Coming Out of The Fog and Adoptee Rage
- Ashlee Cooper
- Oct 1
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 7
So, apparently "coming out of the fog" is a thing. It's a consciousness model with steps and stages. Until recently, I was still in it.. The Fog. And then, on a perfectly good Tuesday, I went into a full-on motherfucking rage about adoption.
I’ve had flashes of this before. Like whenever anyone talked about adoption and I inexplicably wanted to claw their eyes out but instead, I smiled and nodded. God forbid I collapse the narrative for anyone.
I read You Don’t Look Adopted and saw myself in every chapter. I even started naming parts of me I’d never connected to being adopted. But it still stayed in my head as just a cognitive knowing, not a full body knowing.
Then I picked up The Primal Wound. I couldn’t finish it. It was so painful that something inside me started to stir more, something I was terrified to let in.
And then, on that Tuesday, I got an email with just the word "adoption" and I went into a full on murderous rage. No, I didn't murder anyone, but I wanted to.
And then I fell down the rabbit hole. To be clear, I am still here. I am reporting from inside the rabbit hole. Just so you know. The rage is still strong in me.
What is "The Fog"? Some people use it as an acronym; F.O.G. for Fear, Obligation, and Guilt. It’s the haze adoptees live in until we start waking up to the reality of adoption.
I’ll link to the PDF with the original framework, but I loved a Reddit version that makes it easier to understand like a TLDR of the stages:
Disengaging – Adoption is just a fact about me.
Denying – Adoption doesn’t matter. Nothing to see here.
Defending – Maybe adoption matters, but only in positive ways.
Discerning – Maybe adoption is more complicated than I thought.
Deconstructing – Uh, adoption is way more complicated than I thought.
Drowning – Adoption is so complicated and emotionally overwhelming. (Hello, rage.)
Developing – Constructing a whole sense of self that includes how relinquishment and adoption shaped me. (Not there yet.)
Deciding – Now I can decide, with awareness, what I want my life to mean. (Nope, not here either.)
So yeah. I’m drowning. Only my "drowning" is rage. A. LOT. OF. RAGE.
-more to come as I proces this shit.