YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hi, my name is Pam. I'm a happily married lady with three grown daughters. I'm a museum curator. I found this podcast through ACE Broadcasting, and your podcasts with Alison Rosen & Adam Carolla.

I'm wondering if there are any other folks here who like myself are dealing with issues and feelings surrounding their adoption - feelings of utter alone-ness and abandonment. Lots of sadness for what is perceived to have been lost. These feelings and thought over the years have caused me to be very beautifully f'ed up.

Do you also feel guilty for wanting to know about your birth family? Does this need to know make you feel ungrateful?

I wanted to know, and I dug in and found out - I took the plunge and found my birth family. (My adopted family was mad at first, but have come to understand my need to know. My older brother is adopted as well, and he has no desire to know more.)

This "finding" has been a mixed blessing - bittersweet at best, but, I do have a more solid foundation under my feet - I know where I come from and who I look like and why I am the way I am. Nature and nurture do go hand-in-hand in my experience. My adopted family is very cool, reserved & undemonstrative while I am a very demonstrative person, for example, but I inherited a very negative competetive outlook from the Mom who raised me.

My family is from Arkakansas a backgorund that is culturally very different from my Pacific Northwest upbringing.

I'd love to communicate with others who share this similar experience.

Hi Pam,
Welcome to the forum. I'm not adopted myself, but 2 of my cousins were. I think if I had been adopted, I would have a lot of mixed feelings about finding my birth family. I can see that being very unsettling. I'm glad your adopted family got past their hurt feelings when you sought out your birth family. Are there official support groups for people who were adopted as kids?

Hi - thanks for the nice welcome.

For those fighting for the right to know, (believe it or not, this is not a given in all states) you can contact the Adoptee Rights Coalition, which is a national organization. Here is a link to their weblog: http://adopteerightscoalition.blogspot.com/

http://adoptees.adoption.com/ is also a good site for anyone looking for more information on counseling, searching and more, plus they have an awesome adoptees blog.

Both Joan Didion & Steve Jobs can teach us something about the feelings of abandonment that adoptees deal with:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/steve-jobs ... xCBrXowCrg

That's a fasciating article. I was especially interested in the different ways parents can explain to their adopted children why they were adopted. For example, one psychologist suggested the words, "Your birth parents were unable to take care of you at that time." If it's not too personal, I'm curious what your opinion is about the best way to have this conversation with adopted kids.

Also, on a slightly less personal note, you mentioned that you're a museum curator. What sort of museum? Is that job as cool as it sounds?

Dan

Hi Dan:

Yes, it was an interesting article.

I was told that I was adopted, which meant that I was "chosen" & "special." This sufficed when I was very young. It was age appropriate if not vague.

As I got older, I began to ask more questions and it was explained to me that my parents already had 5 children & could not afford to keep me. For me, this set up a big contradiction - how can I be special & chosen if my parents gave me away, but not my
other sibilings? Therefore, I must be damaged or flawed somehow, and not really special at all. To my parents credit, they really couldn't tell me the real reason. It was not age appropriate information and I'm glad they didn't tell me and that I was a grown adult when I found out.

I think perhaps the best way to handle the telling & explaining, is to have as open an adoption as the parties are comfortable of having.

Being a curator is really fun. I have worked in a general local history museum, a house museum and right now, I work at an aviation museum. I think my love of history comes from not really having a history of my own and being facinated with other people's history.

Pam

Pamela wrote:I think my love of history comes from not really having a history of my own [...]

Aww, don't say that. Technically, you have twice as much history as anyone else, and you have a much greater awareness of its importance, because of the early obstacles you experienced.

Please take care, cheers, all the best!

Pam,
Wow, thanks for a great post. And welcome to the forum!


What a great subject. You are not the first person who I've heard share these feelings and experiences. Thank you for describing them so eloquently. And thanks for being a part of the forum. I hope you get a good thread going with some folks who can relate.


Paul

Miguel - thank you. You are right - I do have twice as much family history as most people.

What I was getting at when I said I didn't have a history of my own, is that for 35 years, I knew nothing about my background. Knowing my birth family history now is a great blessing to me, but up until that time, it was all a big mystery - it was something I could fantasize about but could get no factual data.

I think it gave me a sense of control to become a historian.

PJ

[quote="Pamela"]

This "finding" has been a mixed blessing - bittersweet at best, but, I do have a more solid foundation under my feet - I know where I come from and who I look like and why I am the way I am. Nature and nurture do go hand-in-hand in my experience. My adopted family is very cool, reserved & undemonstrative while I am a very demonstrative person

Hi Pam,

I'm sorry I didn't find this post earlier--I've been listening to the podcast for about 6 months, but only just joined the forum. I'm adopted too. What you said above about your adopted vs. bio family is similar to my experience. My adopted family is quite reserved, but my birth mother's side is very demonstrative and affectionate. I think I missed that growing up. It's nice to find another adoptee on here. I'm glad I had the upbringing I had, but I would never wish adoption on any child. I think it is incredibly painful. Luckily adoptions are more likely to be open these days, so that kids can have more knowledge about where they come from and who they look like. It seems trivial, but not knowing who you look like is near torture. My friends have expressed it to me like: (e.g.) "I might hate my fat arms, but at least I know where they came from--my mom"! haha. But the truth is, I look nothing like my adopted parents and have very few personality traits in common with them. It was extremely frustrating growing up and it tormented me on a daily basis--much more than I ever admitted to my friends. I'm going ok now, but I still don't know anything about my father's side. I just ordered a genetic test to find out as much as I can.

Anyway, lovely to connect with you on here and I hope you're going OK at the moment!