Ambiguous Loss & Grief for Siblings in Adoption

I’ve been grieving some things lately that I wish I wasn’t having to grieve. And I’m being reminded in the most unfortunate of ways that grief is a complicated, unexpected emotion that shifts and changes and hits you out of nowhere whenever it feels like it. Sometimes an event triggers it, other times it’s just a weirdly hard day.

I’ve found myself grieving so many different things: what was and what wasn’t, what is and what isn’t, and what will never be.

Some days are magic. I feel all the joy and experience delight.

Other days I find myself using every mental process to make sense of absolutely anything.

And then there are days between that I have to remind myself there’s a reason some things feel hard, why exhaustion sometimes hits.

This grief has reminded me of the ambiguous loss in foster care and adoption. It’s a grief often bare of physical absence and yet full of psychological loss.  

I didn’t lose anyone when my family adopted and yet I somehow lost so much.

When my siblings came home, I was not prepared for the sadness of losing what once was mine. I grieved the life I once knew – the normal, the comfort, the certainty, and the security. I grieved the people I once knew, even though those people were still present in my life each and every day. I grieved the loss of myself – my innocence and ignorance. I grieved the life I knew I would never have again. I grieved my reality.

My siblings became the center of our family the moment we met them in the orphanage. It took each and every one of us to just survive each day. My whole world flipped upside-down.

The truth was my siblings had more mess than my parents knew what to do with. They were deeply, deeply hurting, and it came out in all of their behaviors. They were scared and they reacted. They felt out of control and needed all of the control. They craved connection and could handle none of it.

By the time we got home from their home, just two weeks after bringing my siblings into our family, we were exhausted. The shock of the experience had yet to wear off and we continued to walk around in a stunned state.

The only people who I felt would be able to understand what life was like in our new family were my parents, but I did not even recognize them anymore. The parents I had known for the first 16 years of my life were stable, steady, and certain. My dad was a steady rock and I was convinced he could fix and do anything. My mom always had answers. When I did something, I knew how they would respond. Our relationship was known. Our little attachment dance was locked down.

But all of a sudden, I did not know who these parents were in front of me. I could not identify them as my own. Their stability, steadiness, and certainty were replaced with instability, shakiness, and uncertainty. They were overwhelmed, emotional, and clearly did not have the answers to any of their problems. They changed, and our relationship changed. I no longer knew how they would respond if I did something. I stopped trusting the relationship because I did not know what it was anymore. I did not know who they were anymore. Our attachment dance changed. Instead of learning the new steps, I stopped dancing. I stopped talking to them and spending time with them. I stopped viewing them as parents who were there to take care of me.

So I just walked around feeling tremendous loss and yet knew my loss didn’t compare to the losses my new siblings had experienced. I was so very aware that my grief and loss would never be an ounce of the grief and loss my siblings had experienced. Their loss was traumatic, and I will never pretend to understand their grief just because I know their stories.

But for me, the sudden loss of my family was rattling. I had no idea I would lose our family of six and we would never return back to our original form. I was wholly unprepared for my parents to change as much as they did. And I was completely clueless that my brothers would become the center of our new family, of which my older sisters would somehow not really be a part. I was just so unaware and unprepared for all the change, and it left me feeling vulnerable and shaken.

People talk about the ambiguous loss of adoption for adoptees. For adoptees, this loss can look like the physical absence of their birth families, which often involves no longer living with their families even though these family members may live in other places, often without any contact. For me, I realized I experienced a different type of ambiguous loss. My family was still physically present but was somewhat psychologically absent. I still saw my family often – I lived with most of them – but they were different. We were different. I wanted us to be the same as we once were, to be the one thing that did not change in the midst of all I could not recognize anymore, but we were too susceptible. We had all changed and our whole family transformed. I missed them, and I missed us. The loss felt heavier because I did not even know when we stopped being us. I was not prepared for an end to ever come to whom we once were.

Mourning the loss of relationships, of family, of people when they are still physically present in your life is a tricky thing. I was grieving the loss of who we used to be while still being a part of who we were in the present. It was hard and messy.

So I clung to the joy of having my new siblings in my life, thinking that would make up for all the grief.

It didn’t and it doesn’t. All these years later and I know better.

I know there’s no such thing as comparative suffering. I can’t magically make sense of my experiences by comparing them to my siblings’. It’s not helpful to just try to minimize my own struggles and hope they will go away because “it’s not that bad.”

I know grief and joy can coexist, not taking anything from the other. Joy doesn’t replace grief. And in foster care and adoption, they often come hand-in-hand in a most complicated way. It’s best to just hold onto both, believing that one day the joy will be more prominent than the grief.

And I know the only way out is through.