You're My Second Mama, Aren't You

The Veil of Secrecy

// January 14th, 2012 // Adoptees, Adult Adoptees, Doubts, Emotions, Resources, abandonment

I want to continue talking about secrecy as it relates to adoption by discussing one of my favorite books, Being Adopted, the lifelong Search for Self, written by David M. Brodzinsky, Marshall D. Schechter, and Robin Marantz Henig.  I’ve talked about this book many times, and an overview is listed on my resource page.

The three authors deal with adoption related issues, exploring the experience of adoption and its lifelong effects.  They support my hypothesis that secrets do far more harm than good — and often times can’t be kept in the long run.  Almost inevitably, there is some event or person that brings the secret to life for the adoptee, and the strong feelings it produces can be overwhelming.

Adoptees have a variety of reactions to learning their secrets, and unfortunately very few of them are positive.  Often times these adoptees have a very difficult time getting over a sense of anger and betrayal, and can be almost crippled by trying to figure out what was real in their lives, and what was not.  From the book’s many stories, this is how a 58-year-old woman named Ellen felt about finding out she was adopted.

“The rage smolders,” said Ellen, 58, whose parents had told her half-truths about her brief history, until just two years ago.  “How do I go about forgiving someone who heartlessly denied me getting to know my birth mother, grandfather, aunts, and uncles?”

Even though these secrets are kept with the best of intentions, adoptive parents need to think through how they are going to handle the situation when a child is first capable of understanding the “concept of adoption.”  This is particularly true in a domestic adoption, where the child and the family may look alike, so there is not a constant reminder that the child is actually adopted.

There are times when adopted children actually Intuit that they have been adopted, and will ask over and over again, if this is the case.  The book tells a fascinating story of Mildred, who felt throughout her life that she was adopted because she felt different from her birth family in many ways —from the way she looked, to her attitudes, and even her sense of humor.

Mildred’s family actually had her see a therapist about her obsession and she finally began to accept that all of her feelings were in her imagination.  Then three years after she had completed her therapy, her dying mother called Mildred on her deathbed, and confessed.

“You were right,” the old woman said to her now 58 year old daughter, “You were adopted.”

Not all stories are this dramatic, and many people now realize that being open and honest about adoption is always the best thing to do.  Nonetheless it is a fact that there are thousands of older adults who have had to live with the secrecy all of their lives, and for them, now as an adult, there will never be any resolution.

This is an excellent book for adoptees to understand why their feelings are mixed, confused, and why they have not totally felt a part of this world.