those that have found their biological family, do you notice your personality is more like them or the adoptive family you were raised with?
for me i am exactly like my birthmother. i swear at times we share a brain. same attitude and views. i was just wondering if it was this way for others or if are a rare case.
julie j
Favorite Answer
Hi Rachael,
Yours is not rare. I've heard of many cases of reunited adoptees and natural families who are very much alike. My own case was similar to yours. I'm very much like my natural mom in so many ways. That is one of the fun things after reunion is discovering all the things you have in common with each other. Not just physical traits. There's personality, mannerisms, preferences, outlooks on life, and all those other intangible things. Non-adopted people take all the family traits for granted because they have grown up with them. It's a huge deal for those who have been deprived of that all of their lives.
There is some variation that can be expected in any families. For instance, of my two natural sisters, I'm far more like the one I was raised with, although physically I resemble the other one more. The other one is different from us, as could be expected with siblings who were raised together, they are not always alike either. Does that mean I regret finding her? No way. I'm thankful for finding everybody and would never trade that away no matter what they were like.
Thanks for asking. Hope you and Lori A. are still discovering new family similarities. Happy New Year.
julie j
reunited adoptee
lilmomma
Oh honey, that is not rare AT ALL!!!!! When I first spoke to my birth mother, I thought that someone was playing a joke and so did she b/c the similarities were unbelievable!!!!! I have a lot of traits from my a-parents too, don't get me wrong. But it was just crazy to have so much in common with my birth mother, a complete stranger to me! Let me give you a list:
-our voices are the same. Its like having a conversation with myself
-when I was adopted, I already had a first name given to me by a previous adoption, but not a middle name and my a-parents gave that to me. Well I be darned! Same middle name as my birth mother. They never met her or knew her name prior to my search
-her birth day is the same as my son's
-we are in the same line work. I do hair as a hobby and wanted to go to school for it but changed my mind and went in the other end of cosmetology (make up, esthetics, waxing, etc....)
-our attitudes are VERY similar
-we look like sisters, that was weird the first time we were together and someone stopped us to ask if we were
I could go on for days! All growing up, I always favored my a-mother and my other adopted siblings looked like my a-mother and a-father. So to have that all changed was interesting to say the least. Its nice to hear about other adoptees with similar experiences.
grumppopotamus
When I first reunited with my bmom, I looked for similarities. I wanted them. I needed them. There are some: love of books, weirdly similar views on religion. But that was it. It was disappointing. I knew I wasn't like my afam, and then I wasn't so much like my bmom.
Forward to a couple of months ago. I had contact with my bdad, buncle, and bgrand. Turns out I AM like that side of my family. It's been strangely validating to know that a large part of who I am is biological. That despite my upbringing, some of my best traits are inherited.
Jen
I grew up with my natural mother & an adoptive father. I was told my entire life how much I was like my mother - physically, emotionally, mentally etc. I believed I was simply a carbon copy of my mother.
Then I met my natural father! WOW! There is SO MUCH of him in me!! It was so exciting for me to put the pieces of the jigsaw together & know where the little bits that weren't like my mother had come from. SO much of my personality is just like his.
Strangely enough the weirdest thing was that he had had another son (I have one full blood brother) who was SO identical to my brother in both physical appearance & mannerisms. It was so uncanny as our mother left our father when my brother was 6 months old so all similarities were purely genetic, not learned behaviour!
KimGonzo
I see ways that I am very much like my adoptive family. They raised me, so of course some of their habits and attitudes have rubbed off on me. I also see ways that I am like my birth family. We share the same genes, so some of my traits are genetic. The way I see it, I come from two families: my birth family and my adoptive family.