A guest post by Amanda Medina: No, I Don't Owe Her (My Adoptive Mother) My Love

When Anne reached out to me, inviting me to write a guest post for her blog, I was beyond honored. I have shared my story on my own blog for about a year and a half now. It has been a process of growing into my voice as an adult adoptee. Today, I speak with confidence about adoption, a topic I would not have considered touching on while growing up. One thing I have learned since launching my blog, since starting to share my story, and since openly and honestly voicing my insights about adoption and my own healing process as an adult adoptee, is that none of us are alone in this. In this piece, I am going to share with you something that I carried my whole life, since I was young, until very recently. I share it in the hopes that if anyone else out there ever felt this way, this piece will serve as comfort and evidence that you are not alone. And that what you are feeling is not only validated, but normal and reasonable. 

It recently dawned on me that I don’t owe my adoptive parents anything. I don’t think any child owes his or her parents anything. Stay with me here, I am not saying that children can treat their parents badly, I am not saying that it would be okay for a child to disrespect their parents. At any age. But the idea that a child is obligated to their parents in any kind of way, for having been brought into the word, no I don’t agree with that. I’ll tell you why. 

Regardless of the age at which a woman gets pregnant, there is a choice to have a baby or not. The pregnancy may or may not have been planned or wanted, but the choice about what to do once pregnant is always a matter of choice. You have the baby or you don’t. There is giving birth, or there is abortion. A choice. It may not feel like a choice, but it is. Someone is making a choice about whether the baby is going to be born or not. (If you are thinking that miscarriage is the exception you are right, it does not apply here, so let’s not even go there.) 

If the choice is to have the baby, other choices might follow. This is where adoption enters the picture. There are many cases when an expectant mother goes* for adoption. The reasons and what are some problems with these reasons is a topic for another piece of writing but suffice it to say that a choice is being made, coerced or not, pressured or not, willingly or not, a choice is being made. Even when the choice is not that of the mother, it is someone making a choice for the baby to first have been born, and then adopted. (In the case of adoptions based on kidnappings and falsified information making the child adoptable, there are choices being made along the way, albeit not by the mother herself.) 

The only one involved here, who does not make a choice of any kind, is the child to be born, and the child to be adopted. For not having had a voice, a say, or choice in being born, in being brought into the world, a child does not owe his or her parents anything. Not even love. 

That said, in a healthy relationship, in a healthy family, love is not owed, but nurtured, grown and naturally occurring. The mother and the baby form a bond so strong that as they go through different stages in life, and as they face different difficulties and challenges on the road as the child grows up, and goes from being completely dependent on the mother, to doing a push-and-pull dance between being dependent in some aspects and wanting to claim independence in others, and probably landing on a balance between full independence and deep appreciation for the mother (father and family as a whole). This happens in biological families and it can happen in adoptive families. For the sake of this writing, let me focus on the adoptive family, mainly my own, for the rest of this post.

When I think back to when I was little, I don’t remember ever feeling like I needed or even longed for my adoptive mother. If I would lose sight of her in a store, I would have more of a freeze / shut down reaction because it was scary to be alone. But I would not freak out at the thought of not seeing my mother. I would not cry for her and I do not ever remember ever feeling attached to her. And I understood at a young age that this feeling was not how a daughter was supposed to feel.

When I was about 9 years old, I started feeling resentment towards my family. I started questioning my adoption. Not that I was adopted, but that I was adopted by them. 

On occasion, I wished to have been adopted by another family. A family that was normal. Normal to me meant a family where there was display of love, where there was an honest enjoyment in spending time together, a family where there was room for nurturing the bond to be formed and the relationships to be grown between mother and child, father and child, and siblings. I experienced none of this. 

I often describe us as four people living under the same roof. In the same house. Acting much like a family on the outside. I had what I needed in things. I never went hungry. I never had to worry about clothes. I lived in good areas and went to good schools. I had financial help and support from my parents all through college, and into University. They did not treat me or my brother bad. They helped us in many aspects, but they did not provide either of us with what we needed more than anything, and especially as adoptee children who had trauma and abandonment in our past. What we would have needed more than anything was EMOTIONAL SAFETY.

I wished to have been adopted by a family with parents who did not fight. A mother who did not raise her voice at everything, and father who did not wash his hands and take the backseat in the journey of raising kids as soon as difficulties presented themselves. I wished with all my heart to have been adopted by parents, into a family where I felt I was loved, belonged and valued. I did not know at the time that there were kids out there, my age taking their wish further and wish they had never been adopted. I did not know that was an option. 

So, I wished for another family. 

And I would crumble under the guilt that it brought me to feel that way. 

Since I was about 9 years old, I have carried a guilt so heavy I have not been able to talk about it. I mentioned it for the first time to my husband, the one person in the world I trust more than anyone, just about 6 months ago, at age 35. And I have known him for 20 years, going on 10 years of marriage. 

Keeping my family, and especially my mother at arm’s length, because I did not feel emotionally safe with them, made me feel like I failed as a daughter. How backwards it that?  I was never told to be grateful, on the contrary, I was told they were grateful for my existence (an issue for another post as well). But I realized at a young age that I was not able to love my mother the way I thought a daughter should love a mother. I realized at a young age that I did not feel attached to my mother, or family. And I realized at a young age that in a family, it was not supposed to be that way. 

What I didn’t know was that there were logical explanations for all of it, some due to the environment I was in, and some due to the course of events that had put me there. I thought I was failing for not being able to say that I loved my mother more than anything in the world. I thought I was failing for not feeling the need to be close to family but longed to move far away the first chance I would get. I thought I was failing for not loving them. For not loving her. I thought I was failing as a daughter.

And not until very recently have I been able to release the guilt, that I finally realized was never mine to carry in the first place. Not until recently, when I finally understood the reasons I felt this way growing up, and why it was always okay, have I been able to release the guilt and forgive myself, both for the inability to love my adoptive family, and for the guilt I put on myself all those years as a result.

Not until I realized that as a daughter, an adoptive daughter in my case, I never did, still don’t and never will, owe my family, or my mother anything, not even my love.

And the saddest part of it all is that had someone told me this when I was young, had someone been around to break this down to me, explain to me and validate my feelings back then, it may have prevented all of the above, the resentment, the guilt, the distance and even losing out on having a real family.

For them.

And for me. 

*I don’t say chose, because whether or not it is actually a choice for the mother herself is up for discussion, being that we have heard from numerous first mothers who share how they were made to believe they would not be able to care for the baby, that adoption would be out of love for the baby, and that there was no support for them, and even being coerced into adoption.

To connect with Amanda, read the rest of her story and writings, as well as other fellow adoptees’ stories, and to see what else she is up to in the adoptee community, please visit her blog This Adoptee Life. www.thisadopteelife.com