An open letter from an adopted kid...

Dear mom and dad.

I know you have done everything for me. You have given me a comfy bed and cool toys. I am fed and have clothes to wear. But i still feel unloved and alone. i don't understand why my real parents didn't want me.  i don't know why i couldn't live with them. I've heard you say that my real mom couldn't take care of me. But you can take care of me, so why couldn't she.  she must not have loved me enough. i thought moms and dads were always supposed to love their kids. what is wrong with me?

I know I don't sit still.  I get in trouble at school. Is that why they didn't want me?  Am i too loud in the house? Is it because I get muddy and dirty? Maybe they thought I was ugly. Did I cry too much as a baby? That must have been why they gave me away. 

you tell me you love me.  you tell me that i belong to you. but then i hear you say that you can't handle me. i hear you tell dad that i make you crazy. dad says that he doesn't know what to do with me. Does that mean that you don't love me either?  you are always on the phone talking to other people, and when i try to talk to you, you tell me to be quiet.  i just want to tell you about my day. and when i do other things to get your attention, then you get mad at me and yell.  it scares me when you do that because im scared you will give me away too.

i try to be good. i try to do the right things so you will love me.  When i do good on my spelling test, you give me a present.  when i haven't fought with anyone at school, we do something fun together.  but i can't always be good. sometimes i just want to run around and yell. sometimes my brother makes me so angry, i hit him. and then you yell at me and tell me that you are frustrated and don't know why i do those kind of things. 

you only show me you love me when i do good things. my real parents would love me even when i did bad things. my real parents would take me to the park, take me to the zoo, and build things with me all the time. my real parents wouldnt yell at me.  my real parents would be able to handle me.  my real parents would never be to busy for me. 

but they didn't love me.  and you don't either. i must be so bad and ugly that nobody can love me.


I wrote this letter because God has really been putting the hearts of adopted kids on my mind lately.  As someone who was taken away from my birth mom at 7 and adopted when I was 11, I remember how it can feel to be abandoned and feel unloved.  No kid is logically able to distinguish "she couldn't take care of you" or "she was on drugs" from "she didn't love me."  As a kid, those concepts are hard to grasp.  In an adopted child's mind, you can only understand that your real parents aren't you parents now, and so they must not have loved you. I have seen and heard so many stories about families of adopted kids (adopted parents and the child) having horribly dysfunctional relationships. I think adoption has become this rosy ideal way to have a "family."  Yet, nobody is preparing parents for exactly what is down the road and helping them get through what will eventually come up in the child they are opening their homes to.  I am so incredibly blessed to have such committed parents who were able to walk me through all of this when i was a kid going through it.

Everyone questions who they are at different times in their lives. And when you are adopted, the fundamental cornerstone of "family" is not the "normal" picture.  And so many times, i think adopted parents don't know how to deal, just the same way these kids don't know how to articulate "I feel like abandoned by my real parents.  My heart is broken, and so I am acting out because of that."  Its easy to forget that it is so normal to question and seek out the basic answers to who we are, but kids lack the tools to do it so neatly like adults do. A child sorting out their history and identity can be a messy thing. 

Its not an easy fix.  I definitely don't know the magic formula that needs to be given to new adopting parents. But I do know that 1. kids emotions aren't rational. 2. a heart broken child can and will pick up on the emotional undercurrent and if it's negative, they will assume that something is wrong with who they are and that 3.adoption is just as a serious and spiritually significant as marriage. 

i feel like I'm leaving this as an unfinished thought, but its not something that can be neatly ended with a few nice sentences. I just want the world to realize what these kids are feeling, and I pray desperately that God will "turn the hearts of parents toward their children."