Adoption is stunningly multifaceted.  The poem below was written by a friend of mine.  It addresses so many important psychological issues, and I will let it speak for itself. 

Adopting an Identity

Letters and pictures, that's all that's in the envelope
My mom says they're from my biological parents
and that idea doesn't process because the hand-written letter
from my bio-father
looks so much like my mom's handwriting that
I think she's playing some sort of trick on me.
She's not.
I flip through pictures of Chimene and Richard,
these accidental lovers,
and of the two half siblings I never knew about.
It's surreal and I feel only half awake as
I flip back and forth among the pictures and wonder who these people are
and wonder who I am because of these letters.
My mom lingers.
I think she feels as though she's obligated to help me
along this emotional journey
because she's my mom and that's her job.
All I can think about is how similar this is
to the moment in the second grade when I was told I was adopted.
I was told I was unique in a way I didn't want to be.
My biological mother uses an abundance of "hahas."
I can't connect with her "hahas;"
I can't see any humor in the impersonal black ink.
I can't connect with a person whose letter is like a resume,
a list of altruistic hobbies and likable characteristics.
Yet, I look at this paper and see myself
in her love of books, her terrible humor.
And now I'm reading about this woman,
this woman who's training for the Iraq war and likes to plant,
whose first love is God followed by her husband John,
this woman who's half like me.
Only half, but that's half more than I can say for my parents.
I move on to Richard.
I already like him.
He gave me actual pictures, glossy,
without fingerprint smudges, true and genuine,
just like his hand-written letter that tells me he took time and effort in this compilation.
I almost feel like an intruder looking at his best friends,
his brother, his beard that makes him look like
The Dude from The Big Lebowski.
Richard begins by feeling obligated to tell me that I wasn't a mistake,
that there was a good reason why I was brought up by a different family,
blah blah. I don't need comfort from a man I don't know.
But I do know him.
Because I'm the carbon copy of him,
from his cheekbones to his aspirations.
Our canines are identical, our eyes mirrors,
our dimples cousins, our smiles duplicates.
This letter is staring me in the face,
telling me that I'm not random, that it's okay to not be like my tall parents,
my Ivy-League brother, my brown-eyed family
because I'm not exactly a part of them.
No one has ever told me that I'm special the way
Richard is telling me I'm special.
He says, "Your existence in this world means a lot to me. It's difficult to put into exactly the right words, but it's kind of like... When you were born, it validated my existence. No matter what I did or did not accomplish from that point forward, there would always be you."
So maybe these letters can validate my existence
and even though I felt out of place before, like a mute in a debate class,
I can walk, and recite poetry, and do anything I want
without thinking I'm doing it wrong because
my family kept calling me "different" since they didn't know what else to call me.
I can walk and recite poetry and get pissed, breathe, smile, live
with all the validity in the world.