By Chris Sargaent, adoptee
I came to VANISH’s peer support group not looking for comfort, but for clarity.
I’m 60 now. After nearly two years of therapy working through adoption trauma and the patterns of self-sabotage it created, I needed to hear from other adoptees. Not mothers. Not social workers. Not people studying us. People who had lived it.
The group gave me that. Male and female adoptees speaking plainly about what nobody else wants to hear: that adoption isn’t just separation from parents. It’s identity erasure. Recovering from name changes designed to wipe out our origin. Working through sealed, incomplete or missing records that block access to who you are. Replacement narratives where someone else’s story becomes yours. Lifelong questions that can’t be answered. It’s grief management on steroids.
And in most places, adoptees are expected to whisper or stay silent. This monthly group was one of the few spaces where I could speak openly from deep within and be understood.
It gave me the scaffolding I needed to keep doing the recovery work. I don’t attend regularly anymore – not because the group failed, but because, through its facilitation and the counselling brokerage program, it gave me what I needed to move forward. That’s what good support does.
The group and VANISH matter. Fund them. Keep creating spaces where adoptees can face adoption head on.
Peer support is essential, and my hope is that adoptees’ voices increasingly lead the organisations, chair the panels, and shape the research. The people who have lived this should also be leading the way forward.
VANISH peer support groups meet monthly and are facilitated by professional post-adoption support workers, many of whom also have a lived experience of adoption. Find out more about our support groups here or contact us to discuss how we might help you.