this loss doesn’t come with flowers

Adoption-related grief is something both adoptees and society often struggle to fully recognize and understand.

Because adoption is so frequently framed as a positive experience, conversations about grief and loss are often minimized, dismissed, or never acknowledged at all. As a result, many adoptees grow up questioning their own feelings, unsure whether they are "allowed" to grieve experiences that they may also feel grateful for.

This is part of what makes adoption-related grief so complex.

It often exists quietly, without validation, understanding, or space to openly talk about what was lost.

There is a term for this experience: disenfranchised grief.

what is disenfranchised grief?

The term disenfranchised grief, coined by Dr. Kenneth Doka, refers to grief that is not openly recognized, validated, or supported by society.

Unlike grief that is acknowledged through funerals, rituals, sympathy, or communal support, disenfranchised grief often exists in the background. It can be overlooked, questioned, minimized, or ignored altogether. When grief is not recognized by others, people often struggle to recognize it within themselves.

For adoptees, this can be especially complicated because adoption is so often framed as an entirely positive experience. When adoption is discussed only in terms of gain, there is little room left to acknowledge the losses that came before it.

the losses in adoption

Adoptees grieve people, relationships, experiences, and parts of themselves connected to the separation from their biological family. This grief can exist whether an adoption is closed or open. Maintaining contact with biological family does not erase the loss of being raised apart from them or the emotional complexity that can come with navigating multiple families and identities.

For many adoptees, grief is not tied to one specific event. Instead, it is connected to an ongoing experience of separation, disconnection, and unanswered questions about identity, family, and belonging.

Even when adoption is loving or open, there can still be grief connected to growing up separated from biological family, personal history, or parts of oneself that feel difficult to fully access or understand.

For transracial and international adoptees, grief may also involve disconnection from culture, race, language, or community.

And for many adoptees, the grief itself can be difficult to define because it is tied not only to what was lost, but also to what never had the opportunity to fully develop in the first place.

disenfranchised grief in adoption

Disenfranchised grief does not always look like grief in the way people expect. Because adoption-related loss is so rarely acknowledged, many adoptees grow up minimizing, dismissing, or disconnecting from their own emotions without realizing it.

Instead of openly grieving, they may avoid difficult conversations, intellectualize their experiences, tell themselves they should not be affected, or convince themselves they have no right to feel loss at all.

Over time, unresolved grief can surface in other ways. It may show up as anxiety, emotional numbness, perfectionism, relationship difficulties, identity confusion, feelings of emptiness, or a lingering sense that something feels "off" but is difficult to explain.

Sometimes the grief becomes so familiar that it no longer feels like grief. It simply becomes part of how someone moves through relationships and the world around them.

grief & gratitude can coexist

One reason adoption-related grief can feel so difficult to acknowledge is because society often treats grief and gratitude as opposites. They are not.

An adoptee can be grateful for their adoptive family while also grieving the losses that made adoption necessary in the first place. Recognizing grief does not diminish love. It does not erase gratitude. And it does not mean adoption was the wrong outcome.

Having language for disenfranchised grief can help adoptees make sense of emotions that previously felt confusing, isolating, or difficult to explain. Grief that is acknowledged has the opportunity to be processed. Grief that remains silenced often continues to surface in other ways.