Grief and Gratitude
by Sarah Harper
December 4, 2024
With Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror, I have been thinking a lot about the pressure adoptees feel to be grateful. Adoptees have many feelings about the expectation of gratitude. There are so many variables that influence our relationship with this concept. For me, the idea of gratitude is complicated and constantly shifting.
When people talk about adoption, they often see through a lens that tells them adoption is a better life for a child. In reality, adoption only guarantees a different life for a child. I don’t spend time trying to make the argument that my own adoption either was, or was not, better than the alternative. I believe it was necessary. I believe I had a better life experience in many ways. But there was also so much I lost.
I was very fortunate in that I was raised by parents who loved me, were committed to my happiness and wellbeing, and made sure I had everything I needed to be successful in life. They understood that adopted children have different needs and should be parented differently than biological children. And because of their parenting, I was loved, felt physically and emotionally safe, and at 46 years old, have deep, loving friendships with my parents.
Every adoptee has complex thoughts and feelings about their adoptions that evolve throughout their lifespan. If I had to sum up my experience as an adoptee, I would say it has been overwhelmingly positive. Having said that, even though I am glad for so much, I would not say I am grateful. Adoptees should never be obligated to gratitude.
The obligation of gratitude robs the adoptee of the right to live authentically. It denies us a huge part of ourselves when we have already lost so much. Even when I gained so much in life, there is also much to grieve.
The trauma of maternal separation is a silent wound that continues to shape my life. It's a primal ache, a feeling of being untethered. This trauma manifests in different ways, sometimes as anxiety, sometimes as a deep-seated fear. Whenever a child is unable to be loved and parented by their biologically intended parents, there is a schism. Maternal separation in infancy cost me a connection to myself – a sense of grounding in my own identity, a knowing of where I fit in the world – and impacted the ways I connect with others. Even though I wasn’t always conscious of this, it has always been and always will be true. I was disconnected from a lineage and an ancestry and only began to understand how to grieve that.
I grieve a lifetime of being separated from biological family that I am now in reunion with. And now that I have genetic mirrors in my life, I am able to understand certain things about myself I never did before. I am learning how to love myself more fully every time I see my genetics staring back at me.
The list is long. I could go on and on about what I gained in life because of my adoption. And I can talk endlessly about what adoption robbed me of. The most peace I ever feel is when I allow myself to sit with all of those realities. When I allow myself to acknowledge all of it… I am whole, embracing my life, with all its contrasting threads of gratitude and grief.
