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When we say identity, most of us picture the ordinary work of figuring out who we are: our values, our personality, what we want out of life. Adoptees do all of that too. But underneath it, they're often doing a kind of identity work most people never have to think about, because most of us were handed the answers so early we never noticed we had them.

Consider how much you know about where you come from without ever having asked. You've probably seen photos of relatives you never met, heard the story of the country a great-grandparent left, caught your mother's nose in the mirror or your father's hands in your own. You might know your family runs to heart trouble, or tends to live into its nineties. All of that arrives before you're old enough to wonder about it, and it settles into a quiet floor under your sense of self.

For an adoptee, a lot of that floor is missing, or partial, or uncertain, and the questions stay open even when the answers aren't there. That work tends to gather in three places: where you come from, what your own body tells you about who you are, and the story the culture hands you about your adoption and what you're supposed to feel about it. Rather than explain those, I asked an adoptee to walk through them. Listen for the places where a question is still open for her, even now.

So when an adoptee is doing identity work, it rarely looks like a tidy "who am I." It might be a client who can't fill in a medical history and feels a flash of grief they can't explain, or someone who goes quiet at a family resemblance, or a person slowly realizing the story they were told about their adoption doesn't match what they feel.

Two things to carry out of this. First, origin work is not the same as searching. A client can be deep in questions about where they come from and have no intention of looking for anyone, so don't assume the work means an action. Second, the body and the cultural story count as identity work in their own right. When a client brings a resemblance that undid them, or brings their tangle with the "you're so lucky" story, that is identity work, and it deserves the same room you'd give to the question of who they are.

Reflect

Think of a small moment when you caught yourself in a relative, your mother's expression in the mirror, your father in your own laugh, someone telling you that you have your grandmother's temper. Notice how little you think of it. That kind of recognition is so ordinary it barely registers, but underneath it, it's telling you who you are and where you come from.

Write one sentence: if you'd never had those small recognitions, no face that echoes yours, a blank where the family history goes, where would you look to know who you are?

For a lot of adoptees, that looking is much of what identity work is, an ongoing search that mostly goes unseen by the people around them.

Review

Identity work in adoption gathers in three places. Recognizing which one a client is in helps you follow it.

• Origin – where I come from. Biological family, lineage, heritage, the questions most people answer before they know to ask. For adoptees this information is often partial, uncertain, or absent, and the questions stay open even when the answers don't.
• Bodily – what my body tells me about who I am. Seeing yourself in relatives (genetic mirroring), resemblance, the family medical history. A quiet layer of identity for non-adopted people; often absent for adoptees, and most visible for transracial adoptees. DNA testing has changed it.
• Cultural narrative – the story I was handed. The cultural script about adoption (gratitude, rescue) and what the adoptee is allowed to feel about it. Stepping outside that script is what adoptees call "coming out of the fog."

Two reminders for the room:

• Origin work is not the same as searching. A client can be deep in origin questions with no plan to look for anyone.
• The body and the cultural story are identity work in their own right, not side issues. Give them the same room as the question of who they are.