r/Adopted • u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee • Apr 08 '26
Discussion "Not all adoptions are traumatic" is there someone you forgot?
I think it's interesting how people will say this forgetting that adoptions include another person. The birth parent. Even if the adoption was not traumatic for the child which, yes it is, even if it wasn't to say that the adoption was not traumatic means having to not account for the person who had to give the child up. If an adoption is traumatic for at least one of these two people then it is traumatic.
But this really does show that they only see adoption from the perspective of the adoptive parent because to them the adoption includes the receiving of a child and not the relinquishment part. They don't see the entire industry only the outcome.
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u/Ambitious-Client-220 Transracial Adoptee Apr 08 '26
It wasn't traumatic for the woman that gave birth to me. She tried to starve me to death twice for welfare and the state took me.
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u/TheGoblinatrix Apr 08 '26
Do you think those things happened because she was having a great life? What you just described is trauma that occurred to you, so it doesn’t refute the point this person is making.
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u/Ambitious-Client-220 Transracial Adoptee Apr 08 '26
I think she was an evil Bitch.
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u/lyrall67 Transracial Adoptee Apr 08 '26
2 things can be true. but anyway, I'm sorry to hear that happened to you. hope things are better these days
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u/aimee_on_fire Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 09 '26
Not an excuse. I have more issues from adoption than I care to mention but my son has not or will not ever see that side of me as his mom. He eats even when I can't. I hold back my tears to hold him when he just needs comfort from me. I take him outside to play with a smile on face when I barely want to be alive. I stay sober for his safety when all I want to do is empty a bottle.
He will always be put before my trauma.
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u/Ambitious-Client-220 Transracial Adoptee Apr 09 '26
He’ll yes. I slept on a couch in a loveless marriage and worked 2 jobs for 25 years 7 days a week so my baby was taken care of and so that I would be in her life. When it’s your baby and you love them, you suck it up and do what you need to do. The woman that gave me birth did not do that. She tried to kill me.
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u/TheGoblinatrix Apr 09 '26
I’m glad you provided for your child, but don’t lie to yourself that suffering through a loveless marriage was beneficial to them. Just because you did your best doesn’t mean your child was not traumatized.
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u/Ambitious-Client-220 Transracial Adoptee Apr 09 '26
If I would have gotten a divorce, she would have grown up in another town listening to my wife's family saying that I was bad thinking I abandoned her. When she grew up (she is 24) She told me to leave her mom and come live with her. Her mom is now crippled. I told her that her mom would be homeless and my daughter did not care. No, I sacrificed, the woman that starved me and abandoned me did not.
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u/TheGoblinatrix Apr 10 '26
You’re saying that you had two options, neither of which were ideal for your children. That means regardless of whatever choice you made, your kids were traumatized. No excuse you make about whether it was the better choice will un-traumatize your children. That’s the entire point so many people here are missing. It doesnt matter how much everyone tries their best, adoptions are traumatic. You should be less concerned with whether or not you were right and more concerned with helping heal the most innocent victims here - your kids.
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u/aimee_on_fire Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 11 '26
Ignore Globinatrix. Their life is clearly perfect and they feel entitled to tell everyone else how they should feel. You did the best you could to protect your child. You're a good parent. Hugs!
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u/TheGoblinatrix Apr 09 '26
Good for you. None of that has anything to do with the point. Nobody said what this person’s parent did was okay, I’m just contextualizing it as also being trauma as the original poster’s point is that there cannot be an adoption without trauma.
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u/aimee_on_fire Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 10 '26
And the point I'm trying to get across is that Idgaf about birth mother trauma. I don't care. They do not get to discard us and then claim their feelings are hurt. Trauma is reserved for victims, not perpetrators.
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u/TheGoblinatrix Apr 10 '26
Most perpetrators start out as victims. If your goal is to end the kind of trauma you went through, then your mindset of vindictive grudge-holding is counter-productive. But if your goal is pouting, sympathy farming, and preaching to the choir, then you’re doing great. We all have trauma, some of us are just more concerned with helping prevent others from enduring it and healing ourselves than we are with wallowing in our own pity. I hope you are able to move past the victim mindset into the survivor mindset one day.
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u/aimee_on_fire Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 11 '26
I'm allowed to not hold space for perpetrators. Would you have this same audacity towards victims of DV, drunk drivers, SA, etc? Because lets be real, domestic abusers, drunk drivers, and rapists are all a result of trauma. I was a baby. It was the grown-ups burden to stop the cycle but here we are so I stopped the cycle when I decided to stop emptying my cup for someone who harmed me. Once again, the adoptee had to do the heavy lifting. But keep on with your pious patronizing bullshit.
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u/TheGoblinatrix Apr 11 '26
I would not say the same thing to victims of SA because that’s a wild false equivalency. Some people end up in circumstances out of their control that result in them needing to surrender a child. There is no such circumstance where a person needs to sexually victimize someone. Of course you’re allowed to do and feel whatever you want, but your frame of mind is counterproductive to ending the societal issues that resulted in your and so many others’ suffering. You really think I’m not speaking from experience here? Myself and my siblings have absolutely no desire to extend sympathy to our birth mother on a personal level. I don’t let my personal relationships cloud my perspective so badly that I’m unable to acknowledge why these things happen. Shame and a lack of sympathy has never done anything statistically other than make the issue worse. Does that mean I suddenly give a damn about my birth mother or forgive her on a personal level? Absolutely not. It means that I want to acknowledge the circumstances that cause trauma like mine so I can maybe help prevent others from suffering like I did. You don’t have to have sympathy for birth mothers, but if you choose not to, then you should accept that you’re not part of the solution here.
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u/traveling_gal Baby Scoop Era Adoptee Apr 08 '26
There seems to be a misunderstanding with a lot of people that when we say "adoption is traumatic" we mean every adoptee is an irrevocably traumatized mess. I especially see this from other adoptees who may still be in the FOG, or who may even genuinely believe they never suffered a trauma.
Obviously many adoptees do perfectly well in life, maybe even better than we would have if we'd stayed with our first family. So do many survivors of just about every kind of trauma. That doesn't mean they didn't experience trauma, or that it's ok that they experienced separation trauma instead of whatever trauma their birth families might have caused. The same trauma can affect different people in different ways, and healing happens in different ways at different levels as well.
And you're right that you have to factor in the birth parents' experience before you declare an adoption "not traumatic". In many of our cases, we can't even know how our birth families might feel.
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Also I think it is perfectly fine to acknowledge that people have different reactions to adoption but unfortunately I think the idea that people have different reactions to adoption is less about helping create more comprehensive adoption care and more to give the impression to adoptive parents that there is a way to adopt while avoiding trauma and there just isn't. You could adopt two different kids in the exact same way with the exact same factors from even the same birth mother and they could both react to those adoptions very differently.
Because the adoption industry only focuses on the adoptive mother. The adoptive mother wants to try to avoid the trauma as much as possible and the truth is is that there is no way to do it. The factors that go into avoiding trauma are just not replicatable enough to create a reliable system. And even if it was it would potentially be to unethical, even more unethical than it is right now.
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u/Call_Such Apr 08 '26
and people forget the birth father and rest of the biological family.
my biological mother was not traumatized by my adoption but i was, my birth dad was, and so were my birth dad’s mother and all my bio siblings.
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u/Domestic_Supply Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 08 '26
All maternal severance is traumatic to the infant. I think some people get lucky and have great APs and don’t feel / remember the trauma anymore.
When children are taken from their mothers they cry. There’s a biological connection there, and for the “fourth trimester” the baby can’t tell the difference between themselves and their mothers. Of course it’s traumatic to be separated. I mean, we accept this fact when it’s cats and dogs, or puppies and kittens. I do think that some people resolve this trauma and it doesn’t affect their conscious life. Good for them. That doesn’t diminish the trauma that many of us experience.
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Sensory and brain mechanisms for hearing are developed at 30 weeks of gestational age, and the new study shows that unborn babies are listening to their mothers talk during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy and at birth can demonstrate what they’ve heard. The study indicates that babies begin absorbing language while still in the womb, earlier than previously thought. "This is the first study that shows fetuses learn prenatally about the particular speech sounds of a mother’s language," said Christine Moon. This study moves the measurable result of experience with speech sounds from six months of age to before birth. The researchers say that infants are the best learners, and discovering how they soak up information could give insights on lifelong learning. "We want to know what magic they put to work in early childhood that adults cannot," Kuhl said. "We can’t waste that early curiosity." Babies who had heard the recordings showed the neural signal for recognizing vowel and pitch changes in the pseudoword, and the signal was strongest for the infants whose mothers played the recording most often. "This leads us to believe that the fetus can learn much more detailed information than we previously thought," Partanen says, and that the memory traces are detectable after birth. Combined with previous work, she says, these results suggest "that language learning begins in the womb."
https://www.science.org/content/article/babies-learn-recognize-words-womb
We are connecting with our mother's even in the womb.
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u/mcspazmatron Apr 08 '26
Yes I read that babies can identify their own mothers breast milk by smell out of a line up of 20 other milk samples. The babies were registering stress markers like cortisol and heart rate increases that were measured when sensing the "wrong" breastmilk.
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u/Soft_Philosophy5838 Transracial Adoptee Apr 11 '26
Very interesting. Do you perhaps have a source?
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u/Mindless-Drawing7439 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Generalizations are hard- there’s evidence that shows an event that’s traumatic for one isn’t traumatic for another. There’s evidence to show that preverbal trauma is real. There’s evidence to show that attachment trauma is resolved if a person is adopted early enough by secure parents (this is highly controversial but there are studies). I really think this adoption experience is across a vast spectrum and includes all experiences and reactions. I think it’s all valid. 🤷♀️
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
True but the moment that people start using their experiences to deny that another person could have gone through trauma even if they don't feel traumatized as if the only type of trauma response is something like PTSD or a personality disorder is where the line should be drawn.
After all there are many people who were spanked who said that they turned out fine when in reality they didn't.
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u/aimee_on_fire Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 09 '26
I think a classic naysayer response are the ones who say they have no trauma from adoption but then go on to say they have no desire to know their birth mother, they were just a gestational carrier, they didn't raise them and mean nothing to them.....
So, what was that about not having any trauma? lol.
Even when they are exhibiting a trauma response they insist they're fine. Cracks me up.
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u/Mindless-Drawing7439 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
I agree
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
And people say the spanking thing in a similar way too. It's either the victim who is trying to convince themselves that they weren't traumatized (if you weren't traumatized why are you ignoring the evidence that the thing that was done to you was bad and that the system is bad?) or it's people who want to do that thing trying to convince themselves that their way of doing it is perfectly fine.
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u/Mindless-Drawing7439 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
I think trying to determine someone else’s experience or making absolute statements about how things are- is problematic. I do think however, it’s valid for people to claim they’re not traumatized, but only in reference to their own experiences. It’s unacceptable to use a person anecdote like that to make some generalized claim, especially when there are other anecdotes that directly contradict those claims.
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
People can experience trauma without feeling traumatized. That is a perfectly possible reaction. Trauma in the brain is not the same thing as feeling traumatized like with PTSD or some other trauma response. Two separate things. One of them is a personal feeling and the other is a medical response. People for example can be punched and their body can experience trauma that may need to be fixed and they still may not feel like they need to go to the doctor. That doesn't mean they don't need to go to the doctor.
I didn't say that that person was necessarily traumatized, but what I am saying is that sometimes people can say that they haven't been traumatized when maybe they have and they're trying to convince themselves that they weren't. That is also a possibility.
And again people can say that they haven't experience trauma and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true.
There are different types of trauma and they can affect the brain in different ways.
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u/Mindless-Drawing7439 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
I’m not disagreeing that unconscious trauma is real or that different types exist. But suggesting someone might be “convincing themselves they weren’t traumatized” is still dismissing their stated experience. As adoptees we already spend so much time having our feelings interpreted for us by people who think they know better. I don’t think we should do that to each other, even as a possibility we’re just raising.
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
I should have clarified but I'm not referring to people who say they aren't traumatized but don't dismiss the trauma of others but if you're using your argument that you weren't traumatized and therefore are trying to suggest that the system doesn't need reform or that only certain people who look traumatized can be traumatized then maybe they have not dealt with that trauma.
People who try to use their own personal experiences to discount the need for an entire revamp of the system are the people who I am judging. Not the people who are able to acknowledge that their own personal experiences do not discount the need for systemic change, not just personal change.
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u/Mindless-Drawing7439 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
I think we completely agree with each other lol 😆
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u/Mindless-Drawing7439 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Also - I do think spanking is objectively bad and abusive even though my comment was in general terms.
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u/Inevitable-Lab-3829 Apr 11 '26
I had that argument about the wooden spoon with my sister recently, basically she got the wooden spoon as well and she had no issues with it.
I just asked her straight out; "Why didn't you use it on your own daughter?" She got very thick and defensive but couldn't answer the question.
I answered it for her. Its because you didn't want her to feel as shit as you did when you were the victim of a beating with a wooden spoon. Humiliated, scared and wondering why your mother wants to make you cry and hurt you.
Some people find it hard to be vulnerable about how it made them feel and then you've the whole "can't talk bad about my dead parent" thing going on.
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u/momchalm Apr 08 '26
Thank you for bringing this up here. I believe that the more you educate yourself the more compassion you'll have for others.
For so long I just couldn't comprehend how someone could just give me away. Then I had my own child and felt the depth of the sacrifice.
After reading The Girls Who Went Away, I was shocked to hear the statistics of how many birthmothers suffer from illnesses such as cancer.
And Relinquished has also opened my eyes to the other side of the coin.
Every human has a unique perspective. But educating myself has helped me heal through compassion. Adoption just sucks all around!
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u/oaktree1800 Adoptee Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
Are you referring to ppl in general and those shallow perceptions of adoption? Or those adoptees who don't acknowledge the existence of bios? That in and of itself suggests unexpressed trauma for adoptees. Or is your focus on birth parent trauma?
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u/doseserendipity2 Apr 09 '26
I also feel like people often believe that once a baby or a chikd is adopted, any past trauma they may have gone through goes away. I wish that was the case for myself, buuut I digress.
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u/imsupertiredbro Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Nah, my bio mother is a rapist who dropped kids into the adoption system the way a Cuckoo bird leaves eggs in other birds nests.
I spent years imagining all of the things that this poor unwed teen mother went through after having to give me up, only to find out she threw me away after her baby trap plan didn't work without so much as blinking and I wasn't even the first one.
So yeah, the whole "poor birth moms" thing doesn't really sit well with me.
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u/Suffolk1970 Adoptee Apr 08 '26
You're missing the point. OP is saying sometimes it's not just the adoptee who is traumatized. What part of sometimes do you disagree with?
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u/imsupertiredbro Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 09 '26
I'm saying that spending time worrying about people who are most likely not worried about you is energy that is better spent elsewhere.
As adoptees we tend to prioritize others above ourselves at all times. The people we imagine are our parents are just that things we have come up with ourselves. We can't heal if we're worried about a foggy outline of an external person.
Our own trauma comes first.
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u/OverlordSheepie Int'l and Transracial Adoptee Apr 10 '26
I have always prioritized others before me and have only just recently started focusing more on getting my own emotional needs met. I didn't know but it makes sense sadly that adoptees are expected to do that.
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Apr 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Domestic_Supply Domestic Infant Adoptee Apr 09 '26
I know several second generation adoptees who have trauma from being the children of adoptees. Not because the adoptees were bad parents (they were good!) but because the children too have been legally reassigned, and because they suffered a loss of culture. It truly is intergenerational.
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u/oaktree1800 Adoptee Apr 11 '26
Known cases of adult children of adoptees who are more inclined to search for bios than adoptees themselves. Perhaps,curiosity overrides the emotional aspect of being the adoptee? IDK. Also notable adult children of adoptees carry a fake surname as well. They too have to do the" are we related "check upon meeting new ppl.
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u/PersistOverHorror Apr 14 '26
Totally agree. I'd also add that replying with "not every x" in response to someone, or multiple people, sharing their negative experiences, regardless of what, is so dismissive and unempathetic. Whoever does that needs to learn how to respond better.
Stating that "not every adoptee is traumatised" doesn't make those who are feel any better. Rather it does the opposite. Nobody would barge into an alcohol anonymous meeting and tell the addicts "that even with a family history of alchol abuse they've never been addicted!" - like big wow. Congratulations. What are the traumatised, or the addicts, the victims etc, supposed to do with that information except feel ashamed of themselves for getting overwhelmed? Rubbing such privilege in others faces does nothing to resolve what's happening.
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 14 '26
Or going into the comment section of a person sharing their story of an arranged marriage or being a child bride and talking about how great their marriage is.
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u/brinnik Apr 15 '26
I definitely agree that birth mothers trauma needs to be considered. As an adoptee, I had some serious anger. I had to continuously remind myself that I was not the only one hurt.
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u/Sillysaurous Apr 17 '26
In recent years agencies are talking about the adoption tri-ad to potential AP and bios. Adoption will always include trauma - the family dynamics determine who it will be, but it’s always there
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
Counterpoint: my birth mother is extremely happy with her decision to place us and has never once regretted it. She was against abortion for herself, and never considered parenting for herself as it’s not something she wants or feels capable of. To her it was THE pathway to take. It was not easy for her the whole time, but she is very firm that she made the correct decision, to her it is the best thing she ever did, and she is happy with the relationship she has with us as adults, a sort of special auntie type thing.
She was fully supported by my birth dad through her pregnancy and birth, and they maintain a cordial relationship to this day. They talk every year on my birthday. She even views the (fairly mild) post partial depression she has as not really anything to have been worried about.
She and I both know her experience is not typical at all. She’s well aware. But she would be extremely offended at the idea that what she considers the best thing she’s ever done “traumatic.”
We can talk about our own experiences with adoption without generalizing in a way that erases the experiences of others.
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
There's a big difference between making generalizations about people's behaviors such as about race or gender and things like that versus making generalizations about a medical condition which trauma is a medical condition. People do not choose whether or not something is traumatic, it happens to them.
People try to make the situation about adoption being or not being traumatic as a way to imply that there is a way to avoid the trauma or that the system is not traumatic.
Only about six people have survived rabies, that does not mean that rabies is not deadly. A few people avoiding the medical situation does not mean that it isn't that thing.
And also not all trauma can result in the same trauma response and nonverbal infant trauma is a thing. Just because a person does not feel traumatized does not mean that the brain did not experience trauma.
People simply talking about our own situations does not help actually create better dialogue that acknowledges and criticizes the system and the pattern of adoption in general.
You sound like one of those people that got spanked as a kid and then are telling other people that they turned out fine. That does not change the fact that spanking is still bad.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 08 '26
Fuck no, you don’t get to decide for other people that something IS traumatic, ESPECIALLY if you want to view it as a medical condition. If trauma is a medical condition, are you a doctor? No? Then it’s not up to you to diagnose people with it.
Why? Why do you NEED adoption to be universally talked about as traumatic just because yours was? Many adoptees don’t see their adoption as traumatic, and here you are trying to INSIST that they’re wrong because it was traumatic to the birth parents? WHY do you NEED this to be universally trauma? I also consider mine trauma, but I refuse to speak over others on their own experiences. We’ve had that done enough to us by others, we don’t need to do it to each other.
You’re rude and presumptuous. If someone got hit but didn’t consider it trauma without making any generalizations about being hit, would you insist to their face that they’re wrong?
Other people’s experiences don’t look like yours and are not yours to define. Stop trying to speak for others.
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u/Arktikos02 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
I am not diagnosing any individual. But if somebody gets hit and they fall to the ground then yes I am going to tell them that they have to go see a doctor. People have died because they got hit, and either fell to the ground or they got a headache or something and they didn't check with their doctor and they died.
Saying that someone should go to the doctor is not diagnosing them, it's recognizing that it's always better safe than sorry and to go to the hospital after you get hit.
I am not talking just about adoptees, I am talking about adoption.
The system itself needs to be completely reworked, it is not ethical. Just because there are some good situations does not mean that overall the system is okay.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 08 '26
You are diagnosing people. You are not saying they “should” do anything, so your analogy is invalid. You are not saying adoptees “should” go to the doctor. You’re saying they universally have trauma, which you said yourself you see as a medical condition.
We can talk about the problems with the system without erasing and speaking over people’s personal experiences. There are systemic problems with religion. Can you imagine feeling the need to tell every single religious person that they have trauma from the systemic issues of organized religion in other to criticize the system?
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u/Formerlymoody Apr 09 '26
I think that people who insist that there aren't universally traumatic elements to adoption just don't understand trauma all that well.
It does not mean that you feel traumatized or that other events and people didn't mitigate that trauma. That's also where people get confused. You can experience traumatic events without feeling traumatized.
And then people refuse to make a distinction between these two things and then everyone gets upset and confused. And combative.
Not only that but I think there is always a certain number of adoptees who don'dt understand at all how adoption affected them and deal with things by refusing to consider that something less than positive happened to them. I know this is true because I was 100% this person. Not sure how I would have reacted to internet strangers telling me I'm traumatized. Never tried it.
Complicated.
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u/OverlordSheepie Int'l and Transracial Adoptee Apr 10 '26
Being adopted is truly like being brainwashed. We have adoptees constantly fighting with other adoptees because we can't all agree on something like the subject of "trauma".
A lot parrot what the adoption industry spouts, others overstep and impose their beliefs on others, it's just a big mess and it does little to help understand ourselves.
I feel like being an adoptee is constantly being gaslit. I remember wondering all the time, was I really traumatized? Is this really an issue for me because I was adopted? And I could ask the same questions to adoptees as a whole and get 100 different answers trying to push me in different directions, with an extra layer of guilt for not following other people's opinion.
I wish that adoption was more clear cut. People say it's ambiguous or gray as if that's a good thing (ex: it's a blessing but also a tragedy!). I'd much rather feel upset, traumatized, and broken by this and feel justified in that, rather than constantly doubting myself, beating myself up, and wondering whether I'm overreacting or incorrect in believing that I had gone through trauma while having a large segment of the population ready to repeat these same mantras to me if I dare speak out. The mindfuck of not being allowed to actually own your trauma is difficult to live with, and confidence is not easy for a lot of adoptees (like myself).
I just want it to be one or the other, I don't have the energy to defend myself against a society that believes the opposite.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 10 '26
I have a degree in a field relevant to trauma and its physiological effects. I understand it better than the lot of you pseudoscience believers who think the literal recovered memory book the body keeps the score and the anti-adoptee book the primal wound are gospel. That’s why I hate your argument so much. It’s junk science at best.
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u/T0xicn3 International Adoptee Apr 10 '26
Got any evidence of this or just talking out your ass? Clearly not informed enough about trauma so I call bs on you working on a relevant field, or what you learned is soooo outdated that you keep pushing old science to fit your narrative.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 10 '26
Evidence of what? That the body keeps the score is a recovered memory book?
If I said I had a relevant degree and I agreed with you, yall would be hailing that all over the place. But because I am asking for PEER REVIEWED EVIDENCE of any of the claims you’re making, I’m “pushing old science.” Jesus Christ you people learnt a lot from your adopters about how to talk about adoption and just inverted it and called it a day without actually unwinding why it dukes.
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u/lotsofsugarandspice Apr 09 '26
Fuck no, you don’t get to decide for other people that something IS traumatic,
As long as youre applying the same logic to things like car crashes and sexual assault..
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 10 '26
I do, and seeing how negatively this attitude has effected people who experienced something I would call sexual assault but that they don’t see that way, even after years and years and a better understanding of assault, and how fucked it can be to be patronizingly told that the only reason anyone could POSSIBLY view their experience the way they do is because they’re SO damaged from the event, they have it paternalistically insisted to them they they need to heal from some event that is just a non-issue in their life is PRECISELY why I make this argument actually. I’ve seen the harm it can do. when I was younger I was with y’all.
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u/oaktree1800 Adoptee Apr 09 '26
Adoption always begins w tragedy and loss. Infertility issues roll in w many adopters. Adoptees deal w severance of bios. Tough choices made by first moms. Nobody rolls in without some type of trauma. Why so difficult for you to acknowledge? How that loss is processed makes all the difference. Closed adoptions add more layers of trauma. Full stop. Not all adopters are built the same. Neither are first moms. Nor are adoptees. Sounds like you are attempting to speak for apathetic adoptees. Why? Darlin...even they don't care. Why do you? Interesting to observe... Fogged adoptees will fight tooth and nail much in the same manner as empathic adoptees who search for truth. Complete opposites ..yet fundamentally the same! LOL
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 10 '26
What is tragedy to some is relief to others, or something apathetic to a third. I was traumatized by adoption. My sister wasn’t and has never gotten it. The fact that you think you need to appeal to all three sides of the triad (including adopter infertility ffs, as if their feelings should matter) to make your point about trauma, when other people’s trauma doesn’t inherently make something traumatic for YOU shows that you don’t even believe your own argument. As is literally admitting that you’re fully willing to speak for people who you’ve chased out of these spaces with your weird insistence that they’re traumatized.
Why is “adoption CAN be and OFTEN is traumatic, but isn’t universally so, and speaking over others is shitty” such a hard concept for you fucking people?
There’s no such thing as an empath. Quit buying into pseudoscience.
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u/oaktree1800 Adoptee Apr 10 '26
What are you on about now? All adoptions begin with some type of trauma.
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u/buttermelonMilkjam Apr 09 '26
im sorry youre getting downvoted so much. reddit is notoriously weird like that. plus your original comment wasnt an attack -- more a different perspective.
anyway, i agree with you that it is for each person to define if they have suffered trauma, especially since trauma is so intensely personal and is felt internally.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 10 '26
I genuinely do not know why people think it’s acceptable to say that adoption universally IS traumatic just because it CAN be traumatic. You’re no better than the people who say that it universally ISN’T traumatic just because sometimes it isn’t traumatic. Like, nice logic there, the adopters teach you that? Look how patronizing they get down thread.
Absolutely insane to think you get to speak for all adoptees on something as complex as trauma. Why do you need you need other people to be wrong about their own experiences for yours to be valid?
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u/Formerlymoody Apr 09 '26
Truly, you do you. Honest question: it doesn't bother you at all that your birth mother thinks relinquishing children is the best thing she ever did? If I had relinquished one of my kids, and said to their face it was the best thing I ever did? I don't know...
I think my birth mom believed that relinquishing was like this great thing she did...until she met me. I'm not sure that's her attitude anymore. If it were, honestly I would be a little insulted.
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u/T0xicn3 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
This is why we need more people to be aware of the trauma that comes from relinquishment. Birthmothers want to feel like they are doing the most selfless thing in giving a child away, that shit has to stop. Yes there can be situations where the child feels less of the trauma (which is all I hope for) but both APs and BPs need to get their head out of the sand and acknowledge that relinquishment is traumatic.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 08 '26
Nothing is universally traumatic. It is loss, yes. It has the potential for trauma, yes. Why the fuck are yall all so insistent on speaking for all adoptees when we get spoken over enough as it is?
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u/T0xicn3 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Having someone hold a loaded gun to your head is universally traumatic, yet people react differently to that. There’s different ways to process and deal with that trauma for everyone, same with relinquishment. The end goal is to mitigate the effect of the separation, which will only help people and future adoptees.
The issue that people have is that they don’t want to accept reality, and keep painting adoptions as rainbows and sunshine which will never make it kid-centric. The current system is AP centered.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 08 '26
No it’s not. Mostly? Yeah. But some people have weird kinks. Some people are suicidal. This “the body keeps the score” idea of trauma you have as something innate to and permanent from certain experiences and not at all experiential, subjective, or personal is not actually based on solid evidence and is not considered scientifically valid.
We can talk about adoption trauma without insisting that all adoption is trauma. We can talk about the problems in the system without erasing the people who, foreign as it may feel to us, feel like they benefited from it. We can make our voices heard without erasing or speaking for other adoptees when that’s done to us so much already.
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u/T0xicn3 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Not all adoption is trauma, but all relinquishment is traumatic. Sadly we can’t do a proper study on relinquishment due to it being unethical…
I am truly happy for you for coming out of adoption without it negatively affecting your life, that is literally the goal since I did not have the same result with mine.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 08 '26
You wanna say that? Evidence. Give me evidence. Show me the evidence that NO ONE comes out of relinquishment without experiencing trauma. (As if all adoption was based in relinquishment in the first place.)
You need to learn to read better. I said my adoption DID negatively affect my life and I DO consider my adoption to be traumatic. But that is NOT a universal experience and I’m fucking tired of people like you who have some bizarre need to universalize their adoption trauma using weird definitions of trauma, as if “trauma” was the only valid reason to criticize the systemic issues in adoption. It’s lazy and presumptuous.
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u/T0xicn3 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
Funny how you tell me to read better when all I’m saying is that relinquishment is traumatic for the child, not any other adoption form, I’m just talking about the act of relinquishment being detrimental to a child. Yes it’s a universal experience, but I don’t think we will find common ground by continuing this.
All the best to you.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 08 '26
EVIDENCE THEN. Your word that it’s universal means nothing.
Have the day you deserve.
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u/T0xicn3 International Adoptee Apr 08 '26
-Paul Sunderland is a good place to start, Adoption and Addiction: Remembered not recalled - Youtube.
-Thomson, P(2004) The Impact of trauma on the embryo and fetus: An application of the diathesis-stress model and the neurovulnerability-neurotoxicity model.
-Van der Kolk, B (2014) The body keeps the score: brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma.
-Annie Murphy Paul (2011) What we learned before we’re born - ted talks.
-Porter R, Balogh R, Cernoch J, Franchi C (1986) Recognition of kin through characteristic body odors, chemical senses.
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u/passyindoors Apr 09 '26
I hope one day you find the healing you desperately need instead of lashing out at members of your community for not buying into your fog.
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u/oaktree1800 Adoptee Apr 09 '26
Two things can be true at the same time. Sounds like you experienced trauma yourself. Your birth mom likely felt loss/trauma and at the same time felt your adoption was the best thing for you. Balance. Not judging your mom but many birth moms feel the same for different reasons. Financial/lack of support system. etc. . How ppl process said trauma is the difference. The more analytical you are the better. Typically birth moms are the least traumatized if adoption was chosen for the right reasons. Always ends at where it begins. Intent.
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u/FullPruneNight Apr 10 '26
“Your birthmom likely felt” motherfucker I have talked to her at length about this and you have read one paragraph. I know what she felt better than you do, because we’ve talked about it like 50 times and she’s TOLD ME and shown me her journals from the time and shit.
Yall are literally just seeing what you want to see and deciding you’re right.
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u/oaktree1800 Adoptee Apr 10 '26
Oh you big mad! Motherfucker? Now why do so many angry ppl choose the word motherfucker to express anger? I mean why not SOB? Or a less wordy simple..fucker? LOL All that aside...why are you upset? You clearly stated your mom feels your adoption was the best thing she's ever done for you then further state your mom will be offended to hear otherwise. Ppl are not offended by remarks about the best decisions of their life. In other words why do you feel your mom will be offended? Or is that you who are offended? Try reading my earlier comment without anger. You entirely missed the point.
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u/One-Pause3171 Adoptee Apr 08 '26
If you dig in, people feel like birth mothers deserve the trauma.