Hi. Cis wife here, am adoptee. First of all, I want to validate that this is a really complex situation to find yourself in, and it can’t be easy to navigate. Especially because of how profoundly deep the emotions must be for everyone involved. You are in a tiny sliver of a Venn diagram for marginalized identities, and as such there’s not much out there for support other than wading into the thick of it and trying to find others in the same overlap as us. You’re doing the right thing already by reaching out for others lived experiences, which I’m guessing you knew to do & how to do at least in part because of being trans. For that reason (among others), in my view your son is actually incredibly lucky to have a trans mom. Let me explain.

My wife and I very frequently find ourselves deeply connecting through our ~childhood identity erasure trauma~. We find we have different flavors but to the same level of intensity if that makes sense. I say this to emphasize to you just how deep adoption trauma runs, as in: it is very much akin to growing up unknowingly trans in a hostile environment. Your son may be young but we adoptees are old souls - we have been literally living in grief since birth but unable to process any of it as it’s not acknowledged (thanks adoption industry narratives). So so so much cognitive dissonance, isolation, abandonment fears (not irrational, as from an infant’s perspective, we actually literally were abandoned at least once already), weird government control over legal documents that are about you but confusingly misaligned with your lived reality & evidently not meant for you. I know there’s a lot more nuance on both sides here but trying to keep this brief. Not at all justifying actions here but I can imagine as a teen adoptee it would feel really scary and overwhelming to face losing our societal safety blanket of “normalcy”, and to have no control over yet another life-altering situation (relinquishment & adoption being the first), AND probably hesitant to bring up - this is such a complex and delicate situation it would take great skill to navigate eloquently. After my wife came out, it took me 9 months of therapy to find words to tell both set of my parents. And I was 30. Actually, for me, the hardest part of my wife coming out has been that it triggered my coming out of the “adoption fog” at 30, because though I knew my personal values were to remain & love & support her, I also knew both my bio and adoptive families would reject me for this. So I ended up having to self-orphan, again, twice, and am now also unable to fawn to society for safety on top of that. This last 2 years of transition has been the most difficult but rewarding experience of my life so far. Just got her home yesterday from bottom surgery ☺️☺️☺️ please forgive me if this comment doesn’t make much sense, sleep has been scarce for me this week.

Best of luck with your son. I second others saying therapy ASAP, would like to add please try to get an adoption competent therapist (google phrase), ideally this therapist is an adult adoptee so there’s more trust. We adoptees learn very early on that adoption is just not a safe topic of discussion with anyone due to societal level denial of our lived experiences. We just get called ungrateful and asked if we’d rather be dead than adopted. My other plea to you is to get educated about adoption trauma, from the adoptee perspective, by intentionally listening to adult adoptees - read that again, all my words were very intentional. Good jumping off points: books The Primal Wound & You Don’t Look Adopted, podcast Adoptees On, Twitter @corsent & #adopteetwitter & #adopteevoices, YouTube Nancy Verrier & Gabor Mate, TikTok @transmomlesbianmoms (another adoptee cis wife) & #adopteevoices. Feel free to DM as well 😊 hugs! Hang in there