Adoption and Trauma
“All adoption is a trauma,” the speaker said as my eyes filled with tears. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that, and it hit me hard. I had known that in my adoptive mama heart for a long time but had never been able to articulate it. For the rest of the conference and even now, three years later, it has stayed in my head. All adoption is a trauma. It’s not what people tell you. People celebrate and throw parties and congratulate you when you adopt a child, or three, and it all seems so surreal, for a while. But as the dust settles and life moves along you quickly realize that it is all so misleading. You were lied to. No one ever told you the full truth. No one told you that adoption is not all a happily ever after, for you or for your child. It’s not a fairy tale. Because all adoption is a trauma. You mean my sweet baby who I picked up right from the hospital is still going to have trauma, need therapy, have huge behaviors as they get older? Yes, probably. You mean that my beautiful brown eyed girl who came to us at age three might not be grateful that we plucked her out of the foster care system? Yes. You mean she might be angry, seemingly hate us, because she falsely believes we stole her from her bio family, even though they had abandoned her years before we met her? Yes. You mean my child might have developmental delays and be multiple grade levels behind her age because of all the drugs her bio mom ingested while she was pregnant? Yes. But why? Because in one way or another all adoption is a trauma. Every child who is adopted, even if the mother did everything right while that baby was in utero, and it was handed directly into the arms of their forever mama after birth, has had a trauma. They have been separated from the body that nurtured them, the voice they heard, the person who carried them inside for nine months. It’s hard to believe, hard to retrain the mind to see it this way, unless you’re an adoptive mama, because then you know. Deep down you know. You know when someone looks at you with judgmental eyes because your kid had a meltdown in the grocery store or hit someone at school or called an adult a bad word. You know when they scream at you, “I hate you! Get out of my life!” You know when you spend an hour holding them to keep them safe while their little dysregulated brain rages and then finally calms down, and they collapse into your arms. All the while through your tears you want to scream, “I’m a good parent! I’m trying my best. Everyone lied to me. No one told me it would be this hard.” Mama I’m here to tell you it’s ok. You are not alone. This is the hardest and best thing you’ve ever done. I’m not gonna tell you you’re a superhero or a saint or that you are an amazing human, because you know we’ve all been told those things. I am gonna tell you that you are an imperfect person raising an imperfect person and that you are doing a good job. I know how much you love your child. I know how hard you work to make them feel loved. I know how hard it is when other people don’t understand or only see their behaviors. I know how much you want to protect them so that they don’t feel any more hurt. I know how much you long for someone to truly understand. I see you. I am you. Can I share with you the thing that helps me push through when things feel overwhelming or even hopeless? Jesus handpicked you to be their Mama. Read that again. Out of all the Mamas, He picked you. With all your flaws and all of your imperfections He knew you would be the perfect one to help shape them into the person that God wants them to be. And you know what else? They are the perfect child to help shape you into the person that you are supposed to be too. Every adoption is a trauma, yes, for our kids, for us, for their bio parents. We can’t pretend that it isn’t. But once we are armed with that knowledge, we can better help our kids. We can better understand them. We can more easily love them, and we can watch as God makes something beautiful out of it.
Jeremiah 29: 11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
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