🏠What it means to have grown up as an adopted child
Growing up adopted meant your first experience was abandonment before you could even understand what was happening—creating a primal wound that shaped how you see love and belonging.
You may have been told you were "chosen" and "special," but deep down you wondered why your birth parents didn't choose to keep you. Growing up, you always felt different from your adoptive family—like you didn't quite belong, even when they loved you deeply. Questions about your origins, medical history, or birth family were met with uncertainty or discomfort, leaving gaps in your sense of who you are and where you came from.
You may have learned to fear that people close to you will leave, because the first people in your life did exactly that. You often find yourself either clinging too tightly to relationships or pushing people away before they can abandon you. You overachieve trying to prove you were worth keeping, but success never fills the void of that original rejection. At your core, there's a constant sense that you're somehow "damaged goods"—why else would your own parents give you away?