Being Adopted is Expensive--Guest Post by Jennifer James
I have spent more than 30 years in therapy learning about myself while the medical community has categorized my behaviors and symptoms. There is no line item or ICD9 code for “being adopted” yet we are over represented in both the mental health and prison systems. We are also 25 percent more likely to attempt suicide. These are epidemic public health numbers and had I not had the support of my family, friends, medical team, and employer, I would not have survived.
I bring up the expense of adoption because acceptance of my circumstances with professional help has been costly in many areas of my life. Financially, I have spent and continue to spend a lot of money on my mental healthcare. My appointments, groups, and therapies also take time away from living my life and enjoying my relationships to their fullest. I have spent so much time tending to this feeling that I am not enough. Broken. Unfinished.
I joined Flourish after I had been participating in a three-day a week online Eating Disorder Intensive Outpatient meal support group during the pandemic. I suffered a relapse in my eating disorder after a breast cancer diagnosis in 2015 and by the fall of 2020, my eating disorder was finally stable and I no longer had the need for multiple days of group work and meal support. In a past life I would have celebrated this accomplishment, but this time I was scared. I still had a need for connection with other people like me. Throughout this relapse I met several people in my programs who had eating disorders and were also adopted. At one point 50% of my eating disorder group was composed of adoptees. I was uncovering so many parallels and felt like I was on to something. If healing in a virtual group environment worked so well for my eating disorder and other symptoms, I had hope. Flourish became the perfect solution to safely step down from my eating disorder group and also fill my need for weekly community support and to finally meet and talk to other adoptees.
Flourish was also not free. I was now choosing to invest money in myself without a co-pay or a doctor’s order to try and soothe my yearning to get over my deepest fears surrounding my adoption. It turned out to be the best money I ever spent on myself. I joke with my writing coach, Anne Heffron, about the constant expense of adoption and that she is part of that when I pay her monthly fee. A price that is more than worth it. I need her because she “gets it.” I secured her as a coach before Flourish ended to not only continue my work but also to selfishly keep myself supported in an adoptee writing community. I have no intention of stopping my work with her because I need her skillset. She taught me the concept that adoptees need adoptees. The questions she encourages us to answer for ourselves, no matter how uncomfortable, are necessary in healing. We have lost years of our lives NOT talking about adoption. Our voices matter.
I have learned expensive lessons, lost precious time, and carried the shame of my adoption without knowing what to do with “it” while also watching everyone who loves me try to solve “it”for me. The survival of an adoptee requires money, time, unconditional love, and extreme patience from others and the self. Sadly the stars do not align for all adoptees and we lose many to suicide.
Discussing the burden and shame of adoption makes me think of the words from the women at church who used to remind me of my need to always be grateful for my adoption. My practice of gratitude routinely turned into guilt for circumstances I had no control over.
Flourish allowed me to buy a gift for myself. Something I didn't even know was for sale. Agency. A life that no longer makes me feel like I am a list of diagnoses or a cost to another person. I am different and changed after 16 months of writing weekly in an adoptee community. The words that flow out of me are authentic and are my truth. I have had the freedom to write without judgment about the radical topic of adoption and my experience as an adoptee. Before finding this connection, I often felt “told” how to feel. I have let go of other’s visions for myself and am gaining back control of my life.
