The Ghost Kingdom Thanksgiving: A Hidden World
Understanding the invisible landcape that shapes identity.
Posted November 25, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
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:
Who were the family we were born into? Who were the parents we might have had? What culture or ancestry might we have known? What version of ourselves exists only in our ghost kingdom?
“The ghosts who trail everyone in the adoption constellation make up a shadow-cast of characters too dangerous to be allowed into consciousness. I call this the Ghost Kingdom.” —Betty Jean Lifton
Thanksgiving, with its empty chairs, family rituals, and lineage-focused conversations, can stir those ghosts profoundly.
What Is the Ghost Kingdom?
The Ghost Kingdom is not fantasy .
It is a psychological home where fostered and adopted people explore:
Who might they have been? Where do they come from? Why were they separated? Who loves or remembers them on the “other side” of their story? What ancestors or traditions were they meant to inherit?
It’s a private universe animated by longing, grief , imagination , identity questions, and unfinished stories.
This world forms because adoption is not a moment; it is an ongoing developmental task of exploring the 7 core vulnerabilities in adoption . As Lifton and others have shown, adoptees must integrate two identities: the life they are living, and the life they lost.
A "Two-Table" Thanksgiving
Holiday tables are symbols of family history, genetic familiarity, and cultural passing-downs.
For adoptees and children in foster care , this season can activate deep internal questions:
Who would I sit next to at the table if I had grown up with my birth family? What recipes, traditions, or stories would have been passed to me? Whose laugh or mannerisms would match mine? Would anyone at that table know the child I once was, or the person I am becoming?
Many adoptees describe a “two-table Thanksgiving”: one table real and present, the other imagined and missing. One filled with people they love, the other filled with people they long to know.
Neither table cancels the other out. Even when a child is placed in a safe, nurturing, stable home, the loss of their first home remains psychologically significant. A child’s psyche holds both realities.
Why the Ghost Kingdom Exists
We all inherit a story that predates us.
Our ancestor migrations, traumas , talents, and temperaments live inside us through biology, genetic mirroring , and epigenetics . For fostered and adopted individuals, that inheritance can feel shrouded, fragmented, unknown, imagined, and longed for.
Lifton argued that without this ancestral connection, identity coherence becomes a lifelong task. The mind fills in the blanks to restore a sense of continuity, seeking out others who look, act, or sound like them. "You look/sound/act like me, so we must be related?"
This isn’t pathological. It’s developmental.
The Fostered or Adopted Child’s Inner World
Children separated from their biological families often grapple with questions that shape their inner Ghost Kingdom:
Who do I look like? Do I have siblings? Why was I placed in foster care or adoption? What traits or talents run in my bloodline? Does anyone from my birth family think of me on holidays?
These are identity questions, not betrayals of their adoptive family .
When society pressures adoptees to feel only “grateful,” the ghosts go underground, and grief becomes private, secret, or “unallowed,” also known as disenfranchised grief in adoption.
Thanksgiving amplifies this emotional bind:
Be grateful, but feel your losses quietly.
But gratitude and grief are not opposites. They are companions. Both must be voiced and hold an equal space of empathy and understanding.
Holiday Stigma and the Silence of the Ghost Kingdom
Research from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute shows that adoption stigma persists. Adoptees are still perceived by many as more troubled, and adoptive parents as more heroic.
This narrative makes it harder for adoptees to express discomfort, longing, or sadness during family holidays.
Many internalize the idea: “I shouldn’t feel this way. I should be grateful.”
But the Ghost Kingdom reminds us: You can love your adoptive family deeply and still grieve the family(ies) you lost. Both can be true.
Working Through the Ghost Kingdom, Especially During the Holidays
- Normalize the Ghosts
Let children and adults know it’s natural to wonder, imagine, or long for their people of origin, especially during holiday rituals centered around family history. It's their birthright to know where they come from.
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.