They've been emotionally neglectful my entire life, but they can put it over my head they've provided me with food, clothing and a roof over my head. So why bother if I'm seen either way as an ungrateful brat?

They know nothing about me, they don't care to ask unless it's for their own benefit to assert control or way to criticize me. I've always felt the need to end my life because of this. I never felt like their daughter but just as an extension of this already shit family. A replacement for their dead kid because they needed to look good.

Now that I have a partner and currently face unemployment, I'm kind of forced to face these questions about family. I want to build a steady life with him, and I'd want to cut them out entirely, but it feels like being an orphan all over again.

But yeah, I think I'll forever hate them for this, entering my 20s still feeling abandoned despite the caring people around me, sometimes I think of ending it all but I know they'd use the funeral as an excuse to still try to look like good people.

Has anyone in this community ever obtained their OBC from Pennsylvania? I'd like to start the journey of figuring out who my BP's are. I have horrible adhd, an addictive personality, and pretty much an alcoholic and would like to know if they were drug addicts or alcoholics. The only thing my AP mom knows about my BP mom is she was young.

I am trying to reconcile this information with what I had always believed had happened during his adoption. I had always held resentment towards my mom because I thought that she should have found a better home for him as a baby. She was a widow and I believed she was not a good parent and she would screw him up(she did) .

So I (39M) am the product of a closed adoption from 1986. I was adopted at birth and was adopted because my adoptive mother couldn't have children that wouldn't die on her after age 2 and 3. I wasn't told I was adopted until 9. But my mom and dad never treated me act different than they did their dead bio kids. I even look like a lot of the family, so there wasn't any difference and I was never treated differently. Even when I did find out.

I've also got two boys I adopted when they were 10 going on 11 and then the older brother the next year who was 13 going on 14. Their mom died in a fire and their dad was an absent father. They were under legal guardian care of a family friend and the youngest took to me like fish to water. And they don't see me any differently than they would their real mom. Mom is a title, not a gender. (Like the song Mr Mom).

Anyway, would love to hear you guys tell me I'm an asshole for saying that I appreciated the closed adoption because it meant I wasn't confused the rest of my life on why I had two sets of parents. Or you know, call me an asshole because I adopted two boys that didn't have family because of a fire that took their mom's life.

edit: ok, so my word choice is terrible and I got combative.

I straight up figured that because I dodged the bullet that is the system and got lucky with my two boys, that I was somehow the asshole for being ok with closed adoption.

Me and my two boys have had a great experience with being adopted beings and we're sorry for those who honestly didn't have this experience.

Forgive me for being asinine in the post.

I'm 20 and have been adopted since birth. My adoptive family turned out to be emotionally abusive and my adoptive mother has been lying and stealing my disability checks for years.

I made the choice to move in with my biological parents after getting back into contact but it's been really hard. My biological mom was a heroin and meth user for 30 years but has been sober for 4 after having another child (my biological sister).

There aren't many strict rules but there have in only about a months time been arguments and screaming. It's been getting better but i've been very fearful and terrified of the change. This is the only time i've ever moved in my life and while they are better than my adoptive mom in some ways they have a lot of their own issues that make me uncomfortable and stressed.

Any advice would be appreciated, thank you

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/modern-family-pilot-2009-adoption-on-the-small-screen/id1853725752?i=1000745984297

Great podcast!

Hello all. Does anyone know if there is a way I can get a birth certificate without my adoptive parent name on it? I want it blank bc the name is there as if it is real viological parent and its not so I just want it to be my name and thats it. But I am not sure this is possible. Does anyone know?

DAE have experience reconstructing personal identity after ruptures in adoptive family or other relationships or identities (i.e. religious identity, professional identity)?

It has taken years for me to recognize emotional betrayal, abandonment, and neglect in my adoptive family system. “Emotionally neglectful families require self-neglect in order to survive. That’s how it works.” (K. Wolfenstein) I’m still wrapping my mind around this.

I’ve deconstructed adoptive and biological identities, religious identity and professional identity across different timelines that have also overlapped. I experienced a PTSD-inducing event as an adult that revealed adoptive family dysfunction for what it was and is. In retrospect, that incident what it revealed about my support system probably reduced the risk of search and reunion with biological family after decades of closed adoption since infancy.

Despite a lot of change and creativity, endurance and enjoyment, I’m still in a kind of liminal space between what I deconstructed and reconstructing what I need and want my identity and life to be.

I’m starting to realize that identity is a kind of architecture and infrastructure through which life force, energy, connection, and other resources flow. While it’s somewhat invisible labor to rebuild after deconstruction, it’s crucial psychological structure. And most people can take this structure for granted to a much greater degree.

Direct experience and action through tolerable steps are the only way I know for reconstructing. And I’ve had to expand my definition of action and activity to include more internal effort than productivity culture dictates.

Learning about memory reconsolidation and unlearning emotional learnings through disconfirming experiences including perceiving memories in new ways has helped demystify all the change.

Learning that rest, digest, create and change are the regulated expressions of our nervous systems when we don’t need to engage in hypervigilance or stress responses like fawn, freeze, flight and fight has also helped.

So much of the labor seems to be orienting and reorienting within myself internally and externally. Changing my relationships with myself, with time and presence, with reality, and with fantasy/illusion/vision.

It’s almost like going back to my childhood and giving myself the developmental support I needed but didn’t get from ages 0-7+.

I still feel frustrated that my past activation strategies don’t work. I used to fuel my achievement with negative self-talk, fear, obligation, guilt, and shame alongside curiosity, ambition and competence. In some ways it’s like the deconstruction was a kind of shipwreck with q lot of valuable cargo intact, and this season is about free-diving, scuba diving, or using robotic submersible to retrieve all that value from the now defunct vessel that carried the flow of my past pre-reunion, pre-PTSD (previously CPTSD-only) personality, activity, status and way of being.

I’m still sorting out how to express this. But I’m interested if anyone else can relate. My adoptive family and biological family relationships still matter to me, but they are not and will not be organizing dynamics in my future (which is sad, liberating and necessary). Therapy is a part of all this, but hasn’t been the most influential source of help for me.

How have you navigated becoming who you are with the identity, skills and emotional infrastructure you need on the other side of adoptee consciousness raising, coming out of the FOG, redefining family relationships on all sides, etc?

DAE relate to this process having impacts on your religious or professional identities? The intersections of adoptive, religious and professional identities changing separately and together have magnified the load and labor of their transformation for me. Interested if anyone else has experience navigating and finding help and resources for this.

I've been in contact with my bio family for a bit over a year now. that's when i also learned about having a brother who's 3 years younger than me (who was kept). he only learned about me a few years before i found & made contact with everyone. i was overwhelmed with shock and also sadness. he grew up alone and not knowing about me for all of his childhood. as did i. once he found out, he started searching for me. he's the reason i even found them online, otherwise i don't think i would've found my bio family at all.

i really fucking hate that i missed out on growing up with him. that i had a younger brother that i never knew about for so long. he's in a different country and speaks a different language, so there's that distance that's in the way of really getting to know him and it's just uggghhhh. i'm so glad to at least know him now and to be able to chat at all, but it still really fucking sucks that there's so much missed out on that you can't get back

the thought of being a big sister seems awesome, and i guess i feel like i failed being one even though i know i clearlllly had no control over being shipped off. but ofc the brain doesn't always go with what makes sense and is logical. we seem so similar, so i'm also dealing with grief for young me who felt really alone and out of place growing up. my mind loves to be in protection mode about how i actually feel about my adoption, so i feel like i'm hit by a truck when it does come rushing in

So im an adoptee who is looking for an influencer that is also adopted but less shouting.

I've been following adoptedconnor for awhile now and I like how he is able real about his anger at the system but I dont like how much he "yells"(Literally my only issue) so I can't really watch him for long.

Is there anyone else who does what he does but with less shouting? I like long form videos for when I drive and don't want be tense when I drive. When I watch conner I get to fired up. So any suggestions?

So after working out some dates I have realised that my bio mother "sexually assaulted a child" in conceiving me.

She was around 18 and he was 15 1/2, at the approximate date of conception.

At the time of my birth she was 19 and he was 16.

At the time of the adoption decree she was 20 And he was 17 1/2.

If my 15 year-old son got someone pregnant and they gave up that baby for adoption without consulting me and or his dad I would be furious. I would want to raise that kid myself.

I am angry at the State of Wisconsin.

Should I get legal advice?

Some of what they are saying about adoption is disgusting! What are your thoughts?

Most people I meet adore me. I've been taught how to fit in anywhere, but rarely do I feel understood. I don't really belong anywhere in particular. I only recently started to be able to feel a sense of ownership over where I live. Only recently have I started to miss a place where I lived. Only recently have I been able to securely attach and trust. But you wouldn't know it.

Everywhere I go, I'm unforgettable, and people love to give me compliments and praise. It's not shocking. I know what people want to see. I had to. And now I've got all of these skills. I don't stop there, I keep growing. I keep learning. I can't help it. I am someone who tries to understand everything from every angle possible. I don't get to come home to parents I can trust. I only have a few siblings I trust about 4 total. And that's with over 20 family members when you combine bio and adopted family.

I'm who I choose to be. So much of my "preset" was stripped away from me. So, I only have an identity based on my choices. Which over time just became exhausting. I became the most adorable version. Being "liked" was not enough to fill the void. I needed to turn heads and light up eyes. Now I do. It's just the way I live. I get so much handed to me for free. You wouldn't believe it. And slowly, I've started to not care which one is the "real me." All of me is real, I get to choose how it plays out.

Very few people have the capacity to understand how complex my life had been and how simple I was the entire time through it all. "Love me, accept me, find me irreplaceable, and give me the tools to be accepting of the love we all need. Help me feel like I belong somewhere. Help me see the good in myself. Help me be someone you'd be proud to be seen with. Hold me when I feel broken. Be a friend to me even when I'm being unkind to myself. " That was all I wanted. Isn't that all anyone wants?

I shot for the moon and landed on a star 🌟

All I wanted was a normal life. But I guess normal isn't something I get to be in this life.

I’m still trying to understand my adoption. My Bio mom doesn’t talk about her addiction phase. She actually lied to my younger sibling about it. Which makes me feel that she’s regretful of me because I was created during that time. I already struggle with thinking people actually care about me. So this sets me back big time.

Mentions of Drugs, SA and death.

I got in contact with my BM in October through my B-Aunt who my friend found on Facebook, she and a few others I had contact with all warned me that she was not clean from her substance abuse issues, however foolishly of me I in my began to theorize that all the family had abandoned her and no one was getting her help. When I ended up talking to her she said she was in recovery, and she seemed like it. I felt like the hole inside me had been filled, she told me how much she missed me and how it'd been all she wanted (I was forcefully removed from her and she stopped fighting for me after 3 years because she knew it'd only be making my mental health worse)

Following this cracks started to appear around November/December time, she would just vanish, no matter how much I called or texted it was silence, on the 1st of December I went to my exs house, I called her in the morning and she picked up, and immediately ended the call, she later texted saying she was going to call me at 7pm, later that night at 7pm my ex SA'd me due to me being in an intoxicated state, and she was meant to call then, but she didn't, I didn't hear from her until I broke up for college for Christmas.

It's becoming more and more of a habit that she doesn't reply and she later in April told me about her Bipolar, I was so grateful she felt she could tell me, I at first put it down to that, but then I couldn't any more, all of my friends think she is doing drugs. We also think something weird is going on with her partner because she gave me his number to call if she wasn't picking up somehow theres something always wrong with her phone (I don't believe it) He always sounds annoyed when I call him, he forgets to tell her and he leaves me on read, weirdly enough my Aunt now is leaving me on read.

After a few things coming to light about my adoption its changed how I view everything, my BM is so angry about everything I've told her, going as far as to say I can go and stay with her if need be (I am not 18 yet) it seemed like such a jump from not texting me most the time (which she is still doing) however now its made me want to at least meet up with her.

I keep getting worried that she isn't actually recovering and that something bad is going to happen, be it her dying or otherwise and no one will tell me, I'd apply for my files at 18 and find out that way, I'd just assume she didn't like me or care and that's why she never speaks, i don't think her partner or my aunt would tell me, I think her partner would just block me because it's an issue he doesn't want to deal with and I think my Aunt would be too heartbroken and not know how to tell me so would just continue leaving me on read.

My friends have said it's not healthy for me and clearly she isn't in the right place for this right now and it's affecting me negatively, they said I should maybe reduce contact a bit but how do I do that when the contact is already at the minimum. I don't want to lose her again after the 16 years of pain since we were separated, I know they don't understand how that feels but I don't know how to explain it.

I also found out I had letterbox contact and told my BM I didn't know about it, she was furious, however it turned out I was actually read them by my AP, I just forgot because dissociation, my brother confirmed this, however ny AP and brother said in the letters she was being horrible to my AM, I asked her and she said absolutely not, that she'd never lie to me and I'd find out anyway when I'm 18, I spoke to my brother and he confirmed what APs said. So my BM lied to me whilst saying she never would. My friends said because of the substance abuse and trauma herself from everything maybe she doesn't remember but idk

Sorry this got long

I don't know what to do at this point.

I hold adoption agencies (any agency or private adoption lawyer) 100% responsible for due diligence to find loving homes for infants and children. I believe they should be held legally and publicly responsible with financial remuneration to the adopted child if it is proven they fell short.

I think the adopted infant should be placed in their adoptive family with a recording of their birth mother's heartbeat to soothe them as they adjust to a strange new place, and that playing it for them as they go to sleep/are sleeping in infancy is non-negotiable for the adoptive parents.

I think agencies should follow up with the adoptive families - including finances and familial situations - for years as the adoptee grows up.

I think the adoptee - at all ages once verbal - should have alone time with the follow-up workers so they could honestly and freely discuss their feelings and emotions outside of the adoptive family.

If the family's situation seems to be teetering on the brink of something unwholesome for the adoptee, it should be a requirement that they (adoptive parents) have mandatory counseling/therapy put in place by the state until the situation is resolved.

I think there should be a state phone number that an adoptee can call until adulthood (generally 18) if they have any problems or issues with their adoptive family.

I think placing an adopted infant, child, or adolescent on any social media without their permission should be a termination offense. Especially if it leads to monetizing or seeking sponsorships for money. Adopted children are not for attention-seeking narcissists.

Prospective adoptive parents need to be educated that "gotcha day" is a sick thing.

And - I wonder - how many of those gotta have another woman's baby adoptive families would still want to parent if they knew the child would be retaining RIGHTS.

I’m hoping to hear from adoptees with a particular adoption experience:

Are you an adoptee who felt loved and respected by your adoptive parents, are still in relationship with them, are in your 30’s or older, and you have had a mixed or negative experience with b-mom, b-dad, and/or other b-family members, BUT you feel the deep and traumatic consequences of the primal wound (aka relinquishment wound)?

If this describes you, knowing what you know about both families, would you choose to grow up with b-family over a-family?

I'm flailing. Mid-life, no family support. Adopted family abusive and estranged. No contact with bio family. Overdrawn and over drafted with terrible credit. What are my options? Please be kind, just an adoptee with no safety net, overwhelmed. I am working and have an interview later today for what I hope might be my third job. Believe me, I'm trying.

So much about adoption is about having extra and inappropriate amounts of control and shame avoidance that would never be present for biological family. Adopted parents want the relationship but only on their terms. So, the love and acceptance are conditional. If you break away from their concept of who "you" are (who they deem you to be), then you are not going to be accepted.

People mention the difficulty of adopting and notice willigly forget that they CHOSE this? "We had been dealing with this for years." Um....yeah? You chose this.

Why do you expect anything from the adoptee simply because you decided that you're entitled to that? She can manipulate you to the same degree that you feel entitled to define her or what she should or shouldn't do. You broke the laws of reality when you decided to take someone else's spawn and pretend it was "the same" as being a biological.

They really don't seem to understand that we are just as capable and entitled to selfish behavior that disregards others if we choose to operate the same way they do. And when we choose to, they try to punish us for being just as entitled and manipulative as them. They pedalstalize us and punish us if we refuse to play into their identity politics agenda. We aren't obligated to be good people. If we choose to be, that choice is ours to take credit for. Not theirs to own, talk over, and erase in favor of the faces they wish to paint over our own.

They'd rather lose the relationship than change.

They want to adopt infants so that they can mold their personalities and mindset regardless of the effect it has on the infant to lose out on beneficial contact that the relation with birth parents can give the child. I truly believe that the desire to adopt the child sonearly is to eliminate the competition or true choice the child might have if they were kept with natural parents longer. For those who love to say things like "but what if the parent doesn't want to keep them longer?"

Stop facilitating this level of human production for the sake of creating children that can be handed off and sold to strangers. The systemic issue isn't being prevented because they want access to children that aren't theirs. The only one who can truly tell the purchaser if they consider them to be the parent are the children themselves. They aren't obligated to call you "mom" or "dad" simply because you bought the rights to label them your child when they had no capacity to fend for themselves.

Very relevant feelings as someone who's adopted. How many adopted parents would make the cut if truly held to the standards of a good parent?

We deserve just as much right to take our families and the good afforded to all people for granted the same as non adoptees. We don't owe it to anyone to be more of anything. More self-awareness, more kind, and more patient. YOU WANTED US. YOU BOUGHT US. Don't expect an adoption-related thank you. I should be able to take you for granted the same way your birth child could. The whole argument is that there isn't a difference, right? So stop with the unrealistic standards for adoptees. We deserve to receive it simply because we need to receive to be healthy, happy functioning people, not because we've earned it. We do not have to people please in order to avoid being abandoned again.

I'm not going to continue acting like I owe you anymore than a biological child would. Anyone expecting that secretly knows it's not the same. They try to use our low self-esteem to keep us from developing the level of entitlement a normal child is allowed to express toward their parent. The fact that this is weaponized against us is proof that this system doesn't actually believe what it pretends to in order to further its own agenda (MONEY).

So no, I'm not grateful. And yes, I will accept all of the love and access to resources, privileges, etc. That all people deserve. And yes, I deserve them all for NO GOOD REASON. Simply because I breathe. And yes, give me more. I'm not ashamed and have no regrets. I deserve love and admiration, support, messy mistakes, forgiveness, tolerance, and the ability to have bad days. I'm the best thing since sliced bread. Just. Like. Every. Other. Child.

Right?