Adoption is Trauma

It's been a while. I have had a natural born son. Two boys! The youngest is now 18 months old. My adopted son is 5 and a half. They adore each other. 

I keep thinking about my boys and how much they look alike! I keep thinking about how Big Brother has my temperament and I totally understand his little idiosyncrasies. When we brought him home, we knew he would fit in. We knew that if we adopted him he would never have to tell a soul if he didn't want to. Not all adoptees have that and I figured it was a good thing. But, the more I listen to the adoptees stories, I am realizing that no matter how much he looks like us or acts like us, he may feel adopted for his entire life. I'm learning that adoption is trauma. No matter how abusive or brief, a child is connected to his flesh and blood. Adoption takes a child from its mother, the person that this child LIVED INSIDE OF. Is there anything more traumatic?

I'm realizing that Big Brother needs to know where he came from, no matter how much he fits in with us, no matter how broken his origins are. So, I'm reaching out to his mother a little more. I want him to know her someday. I want him to meet his father - if I can ever get a hold of him. Am I afraid? A little. I'm afraid that his origins are so, so broken that he will associate himself with that and it will hurt his identity. I'm not afraid that he will like them. He probably will! And who am I to decide that that is unnatural or not okay? It's perfectly natural. I raised him as a my own and I love him but he's not really, truly mine (and neither is Baby Brother). My children belong to God. Big Brother is allowed to feel however he wants to feel and if he ends up meeting his mother (whom he hasn't seen in 5 years) and feeling connected to her, I wont be threatened by that. (If he rejects me and my husband, I will be devastated! But that's a whole other blog post for a later date.) I am preparing my heart for it. For him to love his birth parents. I hope that he does. I hope they get their lives together and become better versions of themself.

Adoption is complicated and messy but my brilliant, simple, impulsive, loving boy tells his story like this just yesterday, "I was alone and I lived with other parents and they didn't know how to take care of me and now you're my mom and dad!". Then, happily goes back to eating his orange sherbet and laughing at his Baby Brother. 

Be still my heart. He gets it. He is wiser and more in tune than I ever realized.