Third Mom wrote a post called Absence of Grief where she was actually responding to yet another blogger, but I couldn’t make the link work. From Third Mom’s summary, it was about a mother who worried that she doesn’t see her daughter grieving.

So, I had to think about it for awhile. Did I grieve? Do I grieve? Should I grieve? All of them are valid questions and I have to say the answer is still no. Sometimes, I think that our society is a little too private and we forget that it’s okay (sometimes) to ask our loved ones what they are thinking. (This is coming from someone whose middle name should probably be private.) It’s also okay for our loved ones to tell us to go taking a flying leap and mind our own business.

Grief is something that I do understand, but I don’t dwell on it. I understand that children (especially older children) who are adopted can suffer grief when they are thrust into a new part of their life. I understand that some adoptees experience grief later in life. Third Mom has a quote on her post.

If something is important to you and you lose it, you grieve. Simple as that. So if you lose something and you never grieve much (or at all), then again, one of two possibilities: either you’re in denial (ack!), or the thing you lost just doesn’t mean much to you.

There is truth in that statement; however, I am left wondering why everything always has to be so black and white. While I was asking myself the grieving questions above, I realized that I had also left out an important question. Have I grieved? Is it possible to grieve and get past it? Are we (adoptees) expected to grieve forever?

I suspect that even those of us who don’t feel grief in our every day lives have grieved. It may have been a flash in time that corresponded with a thought that is gone before we had time to comprehend the feeling or perhaps we just didn’t recognize it at the time. I don’t think that my lack of grief means that what I’ve lost doesn’t mean anything to me. I like to think that my birth family doesn’t expect me to actively grieve forever. I hope that they would rather I have positive thoughts about them as I grow older.

If you would like to comment, but not on this site, please e-mail me at adoptkoreablog@adoptionmail.com.

Adopting From Korea