Anger?
Feature, Special Needs — By Gillian on September 26, 2009 at 8:00 amThe most surprising part so far about having our daughter home is my struggle with anger. And standing in line behind anger in the department store of my mind is guilt. I didn’t think anger was going to be one of the emotions I would experience after our daughter, Evangeline, was adopted from Ukraine this summer. I thought of other things; joy and fun and bonding and laughter. I thought of struggle and exhaustion and uncertainty and pain.
But I did not think of anger.
Practically, what is there to be angry about? We were able to adopt a child who otherwise had no future. A large sum of money came together to enable us to pay for the adoption. People stepped up to help; money was contributed, people prayed, friends watched our other kids while I was in Ukraine for seven weeks, meals arrived at our doorstep the first few weeks as we adjusted as a family of six.
And our daughter, Evangeline, overall, is doing alright. She likes to play and smile, her laughter is light, her voice high-pitched. She loves to be tickled.
Sometimes I look at her across the room and lose my breath.
But other times, out of the blue really, anger flares up in me. Sometimes the flame is small and I’m able to dampen in and put it out inside my head. And other times I just have to walk away. Why won’t she hug me, or hold my gaze? I am angry because my daughter doesn’t come to me for comfort. I hold her tightly to get her to hug me and even then she wants to let go and get away. Her rejection makes me feel like I’m back in junior high. No one likes rejection, especially mothers.
I’m also angry because I don’t feel like her mother. This dear little one, entrusted to my care doesn’t know that really, inside, it’s like I am babysitting someone else’s kid. It’s like I always have to keep her clean and in a cute outfit in case someone shows up to take her. Is she bonding with me? Does she know I am her mother? Is she happy? She looks me in the eye for a split second and then gazes on. Does she wonder what she is doing in this new house with us? Does she wonder where the kids from her group in the orphanage are?
Feelings of anger have really thrown me for a loop. I take deep breaths. I pray. I’ve loaded some fast paced songs into my iPod and gone out on long walks with the two little ones in the double stroller with the intent to gain perspective.
I am guilty and sad that this is how I feel.
My sister had her first child when I was still in high school. I remember her with her son, the way he looked at her, the way she cared for him. I remember his little hand resting on her arm, the deep, satisfied sighs communicating pure bliss. I remember thinking how remarkable it would be to be a mother, to be the one and only for your baby. Oh, how I wanted that.
I am waiting for my mommy intuition to kick in with Evangeline. Slowly, we are getting to know one another. Sometimes I sense that the connection I yearn for is right around the corner. Maybe tomorrow. Until then, maybe I should take up kick-boxing. No, yoga is probably a better choice.
In between deep breaths, Gillian blogs at Expecting Evangeline and Pocket Lint.
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19 Comments
Adoption is unnatural. Your daughter is just experiencing the lifelong trauma of being taken away from her family, her country and being “adopted”.
The adoption “industry” and the mass marketing it employs telling people how BEAUTIFUL adoption is, is a big fat lie. Adoption is a cruel legal arrangement forced on voiceless children. Their lives are exchanged for money and their identities (that they already have) are taken away from them.
Did her birth certificate get altered or did she get to keep her original (true) identity? She looks at you and doesn’t recognize herself in you as natural children do. It’s HARD to be the adoptee. You, at least, had a choice.
As for her not having a life in the Ukraine? Please. Those orphanages are a ‘racket’ designed to lure American money. They wanted you to feel like you were rescuing her from certain death/neglect. It’s all about profit and not about what’s best for the children.
Adoptees are NOT blank flesh canvasses of which to paint identities onto.
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Sounds like Mara is the angry one here. Ouch! You were looking for support and I am not sure if Mara intended to give it or make you feel worse. I agree with some of her points but yowzers!
I have yet to experience the “joy” of adoption but I do fear what you are experiencing. I think about how difficult it will be to bond and the unforseen challenges. I wish I could give you some good advice and I am sorry that I can’t. Just take it one day, one hug, one interaction at a time. It will happen.
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I feel ya girl. There is a painting that should appear in a Hallmark card and it isn’t real…but, yes, being rejected by a child is hard. While she isn’t a blank canvas – things will come that will shine a light into your relationship. The first time she says words you know she heard from you or the first time she does come to you for comfort!
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Yes, Guera. I’m angry. It totally sucks being adopted. Unless you’ve actually been there, you HAVE NO IDEA.
Can you go down to the vital records department and buy a copy of your original birth certificate? I can’t.
Can you do a family tree of your actual biological family? I can’t.
Have you almost been turned down from a government job because your “amended” birth certificate was considered legal? I have.
Do you know your ethnicity? I don’t.
Do you know your family’s medical history so you can tell every single doctor you visit? I can’t. I have to cross out the entire section and write: N/A ADOPTED.
Do you have to endure expensive medical tests because your symptoms may be a very serious disease and since you don’t know you family’s medical history to know whether it’s something else.? I have. It’s cost me thousands of dollars to find out that I don’t have lupus. I just have raynaud disease (which could be a symptom of lupus.)
I could go on and on here Guera. Being adopted and the subsequent sub-human treatment and discrimination that adoptees endure for the rest of their lives seriously pisses me off.
I wish Gillian the best. It’s an uphill climb with a child who has been traumatized. All adoptees have been traumatized. (Read: Primal Wound for more info.) She will help her child much better when listening to the pain of other adoptees and learning how to help her child cope. It’s not a “fairy tale” this thing called adoption. It’s a life-long tragedy that every adoptee deals with in one way or the other.
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Mara,
Of course it isn’t a fairy tale situation. No family is. None. But, we have to try and make the best of what we have, or don’t have.
In our case, my husband and I wanted children so we adopted. Yes, probably selfish of us to do that because we couldn’t have them but we now have a special needs child who will probably never question who he is but who has fought us tooth and nail from the beginning. Like Gillian’s daughter, he had trouble transitioning, had no language, had severe sensory issues, and had severe attachment issues because he had never learned how to love.
4 years later, most of his anger, and our anger has subsided but he is still a troubled kid and we work everyday on it.
Is it a tragedy? No. Here he has a family that gets him psychological help, the medication he needs, and the physical care he needs. I may be wrong but I don’t think he would have gotten that in Russia.
Is he better off here? I don’t know. I could certainly debate you on his birth parents and the situation in which they lived.
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Thank you for sharing your perspective, Mara. I am sorry for your pain.
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wow. i feel SO sorry for your adopted kids. first to be taken from their families, and then to remove them from their culture….ugh. double whammy.
i’m with mara. being adopted SUCKS. i wouldn’t wish it upon my very worst enemy. ever. hell, i wouldn’t even wish adoption on george bush.
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The posted article is very difficult to read from the perspective of an adoptee. Especially phrases like “We were able to adopt a child who otherwise had no future”. This implies that the child would have never been adopted, or that living and growing in a state group home or other arrangement would have been akin to death. This is simply wrong. The resiliency that allows the child to survive in your home is the same resiliency that would have allowed him to survive other situations. The injury has already been done, in many ways everything else is secondary to this.
The article also implies that the future provided by the well intentioned adoptive family is magically creating a future for the child and that the child should be grateful for this. Being “angry” at a child for having been hurt, and then transported 1/2 way around the world is so very very selfish. The child does not owe you anything! The child is doing his best to survive and cope in the world; he has no obligation to be grateful, to bond with you to fulfill your needs, or to even call you mom or dad later in life!! These are expectations that are put onto the adopted child based on the needs of the adoptive parents – they have nothing to do with the lived reality of behind an adopted child. This is part of why adoptees get angry with articles like this.
Mara has every right to be angry. Admin, your language about your child’s “issues” could use some attention. Any child, with even a minimal capacity for thought, WILL question where he is from. The difference is that a child who is disabled and subsequently dependent on you for survival is less likely to voice these thoughts. The risk of abandonment is too high, the costs of being alone too catastrophic. The child “fought” loving you because you aren’t the one he wants to love. Being “pushed” into loving adoptive parents is allot like brain washing a prisoner of war. They have no choice, you control everything, eventually they cave in and begin to tell you what you want to hear. Seldom does it represent what they feel inside. Adoptees become masters at camouflage, at predicting and providing what others want from them. If they are lucky, they may come to understand this later in life and then engage in the long road of unlearning these survival strategies.
Lots of people want to believe they have something to say about adoption – unless they have been adopted they are will always be talking out their bottoms. The pain of early separation, and then the pressure from adoptive families to “love them” creates pain and confusion on such a deep emotional level that it is almost impossible to accurately describe to others. It requires sensitivity beyond that of almost any other situation.
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The posted article is very difficult to read from the perspective of an adoptee. Especially phrases like “We were able to adopt a child who otherwise had no future”. This implies that the child would have never been adopted, or that living and growing in a state group home or other arrangement would have been akin to death. This is simply wrong. The resiliency that allows the child to survive in your home is the same resiliency that would have allowed him to survive other situations. The injury has already been done, in many ways everything else is secondary to this.
The article also implies that the future provided by the well intentioned adoptive family is magically creating a future for the child and that the child should be grateful for this. Being “angry” at a child for having been hurt, and then transported 1/2 way around the world is so very very selfish. The child does not owe you anything! The child is doing his best to survive and cope in the world; he has no obligation to be grateful, to bond with you to fulfill your needs, or to even call you mom or dad later in life!! These are expectations that are put onto the adopted child based on the needs of the adoptive parents – they have nothing to do with the lived reality of being an adopted child. This is part of why adoptees get angry with articles like this.
Mara has every right to be angry. Admin, your language about your child’s “issues” could use some attention. Any child, with even a minimal capacity for thought, WILL question where he is from. The difference is that a child who is disabled and subsequently dependent on you for survival is less likely to voice these thoughts. The risk of abandonment is too high, the costs of being alone too catastrophic. The child “fought” loving you because you aren’t the one he wants to love. Being “pushed” into loving adoptive parents is allot like brain washing a prisoner of war. They have no choice, you control everything, eventually they cave in and begin to tell you what you want to hear. Seldom does it represent what they feel inside. Adoptees become masters at camouflage, at predicting and providing what others want from them. If they are lucky, they may come to understand this later in life and then engage in the long road of unlearning these survival strategies.
Lots of people want to believe they have something to say about adoption – unless they have been adopted they are will always be talking out their bottoms. The pain of early separation, and then the pressure from adoptive families to “love them” creates pain and confusion on such a deep emotional level that it is almost impossible to accurately describe to others. It requires sensitivity beyond that of almost any other situation.
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I just want to urge you not to take your anger out on Evangeline. You may get so frustrated one day that you will do something that normally you would not. Please put yourself in her place, think about how she feels. She has been taken from the only life she has ever known, her home, her culture, her heritage, her biological roots. I know that you believe that the life you are giving her is better but it doesn’t actually erase the deep sense of loss that she is probably feeling. As much as I love my adoptive family, I do feel and always felt growing up that I was a separate entity. I didn’t look like any of them, my adoptive mum and dad smelled strange to me, I felt like a third wheel in my family. When I met my natural mother I realised what I had been missing, that chemical, biological connection that just is not there with adopted family. The only thing you can do for Evangeline is continue to show her loads of love and don’t force it. I hated how my adoptive mother smothered me and asked me “Don’t you love your mother?” As a child, it put me in the position of nurturer when what I needed was unconditional love.
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By and large, this article made me bristle. There is a little girl here, Evangeline, who is being held onto in an attempt to force her into hugging her adoptive mother. The same mother is also carrying around a boatload of anger. Children sense this kind of thing. How confusing for this poor little soul.
I see an awful lot of pushing, pushing Evangeline to bond, and blame when she hasn’t or possibly even can’t. It’s certainly not benefitting Evangeline. What this little girl needs is time and understanding. Not a mommy dearest who is latching on like an octopus and trying to force physical affection that just isn’t going to come through force.
No matter what, parenting an adopted child is not like parenting a biological child. The bond isn’t going to be the same. An adoptee also has a different set of needs. The loss of one’s first parents is a trauma that can easily resound long into adulthood, and is much much worse if the adoptive parents don’t offer the child some kind of outlet and understanding.
An adoptee shouldn’t come into a family with a role to fill, with a job to do, and from outward appearances, based on what was written, it would seem that Evangeline had expectations of her that she just couldn’t meet, and then her new mother harbors anger at her for not being up to the task.
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Whatever you do, please don’t ever let on to your child how you feel. My a-parents laid a constant guilt trip on my head throughout my childhood for my inability to bond with them – as if this was some choice I made! Once you have a child in your home your own feelings and needs should always be secondary. I would suggest you get some counseling to help you deal better with your emotions, and to enable you to fully be there for your daughter.
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Thank you all for your comments. I am crying reading them, but they are VERY helpful.
BB, thank you for the thought you put into your comment. I see now how my wording is offensive. I’m sorry. I have children with Down syndrome and put a lot of effort into people-first language. Your comment is obviously education I’m in need of.
I should have given more information about our specific situation in the post. I do not believe that ANY child up for adoption has no future. Our daughter, Evangeline, has Down syndrome. In her country, when children with developmental disabilities as evident as Down syndrome reach age four or five, they are usually transferred to an institution. In these institutions, there is no medical care and no personal interaction. Statistics show that 80% of kids in these institutions do not make it to adulthood. Some kids do not survive a year.
Right now, I absolutely agree that I am talking out of my bottom. And maybe I should not be talking at all. Although the feedback I’ve recieved from you all is helping my perspective, one I cannot fully understand but so desire to for the sake of my daughter.
Adoptee72, thank you for the warning. I need to hear this although it hurts. I will do my best to put myself in her place. My husband is Ukrainian and we lived in Ukraine for nearly four years. We have every intention to keep some kind of connection to her biological roots. The sentence in your comment that made me cry was this: “As much as I love my adopted family, I do feel and always felt like a seperate entity.” I don’t know what to say…we are so new to this. But I hear you. That’s all I can say…I hear you.
ASilverhawk, thank you too, for your comment. It points out the obvious; this isn’t about me. I most certainly do not want to become ‘mommmy dearest.’ Your comment helps me to see the burden of expectation I am putting on my daughter.
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Thank you for the suggestion, Beth.
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Gillian, thank you for being so receptive to what we adoptees have to say, it is appreciated by me and will be by Evangeline too. You might be surprised to know that many adoptive parents are completely dismissive of comments made by adoptees about issues like this and it’s very refreshing to be heard and heartening to know that it has helped.
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I agree with Adoptee72. (((Thumbs up)))
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Thank you for your help. Seriously, it’s a perspective I can’t even hope to have.
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