4 Emotions Adoptive Parents are NOT Allowed to Feel

Last month I wrote an article about the guilt I felt after adopting our oldest son. Over the years I have heard from plenty of adoptive parents who have expressed similar feelings. But adoptive and birth mothers alike felt the need to comment on how "narcissistic" I was for feeling guilty and then talking about it. How I should never be allowed to be a parent because by adopting a child I did something "utterly unnatural and inhuman" to my son’s birth mother.

I think all adoptive parent with any sense of reality will acknowledge that adoption is based in loss. Your child loses the family they were born into to some extent no matter how open an adoption you have. But if you dare express any frustration with your relationship with the birth family, or seem at all resentful of choices they make, be prepared for a full-on attack on social media! If you express any frustration or anger with the birth parents, you will instantly be labelled as a horrible person. You MUST think you are better than the birth family and clearly you must be putting them down to the child.

You love your child with all your heart. But be prepared to have your heart broken because no matter what you do, your child will always return to their birth family. You are just a "fake" mother for the time being until your child grows out of "the fog" and realizes how terrible you are for keeping them from their "real" families. You can try to keep feeding them the "Kool-Aid," but eventually they will realize you for the baby stealer you are.

Now I hope to God no one took this to heart. You are enough. Yes, birth families are important, but so are you. You can be sad. You can be happy. You are entitled to feel however you feel. No feelings are wrong. Misguided or misplaced, sure, but every emotion is valid and deserves to be acknowledged. I mean heck, your child deserves YOUR best right?