The first thing you need to do try to find as much information as you can from your adoptive parents.  Ask them for ANY paperwork they might have from your adoption. There is usually legal paperwork and the final adoption decrees, however what communication that went between your folks and the adoption facilitators might have more information  on it as well. As an adoptee,  will want to see if you can find:

• the agency that facilitated the adoption: many agencies keep their own records and have their own procedures involved for reunions, so they are a good place to start an adoption search
• the lawyers who did the paperwork: again, sometimes they actually have records on hand and names
• the maternity home that your mother might have been at: this might be buried in the adoption papers work but can help.
• the state that all happened: you’ll be looking for the state your birthmother was from, the state you were born in, the state the adoption happened, etc.. sometimes there are a whole bunch of state lines crossed!

Gather Information about Your Adoption as Baby

You will also want to find out as many tiny rumors and bits of information as you can. Even the most minute scrap of hearsay might be something that helps eventually.. so that story that your cousin heard your aunt say once.. write down all the details.. you never know! Plus it is surprising on how many people actually KNOW the details of your birth.. so ask  around! Start with people who might have been confidants of your folks at the time; grandparents, siblings of your adoptive parents, friends, etc.  Let people know you need information and take it all in! Ask for help, but be ready to hear a bunch of annoying assumptions and bits of advice. Ignore the stuff that gets you down and gather the information!

Use Reputable Adoption Registries for Searches

You might have it easy and your biological family might have begun searching for you as well,  so try the two best adoption reunion registries first! 

The International Soundex Reunion Registry  (http://www.isrr.net/)  You HAVE TO FILL out the form and send it in by mail, but they are the BEST  since it is an active search registry.. meaning they will actively compare and try to find a match!  All non profit and run by volunteers, they have no ulterior motivation except to help all separated family members find each other.

The other one that is really good is at Adoption.com (http://registry.adoption.com/). I don’t really like their politics of adoption, BUT it IS a good registry that you can search  and add your information.  Lots of people have found others there, so it is good to keep updated, etc.

Adoption Searches at the Beginning: The Adoption Agency

Then, start local first …go to the agency and see what they say. DO NOT, however, pay them for anything if you can avoid it. Some DO make you go through a whole bunch of “counseling” or make you pay for their services. I would say to fight that.  They MADE money off of your relinquishment  and the act of separation, now they want to make money off of this end too?  

Fill out what they offer you, put a letter in your file, play nice, but watch out and don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

Some agencies are great and really do help and some are more interested in keeping you in your place of ignorance. The bottom line is you really cannot trust most of the professionals in adoption.  Remember that this is YOUR life and YOU are the professional of your own experience.

Information from the State Your Adoption was Finalized In

If your adoption was in: Maine, Alaska, Kansas, New Hampshire, Oregon or Alabama, then you can request a copy of your original birth certificate( OBC)  from the state.  Your OBC will have your birth parents names on it and from there your search is usually much easier!

Other states have different “rules” for different adoptees:  Illinois you can also request info, Delaware has some openness, Ohio & Massachusetts have “black out” dates so if you were born in certain years then you have no right to your birth certificate while other years you do! Doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way the laws are.. If you think it sucks then help support the Adoptee Rights Demonstration!(http://adopteerights.net/nulliusfilius/)

Non Identifying Adoption Information

If your adoption was in any of the other states of have a blackout year, then you can request “non identifying” information about your adoption. Basically, they let you know what they know without releasing names or allowing you access to your birth certificate.  This can range from the really bland “mother white age 17 brown hair of Scottish descent” to something a bit more interesting, but keep in mind, it does not have to be 100% the truth.

Passive Adoption Reunion Registries

Most states also have some kind of passive reunion registry as well. They don’t have very good success rates since they are underfunded and under manned in general, so again, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but sign up! Many states also have “unofficial” registries and then email lists and “search angels” and  more folks that can help you.. so  Google is now your best friend and you need to find those places online! There are incredible people online who will help and how have great methods and information as well.

Remember that often much of the information that you think you know is wrong including:

• Your Birth date: depending on when you were born even this got changed at times
• Where you were born: often the city was changed to your adoptive parents area
• You birthmothers age, occupation etc.
• Same with your birthfather, etc.

So be open to “maybes” and “almosts”.. and if you have a gut feeling.. explore it!

Prepare for the Emotions of an  Adoption Reunion

The other thing you will want to be doing at the same time is reading! This cannot be stressed enough! READ READ READ!. at adoptee blogs, at birthparent blogs, read “The Girls That Went Away”, read “The Baby Thief”, you MUST be prepare for the realm of possibilities that you might find and you need to know how to prepare yourself for the emotional up and down that happens!

Start gathering together the people who “understand” and will support you .. it’s both emotionally exhausting and wonderful at the same time…

It can take years to find your birthmother and birth families, or it can takes days, but you never know until your try. Good luck!

***

Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy is a birthmother who searched for her baby who she gave up for adoption  and found him within an insane 3 day period in 2004. She writes about that experince and all things adoption related on her blog; Musings of the Lame.

Related Posts

• Miracle on Social Network: Facebook Adoption Group Finds Family in Record Time

In fact, half the time I really don’t think I know what the heck I am doing. I just somehow make it happen, half the time, on a whim. I reach out and try to move the world. I bite off more than I can chew, I make myself overwhelmed. I spread myself too thin.  There has to be some crazy reason why I do. I realize that it’s probably an unhealthy compulsion, but I can stop. I don’t think I want too.

I Was a Very Good Birthmother

I am not proud of that fact anymore. I used to be, a long time ago when I wanted to redeem myself and show those nice people at the agency how strong I was, how worthy I could be, how selfless I tried, but now it seems like I was stupid and foolish and let my need to prove something take away something precious.

Then I Became a Very Bad Birthmother

I broke the rules and contacted my adopted son, Max, before his 18 birthday and without the blessings of his adoptive parents. People gave me a lot of grief over that including my agency and also Max’s parents, though not directly since they have yet to ever speak to me or answer my letter when I asked for understanding. I know some people might think that I have no right for any of that since I did break the “rules”. But to be honest, I don’t see it that way. It was just that for the first time I did not put everyone else’s needs before my own. And I don’t think that I suddenly went from selfless to selfish, I just think that I let us be all equal for once. What I wanted, what had happened, was not more important or less, but finally equal. I saw myself as not lesser than them, not the scared young girl anymore, but worthy and worth it.. important enough to contact my child.

I had a Great Beginning Reunion

Storybook like it was with the blogosphere hanging on to every post as it happened. It was great to share it all online and have the support of so many who helped me get there. I had such high hopes. I had such dreams, but now, it’s kind of fizzely. Is that a word? I don’t know, but now.. I feel stuck, confused, lost again…mother, not mother what does it all mean?

But Now I am Some Reunion Expert?

No, not really. Oh, I am thrilled to have this chance to collect and edit the adoption search and reunions stories with GIMH’s own Melanie Recoy, but I am no expert.  I know probably none of us are. We cannot be. Adoption reunions are complicated and fraught with pitfalls which is why I know this collection is so needed and will be such an excellent recourse. Even in reunion, even with this ever growing adoption community online, it’s still so hard not to feel isolated and alone in our feelings.

Muddled in the Middle Reunion

I have to admit, I am lost. Oh, worry not.. I can collect and edit this book like no bodies business. I can present proposals and will talk like sorrowful lightening at the Adoption Initiative where I know my fellow blogging birthmothers and I will make people think and probably cry. But my own story.. I know not the ending or even where it might be going.

Oh I am lucky, I know that. To find my son happy and healthy, I am thankful. To find him at a young age and so welcoming , I am blessed. To have had the chance to meet him, to talk to him, to touch him, top smell him. to see his smile,. to have all my four children together, to hear him laugh.. yes, I hold that dear to my heart. But I want more.

Suz called it adoption  reunion survivor’s guilt and I can totally get down with that. I mean, I feel even worse sometimes when I think of those who NEVER had a reunion, or would give anything to have the combined less-than-one-week-of-his-life-time-together-with-my-child, yet.. I want more. It’s not enough. You know what? I am not happy and content and peaceful about my “decision” at all.

I have two close birthmother friends whose son’s came and LIVE with them! Can I admit how jealous I feel?  But, I am happy for them too.. and yet, it makes me miss my own child just that much more. And I don’t expect him to give up his whole life and live with us.. I know that’s not realistic for us, but wow, what I would give for a good long visit now and then. It’s so hard to think.. well, he’s happy and that good and he doesn’t need you, but then in the same thought think.. he’s happy and too busy and he doesn’t need you.. or think about you or call you or send notes or letters or even bother being online because that is where I live and wow.. he says everything is cool and it really sounds like that but then how come we don’t hear from him more and I don’t know what to do!! Should I be more persistent? Or should I give him space? What if he really is just too nice to tell me to go to away? But then why can’t he just say that? I don’t really want to hear that! So,  maybe he is just busy, but do I have a right to say hey.. what about me.. you’re  killing me here! Or will that just turn him away? I have no right to put guilt on him.. he’s not here for ME.. so argg.. it’s not his job to fix it..rinse, wash, repeat..

And really.. you have to read that really fast to know how garbled that thought is as it runs through my brain like ALL THE TIME.

I want him to write a reunion story for the book I think just so I know what he feels, but I also want to be all nepotistic and get my son published. I want him to go to Kentucky with me for the Adoptee Protest,  so I can get him around more adoptees and maybe he can unburden himself, but I also want to see him. I want him to want to met his father but I wonder if that is because I still feel guilt for denying that man his only child and then telling him 19 years later and rocking his world. I want my daughter to stop bringing him up every five minutes like she does, but I can’t quell her natural emotions without feeling like poop.

I mean, my two youngest play this game that they call “Maxie”. Tristan is the young kid and Scarlett is his mother. Can you hear the weird mental play acting that these two are working through.. or am I just being weird because they choose, of all the names in the world, their oldest brothers who they don’t really get to see at all.. so they play a game in his name. Ouch. Even my dear hubbie, who is not known for being Mr. Sensitive, kept on telling them to play some other “game”. I didn’t dare to do that, it felt wrong to me. And finally, one day he asked, ” Don’t you think it’s weird that they play that? Doesn’t it bother you?” and I had to admit that it did, but what was I to do? they had a right to work it out somehow. I can’t tell them not to And really, what difference does it make.. it’s not like I don’t think about, wonder, worry about what is not happening in our reunion ALL THE TIME.

He made them stop playing it and now I feel guilty about that too.

Yup, I am a Lucky Reunited Birthmother

Everything worked out just as it should, but still.. I spin in my own mental circles worrying myself over everything and wondering what to do next; half the time so paralyzed with fear for doing the wrong thing that I do nothing at all, except bite off more than I can chew and spread myself too thin. I have to put this energy someplace.

***

The best place to keep track of Claudia and her none stop adoption induced insanity is on Facebook where she will friend everyone and like everything while constantly marketing and updating you one all things adoption realted….really, look her up!

If you have an adoption search and reunion story to tell, even as confusing and mudduled as the one above, please consider submitting to EMK Press by October 1, 20210. The Adoption Reunion Book will be stories from all members of the adoption journey: birthparents, adoptees, and adoptive parents.

Related Posts

• “Mother and Child” Upcoming Adoption Movie Review
• Miracle on Social Network: Facebook Adoption Group Finds Family in Record Time
• Fending Reactions to ABC’s Finding My Family
• There is No Escaping Mother’s Day
• Getting Ready for My Gotcha Day

Hollywood  tries it hands at an Adoption movie again in this film by Rodrigo Garcia due to open May 7th.

Critics Rave for Performances by Adoption Triad

Shown already at both the  Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance, “movie” reviews hail the performances of the main characters played by Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, and Kerri Washington as both Oscar Worthy and also sang praises for Garica who was both writer and director.

I, however, do not pretend to be a true film critic, but rather look upon anything adoption related for it’s true views and media portrayals of adoption. It was with my “adoption eyes” that I viewed the Screening of “Mother and Child” at the Sony Private screening room in NYC this past Monday evening.

Not Another Typical Hollywood Birthmother

We are first introduced to Karen played Annette Bening. The first scene shows her, at 14, daring to love a boy, then sitting among many pregnant teens in maternity home and then, painfully giving birth. The year is about 1973  and the snapshot images of the unwed mother’s experience is frighteningly true to what many other mother’s describe all too clearly in both Baby Scoop Era blogs and The Girl’s That Went Away. I worry that I did not bring tissues.

Bening, who I have always admired as an actress, seems to understanding some of the finer nuances to life as a birthmother. We are brought back up to the present day where she cares for her invalid, aging mother and the left over tension from things left unsaid is clearly felt in their interactions.

“It’s going to be her birthday soon”, Bening brings up with a hopeful sound in her voice.

Her mother ignores her completely.

Quickly, I can see that she has not “moved on’ from her experience, but continues to be haunted. In fact, in many ways she has frozen to that time when she relinquished; waking up from the often reoccurring nightmare of birth and quickly going to her own mothers bed, like the child she probably still is in many ways. Still, the anger is there in Bening and the avoidance is there in her mother.

As Karen, Bening is emotional shut off. She is going through the motions of life; working as a physical therapist, caring for her mother, but it’s obvious that she derives no enjoyment from anything at all. She is stiff and cold with co-workers, her mother’s caretaker/housecleaner, Maria, and clearly resents/ fears Maria’s young daughter as many birthmother’s also report wanting to avoid all other children and the pain that they bring up.

When her mother dies suddenly, it becomes even more obvious how far apart the adoption rift has caused them. Maria tries to tell Bening that her mother was a good woman and Bening is shocked that the housekeeper is obviously closer to her own mother than she is. Desperately, she asks what did her mother say about her, and when Maria tells her that her mother took responsibility for ruining Bening’s life and had made a terrible mistake by forcing her to give up her child, Bening  breaks down and sobs in a most realistic way.

“I needed for HER to say that!” and indeed, the betrayals of our own families during pregnancy, relinquishment, and the ongoing grief is very difficult to both mitigate through and find true forgiveness from. Waiting for the acknowledgment for 37 years and then losing the chance to ever get it, Bening’s response is pretty true to life.

Overall, I really appreciated how Annett Bening played a birthmother. Difficult, broken, stuck in the past ( constantly writing to her daughter in letters never mailed), cold, removed and knowing that she had nothing left, I think it was an accurate portrayal of a mother in that situation. A chunkier, graying  Jimmy Smits plays her co-worker who is trying to get her eye and you can see that not only does she not know how to interact with him, but she doesn’t know what to do with him at all. However, he persists and upon finally picking her up for a date, she explains what she is about:

” When I was 14, I had a baby and gave her up for adoption, I think about her all the time. I dream about her.  I buy presents that she will never see. I write letters that will never get mailed. I have nothing else”

Somehow, Bening was able to get it and show it well.

Naomi Watts Gives Us an Adoptee Nightmare

Watts plays Elizabeth, Bening’s daughter, now 37. To create this character someone must have read The Primal Wound and took every adoptee issue and wrapped it up into one scary package.

We met her upon a job interview with Samuel L Jackson and she describes upon his request her personal life:

‘My mother was 14 and gave me up at birth. My adopted father died when I was ten. My adoptive mother and I are not close. I left home at 17 and have been on my own ever since. I am not married or have children nor do I have plans to do either”.

She is frighteningly sexual aggressive, cold, calculating workaholic. She runs away from any situation before she can get hurt. She uses her sexuality to control those around her. She is adoptee trust issues personified. She seems to have no real connection to other people, unless she is in bed with them, and even then it’s a stretch, and no connection to her own issues or the adoption at all. Of course, she shows no sign of waiting to search for her roots even though there is no sign of any adoptee loyalty to her adoptive family either. Bonding, closeness, family, connection all seem to freak her completely out, yet she keeps returning to Los Angles, the city of her birth, and doesn’t seem to question why.

Elizabeth is full of extremes, however, and upon finding out that she is pregnant ( though not knowing of it is her boss Jackson’s child or her married neighbor’s), she quickly goes from ” I can’t be; I had my tubes tied when I was 17″ to cursing out the Gyn-Ob who assumed that she would want an abortion. Determined to keep this baby, she runs away from her job, Jackson who is scared of getting attached and hurt by her coldness, and her life.  Now softer, as her belly grows, she strikes up a friendship with Violet her blind 14 year old neighbor who asks probing questions.  When Violet inquires if she was angry upon being given up for adoption, Elizabeth answers “All that anger washed out of me”.

Violet suggests that she should search for her birthmother and sure enough, Elizabeth writes the letter that will go into her adoption file.

While it IS typical for many adoptees to re-examine their feelings of their own births during pregnancy, the 180 degree flip that Elizabeth experiences is almost hard to believe. It’s just a tad too much change in my opinion and too quick, however I think even the unseasoned viewer can see that adoption has somehow effected Elizabeth quite negatively.

The Entitled Prospective Adoptive Mother, Lucy

I found Lucy, played by Kerry Washington, hard to like, not because she was playing the adoptive mother, but because she was sooooo almost predatory in her quite selfish portrayal. I should have like the movie for showing that side of adoption, but I don’t know if it would come across sympathetic or not?

In the segments of Lucy’s story, there are nice attempts to represent some adoption stereotypes especially in her interactions with her own mother who blurts out things lifted from  the “What not to say to adoptive parents” handbook. Lucy prattles in feel good sound bites like ” It’s the  time spent together that counts” or something to the Nun at the Catholic Adoption agency (surprise.. the same nun who was there for Bening!).

We get a little wonky when, her husband leaves the 4 year old marriage mid-adoption because he really wanted a child of his “own” and she continues on with the same perspective birthmother at the same Catholic agency and it all seems ok. I would like to think that a pending divorce might cause any agency to at least have Lucy take some time off to process that emotional upheaval of any divorce, but maybe not? After all the nun does say to Lucy ” You don’t want to lose momentum” pursuing Ray and her baby earlier.

Ray, the birthmother that Lucy connects with, is portrayed  as a very in control “making a choice” type of girl. She is 20 and is determined to place the baby, rejecting a few families before connecting with soon to be single mom Lucy. They never offer any reasons really that she must place except that she is determined to and does not “want” this baby, though she has a list of what she does wants for this baby boy.

One of my personally favorite scenes though is Ray and her own mother in her mother’s store. Her mother says to her:

“I was 20 and single and pregnant just like you and I didn’t want you either and now, not a day goes by that I don’t think about you all the time”

I have to say that Ray’s mother’s wisdom regarding the mother child bond plays in after. After giving birth, with Lucy present in the delivery room, Ray refuses to feed, hold, name or even look at her baby. Lucy and her mother, delighted, leave for the night and Ray’s mom goes to visit her daughter and granddaughter. The next scene shows Lucy and Ray returning to find the Nun and a a guarded door waiting for them: Ray has “changed her mind”. I don’t know quite what to think of the drama shown next. Lucy freaks the heck out and throws a fit screaming about it’s “MY BABY!! It’s MY baby.. YOU PROMISED!!” to the agency nun and the closed door as the guards pin her down on the floor in a heap of crying screaming mess.

I wanted to scream about how pre-birth contact and prospective adoptive parents in the delivery room was unethical and bad for many reasons to both parties involved..

I am not sure if there are prospective adoptive parents would act like that ever no matter how disappointed they might be. I know from reading adoption forums for years that they can be hurt, disappointed, angry  and sometimes downright nasty towards the mother that dares keep her own baby to raise, but to act like that in the hospital?   I also don’t know if the scene played out like that to show how gross Lucy’s reaction was or to make her seem sympathetic? In either case, it’s Ok because the nun, who really likes to play God too much for my taste, has another prospective baby for her that very night!

What I Hated About “Mother and Child”

My BIGGEST complaint overall is that we see both the Bening and Watts characters beginning to search for each other and the film fails to provide any accurate search information much less give any insights into adoption laws and adoptee legislation.

Rather, both characters return to the Catholic Charities Adoption Agency to do the extremely passive search method of “leave a letter in the file and if your daughter/mother returns we’ll give it to her”. Now, I can see that the Bening character might accept that since she dared not search at all until Jimmy Smits not only accepts her, loves her, marries her and agree when his own daughter encourages Bening to look before she “loses more time”. However, Watt’s Elizabeth is supposed to be aggressive, demanding, smart, and loaded with money, so how could a lawyer in this day and age never even think to turn to the internet for finding her own mother?  Watt’s character would never accept the “wait” concept, but would hire a private investigator to find her mother in a heartbeat once she decided to search. So not only was it unbelievable, but for any non informed birthmother/adoptee, they are encourage to go back to the very industry that caused their separation and be pawn again of an imperfect system. Huge thumbs down for that, Mr. Garcia.

What I Liked About “Mother and Child”

Aside from the interwoven adoption line, the movie really did examine many aspects of the Mother and Child relationship, motherhood in general and many emotional aspects of regret, forgiveness, humanity, etc. We see:

• Bening and her estranged Mother
• Maria and her young daughter
• Watts and her unborn daughter
• Smit’s daughter to Bening
• Lucy and her mother played by S. Epatha Merkerson

In fact, one of my other favorite scenes is between Lucy and her own mother. Lucy is shown frantic with the now adopted baby girl crying hysterically in the middle of the night desperately calling her own mother for help. After the baby gets put down by Grandma, Lucy goes off an amusing tirade that I KNOW many new mothers, both adopted and biological have felt and though yet never dared to say:

“I don’t love her. I just don’t love her. She is so demanding. All she does is want,. She wants to eat. She needs to be fed. She needs to be changed. She doesn’t sleep and all she does is cry. I hate her. Who does she think she F*67ing is?”

And to that S. Epatha says, stronger than she ever says in any Law & Order rerun:

“Do you think you are the first woman to ever have a baby? This is what’ mothers do. This is what it means to be the mother. So stop your whining and crying and BE the mother!”

Of course, being that this is Hollywood’s version of life, that is all Lucy needs to be ok from that point on. While a bit harsh in the delivery, I do think that the very same words should be not only expressed by other frantic mothers but said to some other moms as well and not just adoptive either. I would like S. Epatha’s words said to any woman considering adoption because they are “just not ready”.

What Annoyed Me About “Mother and Child”

Overall, despite the sometimes unbelievable drama, stereotypes, and characterizations, I thought it was an interesting and decent representation of many aspects of the emotions attached to adoption from all sides. Clearly Garcia did his homework on some level to make this film, however, because it is Hollywood, it all ties up neatly in the end.

I won’t provide any more spoilers and will just say the expected mother and child reunion scene does not happen which was kind of a letdown as I wanted to see what the characters would do.  However, for most of the main characters, there seems to be a somewhat happy, though bittersweet ending that was a bit farfetched and too pat for my liking. A shocker to two, a few questions left unanswered, a time line that sometimes didn’t quite make sense ( the two pregnancies either went on too long or someone found a worm hole in time) left me feeling Ok, but wanting a bit more in terms of closure.

If it wasn’t for the true lack of adoption search and reunion options, I could say that finally we have a movie that provides the general public with a much more realistic view of the emotions attached to adoption than Juno ever could.  If you plan on seeing the movie, due the world a favor and print out some facts about searches from the ISRR and leave them on the theater seats. You never know who might be helped by this simple gesture.

***

Claudia Corrigna D’Arcy, also known as FauxClaud, writes about her real very non-Hollywood life as a birthmother at her blog:

Musings of the Lame

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Adoption is, in its perfect form, suppose to be about finding homes for children that need them, not about finding children for parents that want them.

That’s the perfect ideal, for the perfect world, someplace we all know we do not live in. What seems to be missing are some very important adoption facts. That doesn’t mean statistics like how many children are adopted each year, or examples of great gifts for an adopted baby, or even simple logistics such as where to find an adoption agency in Va. I’m talking about the pull your head out of the sand, stop listening to heart-warning stories on Oprah, and acknowledge some cold hard, adoption facts:

There is nothing inherently wrong about wanting to be a parent, but it can become wrong depending on how you go about becoming a parent.

I will never judge anyone for wanting to have a child. I would not think less of anyone or negate their parenting if they became parents though adoption. In fact, despite my disgust at the system, there are many parents through adoption who I like as people, trust as friends, work with to achieve mutual goals. I would even go so far as to say that I am understanding when I hear someone spout off some absolute blatantly ignorant statement; I shrug and think that many of the times the perspective adoptive parents haven’t even had a clue.

It’s not like they were trying to be cruel or uncaring. I know that. They were just doing what the industry and professionals told them to do, what was “acceptable practices”. I blame a system that hides the real hard truths from all the parties involved. It is only afterwards, when we can come together, usually then, when the real truths are exposed and fears disassembled, that the “other” side becomes real people with real feelings, and do many of us realize that we played a part in this misuse of an emotional crisis.

I know that many adoptive parents might resist really looking deep into the way their children’s adoptions were handled.

They might fight to look into their earlier thoughts and often stereotypes. They could, understandably, desire to remain ignorant of the losses involved in their path to parenthood. They might begin to think now, with regret, about some of the practices of their lawyers and other professionals that they trusted. I’m not judging that. I know that’s how it works.

I think it works that way for many parents who surrender as well.  Many do not want to look at it deeply and fully. It really can hurt emotionally, in a way that is completely indescribable and words could never do justice.  Often, by the time we do allow ourselves to feel deeply regarding the relinquishment of our children, we have years invested in self denial.  Because it cannot ever be undone and all we can do is live though the time, mothers and fathers who relinquish their child to adoption have a great resistance as well and often, anger, at seeing adoption in a real light. This is especially true for newer first mothers who still must function at a level for survival as they work through their grief.

The very same can be said for the adoptee, especially for the ones who insist that they “never think about that I am adopted”. From some of the most honest and real, courageous and brilliant adopted persons I have known; I have had the honor to learn that many of the feelings that come from adoption do not always invoke feelings of gratitude, or contentment, but loss and primal rejection, as well as confusion, anger, many unanswered questions and  often unsatisfactory love.

What it comes down to, bottom line; even if an adoptive parent technically participated in some questionable actions in the past, I don’t care. I don’t care if a posse of card carrying content birthmothers really thinks relinquishing adoption was the best thing ever for both them and their babies.  I don’t care about how thankful you are that you were adopted.

It’s not about you, really, but it is. It’s not the past I am concerned about, it’s the future. It’s not how you got here, but what you are willing to do now.

Can you face the cold, hard facts?

******
By 2012, Adoption Will be a 5 BILLION Dollar Plus industry

Even the banking and insurance industry has more regulations applied to then than adoption and we know what they do to try and make money at all costs.

An industry analysis of Fertility Clinics and Adoption Services by Market Data Enterprises of Tampa, FL, has placed a $1.4 billion value on adoption services in the US back in’ 99. No other government or private agency has bothered since then. With a projected annual growth rate of 11.5% to 2012, this makes adoption the largest unregulated industry in the US.

Do the math; even if we follow those conservative projections, because the market has exploded since this last study was done making 11.5% is very mild of a percentage, we have a number that is in excess of 5 billion dollars by the end of 2012 with a growth rate of at least a half billion a year and growing.

Let’s all repeat: NO REGULATIONS PLUS LARGE SUMS OF MONEY EQUALS CLIMATE FOR CORRUPTION. That, folks, is human nature.

Adoption Laws In the USA are Antiquated

Many were placed on the books decades ago based on child development and human nature beliefs that we now know to be wrong.

The amount of knowledge that we have has changed, but the legislation has not been updated. Current changes have been made to benefit the adoption professionals and the industry in general because they have the money to pay for the lobbyists and the influence. The National Council for Adoption, a lobby group with a deceiving name and even more disturbing game, is paid for by the agencies, pro-life groups, and federal tax funds and grants to promote adoption.  They like to separate families not protected by money or the Godly union of marriage in favor for a legally married heterosexual couples. Consent times, like in California and Pennsylvania, have been reduced, because lawyers and agencies want it and they are the ones speaking out to the politicians. It makes adoptions and the profits go though the system quicker.

Birthmother Grief is Real and Traumatic and Lifelong

Many, many mothers did indeed lose their children to adoption and suffer what can only be described as a real diagnosis of “birthmother grief”.

Whether they were downright forced and given no choice, or if they were made to believe they had a choice, but still felt they had no other options, or whether they felt they had options, but were not really given the accurate information regarding long term ramifications of relinquishment for them and for their child. These are women who are and could have been good parents. These children were in no danger of being bump around in foster care for years. No threat of abuse. If it was not for the happy adoption seduction dance of coercion, these families would just be. They would have parented. Maybe they would have had a few first years of lean times, maybe it would have been hard, but look at us now? Suz, Jenna, PoorStatue, Barb for example; all hard working, goal minded, strong willed ladies. I doubt any of us would have sunk to child beating, crystal meth, stripping, and getting beaten by our men just because we had a baby in tow. In fact, I dare to say that we would be more apt not to, because of the need to love and provide for our kids.

There is a huge difference between child protection and child surrender.

Erik Smith said that at the ‘o7 ACC conference, and I think it is brilliant.

Child protection is CPS and state removal for the benefit and welfare of a child. While that system does have concerning issues as well with lots of abuse and corruption, it does result in children that need homes. It is involuntary, it is necessary; it is for the good of the child.

Child surrender is voluntary, it is often not really necessary, but made out to be beneficial. The real “good” of the child is questionable depending on your personal interpretation of what is “better”. Often fraught with myths, and misinformation that sways the participants to be involved for the benefit of the agency and, often, the desires of the paying clients, the perspective adoptive parents. It is finding children to fit the needs of the industry which is based on transferring the parental rights from one party to another for a profit.

The rights of the unwed mother and the unwed father’s rights cannot be ignored no matter how easy it might be to judge them, or worry about the future financial burden on the taxpayer’s money.

Adoptees, Our Children, Pay the Price

There are enough adoptees who search, who are in damaged, who hurt or are just not thrilled that they are adopted that we should care.

They might not hate their lives totally or even at all, but adoption adds a whole bunch of baggage to their load that they must carry. Some had parents that rocked and some had parents that did harm, mostly though, I bet they had parents that tried their best, made mistakes, and loved them lots. The fact is though, that if a child does not need to be separated from their original family, then the great majority of child welfare professionals, from the United Nations to UNICEF plus many others, agree that children are best off with kin. It is a person’s birthright to be with family.

To top it off, many voluntary infant adoptions in this country never were and still are not necessary. Imagine growing up with the most important and foundation building relationship of your life, aborted without logical reason, before you could even voice your own opinions. Call it a Primal Wound, call it adoptee issues, call it a matter of adoptee rights, our children had no choice and they had no voice. Now, they do.

The Need for Adoptee Rights Can NOT be Ignored

Adopted persons are denied their civil right to have access to the Original Birth Certificates and are frequently torn and caught between two sets of parents who have their own needs and issues.

They are not abnormal, or damaged, nor bitter, nor angry, but they are people who we all need to learn from so that we can do better for the next generation. They have the keys to tell us what we need to fix in adoption.

There are enough adoptees and natural parents searching for each other that we cannot humanly deny that it is a primal and necessary urge in many cases.  It’s not a whim, not a phase, nor a sign if immaturity, nor selfishness, nor of poor adoptive parenting, or anything else might we believe. It is just the truth: adoptees have two sets of parents, adoptive and birth parents, and often a need to know and have relationships with both.

We must look at both Sides of Adoption

We cannot say “adoption is always wonderful” nor even focus on only the positive and refuse to see the Birth mothers grief and adoptee loss.

While there are many happy adoption stories, many parents who adore their children and children that adore their parents; there are also enough stories of adoptees who got bad deals, adoptees who got good deals but still have enough issues, and relinquishing parents who just totally got screwed in various degrees. It can be good, it can be bad and it can be all the variants in between. The negative, though, is very bad and threatens all our good. We should all care enough to make it much better for not just our own needs, not just for our children, but as a legacy of improvement to leave behind for future generations.

Don’t Dismiss The Adoption Message with Generalizations

I may generalize and state that “adoption is bad”, BUT I don’t mean YOUR adoption necessarily.

I still don’t need you to tell me how you were above board, super ethical, checked out everything, or begged your child’s mother to seriously look into parenting. I don’t need to hear about how she really IS a crack whore or how she really couldn’t manage it, didn’t want to parent, had a great agency. I don’t need to know about how sure she was, or her reasons for giving you her child. And I don’t buy it when you tell me that she is just fine…really, even if she is. Let me talk to her in 18 years when the taste of the Kool-Aid gets all stale and metallic, without you there so she could speak freely.  Then I might believe it, but I don’t even need to do that. It’s not about proving that you are horrible person, less of a parent, or a baby stealing troll.

Really, I don’t care all that much about what was already DONE. It’s over, that’s the past and none of us can change it anyway.

If you gave your baby to adoption and  you’re all content and peaceful and still think you made a great choice for your baby, and you have no regrets about adoption…OK. I’m glad for you, I really am. I am happy that you escaped the bullet. I can only hope that your child is in complete agreement with you when they can speak for themselves. And if that is not the case, of you ever feel that “hmmm…this is not what I expected, this is a bit more than I was warned about” or if that stale and metallic taste gets to heavy on your tongue, then I am here for you still. I know that deal all too well. And if you are super pissed off and angry and hate adoption with every breath of your being, well I get that too and ever stance of conflicting emotions in between.

If you are adopted and it is all peachy for you…..great!! You have only one mother and father, you have four, and you have six. ok. I cannot tell you how to make your heart beat. Your feelings are not about me, though I will listen and learn from you so I can understand my son more, but really the only one who I need to care about as far as the ultimate decree of my motherhood is my kids. If you want to be angry, I say that you are entitled to your feelings. If you feel abandoned or rejected, all I can do is hear you and try to help you understand what your own mom might be thinking or have felt, but even then..I can’t really speak for her, unless I do know her.

Adoption past is the past and we can really do nothing to change it.

But, we can speak of it, we can document it, we can be truthful about it.

That is all I ask: that you be truthful, to me, to the public, to yourself, to your children’s other parents, to your kids. Just speak the truth, even if it is hard, even if it makes you uncomfortable, even if it hurts you inside and makes you question yourself. No need to explain or defend this stuff to anyone, especially of you really are still trying to explain or defend this stuff to yourself. That is your journey. I got mine.

Even if your adoption was perfect, even if it was the most ethical thing on the face of this earth, even if you saved your child from certain death; it doesn’t matter to me. If you are somehow immune from being part of the problem, are you willing to be part of the solution?

I am still going to say things that make you uncomfortable about adoption.

I still want you to think, I want you to know that it goes beyond your personal experience, it goes beyond mine. I want you to behold such truths to be self evident, that adoption as an industry has a long way to go before it reaches that perfect ideal that we all strive for. I want you to care about more than just you and your child, but the child of that poor woman who looks like she just needs a break with decent day care. Or care about that really pissed off angry man who keeps getting a bad deal at work and can’t get insurance for his family to be or gets crooked out of his parental rights because an industry is running him down. Care about the young girl down the block who looks like a kid pushing a doll in a stroller to school every day with a loaded back pack of books, don’t judge her, or him, but remember, we all could have been in those shoes.

Yes, you; if the stars have aligned differently, if life handed you different cards.

I want you to stop and think about what it means for a mother, never mind if she is a young mother or a poor mother, as neither can measure love; what it might feel for a mother to lose a life with her own child. I want you to stop and really think of what you are asking her to do by relinquishing her baby. How do you feel when you hear of a missing child abducted? What emotions do you find OK for a mother to feel at that time? Do you sympathize with a mother when you hear about a tragic accidental death of her baby? And then explain to yourself what makes one mother’s grief over the loss of a child more worthy of our understanding than another mother’s loss because adoption was involved?

I want people to realize that even if, on the short term, it seems much more logical and sensible for the too young, or too challenged to give their unplanned children to those that have planned, waited and prayed to be parents; that infant surrender is sentencing both mother, child and extended family to a lifelong altercation, often with unpleasant results.  What is exactly a few years of social support, non judgment, and maybe assisted day care and housing compared to a life time of unnatural grief? A life time of loss or a few lean years and maybe some tax aided support?

What is the greater evil? Trauma for life or public assistance?

I want you to think about the world we allow to happen for our children and their children; is it good enough? Would you want your daughter to have a story like mine, or Nic, or Suz? Do you want to have a universe, a climate in this country where the government spends money on known programs that fail, like abstinence only policies, that spends tax dollars on studies to find out who to make adoption appealing so that they can convince women to relinquish, that supports and promotes maternity homes like Gladney for political favors, that teaches professionals downright lies such as the infant adoption awareness training, that allows corrupt influences in your children’s schools like Stephanie Bennett, that has no regulations and no oversight and makes your daughters and sons venerable to an industry that is above and beyond reproach.

It’s not about what you did; it is about what you can do now.

Are you an adoptive parent, and do I make you angry? Do you care that you got what you wanted? Is that all adoption is to you, was to you, a way to be a parent and now it is done? Then why are you here? Why bother; go live your happy life.

Do you care about being the best parent for your child?

Which means that adoptive or original parent; you need to listen to the adoptees and what they have to tell us about our own children. It means making this world, this society, a better place where ALL understand and acknowledge what the adoptees tell us of their feelings so they do not feel they have to perform or lie or keep quiet at their own expense to protect those they love. So they do not feel alone and confused.

Think of your own children facing an unplanned pregnancy. Imagine being separated from one of your kids. Could you do it? Do you want anyone to feel the pain and grief of these adoption losses?  Do you care about making some real changes in adoption practices and beliefs so that things are better for the next generations to come, our children? Can you put your money and your actions where your mouth is? Yes? Then come on, let’s go. We have work to do.

Think Beyond Your Own Adoption Experience

You can have the greatest adoption experience on the face of the earth, and still help.

It’s not about you, but it is. You don’t have to say what you did was wrong or right, but let’s go further now. Let’s make it ALL right for everyone.

And that means accepting the bad parts of it, even if you did somehow contribute to it. I will not say that makes you a terrible person, it means that you have learned and grown. We, as a society, as a community, as a people, have to be able to see, recognize and call out what is wrong in order to make it right. If you don’t all into the category of what was wrong then that statement is not about you. Don’t make it about you. If the shoe doesn’t fit, I am not forcing it on your foot. Just acknowledge that the shoe is there.

The Real Truth About Adoption IS HORRIBLY Raw, Frequently Ugly and Often Unjust.

I know that is hard, I really do. It hurts, it makes us uncomfortable and it makes us question everything we ever thought, everything we ever believed, every decision we ever made. It’s hard, but that is the crux of the issue; Adoption is HARD. It’s is difficult to navigate for us all. If it was easy, then none of us would be here. We would just do this one time act: adopt, be born, relinquish and never look back. It really would be the same as having a baby, being born to one set of parents, or never having a baby, but it doesn’t work like that.

The adoption industry wants us to believe it is the same, they say it is, but they are wrong, it’s a lifelong process for us all.

Sometimes, it gets to be too much.  It is just too darn heavy of a load to carry. It becomes too deep, too convoluted, and our heads and hearts spin. We get freaked out, we need a break, there is so much to battle, so many venues and issues. It wears us all down. People need to recharge and not think about adoption for a little while; we go back to denial for a while, pretend to be normal. People say things that get us upset, generalizations are made and we feel on the defensive, we have to speak up, the negativity gets us down, nothing will ever change.

Adoption Facts are Just That: Facts.

You cannot change the truth.

Adoption will not change if we hide in our holes, in a safe area, and do not test ourselves, push the envelope, get discouraged, run away, or bury our head in the sands. Then in 20, 30, 40 years, we will be old and gray, drooling, and our children will be facing the same issues, writing on blogs and boards trying to make sense of it all.

It’s not about what you did or did not do. It is not about what I did or did not do. It is not about who is right or who is wrong. It’s not about what you knew or didn’t know. It’s not about whether you fit that generalization or not. It’s not even about what offends and hurts you. It’s about being able to speak clearly and make others understand, talk about the truth, the hard stuff, process that, and then improve it. It’s about growing and changing. It is about understanding. It is about seeing my mistakes and yours and learning how to not make them again.  It is about the collective body of knowledge that we all must “get”. Adoption is too vast, too wide of an ocean with too many nuances. We only have one life and we cannot all live though every aspect of it for a total picture. We have to learn from each other.

Every time one of us speaks one iota of truth to someone else, the knowledge of truth grows. Little by little, one person at a time, we can make a difference. The adoption community can touch each other, we can support each other.  We all grow, we understand adoption better.  As players in the adoption arena, we have a moral obligation to make things better. If not us, those who live it, then who?  I challenge everyone to stretch the boundaries of your mind and unlearn what you think you know about adoption. Find truth. Speak truth. Accept truth. Spread truth. And then think what the next step? What can you do to make adoption better? How can, we, as a society, not care about fixing adoption as a corrupt and antiquated institution?

I don’t care about how you got by my side, who you are, color, creed, place in the triad, age or adoption era; all I care about is if you are at my side or not. We all need to work together, use our collective voice, and cry out to fix adoption. Face the facts about adoption, then you must demand ethical reformation.

In fact, take a step right now.. and VOTE to Return Adult Adoptees the right to their Original Birth Certificates. Our Children need all the votes they can get from now until March 12th.

***

I originally wrote this as a long rambling rant on my blog called “It’s Not about You, But It Is” in Mach of 2007. It’s worth poping over to there as the comments are really interesting. I have edited a bit since then so it’s not as long and rambling, but I still find it to be one of my favorite pieces of writing and  core to all that I do.

Related Posts

• This Is Why
• Adoption Carnival V: What do you want REFORMED?
• New Research Encourages Going Beyond Culture Camp
• Finding a Road to Truth: how I came to be the birthmother that I am

ETA: Adoptee Rights has made it to the second and final round: PLEASE VOTE AGAIN!!  Currently, Adoptees OBC access is currently in 14th Place and needs 16 more votes to be one of the 10 winning ideas. We have a chance!!!

Don’t Let Drugs Win Over Your Kids!

Did I get your attention?

Good, I was trying to. In fact, be a little bit mad at me. It’s just a little trick called “link bait” but now since I have you reading, can you please just make it to the end?

At the end of January, Cully Ray, a circa 1947 Adoptee, created on Change.org an adoption related  ”Idea for Change”

Now “Ideas for Change in America” is a crowd-sourcing competition that empowers citizens to identify and build momentum around the most innovative ideas for addressing challenges our country faces.  The 10 most popular ideas will be presented at an event in Washington, DC to relevant members of the Obama Administration, and Change.org will subsequently mobilize its full community to support a series of grassroots campaigns to turn each idea into reality.

Pretty cool, huh?

All that is needed to turn this into a reality is the simple five minute act of VOTING for this issue. And to make it even easier, it’s not a crazy all anti-adoption idea or anything. It’s just that across adoption triad approved, everyone talks about it, but we can’t seem to get enough attention, ideal that adult adoptees should be given access to their original birth certificate. You know, just like every other person who is NOT adopted in the US can get by giving a county clerk their drivers license and ten bucks.  See, nothing gruesome and in fact rather innocuous, but feel free to check out the not so fine print on the actual “idea”; Return Adult Adoptees the right to their Original Birth Certificates.

Now, personally I think this is pure brilliance. Change.org has made it very simple and the idea of having this presented to the administration is HUGE. They could not have made it any easier to help your adoptees.

Now you might be wondering, yet again, why should I care about the fight to open adoption records and to that all I can say, again, is:

You might not think that this matters to you if you child is in an open adoption or from an international situation and won’t need a new original birth certificate or just can’t ever get one.  But as a parent of an adopted child, this issue will affect us all. It is the government sentencing of legal discrimination against adopted people and guess who you are raising…. an adopted person. If we do not raise our voices against the blatant second class treatment  that is faced by Adopted persons  by our own government, then one day you might have to explain to your child why Adoptees are still discriminated against.

It’s in Your Adoptee Child’s Best Interest!

Now, since I was made aware of this amazing opportunity for our US adoptees, I have personally networked and begged for votes like crazy. I went to numerous Facebook adoption groups and simply stated that if all the members in that group would bother to spend the FIVE MINUTES needed to vote for this cause, then we could make it number one in no time at all! Groups and fan pages with thousands in them.  Again, it would be simple! We could do it!

How Incredible would it be to know that you really helped change the laws in our country all for your child’s best interest and their civil rights? How amazing to be able to say to your grown child,

“Well, you know, when you were a kid, adoptees like you couldn’t even get their original birth certificates, but that was unfair so we asked them to change the laws so that you could be treated just like everyone else. “

What does that teach a kid about fairness, and freedom and our country? What does it teach them about self worth and equality and working for the common good? Aren’t these positive values that we want, that good parenting demands, that we inspire and teach to our children?

You know how many votes total the cause has? Do you want to know how many people bothered to take the five minutes to actual give a darn and vote? Are you sure you want to know:

How Many Adoptive Parents Really Care for their Children? Less than 500!

( more link bait SEO..shush!)

Really, look, this is the current number on this widget:

As I type, the Idea to Return Adoptees Civil Rights to their OBC has less than 500 votes and a great majority are from adult adoptees and birthmothers.

What is more important than knowing that your child will grow up and have to hope he or she never loses their passport because their amended birth certificate short form might not be good enough for an adoptee. It really happens and sometimes and adoptee cannot get their passport. Did you know that it can be easier for a terrorist  to get a passport than it is for an US adoptee?

What can be more important than you adopted child not being treated like a terrorist?

You don’t even want to know what is more important to people than your child’s civil rights to be treated equally as any other citizen in the US.

Legalize Recreational Use of Marijuana is more Important than Adoptees!

Yup. Currently the most popular idea in America that people really care enough to spend the five minutes voting on is about legalizing weed, rather than your child.

Adoptive Parents are Allowing Marijuana to be More Important than their Adopted Children!

( yes, more sensational headlines for attention, but you are reading this aren’t you?!)

Legalizing Pot has 1,421 votes. See, I expect that number to change, but here’s the widget:

That, oh Caring Adoptive Parents is Sad!

Let me tell you what else is more important than your adopted child’s civil rights being restored:

• After Legalize Recreational Use of Marijuana with 1,412 votes we have;
• Don’t Sell Elections to the Highest Bidder – Enact strong standards of political conduct for corporations with 1,259 votes
• Improved Medicare for All with 1,023
• Freeze Pentagon spending and fund human needs, like health care, education, and jobs. with 1005.
• with 983, there is Provide Legal Protections for Animals Through the Animal Bill of Rights ( so animals getting a Bill of Rights is more important than Adoptees Bill of Rights? and
• · STOP cruel BLM round ups of WILD HORSES with 839 votes means more to the US than adoption.
• Now again with over 700 votes we have the return of Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana over adopted children
• Establish a U.S. Department of Peacebuilding with 710 votes
• Facing Up to Senior Hunger in America at 619 votes
• And finally with 592 votes, the idea of President Obama, introduce Esperanto as a Second Language subject in schools. is more important than your child.

If you let this vote go through ( and yes, I do mean YOU now)and adoptee rights is not one of the top ten ideas presented to the Obama Administration, then you are allowing Marijuana to be more important than your adopted child.

And I don’t care now if you are mad at me for saying it.

Go ahead and prove me wrong. Prove it to me. Go vote. Take the five minutes, right NOW, to bother to register. It’s easy. Then just confirm your email address, sign in and vote. One little click and guess what?

You are Now a Good Adoptive Parent Doing what is Right for your Adopted Child

But don’t do it for me, really. I’m just egging you on. Vote for your kids. Vote for your child. Vote for the kids that you don’t know. Vote for your other favorite adoption blogger’s kids might grow up and be affected. Vote for the angry adoptee that you hate reading posts from and hope to god your kids don’t turn out like them and maybe they won’t be so angry anymore! Vote because as a group, our children are treated differently due to the circumstances of their birth which they had no control over. Vote because it’s right and good and just and did I say how it only takes five minutes. Vote because you hate discrimination of any kind and this is one time that you can actually DO something about it. Just do it and Vote  and then, you know that you can look your child in the eyes and say, yes, honey I voted for you.

Vote because drugs; Pot, Weed, Marijuana, is NOT more Important than Adopted Children!

And be proud that you did!

First round voting ends at 5pm ET on February 25th so time is running out.

Go Vote for  to Return Adult Adoptees the right to their Original Birth Certificates. There is NO excuse why with the incredible network of truly wonderful and understanding parents of adoptees that really do want what is best for their kids and all adoptees cannot make this be the number one most important idea in America. It makes us all look bad and says that we will allow Marijuana to look more important than what is best for our adopted kids.

And if you do, feel free to grab this badge of honor that is the image for this post and helped pique your anger or curiosity and place it on your own blog or website.

Here is  the code:

<a href=”http://www.change.org/ideas/view/return_adult_adoptees_the_right_to_their_original_birth_certificates_2 “><img title=”adoptive-parent-best-interest-of-child” src=” http://www.growninmyheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/adoptive-parents-pot.jpg” alt=” adoptive-parent-best-interest-of-child ” width=”144″ height=”144″ /></a>

Grab it and spread the word, will you please?

***

Want to learn more about adoptee rights? Read about Adoptee Rights Day here. Feel the need to tell Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy that she went to crazy on link bait and guilt? Feel free to rant and rave on her blog at http://www.musingsofthelame.com.

Help support GIMH! Vote for our Room of Your Own at BlogHer!

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• 101 Best Adoption, Loss and Infertility Blogs
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It seemed like the minute I heard about the earthquake in Haiti, the story was linked to adoption. My poor husband, such a news junkie, started clicking away from the channels when an adoption related story came on. I had to tell him that I would not start screaming at the TV, rather, I knew and expected that when there was a catastrophic natural disaster, whispers and then demands to adopt the children left alive would soon follow. I have accepted that on some level people just want to help  even if their version of helping went against everything I rail against. I do understand; it’s awful for anyone to imagine any child being stuck in such horrific circumstances, or even just normal everyday third world poverty,  and for many, they have been taught or just believe that adoption is the answer.

Haiti and Adoption Was to be No Different

At first it was the stories of American Families who were in the middle of Haitian Adoptions who wondered whether their intended children were alive or dead. Yes, I felt empathic.

Then there were the happy stories as some of those children were found alive and OK. Yes, I was happy that the kids were OK.

Then, there were the cries that diplomatic leniency be made for those “in the process” to speed the paperwork along and finalize the adoptions so the kids could get out of Haiti. Ok, I can get down with that just to be easy going.

And then, we had the plane full of Haitian kids coming in.. and I began to get that yucky feeling: Yup, Haiti would be an adoption free for all. As if the country had not lost enough already, now we shall strip them of their children in the name of “helping” and God?

Then, Haiti surprised us! The Ten Americans who tried to take 33 Haitian children out the country last week without the government’s consent were not  only stopped, but actually charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy!

Yeah, I admit it: I gave a big Whoohoo for Haiti!

Of course, I know it’s not that simple. Were the American’s hearts in the right place? I would like to think so. Were they just naive do-gooders? Some of them, sure.

But, as I say with Many Issues Adoption Related: Follow the Money.

Thirty three kids at a conservative 20K a piece? That’s $660,000.00 dollars. Yes, I know there are costs incurred with food for 33, staff, transportation, office space, letter head, etc.. but I am sure it would not be over half a million dollars in costs!  Fact is: someone, and I don’t know who,  had an opportunity to make a huge amount of money out of getting those children to the US and to waiting families.  Rescued, abducted, trafficked, helped? I do not have to means to look into the souls of those American’s and see either halos or money signs.  None of us do. But, we all need to do is find a lesson in adoption truth here that we MUST apply to many international adoption situations:

Families in Other Countries Do Not Understand Adoption in US Terms!

Maybe it’s just hard for us to understand because of the huge culturally differences in our cultures especially in economic terms, but what we know of adoption in the US does not translate well to many of the international states that we import children from.

It takes thought to go beyond what we might think of a perfect situation: couples has means for caring for a child and the great desire to be parents verses child in obviously horrible living conditions, often suffering to a heartbreaking level, that needs someone to take care of them and love them. It takes an understanding of places that very far removed from life as we know it in the USA.

Orphanages Mean Life

For many undeveloped countries an orphanage is not a place where children go if they have no parents. Often an orphanage is run by missionaries or organizations funded from other more Westernized countries. It is only in an orphanage that children are guaranteed a certain level of care such as an education, basic needs of life such as food and clothing, and medical attention.  In many countries, it is only the act of placing these children in orphanages that enables their survival. Of course, in a war torn or famine ridden society, these desperate parents truly WANT their children to be in an orphanage as that is the only way these children have a chance to live.

Imagine that. I mean really try to picture how crazy desperate you would have to be to send your child away far from you just to ensure that they might live. Would you do it? I bet, if push came to shove, and the only other option was to watch your children slowly starve to death or be destroyed by parasitic diseases, that we ALL would. Even if it meant horrible loss and grief to us all. We would make this ultimate sacrifice for our child’s well being. Not because we wanted to, but because we had to.

Culturally, in many of these countries that are currently exporting their children to the US in the name of adoption, the acceptance of an orphanage has been part of their lives and survival for generations.  Do they sign relinquishment forms? Some do. Does it mean that they really desire to give up their children to be parented by others and be part of another family forever? Somehow I think not. Would you sign something, anything this live saving place wanted if it meant your child would get food and medicine? Sure. We all would.  Release your child to those who are seen as saviors for keeping their child alive and then, be thankful that someone was there to do so.

This was clearly the case in Madonna’s scandalous adoption of David Banda from Malawi. David’s father, Yohane Banda, had placed David in the care of the Malawi orphanage because the baby’s mother had died at birth and he had no one to help nurse the newborn. The orphanage was the only place where formula could be had. Of adoption, Yohane, obviously alive, initially thought Madonna would just “educate and take care of our son”.

“I was never told that adoption means that David will no longer be my son – if I was told this, I would not have allowed the adoption.”

And that leads us to the second important point:

Adoption Means Different Things in Other Countries

I can honestly understand that to many parents, already in a desperate struggle just to live, that the idea of adoption sounds like winning the Lottery for their kids. No matter how great any orphanage might be funded, the children  are still stuck in the war torn famine driven country of export.

Now image that the concept of adoption come up:

Mrs. Bruddanha, the opportunity has come up for Kieshata to be taken to America for adoption!

Oh America?

Yes, Mrs. Bruddanha. We have located a very fine Christian family who wants to take Kieshata to their home and raise her as one of their own. They will take care of her and educated her in the best American schools. And she will go to college! Would you like Kieshata to have such an opportunity?

Oh YES! Mr. Director! Oh yes! That would be my biggest dream for Kieshata to go to college in America!

I thought you would say this, Mrs Bruddanha, so I have just these papers for you to sign.

Ok, so I completely just made up that previous conversation, but I do not think it is such a far stretch. The Haitian parents said that the Americans’ offer of an education seemed like a gift from heaven. Yes, they might have attempted to explain adoption to these parents and went through all the legal jargon of what it really means:

“You understand that you are giving up all your rights to be this child’s mother. You have no more parental rights, etc.”

But the thing is…

“It’s What’s Best”

Birthmothers in the US think they want to do this all the time, too. And we understand the actual concept of adoption. And they explain all the same things over and over again too. And still, we have NO IDEA what the heck we are really getting ourselves into!

• Without the language barrier
• Without the cultural Barrier
• Without the Missionary life
• Without the appreciation of Orphanage Life
• Without the War and famine
• Without the threat of childhood death

The concept of adoption doesn’t translate well into what it means to one’s heart. It’s a logical choice at best. A desperate choice all too often. Most mothers/ families that say they choose relinquishment really do so because they can’t find another option that provides for their child the way they think the child needs.

Haitian parents, Kisnel and Florence Antoine, said they sent two of their children with the Baptist missionaries because they had offered educational opportunities for the children in the Dominican Republic.

Educational Opportunities Equal Adoption?

So we already have cultures who are used to living away from their children for the pure survival of those children and then we introduce this legal concept that they have no real ability to comprehend.  It’s completely alien and just makes zero sense to most. As one of the mother’s of a Haitian “orpahange” was quoted saying:

“Do you think I would give this child away? He is my only treasure.”

Logically, I know these parents think, “how can signing a piece of paper make my child not mine?”

A mere piece of paper has no ability to take that away.

But, my child is going to go live in America.  I must have heard the director wrong. He just means that the American Mother will be like my child’s mother. After all she will be there for him, I will not. But I must do this and someday my child will come back to this horrible place and bring us all to America.

Yes. This is what parents often think when they relinquish a child for international adoption.  In Haiti, they are still alive and talking and we have a wonderful opportunity to learn for watching what happens. We have the ability to seek understanding from these very real, live human parents to understand what caused them to send their children away. And as a more developed, more educated, more “civilized” country, we have an obligation to realize that they don’t understand adoption as we do.  We are asking for apples and they see oranges.. and I don’t care how much anyone might want  family or want to help, we don’t have the right to trick people  or take advantage of them, even if it is “for the best”.

Don’t tell me that “they wanted to give up these children”. Don’t tell me that they made a choice. Death or adoption is not a choice. Educational Opportunities or Adoption is not a choice. Extreme Poverty or Adoption is not a choice. Prison or Adoption is not a choice. Social scorn or Adoption  is not a choice.

In any country, any race, any nationality, any color, any culture: ask any sane, non emotional damaged, mother is she wants to give up her child and her answer will be no. Ask her if she would if she had to if it ensured her child better and she will hope that she can.

That’s Adoption, not a Choice.

###

Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy has documented most of her story about a teen pregnancy, giving birth and reliquishing her newborn son to adoption. Twenty-three years later, life as a birthmother still means a constant interaction with adoption and what it all means.

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I watched a miracle happen on Facebook.  Just now. It was amazing.

A friend of mine, who is an adoptee, put together a Facebook group asking for help finding her birth family. Yesterday.

By now there are 259 members of the group. All from different parts of the adoption community who came together for help with this one simple plea:

Please Help Me Find my Birth Family

And they did.

Less than 28 hours later; not only were dead ends forgotten, multiple comments relaying information, and a phone number been obtained for the lost birthmother in questions; but one single post said it all:

IT’S HER!!!

Adoption Search Complete

And now, 258 group members wait to hear the next part of the journey. No longer are this mother and child lost to each other; now a new dance of reunion must begin.

I was writing another blog post and watching it happen. I say the post hit my wall, but didn’t get the full gist that people were actively search RIGHT NOW as I was writing. Finally I stopped writing and realized the full magnitude of what I had witnessed. Her search was ended. Success.

Amazing Adoption Community

That alone is beautiful enough, but what brings tears to my eyes is the act of the community here.  People banding together to face an impossible task and not only completing it, successfully, but in record time.

Sharing the emotions of the moment as you live it..online.

It brings back my own happy, crazy memories of when for three days I, with dedicated wonderful online friends, also searched for and found my son.

It reminds me of when I was first making contact with Max and before I would go into MySpace and check for a message, I logged into MSN chat and there was 30 of us waiting, ready to talk me through it, as I read my son’s words for the first time.  One of the most intense moments of my life and I shared it with my sisters online, adoptees, adoptive moms and other birthmothers, before I had spoken about it to friends, family, or even my husband.

It was a  beautiful thing to live through. It was beautiful to watch today.  I could just feel the excitement radiating though every comment as they got closer and closer to finding her.

Hats off my friends. You did good!

And yes, this quote posted means just as much on a small personal scale as it does for all things worth fighting for:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

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I  find myself really almost perplexed  by the idea people actually have issues with just the name of the dern TV show: Find My Family.  The controversy is getting allot of attention  as even the New York Times took note.

If the public overwhelmingly finds that Find My Family is an emotional tear-jerker and  filled with such wonderful stories, why do some adoptive parents find it necessary to find fault with a lovely happy ending adoption story where everything was perfect?

Find My Family Finds Adoptions Happy Happy Spot

I mean, if we look at the general responses of people; the show makes people think adoption is so lovely and heartwarming.  Doesn’t that help in reinforcing how wonderful adoption can be? If  we take the show on the same level that it represents itself on, then this view of adoption is the kool aid drinking, rainbow farting adoption bedtime story.  Really it was like the perfect adoption reunion three act play written to make adoption come out clean.

The adoption professionals such as  the National Council for Adoption, fully committed to the  promotion of a well executed adoption plan, should like stories and media sensationalism that help give the common folk that warm and fuzzy adoption feeling. After all, that promotes adoption, right?  Look at all the happy endings!

So far, I admit, I could only make myself watch the first pilot episode. Besides making me burst into tears, the story of the Steinpas Family on the first episode of Find My Family did read perfect. They surrendered for all the” right reasons”, went on to be “happy”, the adoptee was happy too, blah blah, if you don’t know what I mean, then watch it.  Everyone said the right things.

No Obvious Put Down to Adoptive Parents

Perfectly written in all 360 degrees of adoption.  Adoptive parents were played out in a glowing positive light. I can’t make myself watch it again to pull out the quotes, so you’ll have to take my word on it I just fail to see why it is truly that horrible to adoptive parents to watch the show. Why be up in arms? How does the implied choice of name “Find My Family” imply a devaluation of the adoptive family?

And we begin, again, the debate of what family is in adoption.

“What About the Adoptive Parents?”

While perhaps this particular show emphasis the search and reunion aspect of adoption and the foundling relationship between families separated by adoption; there have been and are other adoption shows that merely concentrate on the adoptive parents journey and feelings during an adoption.  I don’t know how sympathetic I feel that the adoptive parents in the families were only side bars in the show.  I guess I have been the forgotten part of the triad for too long  to feel that pull at my heartstrings.

Does it always have to be about you?  Can we say narcissistic much? I’m not trying to be mean, but let’s remember that adoption is suppose to be child centered and based on the best met needs of the adoptee.  You can ignore the fact that many adoptees really feel the need to know their whole truths, but no one can guarantee that your child won’t be among those who feel that way no matter how perfect you parent. I know I have heard too many adult adoptees say that their adoptive parents were fabulous and they love them to pieces and wouldn’t trade their lives in for the world, but still, they just have to find out something.

“My Children are with their REAL Family”

I have seen this said quite a few times. Oh, adoptive parent; do you not see that you are choosing to inject the word “real” into the mix?  I don’t understand why you even hear that word?  How is one family more real than another? Both the adoptive family and the family of birth are real walking talking feeling human beings.  The reality of adoption is, no matter how you slice it and what the final happy ( or not so happy) ending is, that a child has two families.  I am not saying that to devalue your parenting through adoption either , but by bringing in the word “real”, you are  doing exactly what you accuse ABC of doing; making one of the families “un-real”.

Find My “REAL” Family

By adding the quantifier ‘real’ you are now creating a situation where if one kind of family is “real” then the other must by default be “fake”; therefore there will be a winner and a loser in adoption rather than the act of love that you claim it can be.  How can you desire to participate in this emotional loss? Why make it a losing situation for someone?

“How can I Explain the Show to my Adopted Children?”

How can you not? How can you not take this chance to open up the doors of communication regarding adoption issues? ABC just made that aspect of your parenting that much easier!  If you are so deeply offended by the show, then how is it that you think your children will feel that they can openly speak to you about adoption should they every remotely have these feelings to search and know? Unless you have an Oscar on your mantel, I am betting that your acting is not as good as you might think and whether subtly or unconsciously, you child will pick up on the fact that you don’t like this kind of discussion.  Use the show as  practice with your own adoptee. Take out those emotions and feelings in a safe non threatening way and explore them together. Give your adopted child the change to think about what it means to be an adult adoptee because no matter what you want to believe that’s what they are.

Can you not see the connections? Clearly as an adoptive parent, I assume, you feel that your children are where they are meant to be in your life.  How is it then, that the thought of your children finding their own roots be that offensive.  Unconditional love is a major component of parenting on any level. Every human being deserves and yearns to be accepted and loved for all that they are especially by their families. The adoption is part of what made your child who he or she truly is. Her biologically background also plays a major part just as your daily love and caring does.  Yet, the adoptee knows that thier life began with another source and the desire to know and connect with their beginnings is often a natural and unavoidable feeling.  Can you, as parents, not accept that in your own child? Can you not see that by rejecting the reality of the other family, that you are rejecting part of your child as well?

As a mother of an adopted child and someone who believes 100% in the  civil rights of adult adoptees to have what all US citizen have; I cannot see how any other parent of an adopted person could not support that Find My Family can help adoptees understand and accept themselves.

Adoption can be a very isolating event that greatly colors many aspects of one’s live no matter how one participates. We owe it to each other to examine and process all our feelings in the healthiest manner possible so we can better support our children as they mitigate though the  world.  For all involved in adoption, I would like to think that we can see though the scripted settings and emotional pulls to find the positive value to a show that brings adoption into the eyes and minds of the public and can open up and demystify so many of the secrets we still carry.

Anger Driven by Fear

Like I say with many things adoption related; if you find yourself really angered by something, then that’s the thing that you need to work on the most.  If you find yourself as an adoptive parent, really upset by biologically families reuniting, then I would advise that you take out those feelings and figure out what they stem from before they trip you up.

***

Claudia’s Inital Reaction  can be found on her blog  where she writes from a birthmother’s perspective regading Find My Family

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I don’t really like Mother’s Day.

There. I said it. I know I am supposed to be grateful. I know I am supposed to be joyous. I know I am supposed to be thrilled with any aspect of being remembered and appreciated on this one day.

But I’m not and I don’t like the idea of whole dang day.

Mother’s Day is always filled with disappointment. Mother’s Day is never enough.

First, I can blame it on the media and commercialism. This wasn’t the way Mother’s Day was supposed to be. Mother’s Day was intended to be a day when you wrote your mother a handwritten letter and told her how much you honored her. It wasn’t supposed to be the biggest dinning out and gift shopping bonanza for the local mall. They really have gotten out of control with the perfect Mother’s Day on TV. It used to be burnt toast in bed and then mom got up and donned her apron to cook eggs. Now Mom gets a spa day and Dad gives her diamonds. Yeah, I want her life because my Mother’s Days are not like that ever.

Most of my Mother’s Days are spent gardening, alone. I like it like that. See, I was a single mother raising a small boy for many years and it wasn’t like my ex was good at making sure the child bought me appropriately appreciative presents.  I would allow myself to splurge on annuals for my garden on Mother’s Day and then I would spend my day planting them. It was better than giving my son money to buy me something I would have to pretend to adore like a fake Australian crystal mouse. Usually I made him accompany me to the farm stand and help me drag around the blooms.

Then, after a day in the dirt, I would wash off and we would go to Friendlies and have ice cream for dinner.

Just ice cream.

I figured that there was no way I was cooking dinner on Mother’s Day and since there was no one but me to pay for my own dinner, we should make it fun. Needless to say, my kids have all always enjoyed celebrating Mother’s Day just for the Ice-Cream-for-Dinner Tradition.

Remarried now with two more kids, it’s not  like my dear husband is good at making sure the children buy me appropriately appreciative presents, nor is he going to pull out diamonds yearly. I do have lovely sapphires from him and my pearls, but not from a Mother’s Day. He expects me to go out every year to the farmers market and buy a ridiculous amount of plantings and then spend my whole day in the dirt, alone, because that is what I do and I like it like that.  And I do, but an occasional pedicure and a card might be nice.  Just saying.

My own mother has been dead since I was 26. I am 41 now. You do the math.  It’s a long time to live without your mother. I become jealous of people who still have mothers alive on Mother’s Day. Thankfully, most of the people I know have living mothers, but it means that I feel even more out of the loop. I can’t celebrate with my mother. I can only think of her and miss her. When I worked in restaurants that had service on Mother’s Day for years and years after my mother had died, I would refuse to work.  It was not so much that I couldn’t stand being sad, because really I could enjoy the sweet tender-look-like-a-kay-jeweler-commercial moments; it was the nasty Mother’s Day people that made me insane enough to take the day off.

Besides, I had gardening to do.

Yes, I know. I sound like an ungrateful wretch, but I have more. Really.

I have given birth to four children. Three boys and a girl, all beautiful smart and mostly healthy. My first Mother’s Day I experienced as a mother, I was separated from my baby. Two days after giving birth, my son and I left the hospital and two days after that he went home to his adoptive parents.  Aside from the nine months of gestation, I held him close for a total of 48 hours. I would not seem him again for over 19 more years.

Hence, my first Mother’s Day I had to pretend did not affect me at all. Going through the motions of honoring my own mother, buying gifts, signing cards, and then after the cake, as we always had an excuse for cake, alone I cried and missed my baby, wondering when I would begin to get relief from the grief that entered my life along with adoption. No one even whispered a quiet happy mother’s day.  It was as if the stretch marks on my body were caused by some life threatening accident rather than the miracle of birth and if no one talked about it, it might all go away and I could forget.

I could never forget.

For a few years, that was my Mother’s Day until I was pregnant with my second son. Newly married and very hopeful, feeling that the sacrifices I had made for my first son’s relinquishment qualified me for good Karma and happiness, Mother’s Day was hopeful for a little while. Perhaps, after these first years that we struggled, young and in love, we would have our own media moments. But it turned out that love wasn’t quite what we were in and hence, became my years of a single mother.

I had the Mother’s Day routine down pretty good for a number of years.  Handling my own my mother’s death in a grounded way. Trying to make the best of an emotionally change day. Still, on a day meant to honor motherhood, you can’t help thinking of the one you never get to see. You can’t help missing those who are missing from your life.  Mother’s Day, like birthdays and holidays of any sort, become a time to reflect and wonder where your child is and who he honors on that day. Does he think of you? Does he wonder? What is his name and are his eyes as blue?

There were lots of those, spent in the garden. Planting life, breathing spring, remembering. It does not matter when your tears hit the dirt. The earth quickly absorbs them all.

Eventually, my questions were answered. I searched and found my near adult son. We wrote each other messages, rejoiced at our similarities and eventually met and reunited.  Almost sounds like a happy ending, bust out the diamonds and call it a wrap, but adoption, even near perfect situations like mine, almost never have true happy endings.  It’s still very weird.

Your own child, whom you feel like you know, but ultimately, you do not know what you should. You don’t know without thinking whether he prefers creamy or chunky peanut butter. You don’t know how he sleeps when he is dead tired. You don’t know that what the scar is from on his elbow and how many stitches he had from what fall.  Somehow, because he is made of the same stuff, you understand how he thinks, but still, with so much weirdness, you don’t really know what you can expect, what you dare to want.

And so, comes another Mother’s Day.  And while he calls you mom and you acknowledge how lucky you are to be able to share that title, you have to admit that yes, a card would be nice, but there will be no expecting,  only more hoping.  And hoping, I find, often leads to disappointment. Just like thinking that maybe there will be diamonds and spas just like the commercials said.

That’s not my life, though. And really I don’t care about the diamonds. I have my pearls, four small peas in a pod, hanging around my neck for my four babies, all beautiful and smart. My four pearls are always together around my neck, but only once in my life have all four of my children been together in front of my own eyes. I can’t celebrate that. It’s just not enough. I want more, will always want more, and that’s nothing something I can hope for.  Realistically, I can’t even hope for a card.

I am birthmother and Mother’s Day is hardly a celebration of what we have, but what we have lost.

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When you are painfully aware of the coming of November, the dreading commences upon the first days of school.  The air begins to stir and the word adoption gets tossed about in the media with an increasing popularity.  The feelers go out by those who think to plan ahead:

” What are we going to do to celebrate  Adoption Awareness Month?”

My answer is usually a wistful , “Sleep until December?”

I mean really, if I could avoid the whole month, I would.  It’s not just that it is National Adoption Awareness Month. It’s not just that every time I turn around someone is discussing, usually with complete ignorance, how adoption is just so wonderful for everyone.  I am, well enough, aware.

Birthmothers don’t lend well to the celebrations.

It’s not just that I know my very existence on this earth is completely being ignored. It’s not just that I know that my very existence has  not even been considered. People have to be taught to think about the birthmother and we have not achieved that on a national level yet. November is hard on a birthmother; we become invisible because we don’t have all the happy stories to tell.

And it’s not just that either. It’s that Where the Wild Things Are is in the movies and all over everything I see. It’s that Thanksgiving is in November and that is all about family and being that adoption laden word “grateful”.  It’s that on Thanksgiving, I make all my mother’s recipes and I think about her and miss her, and that makes me sad. It’s that the bulk of my adoption related experiences, aka Max’s birthday, the relinquishment signing, etc., all happened in November. And on top of that, it is stupid National Adoption Awareness Month and it gets a bit annoying having to hear about everyone “celebrating” adoption all month long.

November is like the month when I have PMS for the whole year.

You know that feeling when you almost kind of know that there is nothing hugely major wrong, but man, you hate everything and it is all really bad and you know, you just really know, that you are really very unhappy and there’s is not much more you can take. It’s like that…..for the month.

Like it’s really hard to be exposed to all these  almost “fringe” organizations, that think they are all PC-like, and they come out with these shallow ways of celebrating National Adoption AwarenessMonth for publicity. You know they really don’t “live” adoption in any form as they rattle off some blank platitude about “saving all the unwanted children out there that need homes”.

Nice liner notes there, bud. Who wrote that song and dance? You got any more feel good fairy tales to tell me before bed?

It’s obvious, I know. It’s snarky. I hear it too. I don’t usually go for such blatant sarcasm, or at least I like to think so. I can’t help it. Sometimes I find that I don’t even have the strength to begin to try to talk to people in November. Normally, I welcome a chance to respond to an article, or state some facts when there is an inaccurate discussion regarding infant adoption in this country, but not in November. There are just too many. It’s overwhelming.  If I could spend every day, the whole month, running around online, then maybe, just maybe, I might feel like there is a bit more honesty out there, but I don’t have that leisure (or masochistic) privilege. Plus, as I said, it’s like everyone and his brother jumping on the adoption bandwagon and basically talking out their A$%. If I paid attention, then I would spend the majority of November trapped in an adoption induced internet rage.

So I have to tune out big time. Halloween provides a  great distraction, but after that’s over, I am pretty much in trouble. BANG! In rolls November. The leaves are all dead and the tress are naked, .Daylight Savings time rolls in and it gets all dark and cold early. The adoption celebrations commence and whether I want to or not, I will always, on some level, be affected by November and my son’s birthday.

I would like it much more is we could all stop all this CELBRATING Adoption during November, but rather maybe we could work on HONORING Adoption during November. I can’t celebrate the thing that cause me the greatest pain and loss in my life. I cannot celebrate something that has caused my family sadness and, on some levels, kept me from being all I could for them.

Can One Celebrate Adoption Loss?

And while I can understand that for many people adoption is cause for celebration because it brought something good to their lives, the fact is that ALL adoption is somewhere, someplace, somehow resting on a foundation of loss.  That’s not a cause to celebrate. It’s a cause to honor. One honors a loss; one does not celebrate it.

I’m not proposing that anyone has to do anything other than acknowledge the truth  and think about what truly applying the word “Celebration” infers.  It doesn’t have to be about you. It doesn’t have to be about what other people would like adoption to be about. It’s about what is right and truthful. It’s about what takes into account all aspects of adoption.

Maybe, then, just maybe, if we stopped all this one sided celebration, people who have lived through adoption separations could feel like we have some say in the month. Maybe, we wouldn’t feel psychotic during the month of November. Maybe, if we talked about some of the issues with adoption instead, then people might give a darn about the fight that adult adoptees must endure to get their birth certificates. Maybe, then, if enough people cared, we would have some sort of cause to celebrate. I don’t know.

For now, wake me up when November ends.

***

Since she won’t be sleeping, the whining will about life as a birthmother shall continue on Claudia’s blog; Musings of the Lame.

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