Self-Compassion for Adoptees
Part 2 of a series on the Heart Practices for the Relinquished
Note: Compassion can only be practiced amid difficulty. As such, this post engages a few common adoptee challenges including denial of identity and belonging.
Key Points:
Self-compassion allows us to sit with difficult emotions
Many adoptees face doubt that complicate self-compassion
Pity, overwhelm, and over-extension can masquerade as compassion
Three adoptees offered takes on self-compassion
Further resources for adoptee support are at the bottom
The Heart Practices: Compassion
The first post in this series listed all four practices and introduced how lovingkindness/metta can support people who experienced relinquishment.
While the practice of metta can appear similar to compassion, metta can happen at any time. Metta can also be an attitude, an orientation, or an action.
Compassion (karuna) grounds itself in the First Noble Truth of Buddhism—existing includes suffering—and acts amid difficulty, distress, despair, and disconnection.
Adoptees Tend to Live Near Our Bodies
Born into an Asian female body, I have become accustomed to the Uber drivers of the inquisition and the taxi drivers of truth. Doubt in my ability to self-report can begin with a compliment.
“Your English is very good. Where are you from?”
“Thank you. It’s my first language. Michigan.”
“No, where are you really from?”
“Dearborn Heights, Michigan.”
“You’re not understanding. Where are your parents from?”
“Michigan and Ohio.”
Asian females get that sequence of questions a lot, but the interrogation lands differently for folks who don’t know where they are really from.
Services like 23 and Me can satiate that curiosity. Our spit shows us “exactly” where we came from on a map. Unfortunately, that map can also communicate: “Let a third-party show you all the places you lack a lived connection and any knowledge of lineage!”
Kaja Finkler, in Experiencing the New Genetics, links adoptee self-doubt to a lack of genetic history. Published about six years after the major DNA boom in the mid-90s, Finkler’s work suggests the CSI craze, coupled with conversations like the one above, made it harder for adoptees to trust ourselves.
Finkler writes the bioinformatic hype coupled with embodied adversity, “become inscribed on the body and expressed in non-life-threatening symptomologies.”
In other words, certain there is something wrong with us as individuals, and not broader systems, adoptees will indefinitely medically investigate, self-pathologize (“I’m defective”), and internalize interpersonal “life lesions.”
Adoptee or not: we are not our genetics. Honestly, we’re not even our bodies.
Self-compassion is remembering we are how we relate to ourselves.
Self-Compassion Practices for Adoptees
Self-compassion is taking care of your own needs, drinking as you pour, and remembering you are only ever the actions you take.
But “you” is not “me.”
I value diversity and inclusion, so I posted a call for “self-compassion practices for adoptees” on a forum of adoptees. After all, as Angela Tucker concludes in her Adoptee Manifesto, “We are not alone. We have each other.”
The moderators removed my post because, they explained in a private message, their forum is support-based.
In Buddhist teachings, there are three “near enemies” that might masquerade as compassion but aren't: pity, overwhelm, and "idiot” compassion.
I experienced all three forms of not-compassion in response to having this call removed. I share this story to give insight into a real, recent, and adoptee-related process, not condemn a community.
Remember: the goal is to recognize when these forms arise and move toward more skillful action. Our humanity is why it’s called “practice.”
Follow me for a tour of reactivity!
Anger and Pity is Not Compassion
Anger is self-protective and egoic. Pity can look like actions taken based on comparisons, judgements, and hierarchies, rather than reciprocal respect.
Scrolling through the permitted posts, I searched for points of difference: What makes their posts more supportive than mine?
As I’ve previously shared, mindfulness of emotions is a primary practice of mine.
Allowing these emotions meant I could see my angry, comparative scrolling did not advance my goal to share self-compassion practices.
Let’s hit our next stop.
Overwhelm is Not Compassion
Overwhelm can look like avoiding actions because of perceived difficulty. It can be succumbing to a proliferation of thought, rather than taking steady action.
The next day, all five subreddit moderators agreed “asking [their] community members to participate in research” was inappropriate.
The “we” decreed surveillance: “After seeing a bit more of your activity, we can re-evaluate the request to interview our members.”
What research? What interview?
Certain this was a misunderstanding, I was not done.
Burnout is Not Compassion
“Idiot” compassion looks like exhausting energy on others while you burn out. This is unidirectional and not mutually supportive.
What they actually said: My brand new account (LightHive) lacks “history of participation in adoptee communities.”
What I read: Where are you really from?
I explained LightHive was new to avoid using my personal account, re-linked my previous post in this series, sent links to previous adoptee-related writing, and a recent post on trauma-sensitive mindfulness for Trauma-Informed Los Angeles.
I sent a small dossier to second set of forum moderators to avoid another r/adopted experience, with a request to please allow me to post a discussion question on their forum.
Global silence. “Life’s lesions.”
Small irritations, like a Reddit disagreement, offer us practice opportunities. Self-compassion—acting out of love despite discomfort—ended this cycle.
Like forgiveness, self-compassion can only ever happen in the present. Dropping expectations for this post meant I could imagine how it might be otherwise.
Cue the anthem: It’s not right, but it’s okay. I’m gonna make [this post] anyway.
Wrathful Compassion
The denied or 'disenfranchised' grief many adoptees experience can complicate our self-compassion practice. Meanwhile, we often doubt ourselves in a way few others understand.
For example, I have never created a small portfolio to ask for permission to speak on social media before. A Reddit post. But here we are.
On the other hand, it’s my view this is why Susan F Branco, JaeRan Kim, Grace Newton, Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter, and Paul O’Loughlin’s Adoptee Consciousness model includes forgiveness and activism.
Becoming conscious about the layered embodied adversity we felt as children (and still) means deeply acknowledging one’s own experience.
Despite our denial and doubt, “adoptees have been at the forefront of political activism and legal and systemic reform” (3). Awareness and goodwill is metta, but compassion is our specific flavor of fortitude.
All minorities must begin “experimenting with new strategies for survival” in our bodies, relationships, and communities, as Dr. Jasmine Syedullah writes in Radical Dharma.
We deserve self-compassion, not because it will make us more productive laborers or because we earned it. Because we inherently deserve to live our lives, not just occupy them.
This insistence on ourselves interfaces with the material realities of our lives on a personal and global level. This is compassion.
Buddhist scholar John Makransky describes wrathful compassion as “wise compassion for others and the courage to confront them in their harmful thoughts and actions.”
He continues
Ordinary anger is motivated by fear and aversion; wrathful compassion is motivated by love that has the courage to confront people for their own sake. Anger seeks to protect the self, or one’s own self-righteousness. Wrathful compassion seeks to protect all others.
I love this concept, and am grateful to meditation teacher Christian Howard for introducing it to me. “All” includes you, even if marginalized folks read that and see, “everyone but me.”
And I will love myself more open, just like I will advocate for trusting yourself to meet your needs in the moment.
Special thanks to MN, Rebecca, and Tayler for allowing me to use theirs words. I am grateful for your friendship.
How do you, dear reader, practice self-compassion?
How to Practice Moderation as Compassion
Self-compassion doesn’t need to be a life overhaul. As meditation teacher Cara Lai has asked, “What if just existing is enough?”
The heart of MN’s offer is agency and nourishing base needs when the world is too much.
I practice self compassion by taking long walks, naps, and edibles. I feel it's important for adoptees to identify what centers them. Though, everything in moderation. -MN
The goal is having permission to feel. As Katherine Morgan Schafler writes in The Perfectionists Guide to Losing Control, “Self-compassion can be a feather’s-weight more grace to yourself, five seconds, you don’t even have to get up.”
What small actions can you take today that center you?
How to Teach Yourself Your Power as Compassion
Everyone can relentlessly become whatever the fuck they imagine through changing which stories they believe.
Tayler Raven Hanxi Bunge’s “Are you there God? It's me, adopted” begins with a trip to see a Judy Blume adaptation, and concludes with a view on the “magic” of self-compassion.
Being a transracial adoptee in a white community was most marked by a childhood of feeling entirely alone and inside myself. And yet it was there, in my brain with no one else listening or watching, that I found Judy, and Judy found me.
It’s in secrets and magic that, when the world isn’t sure what to do with them, an adoptee can teach themselves the story of their “I,” find power in it, explore it, and reformulate it.
And Judy gave me my “I,” which is as close to God as I have ever been able to find.
What inner strengths have you discovered in your own journey, and how have they empowered you?
How to Know Your Needs as Compassion
The present moment can itself be overwhelming. Consider how easy and common it is to disassociate or deny emotions, or become disregulated and overrun by them.
I met Rebecca Cheek through the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN).
At first thought, "self-compassion" presents itself as a woo-woo, trendy, armchair psychologist word. But as an international, Korean American adoptee, self-compassion is a practice I work on a little each day.
When one's beginning story is predicated on loss through relinquishment, long time companions abandonment and rejection tend to make my existence full of unsurety and anxiety.
There are times, I can be unsure of my place in the world. I have one foot out of the door, ready to leave, lest I am left behind.
Practicing self-compassion through meditative walks with my dog and intentional time and focus on breath work, helps ease the chaos of my thoughts as well as dampen the inner-critic in the form of my adoptive mother's voice.
Self-compassion reminds me to speak kindly to myself even when I make mistakes and to prioritize my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing; for this is not a selfish practice, but one that honors and cares for me, when others have not or will not.
Rebecca’s input reminds us that self-compassion is meeting difficulty and the inner critic with care. Everything is practice.
How do you meet your inner critic and demons, “lest you are left behind”?
Adoptee Resources
Adapted Podcast
The Adoptee Mentoring Society, founded by Angela Tucker
Adoptees On Podcast (the episode “Is Adoption Trauma?” Lesli A. Johnson, MFT provides several resources)
They also have a wonderful book list!
Adoptee Voices, founded by Sara Easterly
Adoptee and attachment literate therapists — there is no shame in seeking out qualified, competent support!
The Adoption Resource Center offers free adoption mediation services
How to be Adopted, mostly UK-based but excellent folks such as…
Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN) is a volunteer-run organization with an annual conference
Lara Leon’s Adoptee Wellness YouTube Channel
Paul Sunderland’s lecture on “Adoption & Addiction: Remembered Not Recalled”
Takeaway Practice
Beginners
When you’re working with a challenging emotion, place your hand on your heart and take three deep breaths.
Acknowledge your feelings without judgment (“I feel angry” or the like — here’s some cool emotion wheels) and remember you are doing the best you can. That’s self-compassion.
Everyone else
A practice of generosity: what resources belong in the resource section?
Please contribute anything that’s been useful for you. It can be a single YouTube video or a whole channel, an essay or an anthology, a song, a book, a poem. It can even be a subreddit!
Currently Reading
Greenlights, by Matthew McConaughey
Very “wrathful compassion” quote: “To lose the power of confrontation is to lose the power of unity.” (The audiobook features his take on what a German accent sounds like.)
Bio and Mentorship Info
Logan Juliano, PhD (they/them) is a mindful integration mentor offering 1:1 sessions and group workshops. They remind the untethered of their inner radiance.
If you found this post helpful and would like to discuss practical tips for applying this to your own life, please email Logan [at] lighthiveintegration [dot] [org].
This is such a thoughtful exploration of self-compassion, especially through the lens of adoptees’ experiences. I like how you connected personal challenges with Buddhist teachings and how you unpack the ways compassion is sometimes misunderstood or misapplied. It’s a great reminder that the path toward self-compassion is distinct for everyone but so necessary.