Security is an Illusion

Security Is an Illusion: Thoughts of an Adoptee

When I wrote my book, I spent countless hours developing the idea, writing, editing, rewriting. My mother wanted to read it. I hedged. I had excuses all lined up: It wasn’t really ready for review. I wasn’t quite finished with it. It needed more work.

I asked colleagues and friends to read it, and I gladly accepted their comments and suggestions for changes. Still, I hesitated to show it to my mother.

When I finally left the written work with her, I cringed inwardly. She called a couple of days later. Her terse comments began, “I read your story. It’s definitely missing something.” I was devastated. I even cried over it. I was 53 years old!

What happened here? Partly, it’s that our parents can make us feel like little children with a snap of their fingers, no matter our age. But more than that, a person who was adopted lives with an innate fear of rejection. For most of us, this fear hangs around in the back of our minds, and doesn’t rule our lives. But it is there nevertheless. If I told my mother how her words brought out that fear of rejection, she would be incredulous.

Fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, flair up in our lives at the slightest provocation. Rarely will a person who was adopted voice this unreasonable fear to his or her adoptive parents. We know it is an unfounded fear, yet we can’t seem to rid ourselves of it. And many of us live with another fear, that of hurting our parents.

Some of us stay in unhealthy relationships rather than opening ourselves to being abandoned again. Some of us are the first to leave a relationship, even one that could be saved, because we want to be the one who abandons, rather than be the one who is abandoned again.

One adoptee wrote, “No matter the childhood tales of being especially chosen, no matter the practical realities one becomes aware of later that make adoption desirable, the question lingers because it is so intensely personal. What was so bad about me that she did not want me, would not love me? What were the hardships she faced that could not be overcome … for me?”

Another adoptee said about relationships with boyfriends, “If I meet someone I like, I begin to sabotage the relationship pushing myself away because I already have it in my head that they’re going to leave, so I unconsciously try to speed up the process.”

As I work with adoptive parents, I have seen the unconditional love that you give your children. Even when you are exhausted from their misbehavior, emotional outbursts, and weekly trips to the therapist, you remain positive and upbeat. You advocate for your child with teachers and parole officers. You are models of patience and hope. The security, reassurance, and nurturing you provide for your children save them from falling into the black hole of the rejection syndrome.

And yet your child may still dread the day when he or she will be abandoned. Remember that it’s nothing that you have done, but something that was done to us, that causes this fear. Our entire world was changed, sometimes overnight, and we didn’t have a thing to say about it. Often our security blanket was left behind, never to be retrieved.

Helen Keller said, “Security is an illusion. Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” You can help your child on this daring adventure called life. But you can’t change the beginning of the adventure; you can only accept the fact that part of the adventure took place before you had your child’s heart in your care.