Receiving My Adoption Records: Being Spoken For, and Finding My Voice Again

When your own history is handed back to you in someone else’s words.

Recently, I had the experience of having my adoption records found and shared with me. It’s something I’ve known might happen at some point, but when it did, I felt an unexpected wave of emotion - not just about what was in the file, but about how the whole process unfolded.

What struck me almost immediately was how little agency I had. The information was handled for me, not with me, as though I were still a child who couldn’t be trusted with my own story.

It brought up a sharp, quiet anger - not explosive, but truthful.

What I Expected (and What Actually Happened)

I’d imagined that receiving my records might feel meaningful, perhaps even settling. What I didn’t expect was just how shaped the information would be before it reached me. A summary had already been written, with someone else deciding what mattered and what didn’t. That summary was then read to me, line by line.

Listening to someone speak my own history back to me created a subtle distance, as if the information needed to be softened or filtered before I could hold it.

It wasn’t a memory exactly, but a familiar feeling. That quiet sense of being positioned as someone who needs their story managed gently, rather than simply being treated as an adult with a right to know.

And I am an adult. Thoughtful, capable, grounded. I didn’t need protection. I needed respect, clarity, and a sense of agency. Yet in that moment, it was as if the system couldn’t quite see the adult in front of it. I felt handled, not met.

The Feelings That Rose Up

The emotions were layered and messy, with moments of:

anger at the way the process was handled,

a sense of detachment, almost as if I was listening to someone else’s story,

and a flicker of sadness.

The anger took me by surprise, not because it was big, but because it was so clear. Anger isn’t always an easy place for adoptees to go. It can feel unsafe or disallowed. Many of us learn early to turn it inward or smooth it over so we don’t risk being seen as “too much” or “ungrateful.”

But in that moment, the anger felt honest. It felt like a part of me finally being allowed to have a voice - a small, steady acknowledgement that something about the experience mattered, and that my reaction was valid.

What This Touches in Many Adoptees

Experiences like this can activate old emotional patterns:feeling invisible or spoken for, feeling powerless, feeling small, feeling as though our needs might still be an afterthought.

For some, it may even stir shame - the sense of not being fully entitled to our own information, our own past, or even our own feelings about it.

Having your story summarised and delivered back to you can quietly reinforce the idea that you are someone things happen to, rather than someone who gets to choose how your own history is met.

This isn’t about individual workers or one-off conversations. It reflects a wider structure that, intentionally or not, can leave adoptees without a meaningful sense of agency in moments that matter.

Reclaiming a Sense of Agency

Naming this experience has helped me reclaim some of my voice. I’m not minimising it or smoothing it over. I’m allowing myself to acknowledge how it felt.

Writing about it brings a kind of grounding. It’s a way of saying:This mattered. I deserved to be met with respect. My responses are valid.

Therapeutically, this is often the work adoptees do. Not trying to tidy up the past, but recognising how these patterns still show up in the present. And learning that anger, grief, clarity, and self-respect all have a place.

Sometimes the most important step is simply allowing the truth of our experience to stand.

Closing Reflection

Accessing adoption records is not a simple or administrative moment. It can touch deep emotional places: the desire to know, the fear of what might be found, the disappointment of how information is delivered, the frustration of feeling managed.

If you’ve had a similar experience, your reactions make sense. They’re not a sign of weakness or oversensitivity. They are a human response to something that carries weight.

You deserve to be met with dignity.

And you deserve to hold your own story.