Watch

Almost every adoptee has heard some version of this: “You're so lucky. Imagine where you could have ended up.” Usually it's said with love, by people who mean well. What it tells the adoptee is that their story is a happy ending, and that whatever they feel about it had better be gratitude.

But adoption begins with a loss, a child separated from the family, the history, the body, the story they came from, and that loss is real whether or not anyone ever speaks of it. Kenneth Doka gave us a name for grief the world won't recognize: disenfranchised grief. Adoption is a particularly hard version of it, because the grief isn't just unrecognized, it gets reframed as something the person shouldn't feel. To grieve begins to feel like ingratitude, and that is the bind.

Rather than have me describe what that's like to live inside, I asked someone who has. As you listen, I'd ask you to pay less attention to the information and more to the moments where you feel a pull to comfort her. We'll come back to that pull, because it's really what this lesson is about.

Somewhere in there, when she let a little grief show, something may have risen up in you, a pull to make it better, to remind her that her parents loved her, or that she turned out well. That pull feels like warmth, and it feels like good counseling. I want you to notice it, because that same reassuring pull is the script she has been living inside her whole life. If you follow it in session, you become one more person telling her that her grief doesn't belong here, and the reassurance closes the door she just barely opened.

So the work is almost the opposite of the instinct. You don't fix it. You don't balance it back toward the positive. Gratitude and grief are not opposites, and the adoptee doesn't have to choose between them. Your job is to make room for both, in whatever proportion is theirs.

The thing to carry out of this isn't a technique. It's one piece of self-awareness: the moment you feel the urge to reassure an adoptee about their adoption, slow down. That urge is the thing to watch.

Reflect

Think of a time someone told you that you should feel grateful for something that also hurt. An “at least you have…” moment, a loss everyone around you treated as a blessing.

Notice what it was like to carry a feeling you weren't allowed to show. Where did it go? What did you do with it?

Now hold that, and imagine being handed that bind at birth, about the central fact of your life, by the people you love most. That is the room your adoptee client walks in carrying.

Write one sentence: what did you need from someone in your “at least you have” moment? That is often exactly what your adoptee client needs from you.

Keep — one-page takeaway

What it is: adoption grief gets reframed as ingratitude. The script says adoptees should feel lucky, so grief feels forbidden (disenfranchised grief, in an active form).

How it shows up: the client polices their own grief (“I shouldn't complain”); grief hides inside other concerns; adoption surfaces at the edges, a birthday, a DNA result, then a subject change (that's them testing whether it belongs in the room).

Watch your own reflex: the urge to reassure feels caring but repeats the bind. Notice the pull. Don't follow it.

Instead: hold both (let the client set the proportions); witness, don't fix; name the bind when they pull back; repair fast if you slip.

Sample language:

• Catching the “should”: “You said you should be glad. Can we slow down on the should?”
• Widening the door: “I'm curious what the sad part knows.”
• Naming the pattern: “We get close to this and then move along, and that's allowed. There's room here for the part that isn't fine.”
• Repairing a slip: “Let me take that back, I just hurried you toward the bright side. What were you feeling before I did that?”

Remember: when you want to reassure an adoptee about their adoption, slow down. That urge is the thing to watch.

Continued considerations:

• Which pull do you feel most strongly when a client grieves their adoption: gratitude, reassurance, or the bright side?
• Think of a client who changed the subject right after mentioning adoption. What might they have been testing?
• Where in your own life do you rush someone toward the positive, and what happens to what they were about to say?

↓ Download this takeaway (PDF)