That day they walked into the adoption agency, nobody really told them.

They never sat them down and explained how difficult the journey would be. It wouldn’t end the day they walked out the door, once the signing of the papers, crossing the T’s and dotting I’s had occurred. What they had begun that day would always haunt them in some way, always shadowing the other joyful moments in life, it would be there, often unspoken but loudly, painfully there.

People told them some of the costs, but this was only in dollars and not in amount of pain grief and suffering. They told them that this would make them happy, a simple process was all that adoption was. Nobody really asked them if they understood, after all how could they, really.

No one ever offered to be there years from today when the emotions were bound to swell up at some huge family event, or simply folding the laundry on a Sunday afternoon. They would council themselves them, or try to search for others who were never told as well. Those others would be the only ones who understood.

They forgot to explain how hard it would be. No one explained how through the lens of adoption experiencing joy, pain, guilt, happiness, questions, anger, regret, apathy, and almost every other intense emotion related to their adoption experience would work to disassociate them from others at times. There was a lack of direction given to them about how they were to love the strangers they had now made life altering connections with, they would have to find their own way.

Everyone who planned to bring this together forgot that they could not plan for them how they would feel over time, how their feelings would change and change again. They did not tell them that others would say that they should be happy when they were sad, sad when they were happy, not so angry at anyone, much angrier at everyone, more compassionate when they had experienced little themselves, and be all knowing as they should have seen this was what would happen to them. How could they? They didn’t know because nobody told them, they had to find out for themselves. The people who became birthparents learned, this is their experience. The couples who became parents through adoption learned, this is their experience. The children who were adopted learned, all they while they were growing up this was their experience. Nobody told them, but they eventually learned.