Here is a plea to adoptive parents. Please, please, please, give your adopted child the space and freedom to be angry and upset and resentful without any consequences from you OR the adoptive family. I am very passionate in a just a few things when it comes to adoptees rights and this is one of them. When I think back on my own situation, it makes me more than a little mad when others told me I better consider my mom’s feelings more than my own. They seemed way more worried about how my mom was going to feel than how I was feeling! I guess because I brought it all on my myself (the reunion) that I deserved what I got? Maybe they assumed that because I was the one that searched that I had already dealt with any feelings I was having. Maybe they assumed that finding her was “getting what I wanted” so I should be happy and now it was all about my mom and dad. Why in the hell did I have to shove my own feelings aside AGAIN to put their feelings above my own? I was going through so many different emotions all at once and now I had to pretend that I was perfectly fine? I was responsible for making my mom happy and comfortable and not just at the time I found “Sara” but for years after that. Now, all that said, I understand why she was upset and jealous and scared and I didn’t want my mom to feel that way. I love her too much to want her to feel that way so of course I tried to make her feel safe and secure in the situation. But that was on me, MY decision to do that. What about my feelings and what I was going through? Those on the periphery didn’t understand my motives in finding Sara and that’s ok. If you’re not an adoptee, you won’t get it, so I have to let that anger go because in the end I’m only adding to my own pain. So adoptive parents, family, please take the adoptee’s feelings into account. You shouldn’t be mad at them for wanting to find their biological families and think that your feelings are more important than theirs. Everyone’s feelings matter, everyone in the triad has a huge emotional stake in this game of adoption. We have to, we must, work together to  protect all our feelings. Everyone’s feelings must be considered and understood. Please, give your adoptee the space to feel whatever emotion they want to feel. If the people in my situation had given me that right, I would’ve been more than happy to consider their feelings to the same degree.