No one talks about this part.

They talk about happy reunion.
About closure.
About family.
About full circles and “finding your roots.”

They don’t talk about what it feels like to sit in the same room with the people who abandoned you.

They don’t talk about your nervous system going on high alert while you smile and pass the salt.

They don’t talk about dissociating so hard you don’t even realize you’re gone.

When I met them, I was shaking on the inside.

On the outside, I was agreeable. Pleasant. Grateful.

Because that’s what you’re supposed to be, right?
The lucky one.
The saved one.
The one that had a “better life”.
The one who should be grateful you were wanted by your adoptive family.

I listened to them say they “don’t remember” the circumstances around my relinquishment.

Don’t remember.

How do you not remember giving away your child? How can you not remember promising to send for my birth mother and me and then running away and never taking her calls again?

But I nodded.
Smiled.
Told them it was okay by not asking for what I needed to know.

It wasn’t okay.

I remember the jokes.

“It’s probably a good thing you and your sister didn’t grow up together — you two would’ve been trouble.”

My birth father saying, in front of his whole family,
“It’s a good thing abortions were hard to get back then.”

And nobody corrected him.
Nobody flinched.

My birth father’s wife saying “you seem like a nice person.” and “I am jealous of you because he talks to you.”

And I didn’t say anything about any of it. I smiled and acted fine.

Because I wanted to be likable.

Because I didn’t want to make it awkward.

Because some primitive part of me still believed that if I was good enough in that moment, I wouldn’t be left again.

I flew to meet them. Left my family for a week, took time off work. I asked questions about their lives. I remembered their birthdays. My brother didn’t even bother to show up because he said he wouldn’t be able to get high on the bus ride.

There were no questions in return about me. They took, took, took.

I should have been the guest of honor during that trip. Instead, I picked up the check at dinner like I was earning my seat at the table.

They fought in front of me. They shamed me. They let me pay without offering to contribute. They got high.
Their resentments, jokes, jealousy and shame spilling out while I sat there, absorbing it.

Once again, I found myself empty from being taken from.

I left that visit exhausted and buzzing — like I’d run a marathon I didn’t train for.

And still, I felt guilty.

Guilty for not feeling comfortable.
Guilty for not feeling grateful enough.
Guilty for wanting to leave early.
Guilty for not liking who they were.

They sent birthday cards with money for me and the kids.

And every time I deposited the checks, I felt sick and full of shame.

Because it felt like hush money.

Like I’m agreeing not to mention the abandonment.

Like I’m erasing what happened by accepting the gesture.

If I take it, am I saying it didn’t matter?

If I cash it, am I cashing in my own story?

I should be grateful, I tell myself.

Other adoptees don’t get anything.

But gratitude layered over unprocessed grief turns into self-betrayal.

And I was very good at betraying myself.

There’s this strange dilemma:
abandoning yourself in the presence of the people who abandoned you.

Swallowing your truth.

Laughing when something hurts.

Pretending your body isn’t rigid.

Saying, “It’s fine,” when it’s not fine at all.

After years of doing that, something in me started breaking.

I realized I couldn’t stay in a relationship that required me to disappear.

And that realization came with another wave of grief:

Sometimes I wish I had never looked for them.

There. I said it.

Not because I don’t care.
But because knowing them did not heal the wound.
It exposed it.

And then there’s my adoptive parents.

They never ask about my birth family.

Not really.

Not in a curious way.

Not in a “how are you holding this?” way.

Instead, when they met my sister, my dad made a joke “what is your name again?” and “don’t steal the silverware!”

And that’s its own grief.

Like this huge tectonic shift happened in my life and everyone just kept eating dinner like normal and making jokes and comments about the biggest wound of my life.

I grieve the missed holidays.
The birthdays.
The weddings.
The births.

All the parallel life events that happened without me.

And then I grieve the fantasy I created about what those moments would have been like if I’d been there.

I didn’t have a better life.

That’s something I had to come to terms with.

I had a different life.

Different doesn’t mean better.
It just means different.

And when I finally stopped trying to rank my life against the one I didn’t live, I felt something shift.

Because if it wasn’t about “better,” then it wasn’t about winning or losing.

It was about reality.

And reality is something I can work with.

For a long time, the pain was unbearable.

I would cry myself to sleep begging for relief.

Begging to feel loved.
Begging to feel seen.
Begging God, the universe, anyone — to make it stop.

The PTSD of being in relationship with people who abandoned you is real.

Every interaction felt like walking into a room where the floor might give out.

My husband carried so much of it with me.

He watched me unravel after visits, calls.
He felt me spin before holidays and after interactions with them.

He watched me second-guess myself.

My kids felt it too — the emotional hangover that would linger in our house after contact.

The toll was real.

And I had to face something hard:

I was overfunctioning in those relationships to create meaning.

Sending birthday cards.
Buying thoughtful gifts.
Remembering anniversaries.
Staying silent to be liked.

Trying to prove I was worthy of staying.

Meanwhile, my own family — the one right in front of me — was getting the leftovers of my emotional energy.

That realization gutted me.

Healing was not pretty.

It wasn’t one breakthrough.

It was years.

Years of therapy.
Of learning how trauma lives in the body.
Of understanding fawning.
Of noticing when I left myself in a conversation.
Of releasing the deep somatic pain stored in my body before I had words.

Years of rage.

I used to hate adoption.

Hate it.

Hate the system.
Hate the narrative.
Hate the forced gratitude.

And somewhere in the middle of all that work, something softened.

Not because adoption isn’t traumatic.
It is.

But because I started to see who I had become.

Sensitive.
Resilient.
Able to love fiercely.

And that fierceness — it finally started turning toward me.

The deepest work was going back for my younger self.

The girl who learned that love meant disappearing.

The girl who sat quietly at that reunion table.

She was still inside me.

Still scared.
Still waiting.

So I learned how to hold her.

Sometimes literally.

Wrapping my own arms around myself and letting her cry.

I created safety for her to come home to me.

I realized something that changed everything:

When I hold myself, I am never alone.

When I choose myself, I am not abandoned.

These people could not make me whole.

Only I had that agency.

I didn’t get to choose what happened to me when I was relinquished.

But I get to choose now.

That’s the power no one can take.

I get to choose who has access to me.
I get to choose whether I speak.
I get to choose whether I stay.
I get to choose myself.

Again and again and again.

And when I started doing that, the load lightened.

I felt real.

Free.

Not free from grief — that still comes.

But free from reenacting abandonment.

I don’t hate adoption anymore.

I don’t romanticize it either.

It shaped me.

It made me resilient.

It made me sensitive in ways that hurt — and in ways that allow me to love deeply.

Starting with myself.

I didn’t have a better life.

I had a different one.

And now it’s mine.

And I will never abandon myself again.