Scentsable Suzy

18/08/2026

Good Emotional Intelligence for Adoptees only❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

** Adoptees only commenting on this post. **

There is something many adoptees hear that needs to stop:

“You were better off with the family who adopted you.”

But here's the question:

How do you know?

If you don't personally know an adoptee's adoptive family, how can you make that judgment?

You don't know what happened inside their home.

You don't know whether their childhood was wonderful, difficult, traumatic, or some complicated combination of all three.

You don't know whether they felt safe.

You don't know whether they were nurtured.

You don't know whether they experienced abuse, neglect, rejection, control, instability, or dysfunction.

You also don't know enough about their biological family to determine what life there might have been like.

You may not know the circumstances surrounding the relinquishment.

You may not know whether those circumstances were temporary or permanent.

You may not know whether extended biological family members wanted (or were able to) to step in.

You may not know whether additional resources and support could have allowed that family to remain together.

And yet people who know almost none of these things will look an adoptee in the eye and confidently declare:

“You were better off.”

Based on what?

Too often, there is an assumption underneath that statement:

The biological family must have been the family the adoptee needed to be rescued from, while the adoptive family must have been the family the adoptee needed to be rescued by.

But adoption itself proves neither of those things.

Some adoptees were raised by extraordinary adoptive parents.

Some were raised in deeply dysfunctional homes.

Some have adoptive parents who ended up divorcing.

Some were abused.

Some were cherished.

Some experienced tremendous love alongside significant pain.

There is no universal adoptive family experience.

And there is no way for a stranger, or even a casual acquaintance to look at the fact that someone was adopted and conclude that they were unquestionably “better off.”

Perhaps their life was better.

Maybe it would have been worse.

Or it could have simply would have been different.

The truth is, there are questions about the road not taken that none of us can answer with certainty.

So please don't approach an adoptee you barely know and write the ending to a story you haven't even read.

Don't fill in the unknown parts of an adoptee's life with whatever version makes adoption most comfortable for you.

Listen instead.

Ask instead.

And if an adoptee trusts you enough to tell you what their experience was actually like, BELIEVE THEM.

ADOPTEES ONLY: Have you ever had someone who knew little or nothing about your adoptive family tell you that you were “better off” being adopted? What went through your mind when they said it?

18/08/2026

😎💙❤️‍🩹

13/08/2026

Good info on brain and grief neuroscience 🩵🩵🎈🎈❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹🎁

🚨 According to Research about our Brain :

This is for the person who has received a lot of advice they did not ask for.

Who has been told to keep busy, to get back out there, to focus on themselves, to practice gratitude, to remember their worth, to trust the process, to give it time, by people who genuinely cared and who genuinely did not know what else to offer in the face of a pain they could not fix.

Who has smiled and nodded and said thank you and felt, underneath the gratitude for the intention, the specific loneliness of receiving the wrong kind of help. The kind that addresses the helper’s discomfort with the pain rather than the person’s actual experience of carrying it.

Who has noticed that the moments that actually helped were quieter than any of the advice. A friend who sat without speaking. A person who asked how they were and waited long enough for the honest answer. Someone who did not try to reframe the loss or accelerate the healing or provide a perspective that might make everything feel more manageable. Someone who simply stayed.

Neuroscientist James Coan at the University of Virginia, whose research on social baseline theory found that the human nervous system is specifically calibrated to function most efficiently in the genuine presence of a safe other person, found something that changes how we understand what actually helps during grief.

The benefit the grieving nervous system receives from safe human presence is not primarily cognitive. It is not delivered through the content of what is said. It is physiological. The presence of a trusted person reduces the neural threat response, lowers cortisol, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, and reduces the metabolic cost of navigating a difficult emotional experience. These benefits occur through proximity and felt safety rather than through the specific words the present person offers.

Researcher John Gottman at the University of Washington, whose research on what people actually need during emotional distress found that feeling genuinely heard and genuinely accompanied was consistently rated as more helpful than receiving advice or reframing, even when the advice was accurate and the reframing was valid, confirmed that what the grieving person most needs from the people around them is not insight. It is presence.

The most helpful thing anyone offered you during this was probably not the most articulate thing. It was the most honest thing. The willingness to sit in the discomfort of your pain without needing to resolve it. The specific and rare quality of being with someone in difficulty rather than trying to move them through it faster than the difficulty allows.

If you have had even one person offer you that, you have had something genuinely valuable. And if you have not, knowing what actually helps is itself a form of permission to ask for it.

05/08/2026

From my favorite mental health professional 🩵❤️‍🩹🩵

03/08/2026

For CPAP machine users. Check this out 😎

100 nights to try it. Love it or pay nothing.