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Why Is It so Hard to Talk to My Adoptive Parents About My Birth Mother?
It’s hard to be honest about our pain — even (or especially) to ourselves.
As a child, I was fond of eavesdropping (don’t be too eager to judge — you’ll have plenty of opportunities to judge me later). At first, I treated it as just another way to learn; as I grew older, it turned into a way to discern people’s honest opinions, as I suspected no one was being forthright with me. I seldom listened in on purpose, but if I happened upon the euphonic tones of someone else’s conversation, I hesitated before making myself known.
On one such occasion, I happened to catch a bit of a conversation between my mother and an aunt. The topic was me — the best subject upon which to eavesdrop, as one quickly learns how differently people discuss him when he’s not present. And after a few minutes of banal chatter, this came up:
“Does he ever ask about his birth mother?”
This was a more interesting topic. Adopted children who overhear — deliberately or accidentally — conversations about them will quickly learn that there is a sizable gulf between how people discuss them when they are present versus when they are absent. No one has ever been forthright on this topic with me, and I know this because I know how they…
