Letters, Rejection, and the Life-Long Journey of Adoption
Letters, Rejection, and the Life-Long Journey of Adoption
Published on:
Mar 02, 2026
Category
Emerging Leaders Candid Corner
The Emerging Leaders Candid Corner
A place where adopted adults candidly share THEIR stories & answer YOUR questions
It is 2007, in the evening time, and my family is gathered for dinner. I am perched at a high-top chair, my elbows leaning down on my parents’ cool granite countertop. Reflecting back, it seems that all important conversations happened here in my childhood home. Both precarious, serious, and communal in fashion.
My parents were nervous. There is a tone of uncertainty in their voice. They are holding a paper envelope and have a stack of binders next to them. You can tell they have consulted each other many times as they pause between sentences and jump in for one another as they collect their words and breaths.
The envelope opened to be a letter, which was much more than a postcard. We received a lot of mail from relatives, but this letter was not a school photo of one of my cousins, or a note from my grandmother. Instead, it was addressed from my family’s adoption agency with a letter and photo enclosed.
I don’t really remember any of the contents of the letter, partially as the letter was not written for me, but for my adoptive sister. The letter was from her biological mother, and it noted information about her recent experiences and my adoptive sister’s half-sister.
I do vividly remember my sister’s expression. The questions, the connection, the immediate comparison of facial features. My brain immediately jumped to an inner dialogue that in all honesty has not changed much over the 21 years.
“Why didn’t they (my biological family) ever write to me?”
“Did they ever open the letters I wrote them?”
As kids my parents encouraged my sister and I to write at least one letter a year and pick out an image to send to our adoption agency. It would be “placed in a box” where our biological mothers could “decide to go and read them.”
“If they saw me in a large crowd, or heck, a small crowd, would they recognize me?”
I felt isolated, left out, and completely invisible. Caught in the middle of two worlds, floating and feeling untethered to either. Rejected.
Sliding a white binder with a stack of cursive papers across the table towards me. My parents decided to share for the first time my “social history,” or what was left of it…
Immediately my eyes darted to “Other Children,” where the names of two half-siblings were listed on my paperwork.
“Why did my parents keep this information from me?”
“Do my other siblings know about me?”
The rest of this memory is hazy, but it ended with my dad sitting with me separately. He affirmed how difficult it must be and how upset I must be that my sister had this opportunity, and that I had not.
Jump to the year 2025.
I am sitting in my parents’ living room on Thanksgiving. They live in a new house, with a new couch to where it seems convenings have shifted. Gone are the cold tables but the tension and uncertainty around complex conversations and topics have not evaporated.
My sister giggles with joy and glee, with her two-year-old daughter jumping at her shins. She has connected with her biological mother over Facebook. I hold so much joy for her in my heart. But also, sadness. My biological mother passed in 2018, before I connected with members of my family. I yearn for that missing connection, and biological mirror.
I still sit between worlds, in partial reunion with my biological family, and a swirl of love and sometimes unnamable feelings within my adoptive family. I’ve found moments of deep connection and understanding, but feelings of rejection and deep loss remain ever present in my journey.
