"Who were the family we were born into?Who were the parents we might have had?What culture or ancestry might we have known?Who might they have been?Where do they come from?Why were they separated?Who would I sit next to at the table if I had grown up with my birth family?What recipes, traditions, or stories would have been passed to me?"
""The ghosts who trail everyone in the adoption constellation make up a shadow-cast of characters too dangerous to be allowed into consciousness. I call this the Ghost Kingdom." -Betty Jean Lifton Thanksgiving, with its empty chairs, family rituals, and lineage-focused conversations, can stir those ghosts profoundly."
Every November, National Adoption Month and family holidays intersect, intensifying feelings of belonging and dislocation for fostered and adopted people. An internal imagined space called the Ghost Kingdom houses unanswered questions about birth family, ancestry, traditions, and possible life paths. Those questions surface as longing, grief, imagination, and identity uncertainty, and can be triggered by holiday rituals, empty chairs, or lineage-focused conversations. Recognizing and normalizing these internal ghosts, creating rituals that make space for both birth and caregiving families, and inviting open expression can help hold the complexity of belonging during holiday gatherings.
Read at Psychology Today
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