This month's PAC-UK guest blogger, who has chosen to remain anonymous, looks at the short and long term impact of adoption on brothers and sisters. A huge thank you from all at PAC-UK for sharing your personal experience in this guest blog.
I was asked if I could write a little bit about my views of adoption and its affect. I can’t think of just one description, but I’d like to try and describe how I see it and feel it.
One way that I see adoption is like a giant poker table where everyone gets a different deal of cards, for some it’s an incredible and a wonderful gift, for some a fresh start, for some it’s a horrific loss, for some salvation. It’s a brutal way of the world shaking things up.
My side of table was the one with the bad hand and I lost it all, but the family that now get the honour of modelling my sisters into outstanding human beings; they got the best hand at the table. My mum and I were the two with the losing cards. Oops, you lost. Your game ends here, better luck next time; that was our result.
Adoption from my side of the table is like chucking a brick into a still pond, ripples that start small and widen as they go out. It’s also like a surgical scar. The wound might heal, but the surgery always leaves a scar.
I guess you could say it’s like chasing a bus, the destination being your sibling’s life but you’re a second too late… the bus door closes as it pulls out of the stop, their journey continues but you’re left behind in the rain.
One thing that fascinates me about my sister’s adoption are the ripples; it made my grandad harsher and much more short tempered; made my mum forever hurt with such varying emotions and days; for me, it made me wiser but also more afraid and with many more struggles!
See, I moved on with my life and have a second family as I call them. I chose to live a whole new life and begin again, but even so, my trauma still ripples through and affects me.
The reason I’m smarter is because I know to appreciate everything about them, and every second I have with them like I never would have done before, but that’s also because I am unbelievably afraid every day.
One of most VIVID lessons I got from this was just how easily “forever” can change and life as you know it can just slip through your fingers like sand.
I am so scared every day that I’ll lose another family like I lost my biological family and I struggle a lot with this, especially when I am away from them, and to be brutally honest, I struggle badly with separation anxiety, which is something I never used to have. I absolutely hate goodbyes with them, just because I worry it will be the last one.
Adoption has changed me for good; I know to hold on to what I’ve got with both hands, but it also left me with scars that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Anonymous | February 2020
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Please note, all content published on this page is provided by our guest blogger/s, based on their real-life experiences. We invite you to discuss this blog via PAC-UK's Twitter profile and ask you to tag @PACUKadoption in to your posts and use the hashtag #PacukBlog
This blog is the twelfth of our monthly 'guest blogger' platform which we started in 2019. We would love to hear from adoptees, birth parents (and relatives), adoptive parents/carers, special guardians and professionals who are interested in taking part in future blogs. If this interests you please email leon@pac-uk.org.
