Is It About Coming Out of the Fog or Is It Really About Stepping Into the Fog? Guest Blog Post by Angela Wrigley

Supposedly coming out of the fog is realizing that your adoption has affected you in ways that you never knew before and that adoption isn’t the beautiful story that was pitched to you by your adoptive parents when you were a kid.

I also read that ``being in the fog is denial``.  I disagree.  To me, denial suggests a consciousness of denying.  But if I don’t know something, how can I deny it?

So how is realizing adoption affected you coming out of the fog?  Sure, my whole life I’ve felt displaced, depressed, confused, and lacking in self-identity, but I adapted and became comfortably uncomfortable with those feelings.  They are all I’ve known.  And what’s wrong with agreeing with the story that the woman who gave birth to me wanted me to have a better life than the one she thought she could provide?  I was adopted by loving people, raised as their own and fully accepted by extended family members and family friends. No problem.

But now I’m learning that I am the way I am because of being adopted.  That’s there’s this thing called the primal wound. That the grief and sadness I’ve felt is because of trauma I’ve held in my body my whole life.  That many of my feelings and behaviours are because of my adoption.

I was just fine before.  Struggling, but fine. Now I’m in shock, and my brain feels murky and sticky. Now I feel like I’m living in a fog. 

I wonder what’s next.