Open Collections

Bork, Vanessa

University of British Columbia

Most people first begin to understand themselves within the context of family stories, knowledge, and even wounds. For adoptees, it is often challenging to understand their sense of self in relation to their families. Current literature on adoptees focuses primarily on struggles faced during childhood and adolescence, with only a small amount of research attending to the impacts of adoption that may persist into adulthood. In this study, the significant gap in the literature addressing the experiences of adult adoptees who continue to wrestle with their sense of self in connection to intergenerational family knowledge was examined. This study was designed with a hermeneutic phenomenological methodological framework to explore the first-hand experiences of six adult adoptees through in-depth audio-video recorded interviews, guided by the following research question: How do adoptees make meaning of their sense of self in relation to what they know about their families of origin? Artifacts were also used as additional access points to the phenomenon. Using van Manen’s (1990) approach to hermeneutic phenomenology, the following common themes emerged: 1) a sense of (ab)normality; 2) the importance of belonging; 3) a sense of self-expansion through acquired information and connections; 4) the unfolding of biography and ongoing evolution of self; and 5) the significance of being seen. The findings from this study are discussed with particular relevance to the field of counselling psychology, and the contributions made to research, theory, and practice, including implications for future research.

Text

2025-06-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88517

Counselling Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/