Understanding the Grief Adoptees Carry

by Lynelle Long, born in Vietnam and taken to Australia, Founder of InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)

For many adoptees, especially those of us adopted across countries, cultures, and languages — adoption begins with loss.

Before the new family, before the new country, before the new life, there is a separation. A rupture. A break in continuity. Something fundamental is lost long before the story is framed as a “new beginning.”

Because of this, adoptees often carry layers of grief that others do not easily see or understand.

It is the grief of losing a first family.
The grief of losing a culture, language, and homeland.
The grief of not knowing the truth of one’s beginnings.
The grief of unanswered questions.
The grief of identities that were interrupted, rewritten, or erased.

For intercountry adoptees, this grief can also include the loss of an entire world: the sights, sounds, histories, and relationships that might have shaped who they could have been.

This is why adoptees do not need to be told how lucky they are, or reminded of how “good” their adoptive family may be.

What adoptees often need instead is recognition of the loss that sits underneath their story.

They do not need positivity attempting to smooth over the pain.
They do not need advice about how to move on.
They do not need a timeline for healing.

Grief in adoption is not something that disappears because a child grows up in a loving home. It is something that lives alongside love, belonging, and gratitude — often in complicated and contradictory ways.

What this grief asks for is something deeper.

It asks for a presence that does not flinch.
A steadiness that can sit with pain and confusion without rushing it away.
A witness who knows how to remain present, even in silence.

Adoptees need people who are willing to walk beside them through the complex layers of their experience without trying to fix it, explain it, or turn it into a project.

People who know how to listen.
People who can make room for what hurts.
People who can offer compassion that is real, not performative.

Adoptees need to their grief to be witnessed.
They need it to be seen.

This kind of presence does not require perfection.

It comes from learning.
From humility.
From the willingness to understand that adoption begins with loss and that acknowledging this loss is one of the most meaningful ways to honour an adoptee’s truth.