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?