Adopted and Loved: A Therapist’s Journey to Healing the Heart

In this episode of Adoption Utah with host Donna Pope, adoptee and licensed therapist Troy Love unpacks the complexity of adoption through his framework of six attachment wounds, sharing lived experience from being adopted at five days old into a family struggling with domestic violence. He recounts managing the duality of loving adoptive parents who caused harm, searching for his birth mother at 37, and the Valentine's Day reunion that brought immediate connection and answered lifelong questions.

Wounds That Shape Identity

The conversation explores the six attachment wounds Troy identified in his therapeutic practice: loss, neglect, abandonment, betrayal, rejection, and abuse. Troy explains how adoptees carry wounds of abandonment even when birth parents made loving decisions, and how adoptive parents need to understand their children's struggles may stem from pre-placement trauma rather than parenting failures. He shares his own journey from self-hatred to self-love and the incremental process of learning to let others' love in.

Therapeutic Models for Healing

Drawing on years of therapy and his work helping others, Troy discusses practical approaches for each member of the adoption constellation. He addresses what adoptees need to hear about their worth, what birth parents deserve to know about their sacrificial decisions, and what adoptive parents should understand about supporting their children's curiosity without feeling threatened. His Finding Peace Workbook emerged from clients asking where they could learn more about healing attachment wounds.