Close but no cigar

"Our survival depends on accurate recognition of both helpful and hurtful experiences. Remembering that it is not enough to remove cues of danger but that we must also sense cues of safety..." - Deb Dana, "Polyvagal Theory in Therapy", pg 67.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop, chipping away at research for a project I'm in the middle of and BAM!

Deb Dana just dropped the mic and my jaw followed suit.

It is not enough to remove cues of danger, but we must also sense cues of safety.

My mind goes straight to how starkly this lays out the experience of being adopted for me.

So many people assume that adoption is "the better choice" because some danger has been removed. Perhaps the danger of being "unwanted" or other forms of abuse and unrest in the home.

What Stephen Porges and Deb Dana have taught me through broadening my knowledge of Polyvagal Theory is... that's not how this works.

True safety cannot be felt simply by removing danger. True safety comes through co-regulation, or what Dana describes as "a co-created experience of connection", and healthy attachment then follows suit. What way too many of us report about our experiences being adopted is that co-regulation was a struggle, which made attachment even more impossible.

Too many of us report homes filled with abuse, manipulation and control instead of genuine attempts at connection and safety.

And even when our adopted parents try to connect, they are often missing a strong biological leg-up in their abilities to attune with us. It's not impossible, but it's not the same as with biological children.

I hear - A LOT - from non-adopted folk that assume that adoptees are rejecting these attempts. Maybe these people have seen glimpses of our childhood and think (or often say they "know") that our parents tried to connect with us.

What many of us have tried to explain is this: It's not that our parents didn't try to attach with us and provide us good lives. The trauma of family separation that we experience(d) made it incredibly difficult for our bodies and brains to feel safely attached and loved.

Adoption is trauma and that trauma becomes a barrier between our ability to sense safety and connect. It doesn't mean our parents shouldn't try. It doesn't mean we as adoptees should "try harder" to connect (that's not a child's job). It means that we as a world should spend much less time attacking adopted people for their genuine feelings of disconnection in their adoptive families and start thinking about how to support healing and prevent this trauma from being perpetuated in future generations.

Dana goes on to say: "Insensitive systems reinforce autonomic dysregulation through blame that engenders shame. It becomes a story about who and not how or why."

My first job our of undergrad was working as a music therapist in a children's hospital. I remember how disturbed staff were when young children had two working parents who couldn't be with their child in the hospital day in and day out. Part of my job was rocking with babies and toddlers when they needed to sleep but couldn't feel settled or safe. I'm often confused how so large an empathy gap exists for adopted people and their unexpected loss of their first parents. The voices they listened to for 9 months, the heartbeat, the smells and tastes... all gone. All different. Where is the concern and empathy for that? Because no easy answer exists we just settle on shame and blame?

Adoptees endure not only the trauma of family separation, but also a world full of systems that at best belittle the adopted experience, and at worst blame the adoptee for their trauma.

Systems like schools, gyms, friend groups, communities, etc., repeat tired tropes about gratitude and "getting over it" rather than doing anything to engender true safety which lies in belonging.

Does anyone feel safe when they're told to shut up and just be grateful they're alive?

I sure as hell don't.

To see science reflect what myself and thousands of other adoptees have been saying for decades, fills me with hope and pushes me toward what's next.

The world doesn't have to be a place of rejection or loneliness. The systems don't have to continue to swallow us all whole.

I've seen what the power of the adoptee community can do in creating new opportunities for connection. Lets keep going that way.