I spoke with a strong lady last night. I like her very much, we have a lot in common. We’ve been down some of the same roads.

In speaking with her and others involved in adoption, I’m always struck not so much by the similarities, but our reactions to them. I’m beginning to detect patterns somewhat like the stages of grief.

It seems that many of us start out as the happy adoptee, we cannot fathom what these angry people are saying. What do they mean by declaring adoption as something like slavery? Our parents loved us didn’t they? We were cared for.

Then we come up against everybody from the government to our families and friends treating us like the eternal child when we complain about the lack of information available to us. At first we wonder why the hell they are so mad at us for just wanting to know what everybody else does. Then it occurs to us they don’t think we deserve to know these things, we should just be grateful that someone adopted us. This is where the anger starts.

We aren’t really mad a these people, we are mad at something much bigger. We start to sense what we are up against. It seems that the institutions and people who should help us are instead putting up every roadblock possible to finding answers. It dawns on us that those angry adoptees might just have a legitimate reason for their anger, but we aren’t quite there yet.

So we take on the system, with varying degrees of sucess. Some of us find what we are looking for, some don’t. The funny thing is, from that point, it doesn’t seem to matter. Those who are disappointed stay mad, those who aren’t stay mad too. Knowing what you missed is every bit as maddening as not knowing.

No matter which road life takes us on, we end up in the same place. All roads lead to anger.

What’s the next stop on the road? I honestly don’t know.

I’m stil mad.

I hope there is reslution for every single one of us, all I know is many of us are walking together now.