When my young friend Sebastian heard he had lost his biological brother to suicide—a brother he had never known—his life was temporarily upended.

Soon after, we spoke about the many questions and concerns this news elicited in him. Sebastian related a complex family story that includes many of the greatest losses, failures, and traumas human beings can suffer.

Sebastian’s father died when he was only 6 years old. He says his mother was not abusive, but her addiction to methamphetamine caused her to neglect her children, and she could not provide a safe home for them.

He recalls that most of the time, he and his siblings fended for themselves from whatever meager groceries were in the house. She would leave them unsupervised for long periods.

When his mother eventually gave up her parental rights, Sebastian was adopted by a loving, stable couple at age 8 after two years in the foster care system. His was a closed adoption. Because of his mother’s untreated drug problem, she was not allowed contact with Sebastian when he was a minor.

Sebastian thrived in his adoptive family but maintained a quiet sense of loss, self-doubt, and abandonment that are common to children given up by their biological parents. Many feel a yearning to understand more about their origins.

The National Institutes of Health reports that the incidence of young children entering foster care because of parental drug use more than doubled, from 15 to 36 percent, between the years 2000 and 2017. This indicates that many children experienced Sebastian’s situation and are now adults reckoning with all that happened and why.

Why couldn’t my mother choose me over drugs? How could she give up and let me go? Now, Sebastian studies psychology and counseling and has a better understanding of the cruelties of addiction. He knows he........

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