Unresolved Trauma Leads to More Trauma

I’m not talking about the willfully ignorant parents. As adoptees sharing our stories, we all have encountered them and have all been triggered and hurt by someone actively choosing not to hear our perspectives. I’m not talking about the parents that refuse to see color, adoption trauma, mental illness, or anything that threatens their rainbows and unicorns narrative. No, I’m not talking about them. I spent a few years of my activism trying to reach these people, and I found it so exhausting, I switched my efforts toward connecting with adoptees and people willing to listen.

I’m talking about the parents who are taking steps to get educated, to seek out new perspectives, and to figure out how to better support their adopted children.

Through my advocacy work, I’ve been able to connect with so many people in this community. As I’ve gained more experience as an advocate, I’ve figured out how to protect my energy and safe spaces while also engaging in conversations with parents. I can’t do this all of the time. No one can. Even in a conversation where the adoptive parents is receptive and willing to learn, the emotional energy of explaining adoption trauma and mental health is exhausting.

I’ve been called out and ignored for sympathizing with adoptive parents and birth parents. Despite this, I’ve still connected and I’ve observed two things:

1. Unresolved trauma leads to more trauma.

2. You don’t know what you don’t know.

While these things apply to every human, for the sake of brevity, I’ll focus this post on adoptive parents. First, we need to establish one rule. In the Intent versus Impact debate, I believe your impact on someone else is more important than you intent. It does not matter if I meant no harm. If I unintentionally harmed someone, I owe them an apology and space to process. I need to hold myself accountable and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

These same principles apply to parents too. From the adoptive parents I’ve connected with (not the ones too toxic to interact with), I’ve found that it is their unresolved trauma that is furthering an adoptee’s. These parents are not intending to do this, but because they have not processed their own histories, their trauma is showing in their parenting.

The second thing I’ve noticed is that many of these parents do want to do better, but have no clue where to start. They don’t know what they don’t know. They are trying to get advice from parents who have not adopted, from adoption agencies, from non-adopted people. When I was adopted, there were few resources on adoption. Parents had little idea what to be prepared for and what complexities and nuances appear in adoption.

These are not excuses to continue the same way as before.

It should be a wake up call to realize one may need to work on themselves in order to fully support an adoptee. It should be a sign that one must heal their hurt to stop (unintentionally) hurting others. It should also be a catalyst to seeking out as many perspectives as one can.

As a scientist, I recognize that there are many things I don’t know and there are many things I don’t even know exist. To seek out those areas, I have to “fish” around and gather as much information as possible to start finding patterns and areas of interest. The same goes for life and finding perspectives. How can a new adoptive parent know what their adopted child might experience without listening to a wide range of adoptee perspectives?

Ideally, all of this would happen before an adoption. In reality, that level of preparation is rare. It’s a disappointing truth, but hopefully something that will be changing as more adoptees speak up and more non-adopted people start listening.

I’m not angry with the adoptive parents finding perspectives and getting educated.

I am holding them accountable.

The work wasn’t done before adoption, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen ever. It’s a life-long process of learning, uncomfortable conversations, and hard work. It means sitting and listening to adoptees no matter what their tone is. It means putting your defensiveness aside and feeling a bit unsafe as the narrative you have been taught for your entire life is challenged.

It’s realizing that when an adoptee shares their perspective, it’s their time to show how they’ve been impacted by a choice they did not make.