Stories to be Told

Today's Daily Thought from Real Simple magazine grabbed me:

“Behind the story I tell is the one I don’t …. Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.”   ― Dorothy Allison

I watch and read anything regarding adoption that comes across my radar screen. So many stories are of wonderful, heart-wrenching reunions—hugs, kisses, tears, the sharing of stories that fill the holes of the missed years.

What you don't hear are stories like mine, where a parent or a child is found and doesn't want anything to do with the finder. Those stories don't raise ratings and sell ad time. They're personal—so very personal.

I know how isolated I've felt throughout my life. I know the feeling of not belonging anywhere or to anyone. I know how I felt when I received the letter from my biological mother—written in the ½" margins of my letter to her—requesting that I never contact her again.

I know. But can I communicate it to you in a manner that allows you to really understand and fully comprehend how it feels to me? Probably not.

The unsuccessful or less-than-fully successful stories are the ones that need to be written about. These stories, if added to the library of adoption literature, would help potential adoptive parents and mental health professionals understand how to treat and deal with adoptive children and what these children are experiencing.

How different my life might have been had my parents realized the turmoil that was swirling in my mind, had they been able to sit me down for six months with a sensitive and caring therapist who could help me feel grounded within myself.

But it is what it is. I am where I am. I look in my invisible mirror every day and watch my words and actions to make sure the Little Adoptee is staying inside. I've tried to make a comfortable home for her.

In the meantime, I keep hopping up on my soapbox to say, "Adoptees have needs you can't imagine. You must look for those needs and fill them."

The world keeps changing. Our body of knowledge keeps growing. Maybe ten or twenty or fifty years from now there will be no unsuccessful adoptions.

I can only hope.