Adoption: A Story of Loss, Love, and Relationships
Adoption: A Story of Loss, Love, and Relationships
Published on:
Feb 02, 2026
Category
Adult Adoptees
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My adoption story, I was told from an early age, began with an expression of ultimate love and immense sacrifice – my birth parents’ decision to place me for adoption. I never really challenged this notion of love as a child because I was given the world by my adoptive parents. No questions were asked, no conversations were had. In my growing mind, my birth parents made a thoughtful choice, one that benefitted me and my adoptive parents. This fruitful angle left my birth family on the periphery of a story that wouldn’t exist had it not been for their decision.
Understanding the Birth Parent Experience
When I was in a previous role serving children experiencing foster care, staff members had a weekly opportunity to consult and seek guidance on their cases. One of my former colleagues said something one day that flipped society’s view of struggling parents right on its head: “I have never met a birth parent who didn’t love their child.” Amidst mental health conditions, substance use, and overall instability many of the birth parents faced, there was an unwavering truth. The children I worked with were not in foster care because their parents were lacking in their ability to love. They were separated from their caregivers for extenuating reasons that impeded them from keeping their kids safe and loved simultaneously.
Supporting Birth Parents During Supervised Visits
Some of the kids on my caseload had scheduled visits with their parents in my office, and when these went well, this was an opportunity to see love in action. Parents would bring snacks, toys, and try their best to engage with their children in spite of the circumstances keeping them apart. This isn’t to say that visits were free of emotional dysregulation, redirection from staff, or sometimes even re-traumatization, but when parents were in a good spot, their love was evident. I used these times of connection and love to gather information for the children’s Lifebooks, used as a creative, visual way detailing a child’s life story and interests. If I could work with birth parents as well as with the child’s current caretakers, I would collect as many memories, pictures, and stories as possible to add of their birth family.
The Importance of Birth Family Information
My own adoption story, and significant lack of birth family information, played over and over again in the back of my mind.
What if this child never reunifies and is adopted?
What if there is limited or no contact with their birth family?
Who, then, will be responsible for keeping their story alive and available to them as they grow?
And most importantly, who will remind them that their story was not devoid of love?
These children endured remarkable loss in their short lives – losses of familiar faces, places, sounds, smells, and quite often, the love that was shown to them in, by society’s standards, unapparent ways.
Holding Two Truths: Love, Loss, and Loyalty in Adoption
I’ve witnessed love’s coexistence with immense loss and when a child’s goal became adoption, not reunification with their birth parents, these losses only compounded. No love in the world, not even that of adoptive parents, could wipe clean the memories, the lasting connection, and most importantly, the love I witnessed.
Adoption is founded on loss, but from this loss can emerge the most profound love. A joining of families, birth and adoptive, shows children that love multiplies. Love is not a pie with limited slices. It exists in both the roughest patches and brightest times. As children grow, they can hold space for this nuanced understanding of their story and the love and loss that co-existed.
Sometimes, the loss feels insurmountable, but the love remains. Other times, the love is more obvious than the losses, and in these moments an adoptee’s loyalties are on full display. Loyalties are our relationships, our ties, whether they be biological, adoptive, chosen, or something else.
In my experience, “my loyalties are tied to all those who love me and who I love in return.” Despite our losses, love and relationships can and will blossom. Take the time to see this through – our love is only stronger because of the losses we have faced.
