Key points

The Ghost Kingdom intensifies during holidays as adoptees imagine the families they lost.

Identity develops through acknowledging imagined roots, not denying longing or curiosity.

Holiday rituals can honor both families, helping adoptees integrate past, present, and their inner self.

Every November, two realities converge: National Adoption Month and the season of family holidays. Thanksgiving is a time of connection, belonging, and gratitude . But for many fostered and adopted people, they often feel pulled between two worlds, a time when the “Ghost Kingdom” grows louder.

The Ghost Kingdom is the imagined, internal world that adoptee author and adoption therapist Betty Jean Lifton described as the place where all the “what-ifs” of adoption live. Many questions arise:

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