TAPLINK

Support for
Pennsylvania
Adoptive & Foster Families

Taproot issue 47 - June 2004

An Adoptive Adolescent’s Struggle

by Molly, age 18

The following is re-printed with permission and is an excerpt from Molly’s senior thesis, May 2001.

 My adolescence has been very complex and filled with anger. A lot of people do not understand why, and as a result, they do not understand me. The reason is that I am adopted. Even if people say that they understand how I feel, they really do not.

In adolescence, feelings are key. Anger is a part of every adolescent’s experience. You are really angry at your family, at your friends. But you can at least resolve the anger you have at the people who are there. But when you are adopted, you can’t resolve the hate and anger that you feel toward your birth parents. They are not there. The absence of the birth parents also means that you cannot express any love you may have for them. I have stored up these feelings and the only way that I have been able to release them is to express anger towards my adopted parents. It’s a little like “ tough love”. I put them through a test. By being angry with them, it allows me to see if they will leave me like my birth parents did.

I also play out these feelings with my friends. I have about ten different groups of friends. When ever I get the feeling that I am getting too close to any one group of friends, I can leave them for an other group. I don’t think that is the same kind of test that I put my parents through. I tend to just leave friends before they can leave me, while with my parents; I try to intentionally push them away. It’s kind of ironic that the fear of rejection leads me to dare people to reject me, therefore creating a vicious circle. Fear is one of my biggest problems.

As my adolescence went on I broke away, but when my parents go away I still worry that something is going to happen to them. I often tried to test their limits on how much they care about me and how much they would put up with. In order to let my parents into my life I have tried to push them away many times. I have felt fits of rage and the unbelievable feelings of hate and rage that I have built up against my birth parents have been taken out on my parents. I think that, like other adoptees, I tend to take it out on my parents because they are the ones in my life. They have never stopped loving me, there are times when I thought I had finally succeeded in pushing them away.

I think a very hard time when abandonment comes up is when my parents get sick. Even if it is only cold or the flu, I worry about them. The worst time that these feelings were apparent was when one of my moms got breast cancer. It really brought up the feelings and emotions around death. I got really angry at her. I withdrew and I was very mad at her because I thought it was her fault.

I deal with each of my moms differently. I feel a little closer to my mom Lynn I think because she was home with me when I was a baby. When she gets sick I get worried and frantic.

Since I have recently turned eighteen, the issue of abandonment is very much present in my life. At this time is my life it feels like I am being abandoned all over again. I am less than four months away from leaving my family. I have to start a new life, a new identity; I have to start living on my own. I have a lot of “news” coming up. And the “news” do not include my family. To quote one of my adopted friends, she told her parents last Christmas, “well, I guess this is the last Christmas I will be spending with you guys.” Adoptees feel like once they leave home, they are no longer a member of their family. I remember saying the exact same thing to my parents last Thanksgiving. In fact it is very common for adoptees to feel that when they are approaching their “last” times at home they will no longer be a part of their family and will not be able to come home again.

Thinking back now it would have been great to be able to share this feeling but one of the things about being adopted is that you do not share your feelings. You learn to cope with your abandonment by showing the world that you can be independent, you do not need others, and you are not vulnerable.

I want to help others understand what it is like to be adopted and the issues that adopted adolescents grapple with. The issues of worrying every time my parents and I are separated and that this time they may just not come back. The thought that two of my best friends, who introduced will decide they do not want to be around me any more and will stop being my friends, especially before I have the chance to leave them. It’s perfectly fine for me to stop being in relationships with people just as long as I leave them first.

Through writing this I have been able to learn that I am not alone. There are others out there who feel the same way I do and help is available. This has been very hard though because I am approaching the time when most adoptees start to feel as though they lose their family and their identity. I trust I have provided the reader with a greater understanding of what it feels like to be adopted and the consequences of those feelings in relationships with others. And now that I have explained my behavior and the way I think, I will continue my pattern and leave (my high school) before they can leave me.