For years adoptees called Lost and Found their Bible. It expressed forbidden thoughts that no one dared to say before, and gave them insight into their own feelings and behavior as children. I talked about the Great Sleep that I and other adoptees went into in order to bear not knowing where we came from or who we looked like. We had awakened only when we realized that not to know would be to live without meaning.
In Lost, Part I, I cover the life cycle of the adoptee growing up in the closed adoption system. In order to play what I call The Adoption Game, adoptees assume different roles. Some become the Good Adoptee, who is placid, obedient, doesn’t ask too many questions, and is willing to live "as if" born into the adoptive family. The Bad Adoptee is rebellious and acts out at home and in school. But here is the paradox: the seemingly Good Adoptees often feel like an impostor because of the secret thoughts and fantasies they are hiding from the parents. And Bad Adoptees, who act out early, sometimes reform, and become overly solicitous to the adoptive parents in young adulthood. For years after Lost and Found came out, adoptees would write or come up to me announcing: "I was the Good Adoptee"or "I was the Bad Adoptee."
I write of the adoptee as mythic hero, the survivor and the double. I introduce "genealogical bewilderment," conceptualized by British psychiatrists Eric Wellisch and H.J. Sants. They noticed the stress of children who have uncertain knowledge of their natural parents. Wellisch observed that the loss adopted children feel in not knowing their heritage or seeing a relative who looks like them could lead them to irrational rebellion against their adoptive parents, the world as a whole, and eventually to delinquency.
In Found, Part II, I write about the ambivalence adoptees struggle with in trying to decide whether or not to search for the birth mother; the stages of the search, which include the fear of knowing; and the varieties of reunion experiences. I call finding the birth father the "mini-search."
Roots and Wings, Part III, came about when birth mothers suggested that I write about their experience as well. I added two chapters: "Birth mothers - Are They Baby Machines?" and "Birth Mothers Who Search." When an adoptive mother told me that she would feel like a baby sitter if her son ever searched , I added the chapter: "Adoptive Parents - Are they Baby-sitters?" Of course, they’re not. Adoptee often feel closer to their adoptive parents after solving the mystery of their origins.
This last section takes up the sealed record controversy, and the civil and human rights of adopted people to their original, unamended, birth certificate.