The Darkness: Adoptees and Disenfranchised Grief
Trigger Warning: substance use disorder, suicide attempt, eating disorder, adverse childhood experiences.
A dear friend said something the other day that made me feel seen. He said, “A southern woman is an unbridled force of nature, and that’s how you were born and who you are, no matter what’s happened.”
So, I guess that’s where it all started.
My birth family is from Tennessee, but the path my life was rerouted to was to Indiana instead with adoptive parents, Betty and Dave. I lived on a quiet circle drive, and was raised as an only child.
The house I grew up in was designed by my adoptive father’s mother, who was a trailblazer, having been the first female to graduate from the architectural program of her alma mater. She and her husband, a hardworking WW11 veteran and charismatic gentleman, had a goals type love story, and were pillars of their community. My adoptive parents were as well. Being a Steinhilber was something to be proud of, and the very bones of my childhood home were built on the merits of that rich, respectable history. It just wasn’t my history. I was only a Steinhilber on paper, not by blood. When I became a Steinhilber, I was a baby with nothing of my own to claim, so I got lost from day one in the branches of another family’s tree.
“When I became a Steinhilber, I was a baby with nothing of my own to claim, so I got lost from day one in the branches of another family’s tree.”
My adoptive parents were of the age that they should have been my grandparents, and often got mistaken for such. They loved me in their own way, but they never saw me. After all, how could they? Nothing about me reflected either of them in any way, so I was an incalculable enigma. They were also products of their environment and generation—their generation being one that dances around uncomfortable things—and the uncomfortable thing was me. My past, my ghosts. The darkness inside of me born from the primal wound of biological abandonment.
Unspoken
I spent the majority of my childhood twirling, leaping, swinging, vaulting and flipping through compulsory choreography with perfectly pointed toes, but always double hopping on the landing because the judges in stuffy suits and active scowls wrecked my nerves. By age 11, I was dabbling in bulimia and laxative abuse. There were a few other adopted kids on my team, but like within my household, we never spoke of it.
“There were a few other adopted kids on my team, but like within my household, we never spoke of it.”
My relationship with my adoptive mother was torment for us both. I was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder, as many adopted children are. The only communication we had was through tense screams or dreaded silent treatments. She controlled everything I did and got furious when she couldn’t control everything I thought.
She also had no one else. Her entire family had passed before I was born, and she had never healed from the wound of her infertility. I knew I was there to fix that wound. I felt the weight of that responsibility from a very young age, and though I felt sympathetically toward all that she had lost, I resented the role I was to play. She didn’t mean to, but in her attempts to mold me into something I could never be—an extension of herself—she took me from me, and didn’t understand the wreckage it caused my spirit.
Truth Revealed
I was a good kid that was always grounded. Until I was a bad kid that was always grounded.
There was never a discussion or an explanation; no teachable moment wisdom imparted. She just always said, “Because I’m the mom, that’s why.” And, in the face of that, I don’t think that non adopted people can ever truly appreciate or understand how repressed and depleted an adopted teenager must be, to be riddled with hormones and all the blind rage they’re accompanied by, not to say the one thing that was constantly on my mind; You’re not my real mother.
But once, when I was sixteen, I said it. “You are not my mother. Stop fucking saying that you are.”
It was harsh, but it was the truth. My truth. My mother gave me up for adoption. I lost everything—my whole family—to be her daughter.
“I lost everything—my whole family—to be her daughter. ”
It never made sense to me why I was responsible for managing her insecurities about why I exist in this life—a life I had no choice to exist in due to unthinkable circumstances—but I always was. Right after it came out of my mouth, she was a puddle of tears on the ground, and I was the bad guy.
Soon after that particularly rough go in the ring, she had a stroke and was diagnosed with cancer. “Push it down and be ashamed, kiddo.” I said to myself. And so, I did.
Her prognosis was good until she had another stroke, and she suffered greatly over the course of about a month before she died. After the funeral, my adoptive dad went back to work and stayed there, as men of his generation are conditioned to do. All of a sudden, I was a free range kid.
What is happening?
I was numb, living as an imposter. I experienced the loss of my adoptive mother almost as ambiguously as the loss of my birth mother without anyone even noticing. And that was my goal, because if I had been honest, I would have had to admit that I felt free of her micromanaging instead of conventional grief. And I assumed that would cause me to be shunned by everyone I’d ever known, or be grounds to have me committed.
“I was numb, living as an imposter. I experienced the loss of my adoptive mother almost as ambiguously as the loss of my birth mother without anyone even noticing. ”
“What kind of person doesn’t feel sad when their own mother dies? I am fucking broken.” I insisted to myself.
But the thing is, my grief was never meant to be conventional. I didn’t realize that these feelings or lack of them was simply the natural reaction of an adopted child. A child whose brain was desperately trying to protect itself from even more significant loss.
Much thanks to rampant misconceptions about adoption, neither did anyone else. In everyone else’s eyes, she was my mother, and it was that simple. No one knew what was going on in my head, or thought to ask. I was completely alone, and thought that was exactly what I deserved.
The thing is, when your roots have been a secret lawfully kept from you your whole life, it’s pretty easy to assume it’s because your roots are bad, and therefore you are bad.
“Fuck it, I’m clearly evil spawn. Might as well go bananas…” I firmly decided.
Bananas
I ran rebelliously amuck with all of the “bad seeds” my adoptive mother forbid me from seeing when she was alive. The mirage of me that she kept together with her tight grip came unstitched entirely, and I became the darkness. A lush, an addict, a broken slut. I lost my mind as well as my memory. My brain felt like a haunted ferris wheel on fire, and the childhood I had just experienced all of a sudden felt like a fever dream.
On the night of my eighteenth birthday, I was looking for cocaine and got black out drunk while I did. I don’t remember finding some, only “coming to” at 8 A.M. in the passenger’s seat of some guy’s truck, snorting a line off of his dashboard. I went off with him and his friends to party some more.
They gushed about how impressed they were with the amount of powder I could put away for such a tiny girl. That was exactly the kind of twisted acknowledgement that flattered my traumatized ego at the time, so I kicked it up a notch to show off.
I started to feel funny, and then I was on the floor, convulsing. They picked me up and put me in a cold bath. They tried to strip my clothes off before doing so, but apparently I fought hard enough to make them stop. I don’t remember anything else except waking up on the couch to everyone still on the floor, still snorting and smoking foils. I wanted to pick back up where I’d left off; to get high again to combat the shame I felt. Luckily, I felt it right instead to gather myself as quickly as I could to sneak out the back door and call someone for a ride to my car.
“ I wanted to pick back up where I’d left off; to get high again to combat the shame I felt. ”
I wanted to ask my dad for help, but I had never pursued him for emotional guidance, nor did I realize that’s what parents are for. So I cried as quietly as I could so he wouldn't hear me in the next room. “He doesn’t have my hopeless genes,” I said to myself. “He's a nice, normal guy and he’s already lost his wife, I can’t put him through having a royal fuck up for a daughter, too.”
Later on, I found some light, but mostly, it was just darkness. A spiral of guilt and shame. My life continued to be a string of disasters; toxic relationships that I lost myself and my sanity to because I didn’t know how to be alone or how to authentically connect. Identity turmoil, drug addiction, alcoholism and all around wasted potential. I almost lost my life to a suicide attempt a few years ago.
“I lost myself and my sanity to because I didn’t know how to be alone or how to authentically connect.”
What has changed and aided me in turning all of that darkness into strength and light is facing how relinquishment and adoption trauma have tampered with who I am and how I see myself. Staring down the barrel of the gun that is the fairytale adoption narrative, and putting up a fight. Telling my story and believing every word instead of doubting, shaming and blaming myself.
I am gaining a sense of direction for the first time. And what’s different now is that I can finally see the forest through the trees. When your truth is kept from you and society normalizes it, the forest is simply too dense.
Fresh Direction
I’m now in recovery. My adoptive dad and I have had more open communication than I ever thought we could. I’m even starting to confront the loss of my adoptive mother after sixteen years of stalled grief. I’m a pendulum swinging between bargaining and anger, and it hurts. I would give anything to have one more day and more specifically, one more fight with her. Only this time, to resolve it. For a chance to feel the love she had for me the way she had intended to give it, the way I never could.
The moral of this story is, to leave a child alone with the reality of their own plight is to set them up to fail and suffer and—for adoptees—grief is complex. It doesn’t go away just by ignoring it, and doing so only causes their trauma to snowball out of control. It destroys their self esteem and their ability to trust. Most devastatingly, it compromises their ability to trust themselves, which is a necessary tool for resilience and survival in this world.
If any adoptive parents out there are reading, please understand this:
Your adopted child was somebody before they became your somebody. No one can replace your adopted child’s first family, and it will grievously hurt them if you try.
Your job is not to make them just like you, but to help them become who they were born to be. An unbridled force of nature.
PLEASE NOTE: If you experience thoughts of suicide, self harm, eating disorders, substance use disorders, or toxic relationships, you are not alone. Please feel free to use these hotlines below:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 800.273.8255
Crisis Text Line - Text HOME to 741741
National Eating Disorders Association - 800.931.2237
National Drug Helpline - 844.289.0879
National Domestic Violence Hotline - 800.799.7233
