To the Father of a 16-Year-Old Adoptee Who Wanted to Know What He Could Do Better

I’ve been thinking about your question for a couple of hours: What could your parents have done in your teens that would have helped you? Do you see anything that they could have done better, or not at all?
I see my daughter in so much pain and confusion, yet she resists therapy and, obviously, any wisdom I might have (she is a teen after all). But I don't want to miss something that I might be able to do or be for her. I see her giving up on her talents, turning her back on friendships, hating the world, trying to hide from herself by pushing out everyone else. Therapists have given us insight and suggestions, but nothing like a person who has lived it from the side of the adoptee. Any time or insight you are willing to share or direct me towards would be deeply appreciated. 

Oh, dear, sweet man. My heart goes out to you and your daughter. Living in and with a relinquished/adopted body is so painful and confusing.

The reason I’m crying as I write this is because I don’t have any answers for you. I think of myself when I was 16 which in some ways is so different from how I am now and in some ways (I’m alone here with my dog and the immobilizing, systemic fear I’m not okay) exactly the same.

When I was 16, I did not know about motherloss trauma and PTSD and executive function impairment and the parasympathetic nervous system. What I did know was that I loved my friends and still somehow felt outside the group. I loved running and yet the cramping in my stomach often kept me from being as fast as I thought I could be. I was tall and, in my mind, in terrible danger of getting fat. My inner thighs touched when I stood up, and I had read in some magazine that this was a bad thing and so I ran and ran and ran but I also ate and ate and ate because I felt bottomless. 

I often tried to get out of going to school. It was hard to tell if I was really sick or pretending to be sick because I hadn’t done my homework or I was scared of a certain teacher or I just for some reason was living in a dread of the day, and so I learned to cry, to get hot, to say I just can’t do it. I’m too sick, and, mostly, my mother would let me stay home. If my parents were insistent, I learned places to hide: a friend’s house, the attic of my house, and when I got a car, in Boston with a friend.  

I was part of the track team and would go to school so I could go to practice. My friends were on the track team. I was pretty good at running—not great, but good enough to get praised by the coach, and this praise went a long way with me.

If my parents had sat 16-year-old me down and said, “We see you struggling. We see your friends have boyfriends but you don’t. We see you aren’t getting the grades we know you can get. We see you aren’t running the mile as fast as you can. We see that you think something is wrong with you, and we want you to know this is all connected to being adopted,” I think I would have chewed off my arm to get out of the room. I would have felt like a vase made of clay that had not been fired yet and that my parents were getting their fingerprints all over me. I would have wanted to sob and throw up. 

This is the part that flummoxes me. It seems that 16-year-old adoptees would really benefit from knowing why they self-reject, why they want to cut themselves, steal, lie, die. It seems like it would be a relief to know that why they don’t feel seen or recognized in the world is because they are a ball of confusion, and their energy and actions both draw people to them and push them away. When you believe in your core that you are bad, talking about your problems feels like eating bombs because the problems aren’t something you can change—you ARE the problem, and so while everyone else is focusing on fixing chips in the paint, you know the whole house is rotted and is about to collapse and this is so deeply shameful and terrifying that all you can do is collapse along with it or develop fangs and tear at anyone who gets too close.

What could my parents have done, then? First of all, what pained me almost more than anything when I was 16 was observing my mother hate herself. I think if my parents were fine, I could have at least taken that off my things to worry about plate. Secondly, if my parents had known about adoptee trauma (as you clearly, dear man, do) then they could have held safe, accepting space for me. By this I mean, they could have seen me in a big bubble, and that while I bumped up against the walls, this was all part of the process and that I was going to be okay instead of reacting: she got an F in science; she cries every night; she said she hated me again out of the blue…

Of course she did. She’s adopted. What a thing to have to watch your child suffer and know you can’t do much about it. I think the suffering is part of the journey. I think educating yourself as a parent of an adopted person is brilliant. I think you getting therapy is brilliant. Provide the best container you can for a human being who is spinning because her brain and body were taken before they were developed enough to handle it. Know that being taken from the mother is really a crime against nature and you are there to try to keep this being alive. 

It's okay that you can’t make her happy or feel whole. It’s not your job. Your job is to love and love and love and to never leave. 

It’s hard enough to be 16. To be 16 and to have your subconscious brain telling you that you should die because your mother didn’t want you is intense. 

To be the parent of that child is intense.  

You are walking through fire together. 

The key is that you are doing it together, even if she pushes you away, part of her desperately needs, I think, to know that you are there. The best thing my parents did for me was to remain steadfast in their love. I kept testing it, kept thinking it couldn’t be real, but it was. It just took me a long, long, long time to believe it.

I’m sorry I could not be of more help. I’m learning about adoption and adoptees as quickly as I can to try to figure this all out. How can the kids suffer less? What can we do? 

We’re in this together. Thank you for reading my book. Thank you for writing to me. Thank you for walking into the fire with your eyes open. .