Private Adoption Education On Trauma

Private Adoption Education on Trauma

The private adoption process can be full of trauma for all sides of the triad. Understanding, preparing, and healing from that trauma is critical for all involved. Today we are going to get a better understanding of how to heal from the adoption process and how to prepare for trauma with adopted children from Stacey, a coach who is focused on trauma and adoption trauma.

Stacey’s Background

Stacey Uhrig is a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach who educates on what childhood / developmental trauma is, where it shows up in adulthood (keeping you stuck!), and how to finally move forward from it. She helps people identify patterns and limiting core beliefs developed in childhood and teaches them the tips, tricks, and tools on how to FLIP them as adults leading to more joy and connection.

As a practitioner who utilizes modalities like Hypnosis and Rapid Transformational Therapy, Stacey helps her clients gain clarity and empower themselves to look at their life challenges through a different lens, flip their mindset, and find greater purpose and more importantly PEACE in life.

Stacey’s Adoption Story

When I got married, I very quickly wanted to start a family. It's something I had always wanted, and it just was not happening for us in a traditional way. So my husband and I went through a number of years of infertility, and for a variety of reasons, I did not feel that fertility treatments were going to be a good path for me. There had been a huge history and my family where women endured extra hormones, by way of say, hysterectomy, or very, very early on, like seven days birth control, and it didn't fare well. In my family, most people ended up with some sort of fatal condition. Let's just put it that way. Whether it was breast cancer or blood clotting, it didn't go well. So, I had to really ask myself, what was it that I wanted, and what I knew I wanted was to be a mom. 

I recognized pretty quickly when I did this little self-audit that being pregnant was not as important to me as being a mom. Though all of us who go through an infertility journey, it's a very lonely, sad, isolating experience, especially if you're trying to get pregnant in this age group, where people are often getting pregnant. For me personally, it felt like I was failing a test every month, I'm doing all the things I'm being told to do, and it was not happening. It is happening all around us. So it was a very tough time on a lot of levels. But once I made that decision for myself, because there was a lot of, you know, as well as not being able to get pregnant, I had a lot of anticipatory anxiety about this idea of doing the infertility treatments, because I knew it didn't fare well in my family. So, I felt like between a rock and a hard place, and I just remember saying to my husband, we were driving on an errand and I said, we're getting really close to this timeframe that we had said we would wait X amount of months more. And I said, I just, I don't think I can do the IVF or the IUI. I just don't think I can do it. And he said, well, what does that mean? Does that mean that we don't have kids? And I said, no, I really think maybe I'm called to adopt, but then he needs to come to that. Right. So, if you want to know we had a really interesting way of doing that. 

I think often women come to things quicker. In my husband's defense, I had been mulling it in my head. Well before I had mentioned it to him, I felt like I was being called to adopt. So when I brought it to him, now he had to take that journey himself. But he's also much more analytical, much more black and white, while I am much more in the gray space. So when I first mentioned it to him, now I'm kind of on bated breath. Like, did you think about it? Did you think about it, and now that's extra pressure. So one day, he came home from work, and I said, Okay, here's the deal. I definitely know I want to adopt. But I'm like 80%, and I still have my own concerns, I still have my own fears, I still have things that I need to get answered for myself. So I have a mason jar here. And I have 10 stones, and I've put 10 stones over here for you, and eight of my stones are in right now. That means I'm 80% in. And you might see tomorrow, they're seven. And maybe the next day, there's nine like I'm just as I'm going through this journey I'm going to put in and take out, but you'll know where I stand, because you'll just see the stones. So I'm gonna do the same thing with you. I'm not gonna ask you anymore. And when I see that you're nine or 10 in, we'll talk. And he was like, that's great. So that's what we did, and it took about four months. I had bought some books like Adoption for Dummies. I went away with a girlfriend for the weekend, and I came back and he's like, I'm all in. So you know, it took probably four months, which in retrospect is not a long time. Then we went through our own experience of trying to figure it out for us as a couple of what was important to us in that adoption journey. And then within a few months had selected Korea as a place that we wanted to adopt from.

What that process was like for you adopting from Korea?

I can, and I'll preface it with my one that is almost 18, and my one is almost 14. So I know it's probably not the same, because it was so different between the two. What I can tell you is based on my experience from doing it in 2004, and 2009. In that experience, different from domestic and international adoption, when you are matched with a child, the parents' rights have already been severed. I think some of the up front is somewhat similar. You have a social worker that's assigned to come and do home visits, which takes about six months, they write the report, and then that's sealed. And that gets sent with your application to the agency in Korea, and then you wait. 

In both of my cases, one was nine months, and one was 18 months for the match. When you get matched, you're basically getting a picture and they're like, congratulations, here's your child. And unless there's something like really extraordinarily significant, you take that match. So it's kind of very serendipitous and faith-based and universally are divinely designed, in my opinion, right? With my oldest son, he was eight weeks old when we were matched with him, and it was the only picture we ever saw of him until we laid eyes on him in person. I know the process changed. By the time we adopted our second child, and at that point, in Korea, they're really trying to promote domestic adoption within Korea. So at that time, and I don't know if it's the same now, a child had to be available for adoption in Korea for five months. So we could not get matched before five months. Once you are matched, you could accept and then at that point, in all those cases, once you accept that it's a whole new host of paperwork, because now you're adopting an immigrant orphan, right? Which means they need to get a visa, and they need to get a passport, and they need to get all of those things in place. And that takes about another four months. So my youngest came home at nine months old and my oldest came home at six months old.

How Hopeful Adoptive Parents can prepare for the trauma their adopted children will face through the adoption process

We really weren't well informed and not to the fault of the agency. I'm not really quite sure what they share and what they don't share. But it's so obvious to me as a trauma recovery coach, what I'm looking at in my own children. So earlier, we were talking about this big T little t, right? So one thing I didn't mention in our process is that one of the reasons that we chose Korea is because they really primarily use a foster care system. In our process, that was a very important thing to us when we were looking at doing international adoption. I can't say it's any different but at the time, our thought was foster care may help child development wise for the child. So we were looking at the health care system, how often do they go to the doctor? How in alignment is the health care system in the medical system with the United States system, vaccine-wise, treatment-wise, all of that, so it'd be an easier transition? But we were also looking at, you know, do we want to do orphanage? Do we want to do foster care? We took a lot of these things into consideration. 

One of the reasons why we chose Korea was because there was a foster care system for the children. With that being said, the way that they do it, at least at that time was your child would be placed into the system in the city or the area of the country that they were born in. So using our country, for an example, you're in Arkansas, if the headquarters for the agency say was in the New York, New Jersey area, but the child was born in Arkansas, they would place the child in a foster care home in Arkansas. Once the child was matched with the family, they would then move them to say where the headquarters are, because this is where their main medical facility was. So they imagined they would get moved to New York from Arkansas. Just using this as like an example because both of my children were like, pretty significantly, far from Seoul, which is the capital and where all of the main headquarters were. So in my older son's case, he was born, he was in foster care, and then was matched with us at eight weeks old and then was moved to Seoul, and then was there for four months and then was moved here. Wow. By the time he was six months old, we were his third family. That's three ruptures right from the birth mother to the first foster care family to the second foster care family. So really he has been in four arms by the time he's six months old. My younger son, there was something that happened when he was at his first foster care placement that didn't work. So we had two foster care placements in Busan, where he was from, should be like Florida to New York, right? And then moved to Seoul and then came to us. So by the time he was nine months old, we were his fourth family. I had no concept of how significant of an impact that was going to have on my child. Yeah. And it did have a significant impact. I'm not even sure that they're aware of that, because it says they're normal. But, I wouldn't do anything different at that moment, because they're so young.

I can clearly see now the impact that it had, and I can see the impact it has on them. Now they both struggle with anxiety, there has been depression bouts in and out. And, you know, the reality is, if you think about it. Let's use Arkansas and Florida as an example. A child doesn't really know what a parent is, they definitely know the person that they're with is not the person that they were with for nine months prior. Right? The voice is not the same. The connections not the same. Everybody knows that. There's no question about that. So now they're with this caretaker, who they can know that as long as their needs are being met, fed, hydrated, right, you know, cared for clean roof over the head, and most importantly, connection and love nurturing. They're not making a discrimination. But now all of a sudden, you're moved to another home. That other person's gone. You're terrified, where's my person? The smells are different, the sounds are different. I don't recognize these voices. I don't recognize these people. Where are my people? The only concept that an infant can come up with is it must be me. They're not aware of any kind of process and plan in place, and then it happens again. What ends up happening with the child is inherently becomes this message of I must not be enough. No way for them to have the concept of 'Oh, I'm just on a journey and I'm gonna end up with my forever family.' This is just a part of the process. There's no possible way that they can get that concept no possible way.

4 Tips for Preparing For Adoption Trauma

It's like putting the oxygen mask on. If you don't take care of yourself first, you're not going to be able to take care of the other people around you to the best of your ability.

1.  Be aware - go in with eyes wide open. All experiences, even those in infancy or in the womb, can have an effect on our children when they leave their family of origin.

2.  Nature vs. Nurture.  They equally affect your child and we must honor it.

3.  Be open - our children are on a journey called life and we've been chosen to guide them on it. Each child will explore their life differently, coming into it with different core beliefs and lived experiences. Honor each one as unique and purposeful.

4. Adoption doesn't just happen. It's forever.

One Thing You Want The Audience To Know

Adoption is beautiful. It's amazing that we can be a person to guide a child through life. But when it's not with the family of origin there is a primary wound for the adoptee whether they realize it or not, that at some point may come to the surface to be addressed. Don't ignore it. It's a part of their process. Be aware and open to this possibility and be prepared on how to best support them.

I found today's conversation with Stacey, incredibly informative and valuable. You can find Stacey at flipyourmindset.com. And honestly, this is a resource I wish I had at my fingertips when I was going through my own adoption journey, learning how to process those triggers. And that trauma from your childhood and from just, you know, kind of the process of adoption in general, I know will make your adoption process much more peaceful. So, I hope that you take the step to get the support you need. And go check out Stacey and see all of the amazing tools that she offers, so that you can put those to work in your own adoption journey. Remember, anything's possible with the right plan and support and get the right partners to support you along the way. I'll see you soon friends.

Hi, I Am Amanda

I am an adoption profile expert on a mission to teach you how to adopt and help you create and share your family's story more affordably!