Adoption, Shame & Cocktail Parties

Cocktail parties are so interesting, full of smiles and small talk. Sort of like the perfect pictures we post on Instagram. Everyone stands around putting on their best face, dressed so nicely, chatting, pretending.

I know how it works. I’m better at them now. I used to hate them. Small talk always made me nervous. I was anxious and uncomfortable having to pretend, feeling judged. At cocktail parties, we judge each other's style, wealth, education, status and position in life. We check out each other’s partners, lifestyle and family situation. We all do this, it’s a way of understanding and organizing, defining and protecting ourselves. Occasionally, while making small talk we reveal a little truth or hear a little secret.

I noticed though, no one goes to a cocktail party and says, “I gave my baby up for adoption.” No one says that ever. No birth mother, no birth father has to say that at a cocktail party. No birth parent has to “out” themselves. On the contrary though, I noticed as one of the “relinquished” babies, we are always being defined and outed by non-adoptees. I wonder though if people know this, it feels shaming to be defined as a baby whose mother gave you away. If people only knew how these definitions cut us like the slicing of our very own skin. It burns when we hear it and we look away with humiliation.

Our parents, our teachers, our grandparents, therapists, psychiatrists, principals, neighbors, siblings, cousins all say it.… “She’s adopted.” It comes with a tone. A tone that says something like, oh this one’s different, not normal, abandoned.

It’s such a curious thing to watch the non-adopted people try to define the adopted ones. Therapists try to guess at our symptoms, diagnose us, analyze and pathologize us. The psychiatrists try to medicate our pain. It’s such a curious thing how our adoptive parents try to deny our pain or step over our pain. Our friends try to ignore our pain. We adoptees bury our pain, disguise our pain, drink our pain, cut our pain, smoke our pain and starve our pain. It’s such a curious thing how being relinquished is never talked about with sorrow; but instead with applaud for the adoptive parents.

“It’s such a curious thing how being relinquished is never talked about with sorrow; but instead with applaud for the adoptive parents.”

We adoptees know we were given away. Yet, somehow we are denied the gravity of this choice. Any other time, if a child would lose their mother, their father and their entire birth family, the loss would be seen as unimaginable, a tragedy, catastrophic, a gaping oozing wound. It would be seen as a life-changing trauma, sad and involving a life of grief. Yet our adoption loss, the ripping away of our mother’s, our birth family, our heritage, our country and our blood is often not even acknowledged. We don't even talk about it.

“The secret is the pain and shame, hurt and emptiness, sadness and grief, nausea and self-hatred, haze and confusion; hair pulling, skin ripping, screaming, mirror smashing, horrific pain of losing our original selves.”

Adoption is like a little secret at a cocktail party. The secret, though, is not who are my parents? The secret is the pain and shame, hurt and emptiness, sadness and grief, nausea and self-hatred, haze and confusion; hair pulling, skin ripping, screaming, mirror smashing, horrific pain of losing our original selves. We adoptees have been relinquished, discarded, hidden, shunned, and excluded. The truth is ~ adoption hurts. It comes with shame and secrets. We often never know the truth of our birth and we have no access to our lineage. It’s a forever search for self and a forever pain, not a forever home. And, that’s not small talk.