The Luxury of Having No Questions: Adoptees and the Right to Know

A few years ago, I happened to be conversing with a new friend who asked me what I liked to do for fun. At the time, I was delving deep into the history of adoption in the U.S.

I had been doing quite a bit of work examining both the sociological and historical conditions that accelerated the popularization and legislation of modern adoption so I shared this hobby with them.

The conversation inevitably led to the fact that I myself am an adoptee. I shared a little bit about “coming out of the fog” with them. I explained how, as an adoptee, you reach a point where you want to understand how and why adoption has impacted you so much and you start asking questions. I articulated some of the challenges coming out of the fog has on the adoptee, particularly how it pulls the rug of identity out from under us and forces us to almost start over with our sense of self.

My new friend was intrigued, but found my entire perspective a bit odd.

“Why didn’t you just leave it be? I mean, you look like your family. You could have just ignored it,” they said.

I was surprised by this response because I know the depths of adoption’s impact is not smoothed over by complimenting skin tones.

For my non-adopted friends, life is full of certainties. For adoptees, the questions linger.

Asking those questions is no picnic, but every adoptee must learn to ask them.

For too many of us, questions of simple fact are where we face our first challenge. Pieces of selfhood that average person takes for granted - like knowing when and where you were born - may be muddled. Automatic answers that weave seamlessly into a non-adoptee’s life, like "Where did I get my hair texture from?" or " Why do I love this dessert so much?" are blank puzzles of fragmented unknowns.

The unknowns are not just trivia. Those small answers are building blocks that tie you to a lineage, a place, a body.

The stories that form essential narratives of self-identity are also secretive for many adoptees.

A shocking number of adoptions, even those claiming to be semi-open, obscure facts or tell only one side of the story to the adoptee. The hard answers: poverty, abuse, coercion, falsified papers, addiction, death, etc, are often hidden away in an effort to “protect” the adoptee from the brutal truth of their beginnings and relinquishment.

But lies disguised as protection have a hefty cost.

When you grow up inside a story that has been sanitized, edited, or sealed, you can feel it. You can’t always name it, but you can feel the missing weight where the truth should be. You end up learning yourself through outlines and shadows. You become a person who can sense a locked door without knowing what’s behind it.

And sometimes, even the official records are obscured.

Many adoptees call the organizations that facilitated their adoption and are fed a bold-faced lie:

“Your paperwork was lost in a fire.”

Or: “Your birth mother found out she was pregnant and immediately planned to put you up for adoption.”

Or: “There’s nothing else to share.”

In truth, these organizations can be hiding messier realities. Closed adoptions facilitated without adequate notification of family. First parents who desperately wanted to parent. Broad, complex support systems that failed in a thousand ways. A file can look thin not because there was “nothing there,” but because someone decided long ago that you didn’t need access to it.

So yes, the adoptee asks questions.

Not because we’re ungrateful.

Not because we want to ruin anyone’s day.

Not because we’re trying to rewrite the past.

We ask because we’re trying to live in the present with a full set of parts.

With even these simple questions proving so challenging for an adoptee, you’ll understand how we get caught in the deeper existential ones.

Nobody likes to question the status quo. Questioning a family dynamic may be the pinnacle of taboo in many cultures. There is an unspoken rule floating through the air of most adoptive families: Don’t touch that.

Don’t pull at the thread. Don’t name the grief. Don’t imply anything was lost. Don’t make it awkward. Don’t hurt your adoptive parents. Don’t suggest that my love is your loss.

Furthermore, asking too many questions about yourself is often labeled neurotic or narcissistic. In many contexts, that might be true. But for adoptees, self-questioning is not a vanity project, it's an essential part of reclaiming themselves and moving past trauma.

And when adoptees finally start speaking these questions out loud, we’re often met with blank stares or well-intentioned redirection from therapists, coaches, and close friends.

“Why does it matter?”

“Isn’t it enough that you’re loved?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to focus on the future?”

“Maybe you’re overthinking it.”

"Why would you want to know about your first parents?"

They mean well. They do.

But what they’re describing is exactly the privilege my friend accidentally named. The ability to move through life without ever having to wonder if your origin story is accurate. The ability to be curious without it threatening your belonging. The ability to ask a question and trust that the answer exists somewhere and that you’re allowed to have it.

That is the luxury.

Non adoptees don't need to ask questions. Adoptees do.

Dear adoptee, when you are ready, here are a few tips to asking questions:

1) Start with the question that will steady you.

Choose one anchor question to start. Pick something concrete: dates, locations, medical history, names, documents. A small truth can create a surprising amount of internal calm.

2) Write your questions down before you ask them.

Adoption conversations can trigger big feelings fast. A simple list keeps you grounded. It also helps you notice patterns in your responses.

3) Ask for physical records, not just stories.

Stories matter, but especially in adoption, they are will be heavily filtered through the narrator. Ask for the concrete data points. Ask for copies of everything you’re allowed to have. Save it. Scan it. Keep your own files.

4) Verify information through multiple channels.

Your adoptive mother says you were flown in from your birth country. In her memory they showed up to the orphanage where you were placed directly into their brand new baby stroller. That's a nice story. She believes it happened exactly like that. Still, dig deeper. Verify that information against another source. Call the orphanage and ask how first meetings were conducted in the 80's. Did they let people take the kids back to a hotel for a weeklong 'trial'? Did they have a playroom onsite? Did the provide a take-home care package for adoptive families? Whatever question you have, think of all the details that might be ommitted or modified and see if you can find an additional source that confirms the information you were told.

5) Expect protective responses and plan for them.

Sometimes people dodge because they’re hiding something. Sometimes they dodge because they’re afraid of your pain. Either way, it can feel like rejection. Expect the deflection and have a plan for how to keep yourself steady amidst it.

6) Don’t ask alone if you don’t have to.

Adoptee-safe support changes everything. An adoption competent therapist, an adoptee coach, an adoptee friend who can sit in the aftermath with you.

7) Let the process be layered.

You don’t have to ask every question today. Many questions will simply not have have answerss. You don’t have to solve your whole origin story in one phone call. You’re not behind. You are still you - no matter what answers you get.

Adoptee’s questions aren’t a flaw in our character. They are the an appropriate reach for wholeness, and you have every right to ask that question.

Even if other people can’t understand why you won’t “leave it be,” you don’t need their permission to seek what was always yours.

You have a right to know.