#9 The Truth Will Set You Free — But First, It Will Shatter You
Adoptees are told many things about our own lives. We are told we were chosen, rescued, given a better life. We are told to be grateful and to forget what was lost. But the truth — when we finally find it — is never what we were told.
Truth, for adoptees, is not just discovery — it is rupture. It is the moment when the carefully crafted illusion collapses when the story we were given no longer holds up against the weight of reality. And when that happens, we are left standing in the wreckage, faced with a choice: rebuild from what was taken or live forever in the comfort of a lie.
The Illusion of Adoption’s “Truth”
For most of our lives, we exist within a manufactured reality.
- Our names, rewritten.
- Our records, sealed.
- Our histories, buried beneath legal documents that erase the first chapter of our existence.
We grow up hearing only one version of our story — the one that justifies the severance, the one that makes everyone else feel comfortable. We are told that this is the truth. But something inside us knows better. Something inside us remembers.
The Moment the Illusion Breaks
For some adoptees, the truth comes in a single moment — a discovery of sealed records, a DNA match that changes everything, a reunion that reveals the depth of what was lost. For others, it is a slow unravelling — an accumulation of doubts, of missing pieces, of the aching feeling that something is not right.
And then, the truth emerges.
- The real circumstances of our relinquishment.
- The family members who searched for us, only to be told we had disappeared.
- The realization that our loss was not inevitable — it was orchestrated.
This is when the world splits in two: the life we were given and the life that could have been.
The Shattering & The Rage of Recognition
When the truth comes, it does not bring peace. It brings grief, rage, and the unbearable weight of knowing.
- Grief for the years spent in ignorance, for the family left behind, for the culture and identity erased.
- Rage at the systems that allowed this to happen — at the agencies, the governments, the adoptive families who upheld the illusion.
- Guilt for questioning at all, for feeling betrayed by those who raised us, for not knowing sooner.
Society does not prepare us for this. They only prepared us to accept the lie.
What Comes After? The Cost of Truth
Knowing the truth does not mean we are free. Freedom comes at a cost.
- It means losing relationships with those who demand we stay silent.
- It means being labeled “angry,” “ungrateful,” “difficult” for refusing to comply with the adoption narrative.
- It means standing alone in our grief, while the world refuses to see what was taken from us.
But the cost of not knowing is far greater. To live in ignorance is to exist as someone else’s version of ourselves.
And so, we step forward — not because it is easy, but because it is the only way to reclaim what was stolen.
The Truth Will Set You Free — But First, It Will Shatter You
Freedom, for adoptees, does not come wrapped in comfort. It comes through rupture, pain, and the relentless pursuit of what was hidden. It requires us to reject the stories we were given and demand the truth we were denied.
Yes, the truth will shatter you. It will burn through everything you thought you knew.
But in the wreckage, you will find yourself. And that is a truth worth fighting for.
To Society — Rescue Without Redemption:
Adoption, Grief, and Society’s Cowardice
In the fog of adoption, I was fed the same narrative over and over, like a hymn sung in a dim church:
“You were saved, you were chosen, you should be grateful.”
These words were not a comfort; they were a cage. When the fog finally lifted, it revealed a truth more grotesque and hollow than I had dared to imagine.
The rescue they spoke of was never for me — it was for them. For the system. For their comfort, their illusion of goodness. And when I looked for the rescuers, there were none to be found. Just empty smiles and an unspoken demand to stay silent.
This was not salvation. This was abandonment.
The Agony of Seeing Clearly
Emerging from the fog was not liberation; it was a freefall. There is nothing poetic about realizing your life began with loss and was wrapped in layers of lies sold as love. The grief wasn’t linear, nor was it fair. It struck like a violent storm, leaving behind a bitter residue that clung to everything.
The irony? I had to rescue myself. Me — fractured, grieving, enraged — left to pick up the pieces of a life stolen and sold. Meanwhile, society, the very machine that turned my identity into a commodity, continued its charade of benevolence.
The Cowardice of a Comfortable Society
I have seen privileged people lose their minds over the most trivial inconveniences — missing Wi-Fi, cold coffee, a bad day at work. These same people have the gall to dismiss adoptees grieving their severed identities and shattered histories. They call us ungrateful, bitter, angry — as if these aren’t reasonable responses to systemic betrayal.
The real tragedy is that society, bloated on its own comfort, refuses to do the work it demands of us. It will not confront the coercion, the sealed records, the commodification of children. It will not face the truth that the system was never about rescuing children — it was about preserving privilege and power.
The Bitter Irony
The greatest irony is that society expects adoptees to rescue themselves. To climb out of the abyss of loss, erasure, and grief without help, without acknowledgment. And yet, when faced with its own systemic failures, society recoils. It defends the adoption narrative like a religion, silencing dissent and erasing truths that don’t fit the script.
It is the height of hypocrisy.
Rescuing Yourself in a Broken World
Frankl spoke of finding meaning in suffering, of taking even the most senseless pain and shaping it into purpose. But what he didn’t say — perhaps because his world had already crumbled — is that sometimes, the hardest part isn’t bearing the pain. It’s bearing it alone while the world insists it doesn’t exist.
To rescue yourself as an adoptee is to defy gravity. It is to climb a mountain no one else can see while society stands at the base and shouts: *“Why are you complaining? It’s just a hill!”
But we climb anyway. Because we must. Because no one is coming to save us.
A Call for Reckoning
Society won’t save itself. It clings to its lies, its myths, its fragile illusions. And the adoptee, standing at the edge of this broken system, becomes a mirror it cannot bear to look into.
The reckoning will come, but it won’t be gentle. It will be brutal, like all revolutions of truth. It will tear down the walls of denial, expose the rot beneath the surface, and force even the most privileged to confront what they have ignored.
But until that day, we do the work they won’t. We rescue ourselves, we speak our truths, and we carry the weight they refuse to acknowledge. Because we know the cost of silence. We know what it means to be left behind.
To those who dismiss us:
Save your platitudes.
Save your pity.
If you won’t face the truth, step aside.
We’re doing this without you.
Hello, my name is Shane Bouel,
I’m a retired, qualified designer, lecturer & e-learning specialist seeking true connection.
I am an adoptee of forced adoption, living in Bali — a place that, like me, holds the weight of displacement and the echoes of histories rewritten. My journey is one of systematic erasure, existential severance, and, ultimately, reclamation.
Adoption is often seen as an act of love, a new beginning, a gift. But beneath that narrative lies a deeper, often unspoken truth — one of loss, identity fracture, and the struggle to exist in a world that does not recognise what has been taken.
I have spent years unravelling my own story, uncovering what was erased, and reclaiming the self that was meant to disappear. It has been a journey through grief, awakening, and profound transformation. And now, I invite you to walk that path with me.
From here, we embark on a journey together.
