Almost everyone of us who has contemplated adoption or announced to our families and friends our plans to adopt have received at least one negative or resistant reaction. I know this from my own experience with making this announcement to family and I know this from speaking to hundreds of families created via adoption. There is almost always, one, or more people in our extended circle of families and/or friends who seem resistant or negative towards our adoption.

This always leaves us feeling hurt and confused by their inability to support our decision and we’re often confused by their seemingly negative response.

But what if they’re not being negative? What if what they’re voicing is actually their own feelings of loss? I recently came across this article on Huffington Post that really made me see these scenario’s in a whole new light!

Lessons Learned from an Imaginary Redhead
Written by Elisabeth O’Toole for Portrait of an Adoption

Not long after I married my husband (a tall redhead), my mom and I (both short and brunette) developed a plan. I was going to finally fulfill some long-held desires she’d had for her family -– desires my siblings and I had not successfully satisfied. In the anticipated daughter I would soon be having (yes, it would be a girl), my mother was finally going to get not only a redheaded baby in the family, but, later, a long, lean and very talented basketball player.

I know this sounds like pressure, so I should admit that I had no problem with this assumption. In fact, I’m sure I perpetuated it far more than my mother did. After all, I was fully confident in my ability to produce this child; the child I imagined for us both.

That is not how things worked out.

As readers of Portrait of an Adoption well know, loss is a fundamental and complicated aspect of any adoption. In order for there to be gain –- of a family, of a child –- there must first be loss. Birthmothers and birth relatives experience an often great and abiding loss. The adopted child experiences loss –- no matter at what age he is adopted or under what conditions he was adopted. Communities, foster parents, other children who may remain, and caregivers may experience loss as a result of adoption.

Go here to read the full story: