Navigating Holidays as an Adoptee: Exploring Complex Emotions and Self-Care

Navigating Holidays as an Adoptee: Exploring Complex Emotions & Self Care

For adoptees, holidays mean performance. Acting like you care, acting like you’re happy, acting like you’re grateful. And if you don’t perform, then you live in guilt. 

It’s ironic, because adoption itself is an act. 

Join us as we explore this and discuss what holidays are like for us adoptees. 

What we discussed 

(00:38) Father’s day for adoptees 

(08:01) Mother’s day for adoptees

(11:15) Creating your own holiday traditions 

(13:46) Thanksgiving and christmas for adoptees 

(16:38) Always in debt

(18:29) “Performing” Christmas 

(20:14) Ruining the vibe 

(21:00) Not invited

(24:46) Doing your own thing

(25:39) Birthdays for adoptees

(29:47) The most f*cked up holiday OR Gotcha Day 

(33:37) Advice to adoptive families about holidays OR Question for adoptive families OR What every adoptive family must answer

Links

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Credits

Special thanks to Samuel Oyedele for editing our podcast, support his work on Instagram or e-mail him at Drumaboyiglobal@gmail.com 

Transcript

Lia:
Hello everyone, welcome back for another episode of Adoptees Crossing Lines. Today we're gonna be talking about holidays and the different feelings that they bring up and what it's like to navigate holidays as an adoptee. So presently as we're recording this episode, it's currently June, Father's Day just passed. And I know that Father's Day and Mother's Day, those can typically be tough. holidays for us as adoptees. Noel, I'm wondering what do those holidays bring up for you, if anything at all? How do you navigate those?

Dr. Noelle:
Such a great question. So this Father's Day, I didn't celebrate it at all. I called no one, I wished no one a happy Father's Day. I didn't post on Facebook like I normally would post a picture of my adopted father and say nice things about him. And I would normally call my biological mother's husband. and wish him a happy Father's Day. I'm their only child, so that's something I just didn't do this year. I just didn't, I don't know, I was really withdrawn and just not feeling celebratory. I wasn't feeling like anybody necessarily deserved to be celebrated. You know, I actually thought to myself, am I being selfish? Am I being, am I overdoing it? And I just really, it was not in my heart and I gave myself permission to not do it, not be performative. And I think in past years, it has been very performative for me. I send everybody I know who's a father, a happy Father's Day. message and Not feeling it, not feeling it at all. I felt like I felt fatherless this Father's Day and I behaved as such.

Lia:
I felt fatherless. I resonated with that a lot. I did not reach out to anybody for Father's Day. I recently went no contact with my adoptive dad. And so this is my first Father's Day of not speaking to him. And it was tough in the sense of what you were talking about. I felt obligated. I should have said something. And I felt guilty a little bit. the nature of their relationship, and just reminded myself that this is, this is an attempt to take care of myself, you know, in the midst of all the trauma and all the pain. And when it comes to my biological dad, of course he passed away when I was a kid, and for the longest time, like, I really did not care to even mention this man's name or who he was or anything like that. I think last year was the first time that I posted a picture of him. And I just remember people being like, oh my God, that's your dad, that's what he looks like. And it was so funny because I just used to see pictures of my adopted dad. And this year I actually posted a picture of him because I'm feeling a bit more, I guess, connected in the sense of I want to know more about who he was even though there's deep pain in the fact that he abandoned me. I still... Like, there's still parts of him that I want to be connected to and parts that I want to know more about. Because at this point, I'm not going to have the opportunity to ever meet him. And so I'm trying to learn about what it is that I do know. I was out of town, so I think that was kind of a natural distraction for me. But at night, nights are always really hard for me. I don't know about you. But when everything is quiet and I'm alone with my thoughts, that's when everything starts to settle in. And that's when I started to just have the feelings of like loneliness. And I've talked about this before, but I think, you know, I kind of have a unique perspective in that like I don't, my biological parents aren't here. And so while some people may be disconnected from their adopted family, they may be. in reunion or connected to their biological family. Well, I've never had that. So now that I've gotten no contact, it's like, I feel like I don't have anybody. And so that was really tough, just like the weight of that and kind of feeling like I'm navigating everything like alone.

Dr. Noelle:
I am so sorry that this holiday was so tough for you. I often wonder, this is gonna sound maybe crass, but I often wonder what is the point of this holiday? What is the point of these holidays? I think if you have a healthy, good, robust relationship with your mother or father, that you should be celebrating them right along. It's up there at this point with Valentine's Day for me, like it's another way to make money and sell flowers. But when things got quiet for me that day, that day I just sat on the couch with my daughter because my daughter's father died in 2014. So it's a really difficult holiday for her. And so we just sat on the couch and watched bad reality television and ate stuff we didn't need to eat. And that's how we spent the day. But when I got into bed that night, like you were saying, the quiet is my worst enemy. And I started thinking about, with great resentment, the role that my adoptive father played in my trafficking. And I really loved the man. And I'm glad that You know, I didn't have these realizations while he was alive because I don't have to navigate what you're navigating. But for me, I just I was angry. And I talk about that a lot on here. All this anger, Noel carries around with her. I was angry. I was angry that he didn't protect me from my adoptive mother. I was angry that he left me in that household instead of taking me with him when he left her. I was just angry. And I was not feeling the holiday at all, yeah. I also, the last time I posted a picture of my biological father, my biological sisters had a fit. Now they have never acknowledged me face to face. They've never taken the time to talk to me or get to know me, but they sent a mean message to my biological mother. and she contacted me and told me to take it down. So there's some real baggage there.

Lia:
That's tough. I resonate a lot with your anger over the lack of protection and just being an enabler and being complicit in the abuse and the harm that takes place. I think that's a lot of where I'm at in my journey, is just like this anger that feels like it has nowhere to go. And so I'm trying to sift through that. So I'm wondering how. if we can talk a little bit about what Mother's Day is like. I understand, I think it'd bring up a good point too, just about the monetization, the commercialization of all these holidays and just, it's all capitalism at the end of the day. I do agree with you that I think that if you have that relationship, then there are celebrations throughout the year and it's less of a buildup to this one day where you have to do all these immaculate things because you can celebrate people whenever you don't need a day to be able to do that. So I certainly agree with you there, but how's Mother's Day for you?

Dr. Noelle:
Mother's Day is different because I am a mother. And so it's a very selfish holiday for me. My children get together, I get to see all of my children and all of my grandchildren. We go to my daughter-in-law's house or my daughter-in-law's mother's house actually and have just this big old picnic with her family. and everybody gives each other cards, all the moms give the other moms cards and it's become a nice tradition. It doesn't extend to my relationships with my biological mother and I'm no contact with my adoptive mother. So I think I wished her a happy Mother's Day, but I didn't send a card, I didn't. I didn't feel anything, you know, and this is where I am in my journey at this point is I'm very muted. I think there's so much anger. The only way to control that anger is to shut it out or shut it down. And so I'm very muted. So I'm not feeling anything at all. So yeah, I wished her a happy Mother's Day. I didn't call, I didn't call either one of them on Mother or Father's Day. I just didn't and I'm okay with that. I, you know, I'm taking care of me in that moment. Totally selfish, but a long time coming. I've spent 53 years taking care of other people and performing the way that other people expected or wanted me to perform. And this year I just didn't have it in me to do that. How was Mother's Day for you?

Lia:
Before I answer that, it's interesting that you say that you were selfish because I think adoption in and of itself, the entire act is an act that is designed to meet the needs of other people. And so we're constantly in this state of trying to please or satisfy the people who bought us so we don't get... returned or thrown out or whatever the case may be. And so I feel like it's really hard for adoptees, I think, to choose ourselves, because we're so used to choosing other people and making sure other people are happy. That's literally why we're in this relationship is because somebody else wasn't able to meet the needs that they wanted, and so they chose to go through adoption to meet their needs. Mother's Day. Mother's Day brings a lot of grief for me. Even when I was speaking to my mom, it was really, my adoptive mom was really hard for me because we never really had the best relationship. Our relationship kind of started breaking down when I was like 10. So it was always hard for me. Like I always, I don't know, I see things about how people. you know, oh my gosh, my mom is like my rock and I would do anything for her and she's my hero and she did all this. And I was never able to resonate with that. I was never able to relate to that. It was always so funny to hear because I just couldn't even fathom in my head that a mom could be like that, you know? So it brings up a lot of grief. And then of course, as I learned more about like my bio mom it brought up even more grief because I really think that my mom was and would have been a fantastic mom if she was still here. She just was a poor Black woman and so that's you know why she got her kids taken away but I remember reading through my adoption files and I remember seeing something about my mom like resisting an officer resisting arrest and I remember reading that and just thinking to myself like my mom was a badass. Like, and that like runs in and through me, like, with like the organizing and the things that I like to do, like, it's just, it's just literally in my DNA, you know? So I think now when I try to, I guess, try to pivot towards, I think there's still some grief and I think it'll always be there. But I really try to like find ways to like honor my mom. I think something that I want to do in general for holidays, like, because they're so tough, is I want to travel. Like I typically spend it, you know, by myself and just kind of like ruminating and stuff like that. And I don't want to keep doing that because it's not healthy for me, it's not helping me. And so I want to be able to make it, like make it my own thing, make it my own tradition, because who says it has to be X, Y, and Z, you know? Like I think as you become an adult and you have the autonomy and the means to make your own choices, you can make the holidays about whatever you want. So yeah, I think there's grief around that. And I think there's also grief around my foster mom who passed away a couple of years ago. And so I think Mother's Day is definitely a lot harder for me and Father's Day is newer in terms of being difficult.

Dr. Noelle:
Are there other holidays that are difficult for you that you avoid or struggle through or however you deal with them?

Lia:
Yeah, so Thanksgiving is probably the toughest one for me because that was like the biggest one that we celebrate. And I wanted to like, I wanna make an acknowledgement. Like we understand that, we understand that not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving. We also understand that it's the genocide of indigenous people. So I wanna make light of that and state that just sharing my previous experiences here. But. When it comes to that holiday, that was such a big one that we celebrated. And so as I got older, when I was still kind of celebrating it, it was always really tough for me because I wasn't, at a certain point I stopped going around my doctorate. I think when I turned 18 and I had the choice, I just decided to really stop going home. And then I would try to go to friends, but then I found that to be really painful because it was yet another reminder of what I would never have. So it was okay at first, but I think as I started to come out of the fog, it was like, this sucks because I'm never going to have this. So I think that one's tough. And then I think Christmas is tough, mostly because it's so like commercialized. I think it is like probably the most commercialized holiday. And so there's just all this marketing about family and being together. dinner and traveling and all this stuff. So there's all these constant reminders about these things that I just won't have. So that I find that to be really tough. What about you?

Dr. Noelle:
So the last holiday I spent with my adoptive family was in fact Thanksgiving and thank you for acknowledging the difficulties and the complications behind Thanksgiving. But that was a huge event at my adoptive family's home and they just stopped doing it. It just went away. And... I can remember the first couple of thanksgivings after my adoptive mother just cut it out of our lives. She just stopped doing it. And I can remember the first couple after that, just being so empty and so depressed and so just filled with grief. And I knew that they were at their house having some sort of meal together. She had started ordering in the turkey and the stuffing and the mashed potatoes, had it delivered to the house. I simply was not invited. And so now I'm invited to my daughter-in-law's mother's home, this amazing woman, Heidi, if you're listening, I love you. She includes me and my children and... make sure that we have a place to go as a family, and we're part of her extended family. And it's so amazing. I always feel so incredibly beholden or like I'm not doing enough. Like somehow I need to repay this woman for having me in her home because my own family didn't want me. in their home for these holidays. And these people just, they expect me to be there. They treat me like I'm part of their family and make sure that my children, and including my children who are not married to her daughter, so my other son is invited, and his son is invited. And they have such a sense of family. And I see that and I know that I never had that. I've never experienced that outside of them. And I'm so grateful, but at the same time, I feel deficit. I feel like I owe them something that I, I don't even know what it is that I owe them, but I owe them something and I'm not doing enough and I can never measure up in the ways that they do. So I always have a bit of sadness during that lovely gathering that I try and hide, because everybody else is so happy. It's such a happy occasion, and I'm feeling sorry for myself in a lot of ways. Christmas is the hardest one for me, and an acknowledgement that not everybody celebrates Christmas. There are other holidays around that time, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa. Some people just don't celebrate at all. But Christmas is a holiday that I like to celebrate. And I usually get very, very depressed around Christmas. I actually had one Christmas that I canceled altogether. So repeating the behaviors of my adoptive mother, I canceled Christmas on my children. And I regret that. And so now I try and push through it. But I mean, it's to the point where, you know, I don't have memories of Christmases because I'm so suppressed. And, you know, so I buy lots of gifts. That's what I'm trying to perform Christmas correctly for my children and my grandchildren. But it's a very dark time for me, a very dark time for me. And, you know, my... my bio mom sends me these steaks for Christmas, a Wagyu or whatever they are. And it's, to me, it is the most bizarre thing in the world. I've got to be honest. The box comes and she's so excited for me to get it and I'm confused by it. Why aren't we together for Christmas? What, why isn't the gesture? figuring out how to spend Christmas together versus sending me these steaks. So it's just, it's a tough holiday all the way around for me.

Lia:
So we've talked a lot about just like navigating these holidays and how tough they are and you mentioned something about feeling like you owe somebody something that you don't even know what it is or that you can't even repay and you also mentioned... just like the sadness while everyone is happy around you because it's the holidays. And I really resonated with that a lot. I think that's a big part of why I just can't do them anymore because I feel like I'm ruining the vibe. I feel like I'm just bringing everybody down. And so it would just be better if I wasn't there because this is like a joyous occasion for most. You know what I'm saying? Like everybody's happy to see their family and be able to celebrate and things like that. I'm wondering if there are any sort of um, tips or maybe things that you've found that have been helpful as you navigate these holidays and ways to just like take care of yourself or just ways to get through it.

Dr. Noelle:
Unfortunately, no. I have no advice whatsoever. This is a tough one for me. They just had a 79th birthday party for my biological grandmother, my maternal grandmother. And I wasn't invited. I was thought of at some point in there, a couple of my cousins said things like, oh, it's... it's too bad you can't be here. No one asked me to be there. No one invited me to be there. My biological mother certainly has the means. She could have made it happen if she desired to have me there. She was there. And that struck me, right? That people were... having this big celebration and it was a huge meal and lots of pictures online and you know I was abandoned again. And so I the ways that I deal with it is to just stuff it you know because what am I going to do scream at somebody who am I going to scream at who am I going to tell that little Noel is hurting. You know I don't I kept waiting for my biological mother to say something. Even a, can you come? Would you like to come? We would love to have you here. I don't even think she mentioned me not being there. My grandmother did. My grandmother was like, it was perfect except you weren't here. And I wanted to, I had to bite my tongue because I almost said to her at that point, well, nobody invited me. And maybe they don't understand that I need to be invited. So that's the thing about all holidays for me. Like I'm not showing up unless you have expressly and intentionally invited me. Because I need that invitation. I don't know what it's like to belong in a way that you just show up because you know you're expected. And so there were no invitations for this big party. A couple mentions of my absence. But my biological mother, nothing, nothing at all. And, you know, the only way I have to deal with it is to say nothing. I've done a lot of saying nothing in 53 years, a lot of it. I was never able to tell my adoptive mother how painful it was for her to cut me out of Thanksgiving. And, you know, now we're fully no contact. So, of course, there is no. no holidays or no expectations of holidays, but I think that was the last time I expected to be included. And I got rid of that expectation. And so now if you don't invite me expressly, I don't, you know, I don't know that I'm supposed to be there or that people are expecting me to be there.

Lia:
That is so interesting that you say that about just being like explicitly invited because I do think that is a thing where people just like know that their presence is expected and they know that it's okay for them to just come. But I'm the same way as you like I'm not coming unless I have an invite. I don't want to show up and it be this weird thing or I'm not going to invite myself like that's just that's just not how I roll. So. I think a lot of people don't think about that. I think it's just like a thing for them. Tips for surviving the holidays. I don't know, I think for me, I'm just trying to make it my own, like whatever that looks like. Maybe I just wanna be at home and like order in and like watch TV. Like maybe I wanna travel, maybe I wanna go somewhere. I think I'm just trying to like. make it something other than me just like being at home and like ruminating because for me that's like the worst thing like it can send me into a spiral and send me into a depression like very quickly so i'm trying to like steer away from that um so i mean i've tried to i think for the past i would say maybe the past year or two i've tried to like check in with people or like i think i don't remember what holiday it was but i watched a movie with a friend um virtually so just trying to do different things so that I'm not just like sitting here alone with my thoughts. I can't remember if you said it was a birthday or an anniversary, but it reminded me about birthdays, which if you want to call it a holiday, I don't know. It's an interesting day as an adopted person. But I'm wondering what birthdays are like for you. Like, are birthdays a big deal? Do you like to celebrate others? Like, what do you feel about birthdays?

Dr. Noelle:
I am obsessed with birthdays. I always blame it on being an Aries. It is all about us. But I'm obsessed with birthdays. And this past birthday, my biological mother actually came up for the first time to visit us. My birthday is the eighth. My daughter's birthday is the 13th, and my biological mother's birthday is the 10th. So the 8th, 10th, 13th. And so we had a combined birthday party and spent time together up here. And she met all the grandkids for the first time and my middle son had not met them yet. So that was awesome. That felt right, that felt good. But I remember having birthdays where I wondered why I was even ever born. It was always about Why did my mother give me up? Why did she not want me? So there was always this fixation on my birthday and wanting to celebrate my birthday. Let me be honest, I wanted to drink my birthday away. And so it looks like celebration. But I was fixated on my birthday. And then when we finally met finding out that her birthday, she had me two days before her 18th birthday. And she said she thinks about me every birthday because it's impossible to forget because it's so close to hers. But yeah, and I always made a big deal and still make a big deal out of my children's birthdays. I feel like they should be celebrated and have always kind of gone over the top for their birthdays. Because I want them to be seen. I want them to know that they're seen and that they're valued and that they're loved. And there's something about birthdays that do that for me. It's very much about the individual, so you get that individual attention. Yeah, so birthdays are pretty huge and complex over here. How about you?

Lia:
And so birthdays have always been kind of meh to me. Like they've never really been a big deal to me. I think this last birthday was really like the first birthday that I actually was excited to celebrate. So that was like a new feeling for me. But I feel like birthdays really only became a thing for me because of my friends who celebrated my birthday because they grew up with birthdays being a really big deal. And so I. And I like to celebrate other people's birthdays. Don't get me wrong, I love to do that. But to celebrate my own, not really hasn't been a big deal. And I remember one year, my adoptive dad actually forgot my birthday. And I think for me, that is something that will always stick with me. Because how do you forget your child's birthday? And so I think I was maybe in high school at that point. And I just remember being like, yeah, today's my birthday. And oh, I forgot. And I don't know. I think it affected me in a lot of ways, because I just don't understand how you can do that. And I guess maybe that's why I like to celebrate other people's birthdays. I keep people's birthdays in my phone. I always want to try and remember to wish people a happy birthday, because I do think it's an important day. to be able to celebrate. So trying to reclaim that, I guess, and really trying to get into celebrating the fact that I'm here and that I have life and opportunity to do these different things. So I still want a journey with birthdays.

Dr. Noelle:
Okay, so can we talk about the most fucked up holiday that there is? And yes,

Lia:
Let's

Dr. Noelle:
I

Lia:
do

Dr. Noelle:
dropped

Lia:
it.

Dr. Noelle:
the F-bomb, all right. Because this is in fact fucked up. Gotcha Day. Did you have Gotcha Day?

Lia:
Got your day. Whew, they're not ready, Noel. They're not ready. This episode in and of itself. Let's talk about it.

Dr. Noelle:
I just, I don't understand. I just don't understand. I don't understand. The day I bought you, I wanna celebrate the day I bought you. I simply do not understand. And so of course, in my life, my adoptive mother could not have bothered. Like that was not a thing in my life. that would have been way too much effort for her to have remembered that day. I don't even know what day, I don't know what the day is. It was never shared with me. But adoptees around me and now that I know people who have adopted children, this gotcha day, I think it is loathsome. I just don't, I don't understand it at all. And it's... What are we celebrating? Do you know? Did you have a gotcha day?

Lia:
I do have a gotcha day. It's some sometime in May. I don't exactly remember the specific day. I remember I think finding out, I don't know, maybe in high school or when I was going through my paperwork or something, I think that's when I saw it. But yeah, I don't understand it either. I mean, it screams selfishness. It screams me, me. Look what I did. Like praise me. Like you should be, you know what I'm saying? It screams all of that. And just like once again. centering adoptive parents and decentering adoptees. Let's celebrate the day that we chose to break apart a family and the day that we chose to separate a child from their biological family so that we could build our own because we couldn't handle the fact that we could not have kids for one reason or another. And let's call it Gotcha Day because we're not humans or anything, we're objects. What? Yeah, it's definitely a narrative in a day that is really centered around adopted parents and then just like feeds into the savior complex, the narcissistic tendencies and thoughts. It feeds into all of that. I don't know what is so celebratory about that.

Dr. Noelle:
It's the day I became a mother day. Right,

Lia:
the manufactured,

Dr. Noelle:
it's narcissists.

Lia:
right? The day that you became a paper parent,

Dr. Noelle:
Yeah.

Lia:
that's what they can call it, Paper Parent Day, because

Dr. Noelle:
Yeah.

Lia:
that's what it is. It's the day that you signed this paper, and you became a mother on paper, and you got to change this child's birth certificate, and you got to put your name as their mom and dad, falsifying. documentation that if anybody else did that it would be illegal. But because you paid for this, you're allowed to do that.

Dr. Noelle:
Yeah, yeah, it's cringe-worthy at best. I just, I hate seeing it come across my newsfeed. It just, it's outrageous to me. Absolutely disgusting. What would you tell adoptees or adoptive families about holidays? How can they help their young person or old person in my case navigate those holidays?

Lia:
I would say to remember that while this might be a celebratory time for you and you get to be connected to your family, that child may be feeling the loss of their biological family and they may not want to celebrate or they may not want to do anything. And I don't think that you should force your child or your children to do that. I don't think. I don't think it's right. I think that they should have autonomy, you know, and I think that's a big part of the problem is that we don't believe that children should have autonomy to make choices and make decisions and that they're not capable of expressing or knowing what it is that they want or need. So that's one thing I would say. And then I would say too, like, if you have the opportunity to have, connection still with their bio family, that's a great opportunity, a great day or whatever for them to be able to maybe spend it with them or if you have information, or if you have pictures or letters or things like that, I think it's a great day to commemorate things like that. You could, Mother's Day or Father's Day could be something that's reflecting on their bio parents and things like that. And then honestly, I think just like, checking in, making sure that kid is OK, their mental health, and just letting them lead in that. I think enough people just don't listen to kids, and you try to force them to do what you think is best, as if children aren't capable of thinking for themselves and making decisions.

Dr. Noelle:
Yeah, I think for me the question we should be asking ourselves as parents is, what am I asking my child to perform? And I don't think the age of the child matters. I'm 53 years old and I'm still being asked to perform certain things around these holidays. What am I asking my child to perform? And is that performance harmful to them?

Lia:
Well, folks, there you have it, holidays. We'll see you next week.