The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 2 136 is because of the strategies my mom used.” Teresa explained that her adoptive mother’s intentionality regarding her processing and normalizing her adoption story helped Teresa not struggle emotionally with her adoptee status. However, most participants relayed a personal story of loss and grief that they initially believed did or did not relate to their adoption, which iterated the sense of ambivalence from the participants when asked about loss and grief in association with their adoption experience. For example, even though Martin expressed not having feelings of loss and grief related to his adoption, when he discussed the loss of his adoptive parents, he was struck with a sudden, profound feeling of emptiness: “After my [adoptive] parents passed away, it was like, okay, now I need to fill that void to see where I really come from.” In contrast, Tonya saw how her feelings of loss and grief were directly related to her adoption: “I guess I just experienced loss at a younger age than most people probably would. Because I had to learn how to let go of something I didn’t even know. Someone I didn’t even know.” Mike echoed Tonya’s feelings about the immense ache of missing a person he had never known, his birth mother. The realization that he was grieving the loss of his birth mother initially hit him when he was processing the loss of a romantic relationship: I think that mother aspect was really something that was powerful in that moment. . . . That moment stayed with me. Because I realized that was the night that I finally started to grieve the loss of my [birth] mom. And I started to realize, it’s OK. She’s out there, and you’re out here, and you’re OK with being sad for her, and finally, someone opened the door for me to do that. Teresa, whose potential struggles with loss and grief were alleviated by her adoptive parents’ openness in talking about her adoption story, shared some sadness related to her adoption. She stated that she mostly thought about the parent who gave her up. She wondered about the impact on her biological mom, sharing “What if it was really hard for my mom? Or what if I had a sister out there who misses me? Or a brother or something?” Her expression of grief and loss was more around the questions to which she did not have answers. All the participants were able to discuss aspects of loss and grief, as would be expected, because they are existential elements of the human experience. In interviewing the participants and reviewing their transcribed stories, it appeared that some of them had potentially never processed the idea that they could have experienced sensations of loss and grief related to their adoption, and the research interview was the first time they had been confronted with the idea explicitly. However, most of the participants were ultimately able to connect some loss and grief feelings to their adoption status or experience. Identity Curiosity Another notable theme was an expressed desire for the participants to understand who they are as human beings—to clarify their identity since being adopted. The seven participants varied in the amount and timing of the information they had about their adoptions as children. One participant, Teresa, poignantly shared how her adoptive mother would tell Teresa’s adoption story at bedtime, including being adopted from Korea without identifying information of her birth family. In contrast, Luke relayed that his adoption was revealed to him by a vindictive cousin. However, regardless of the amount of information the participants knew about their adoptions as children, as adults, most of them made some reference to intentionally working toward discovering and understanding who they are.
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