I have dealt with all those feelings. I’m familiar with My fiancé looking into my eyes saying I love you As i pretend to believe them. I feel this skeptical feeling of love sometimes. that feeling is simply there bc it’s what you know. And that’s ok. Once you accept that is how you process love you can overlook the feeling partly as a lie, and partly a healthy defense mechanism. Accept that it may not change and that’s ok. It doesn’t make their love any less genuine, your just processing it that way.
You must feel love deeply. Is your love for others ingenue? If your love is real, then love is real. If your love for others is true then others love for you must be possible. Believe them with their actions. If they are there, they care.
Yes. You were rejected. Your bio moms supposed love doesn’t feel genuine. You feel the primal wound and that is normal considering the abandonment you went through. But I’m sure you have other real love in your life that is genuine even if it feels differently. The way you processed abandonment is so natural. as adoptees we are wise. All people who supposedly say they love you May leave. We know that all too well. But that possibility is true for anyone, adoptees or not. We felt that primal wound so early we now know we can survive it and we don’t take the word love lightly.
I have found the wording of “chosen family” that has grown recently from LBGTQ culture very helpful. For them, many are rejected by family members and they have to form close bonds with friends to fill that loss of “family”.
The cool thing about choosing close friends as your chosen family is that you choose who deserves your time. Someone who loved you so much they thought you’d be better off without them, do not deserve your time or tears. Their loss!
Not sure if you found your birth family yet, but that filled a lot of that aching hole for me. And after yet more years of anger and grief I’m finally at a place where I can genuinely say I’m happy-at night if I think wayyy to hard about it- I oscillate between acceptance grief and sometimes anger but it’s nothing like the utter sobbing pain and emptiness I used to feel. Your situation may be different, but I accept now that my bio mom was a coward. ( a specific circumstance) and somehow, knowing that helps. (As weird as that sounds) Also I love my soon to be husband and chosen family so much, I love the life I forged for myself without their help. It feels good to think you have gone through a unique pain that not many people will ever understand and your still alive to tell the tale. Please be proud of yourself for that!!
Your a survivor. Let that give you confidence. Better days are in the future but you kinda have to make that shit happen without those other people supposed “family”. Also, I have some non adopted friends who have bio family that quite literally are awful people and they have zero concept of genuine love as well. Family is just a word. You choose who gets to be called your family.
Remind yourself daily of things you like about yourself. You are those things because of them and despite them. And above all, as an adoptee if you can’t find one single thing you like about yourself guaranteed you are a survivor and you are brave.