at this point lol). he said stuff like “if i was in the right headspace i should’ve fought for custody … i can’t wait to hug the daughter i never for to hold. thank you, [my name].” super friendly guy, but i definitely got the vibe that he was wrestling with some past guilt.

now, he does have some criminal records from around the time i was born and had a bad falling out with my bio mom, so i was little more cautious and less open while talking to him. things felt a bit surreal for me, so i told him that i needed some space for a while, which he was totally respectful and understanding of. i stopped talking to him for about a month to process things, and then got back in contact with him by sending him a text saying that i’m open to meeting him (we live in the same city, so it wouldn’t be difficult). he replied to that text after only a few minutes and sounded super excited. however, after i sent my next text, he never responded.

it’s been about a month, so i’m pretty confused by his shift in energy. he has multiple kids of his own, so i know that can make thing busy. i’m wondering if he started to panic as things became more “real” or if his wife may have been uncomfortable with him talking to me. we’re still friends on facebook so he never blocked me or anything. i do not want to send him a follow-up message, but i also don’t know how long it’ll take for him to reach back out (if at all).

hi! long story short, i was able to find my bio mom through facebook a couple months ago. luckily, she was very friendly and glad to hear from me. i learned that she has a 17-year-old son, but he has no idea that i exist. i’m 21, so we aren’t too far apart in age. i was able to find my brother on instagram and it seems like we’d get along very well, so it kinda frustrates me that she has never told him about me. she told me that she just hasn’t found a “good opportunity” to tell him. but i mean, he’s almost a grown adult. the longer she waits to tell him, the weirder it’ll likely feel for him.

i haven’t talked to my bio mom in a couple months, so i have no clue if she’s told him by now. he’s still in high school and i don’t want to cross any boundaries, so i don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to contact him at this moment. however, once he graduates, i think he needs to know. my bio mom hasn’t contacted me in a while, so if i don’t hear from her by then, i may have to go behind her back to talk to my brother (he’s a junior, so it’d be in about a year from now)

morally, i just feel pretty iffy about everything. i don’t wanna cross a line with my bio mom, but i think my brother deserves to know that he has a sister (especially since he has been raised an only child)

hi guys! this is my first post here and i’m just curious if anybody shares this experience.

i was adopted at birth by an awesome couple, and they never hid the fact that i was adopted. when i was still a baby, my birth mother would come visit, but as a i began to grow old enough to form memories she cut contact with my family because it was too emotional for her to see me. we had zero information about my birth dad aside from his name.

i was raised as both an only child and only grandchild, so to say i was spoiled and had all eyes on me is an understatement. i was enrolled into gifted programs at age four and was constantly praised for my academics. however, i was always very aloof and struggled to connect with my classmates. my adoptive family is as neurotypical as they come, so they never really understood my social problems and found it hard to understand what i felt. i sensed that there was something inherently different about me, but they just viewed my struggles as shyness. i was simply perceived as mature, which is why i never got referred for diagnosis.

i’m 21 now and have been able to contact both of my bio parents via facebook; both of them were very friendly and excited that i found them. however, with my bio dad, i felt like we especially understood one another and communicated on the same wavelength. i haven’t asked him directly, but based on the way he behaves, i’m very confident that he’s on the spectrum. he has two teenagers with ADHD and a little daughter who was in a special education program for being nonverbal, so he definitely carries some type of gene.

i think i just feel guilty for feeling a chemistry with my bio dad that isn’t quite there with my adoptive parents. we have a bunch of little quirks in common, and i keep wondering how things would’ve played out if i had somebody who could understand and relate to my struggles as a kid.