On Becoming an Adoption Family Therapist: The Other Side of "Gotcha Day"

When I worked in Shanghai, I had not yet heard the American term “Gotcha Days.” Usually a “Gotcha Day” indicates the first day that parent and newly adopted child meet, or the day that the child is legally adopted. I think it is beautiful that some families celebrate the anniversary of this day like a birthday every year, and I also understand why others in the community prefer to honor this event with a more sedate tone. The actual day itself could not be more emotionally complex.

At the foster home, we referred to the upcoming moment with vague and hopeful terms, as if to ward away all the possible bad luck or red tape that could derail it. Among the staff, it was understood that the adoption was the greatest of blessings that could befall one of the children living in the home. Adoptive families and everything that they could represent for the children were welcomed with open arms by the adults at the home.

While I shared this incredible gratitude towards the (mostly American) families coming to adopt, I had a distinct role to play in the children’s story. As their therapist, and a person unaffiliated with their adoption process, I tried to open up a more neutral space for the children to feel safe expressing their anger, dismay, and fear at the prospect of being adopted. The children understood that they had to be happy in front of their foster mama when the subject of their adoption came up, but in the play therapy room I offered up an unbiased space to express their emotions. With figurines in the sand, puppets, and drawings, the children expressed how they felt confused and rejected when their “mama” expressed such glee at their upcoming departure. The children described feeling helpless to stop their upcoming uprooting. Others could not believe how long they still had to wait -- the months between knowing they were to be adopted and the actual adoption day seemed interminable to these little ones.

I made forever family story books, which sometimes they wanted to read over and over again. On another day, I found the book slammed shut on my fingers when we reached the part about homecoming day. Sometimes they couldn’t stop talking about the airplane to America, and other times, when the subject came up, the toy plane would get thrown across the room. The subject of adoption day was like an empty vessel into which every conceivable emotion could be poured.

A certain hum took over the whole foster home when an adoption was imminent, not unlike the feeling of a major holiday approaching. The children did seem swept up in their newfound stardom and recognized that the adults wanted them to feel proud of being chosen. I worked only with children 2 and up, and in my therapy cohort, most had not yet been adopted as babies due to difficulties with their paperwork or fairly serious medical disabilities. The toddlers and young school aged children were increasingly aware of their differences and some could articulate that they don’t have a family because of their lip, or their legs, or their hands. We worked a lot on disputing their core belief that they were unworthy.

But here was a family, flying across the world to get them! This very event challenged the children's very notion of their worth. Once, a child questioned me: does my new family know? Sitting alongside the already confusing emotions of excitement and resentment about adoption day, was another, sadder, subtler fear. They imagined the family traveling so far, only to reject them when they finally met. The children could see their disability or just their perceived unworthiness, getting in the way of their happy moment. As it had before.

And for the orphanage siblings, adoption day was less complicated. It was pure loss. Every adoption, no matter how joyous the build up, had an aftershock that dysregulated the home’s children for weeks. A sibling who had slept in the next bed, eaten one plate over, and fought over the same toys, was suddenly gone forever. The toddlers and school-aged children attended a two-room school run by the foster home, in a building just across the street. This group of children literally spent every waking moment together. The absence of a recently adopted child felt visceral.

Even from my detached perch as the home’s therapist, I felt all these contradictory emotions churning through me. In my heart, I sent love and empathy to the steel-faced Chinese “mama” that just said goodbye to her foster child. I radiated empathy to the foster homes managers, longtime expats who worked tirelessly to make the adoption happen (sometimes for years). I felt the staff trying hard to be outwardly positive, while perhaps repressing or processing their own attachment to the child.

Most of all, I felt empathy for the child and their new family, both flooded with love and fear. Parent and child, brought together across culture and language. So separate and so abruptly thrust together. Sacrificing existing inconsistent attachments to create something infinitely better, something truly permanent.

​As a mental health professional, I have never witnessed anything so complicatedly beautiful.

Learn about how Adoption Counseling at South Boulder Counseling can help you here.