When people talk about adoption, they often use words like love, chosen, forever family. And while those words are true and important, they don’t tell the whole story.

Because adoption is love and loss. Connection and separation. It’s a story with many authors, some of whom got to write their own chapters.

As a therapist, I’ve sat with adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents, each holding different truths, all valid, all intertwined. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that adoption doesn’t end with the legal paperwork. It lives in identity, in relationships, in the quiet moments when someone wonders, “Where do I truly belong?”

The Layers of Adoption: Love, Loss and Identity

For adoptees, adoption is often experienced as both gain and grief. Even in the most nurturing environments, there is a foundational loss: the loss of biological connection, of early attachment, of the original narrative of “where I come from.”

That loss doesn’t mean something has gone wrong, it means something deeply human has happened. Our earliest attachments shape how we see ourselves and others. When those attachments are disrupted, the nervous system adapts in ways that can influence trust, belonging, and identity.

As adoptees grow, they often revisit the meaning of their story at each developmental stage. Childhood curiosity (“Who do I look like?”) can grow into adolescent identity exploration (“Who am I really?”) and adult reflection (“What parts of me come from nature, and what from nurture?”)

This evolving process isn’t pathology, it’s identity work. It’s the natural unfolding of meaning in the context of a complex family system. 

Belonging and the “Both/And” of Adoption

One of the hardest things about adoption, and one of the most profound, is learning to live in the both/and.

Both love and loss.

Both gratitude and grief.

Both chosen and relinquished.

Many adoptees describe feelings like they live between worlds, connected to two families, two identities, and sometimes two different versions of themselves.

Adoptive parents can feel this too: deep love for their child alongside fear, guilt, or confusion about how to talk about the harder parts of adoption. Birth parents often carry invisible grief, loving from a distance, wondering, hoping, remembering.

Therapy provides a space for these truths to coexist without canceling each other out. Healing isn’t about choosing one side of the story, it’s about making room for the whole story.

Role of Therapy in Adoption

In therapy, we focus on building safety, trust, and understanding, not rushing to fix, but to listen. For adoptees, that may mean unpacking identity questions or exploring attachment patterns. For adoptive parents, it may involve learning how to hold space for their child’s grief without taking it personally.

Sometimes, it’s about helping the whole family system talk openly about adoption, not as a secret or a single event, but as a living part of the family narrative.

Therapeutic models like attachment-based family therapy, narrative therapy, and trauma-informed approaches help families build connection while acknowledging complexity. Because adoption healing isn’t about erasing the past, it’s about integrating it into a story that feels whole.

When Love Meets Loss, Healing Can Begin

It’s tempting to want adoption to be a story of pure love and rescue, and in some ways, it is. But healing deepens when we can acknowledge that it’s also a story of loss, uncertainty, and resilience.

You don’t have to have all the answers to support someone touched by adoption. You just have to be willing to stay curious, listen deeply, and honor the reality that love and grief can exist in the same breath.

Because belonging isn’t something we’re given, it’s something we build together, story by story.