Tasks at Reunion


With the emotions and issues that may surface at reunion, there are tasks to deal with them as well. It is essential to find ways to deal with all those emotions and issues which that may be confounding you.

Those tasks include:

  • Grieving Your Loss
  • Forgiveness
  • Incorporating Your Birth Family Member Into Your Life
  • Taking Some Responsibility for the Reunion, and
  • Dealing with Other Family at Reunion.

Grieving Your Loss

Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile. ~ Jean Giraudoux

This step is not much fun. Actually, it is no fun at all. However, if you properly give yourself the time to mourn your loss, there is a great deal of healing possible. Grieving is hard work, but necessary for many at reunion.

There is a term called “disenfranchised grief” that is very appropriate to use in adoption. For decades, there was no acknowledgement of the fact that to lose a baby to adoption created any sense of significant grief or loss for a birth parent. Nor was there any acknowledgement that a baby who was adopted would notice or suffer the loss of its original mother. Evelyn Robinson has related “disenfranchised” grief to adoption and this article discusses her thoughts on the subject.

Grief from an unresolved loss may manifest itself in depression, low self-esteem, or in a variety of other forms. Society is slowing coming to the realization that grief over a loss needs to be dealt with instead of pretending that it will go away if you ignore it.

Adoptees may discover some loss issues to deal with at reunion as well, even if their adoptive family is the best family on earth. The fact that they were denied the opportunity to grow up in their birth families among people who may be more “like” them may sting at reunion. Especially for adoptees who always felt “different” as they were growing up, loss issues may require some attention at reunion. Other adoptees may feel relieved that their birth family did not raise them. There are a wide range of possibilities.

Even for those adopted at birth, many believe that loss can be a very real and authentic issue for them.

Four stages of grieving a loss include:

  1. Numbness and Denial
  2. Awakening/Anger/Rage
  3. Negotiation/Examination/Education
  4. Acceptance

One fact to note when discussing the stages of any process is that there is not always a neat progression from one stage to another. Slipping in and out of the various stages before finally reaching the last stage can happen – and even then, regression can occur at times.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. ~ Mark Twain

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Credits: Jan Baker