Silverstien noted that loss is part of the human experience and is sometimes necessary to gain new relationships, new jobs and new experiences. Kaplan added that while losses are painful, they contribute to who we are as individuals, and therefore enrich our lives. However, before losses can enrich our lives we must mourn them, and society encourages those involved with adoption to ignore their losses rather than confront them. Grieving is further complicated by the fact that there is no end to these losses. Yet, adoptive parents, adoptees , and birthparents frequently engage in behaviors designed to retrieve and replace the losses.
Adoptees frequently imagine people they meet are members of their lost birth family.
Adoptive parents may compare the child they adopt to the child they expected to have. This theme of loss can affect individuals and families forever, both in their relationships and in how they deal with subsequent losses. Birthparents may dwell on the loss of their child and feel socially isolated by it. Adoptive parents may equate their loss of the ability procreate as a loss of immortality and therefore a loss of themselves. In doing this, people conclude they suffered losses because they were unworthy of having whatever was lost.