The subject of belonging came up for me recently when I listened to a We Can Do Hard Things podcast called “Being Left Out: Navigating that Lifelong Ache.”
In the episode, Glennon, Abby, and Amanda talk about the need for feeling like we belong, and how fundamental that feeling is to our survival. In essence, humans are social beings, and not being a part of a group during our evolutionary past would mean not having ready access to food and shelter and other collectively gathered necessities. So to us humans, the feeling of belonging is incredibly fundamental, and triggers a part of our brain related to survival. If we are excluded, that part of our brain actually feels like we are now going to die for lack of resources.
I experienced a little buzz of belonging this afternoon, and immediately recognized how important it felt, even though it was a little thing that doesn’t matter that much in my life. I bought myself an abaya to wear to the girls’ mosque, and both girls now have abayas that I’ve hemmed to the right length and well-fitting hijabs, so we all turned up looking like we actually belong at the mosque. I got approving looks and nods from various mothers of kids who have seen me on past weeks, and the woman who runs the place and the Imam both complimented me with a smile and verbal appreciation of my effort. I felt a bit glowy as I left, and it made me think of the podcast. I’m so glad they can see my effort and hope they see it for what it is: a gesture of respect for their faith and way of life.
That got me thinking a bunch about Sunny in particular. I think the poor kid doesn’t particularly feel like she belongs in our home.
It’s different for Sprout. Sprout arrived here when she was less than 2, has been here 3 1/2 years so has developed along with us, and has all sorts of personality traits that fit in with our family. I remember thinking on her third or fourth day here that she fit right in! She loves the outdoors, loves books, is silly in the same way my husband is, and now I know she loves fashion and dark Halloween-y things like me, too.
By the time Sunny arrived, Sprout was “one of us.” It had already been 2 1/2 years that Sprout had been with us. For Sunny, the language was new (she spoke mostly Burmese), having a lot of furniture in a house was new, our English food was new, having many outfits was new, etc. It was a total whirlwind for her. She adjusted incredibly well and quickly to most of it which is a testament to her adaptability and strength, but the very fact that she had to change so much about herself must have been breathtakingly hard.
She’s been with us a year and a month. Her English is really good compared to where it was. She’s used to some of the luxuries we take for granted now. But she was 8 when she was taken from her home and all she knew, so she remembers the details of her old life well, and she’s still keenly aware that her old life and new life are wildly different.
In some ways I think Sunny is afraid to fit in well here for fear that will mean she no longer fits in well in her old home – the home she longs to return to. In some ways she doesn’t want to fit in, and rightly so. She’s Burmese and Muslim. We are not. And she’s proud of those things and needs to hang onto them.
We are doing our best to keep her in touch with her faith through Arabic school on Sundays and making sure she turns up looking the part, but it hardly compares with the daily Arabic school she would receive if she were with her other siblings. We cook our best version of Burmese food for her on occasion but not every day. We drive from here to kingdom come for her to visit her family twice each month so she can speak Burmese and be immersed in her familiar culture, but a few hours twice a month is very, very little.
There is absolutely no way for us to be as authentic as what she comes from. We are, by definition, very white and “English” (meaning non-Muslim). Those are things she doesn’t want to be. And therefore she feels in many ways like an outsider here.
I’ve noticed that Sunny fibs a lot when Kiddo is around. It’s nothing major, it’s just little stretches of the truth or exaggerations so that she can “me too” Kiddo when Kiddo talks about something. It’s been annoying me but I haven’t said anything to her about it because I hadn’t figured out why she was doing it. But suddenly after listening to that podcast I get it: she wants to fit in and belong anywhere she can, and a feeling of belonging with Kiddo is one way to achieve that feeling. It’s also the case that Kiddo has been part of our family almost as long as she can remember and has a lot in common with us as a result, so having Kiddo around might accentuate the feeling of being an outsider for Sunny.
I don’t know how to make Sunny feel better. It’s true that she’s the least like us of the kids, but that’s mostly because she was older when she got here, and has developed along with us less than the others have. She has fewer memories with us. She has fewer tastes in common with us. She hasn’t been to all our usual haunts yet or experienced all our music yet. We’re working on that by making lots of new memories with her and the other girls.
It doesn’t help that she has some challenging behaviors that come straight out of her traumatic experiences, so she gets a lot of feedback that isn’t positive. I have got to get better at couching “correction” within positive feedback. In fact, I need to couch all correction within positive feedback whenever I can.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Even stupid little things like, instead of “please put the eggs away when you’re done with them,” I can say “I love that you’re so enthusiastic about cooking that you made eggs. One thing though, can you please put stuff back after you cook? That would be very helpful for me.”
It’s a lot of effort to couch correction within positive feedback, and when I’m tired and overstimulated and sick of girls wrecking my house or sick of girls arguing with each other, there will be times when I can’t make myself do it. But even if I can do it some, it will help with self esteem and with feeling less like she’s being singled out more than the others, which currently, she is.
Time may help a little too. She’ll grow to have more in common with us as we develop more shared memories.
But I worry like crazy that, if we wind up adopting Sunny, she’ll resent it. That she’ll always feel like she doesn’t quite belong with her adoptive family. It’s a common enough experience among adoptees if adoptee TikTok tells the truth, and I think it does. It doesn’t lead to good outcomes and is a source of ongoing and lifelong trauma for the adoptee. The thought of that breaks my heart. Like all adopters, I want to think of myself as a “good” adopter. But my need to think of myself in those terms needs to go out the window because what’s way more important is how Sunny actually feels. And if she always feels like she doesn’t belong, I’ll have played a huge part in creating an ongoing trauma for her.
It’s important to note that it’s not that Sprout doesn’t experience trauma from being separated from her family of origin and feeling like she doesn’t belong, but it’s diminished some, I think, through her feeling that she “belongs” in our pre-adoptive family.
Am I doing some things right for Sunny? Yes of course. Am I doing some things wrong? Yep. Can I do better? Yes. I can. I have to. I may not be able to prevent the ongoing trauma that comes from feeling like she doesn’t fit in, but I might be able to diminish it even a little through better parenting and therefore I’m obligated to do so.
In the end, it still may not be enough, and we are all potentially going to have to learn to live with that and cope with it and work our way through it as best we can.
Foster care is hard. Adoption is hard. Feeling like we “belong” is hard, sometimes even within our families of origin, much moreso in families we share no genes and less history with.
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