73adoptee - adoption search, reunion and reform

THE PSYCHO BIRTH MOTHER

Strength: Limitless

Intelligence: Questionable

Charisma: 18 (+30 to News Media)

Weapon: +10 Glaive Of Victimization

Armor: Shield Of Anti-Reflection

When confronted with the Stalker Adoptee, the Birth Mother Promised Confidentiality morphs into the Psycho Birth Mother. Not only has she never regretted her decision, she's the one being victimized and wants only to maintain her privacy, which is why she touts her story to any News Media she can find. Her siren call is: "Don't open the records! It'll destroy women like me!" Ignoring her sister birth mothers, who may actually (horrors!) desire and seek contact with their offspring, she hides in plain sight, turning any adoptees who cross her path back into Perpetual Children. The Psycho Birth Mother refuses to look at herself in a mirror, because deep down she knows what she's doing is wrong.

Labels: adoptees, adopters, birth mothers, civil rights, first mothers, intermediaries, media and adoption, open records

Labels: abuse, adoptees, adopters, culture, international adoption

More than three decades after Ryba and Butler gave up their baby son to Catholic Charities of Trenton, N.J., for adoption, and four years after the agency facilitated their "reunion" with Bloete, genetic testing revealed last year that none of them are related.

Lisa Thibault, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities of Trenton, acknowledged that the situation is "tragic," and that a "mistake" was made somewhere. But she said the agency has done all it is legally able to do for them.

Labels: adoptees, adoption search, birth certificates, birth fathers, birth mothers, civil rights, illinois, intermediaries, new jersey, open records, reunion

Labels: adoptees, birth certificates, civil rights, open records

Katherine Heigl is adopting a child because she's "done with the whole idea of having my own children."

"I wanted to tell everybody so you don't think I stole a Korean baby," she said, laughing.

She's getting a lot of sympathy in the press for adopting a child with medical issues. Okay, I get that, nice humanitarian effort and all. BUT, baby selling is not a laughing matter. It is devastating to adoptees and birth families alike. And there is too much of a "rescuer" mentality here for my liking, as if she is trying to garner sympathy for being so big-hearted as to adopt a special-needs child. Is she going to give up her career to be available 24/7 to this child? Could she have accomplished the same thing by adopting, say, a 15 year old African-American boy, someone who is not as malleable as an infant?

I understand Heigl's character on Gray's Anatomy was a birth mom. I can't speak to that because my TV watching consists almost exclusively of science fiction (why bother with mainstream stuff when I'm busy plowing through the entirety of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys? Mmm.. Kevin Sorbo...) But I can tell you about Heigl's show from a few years back, Roswell, in which she played a half human/half alien hybrid whom--ahem!--had no access to her origins. In other words, the epitome of the sealed-records adoptee.

Let me quote some of Heigl's dialogue from the season 2 episode, "Surprise". In this scene Heigl's character Isabel has returned to her place of origin, the pod chamber where she and the other three human/alien hybrids awoke. She's just been through a really traumatic experience on her birthday, no less, and she begins a monologue to her birth mother.

Happy birthday, Isabel. I'm 18 today, Mother. October 25th, at least that's the day we've always celebrated as my birthday, but you're the only one who really knows the real day. I guess that's why I came to the only place I've ever seen you. I loved that day, but you disappeared and the picture of you is already fading and it's all I had. I was so happy because you were beautiful and warm and I even though I looked like you. But it wasn't you, not really. I don't know what you look like. Maybe I'll never know. It isn't fair, I need you! Where are you? God, it's my birthday, we should be together! How could you leave us? How could you tell us that important information about destinies and saving the world and then just disappear... answer me!

I can't watch that scene without crying because it pretty much sums up exactly what I'd like to ask my own mother every year on my own birthday.

I wonder if Heigl has equated this with her own adoption efforts. For her new daughter's sake, I hope she has. To watch Roswell is to gain a greater understanding of how much it sucks sometimes to be adopted, how much it especially sucks not knowing where you are from, who your people are, and what your history is... and what lengths others are willing to go through to keep you from knowing.

Labels: adoptees, birth mothers, first mothers, infant adoption, media and adoption

What is it with advice columnists? I realize they're primarily for entertainment value (and yeah, I read them, which is why I came across this). But seriously, if they are going to put themselves in a position of helping people then they should, um, HELP people.

Dear Abby published the following this week in her syndicated column:

DEAR ABBY: For 15 years I was a happily married homemaker with a wonderful husband. "Duncan" and I attended church together, frolicked through the fields, even exterminated rodents together. He was my best friend. It was bliss.

Last year I found out my father had had an affair with Duncan's mother the year I was born, which makes him my half-brother! The news was too much for my husband. He had a fatal heart attack not long after. What should I put on his gravestone: "Loving Brother" or "Loving Husband"?

Grieving in Massachusetts

DEAR GRIEVING: Neither. How about "He was 'Everything' to me"? That should about cover it.

Instead of giving a flip answer designed to activate the sitcom-esque laugh track, Dear Abby (penned by the original Abby's daughter Jeanne Phillips) could have done some public good by taking the adoption industry to task for putting people in situations like this.

If we had open records--if every adoptee had the same access to their original birth certificates as the non-adopted, if birth mothers had free and clear access to all paperwork involved with their surrender--then families would be less able to lie about these things and people would not have to suffer the way this person clearly is.

Instead, our trauma is the punchline of a joke in the comics section. Add that to the list of things I wish I'd known before I was adopted.

If you want to write to Dear Abby and express your outrage:

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, a k a Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or Box 69440, Los Angeles, Calif. 90069.

Labels: adoptees, media and adoption, open records

Grown In My Heart is doing a monthly Adoption Carnival encouraging everyone to discuss truths in adoption. I think this is a great idea. Here's my contribution to this month's topic, Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Was Touched By Adoption.

Be sure to check out what other bloggers are saying about this (the Mr. Linky icon at the bottom of GIMH's post), there are some really good conversations going on.

• That being adopted is not a one-time event, but has life-long consequences.
• That being adopted has had more of an impact on me than I may ever realize.
• That sealed records, not my origins, make me a bastard.
• That adoption stereotypes are such common assumptions it's difficult to even start discussing reform.
• That no one was going to help educate my adoptive parents about being adoptive parents.
• That my adoptive parents were going to lie to me about what they knew.
• That my adoptive father was permitted to act as his own attorney in sealing my file.
• That being adopted has an impact on future relationships.
• That, despite being adopted as a newborn, I would still love and miss my birth mother for the rest of my life.
• That being adopted as a newborn does not make me a tabula rasa.
• That "your mother gave you up because she loved you" makes NO sense.
• That my birth mother was likely not advised on all of her options.
• That my birth mother might have been able to keep me if our society were more supportive of expectant mothers.
• That trying to get your adoption records is like trying to pull your own teeth with one hand and a pair of rusty scissors.
• That people who aren't touched by adoption are going to say, "Why don't you just get your records from the courthouse?"
• That my birth mother is a real person, not just some nebulous entity not spoken of in polite conversation.
• That intermediary programs exist to make money, not to help adoptees or birth relatives.
• That my birth mother needed more help to open her heart to me than she was going to get from the intermediary program through which we eventually made contact.
• That contacting my birth mother through an intermediary would result in being locked out of my records permanently (or until the law changes).
• That "no" upon first contact through an intermediary often means no second chances.
• That baby selling exists, and is thriving.
• That agencies and adoption "professionals" often tout profiteering as charity.
• That those same agencies double-dip by later charging adoptees and birth relatives for the same information they themselves sealed.
• That the adoption industry is deeply corrupted.
• That most people don't care.
• That made-for-TV movies about adoption would make me cringe.
• That I would dread my own birthday.
• That being adopted means I am a second-class citizen and have to worry if I'll be able to get a driver's license or passport.
• That being adopted severs me not only from my family, but from my culture and heritage.
• That my mother would be too traumatized to ever acknowledge me.
• That my father and any potential siblings may never know I exist.
• That being angry about all of this makes me "anti-adoption", "anti-children", "pro-abortion", and an "ungrateful angry adoptee".
• That being publicly angry makes me doubly so.
• That my being adopted would have a continual impact not only on me, but on my children and theirs.

Labels: adoptees, adoption search, birth mothers, civil rights, first mothers, open records

It's four in the morning, and I can't sleep. I'm thinking about P.F.V. He was my dearest friend in high school, the person who got me through bad breakups and rough times with my adoptive parents. He was always there for me, the steadfast one, my white knight. The time we dated was one of the happiest in my life. But I screwed it up, and twenty years later I continue to be haunted by that.

He was tall and handsome, with dark hair and the brightest blue eyes you've ever seen. We met, of all places, at a church retreat, which was ironic because neither of us were particularly into church although we went to the same Catholic parish. I was at the retreat because my adoptive mother insisted I be confirmed, just like she insisted upon controlling everything else in my life. But in my own rebellious way I brought a copy of Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land along to keep me company. (Which I was reading, quite honestly, for the science fiction and not the sex. I prefer The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.) This boy and I started talking science fiction and it was instant chemistry. He played a cherry-red guitar in the church band and could do a mean version of the bass line from Fleetwood Mac's The Chain. I'll always picture him with a gray cap on his head and an extra pick stuck through the strings. He was a tinkerer and could solder just about anything, which impressed me because I was always more of a software girl. He made me earrings out of old computer parts. I still have them. He became my confidant, my best friend and later my boyfriend--wonder of wonders for the geek girl who never got the guy.

Our breakup wasn't his fault, it was mine. There was this one incident that shouldn't have meant anything, and yet. thinking back on it, I think it was the catalyst that drove me to push him away. We were at a big celebration with his family, who had always been very accepting of me. By this point we were high school seniors and considered ourselves engaged. A picture was to be taken of his entire family, his parents and many brothers and sisters and their spouses. I posed, too, but his parents took me aside and gently explained that it was a family picture. I walked away, brimming with tears. He tried to console me, but somehow at that moment everything changed, not that I understood it at the time. I suddenly realized subconsciously that even if I married him I would never be truly part of his family, truly part of ANY family. My adoptive parents had always been horrible and I had no way to find my birth family who probably didn't want me, either. The wound cut deep, yet another rejection. A scant few months later I broke up with him in the worst possible way, cutting him out of my life so completely there would be no turning back.

Time gives one perspective, as does the research I've done over the years on what it is to be adopted and the crazy things adoptees sometimes do. But mostly, it was finding and losing my birth mother (again) that really crystallized this situation for me. I understand now what happened, and although it changes nothing, maybe young adoptees can learn from my experience and stop themselves before they make horrible mistakes like this.

I wish I'd known, growing up, about the impact of adoption on my life. I wish I'd realized that I was pushing him away out of fear of being rejected myself. Apparently it's something we adoptees sometimes do, sabotaging our relationships with the people around us. Now, I don't think all adoptees sabotage relationships, and I'm sure non-adoptees have issues with relationships and other aspects of their lives, too. But I think, as adoptees, we don't always consider the impact being adopted has on ourselves, especially when we're young. Knowing these things now doesn't excuse or condone what I did. I can't even offer him an apology because I don't think what I did can be forgiven. I betrayed him, betrayed our friends, ran away to college in another city and into the arms of the first man I found there, in what was perhaps a subconscious attempt to recreate the "sins" of my "wanton" birth mother as she had always been portrayed by my adoptive parents. I guess I wanted to prove that I was horrible enough not to deserve someone as good and kind as him. In many ways I feel guilty even writing this, like I have no right to remember him at all.

Later I legally changed my name to the one he called me, Triona, in honor and in penance, so that every time someone speaks my name I am reminded of what I did, and who I am. I don't feel I have the right to look him up and find out if he had a good life. I hope so. I hope he was able to move beyond the messed-up girl he once dated and find happiness.

Wherever you are, P.F.V., I'm sorry and I wish you the best, always.

Labels: adoptees

In my previous post about excellent adoption articles, I can't believe I forgot this one, which is the most accurate public smackdown of the adoption industry I've seen in a long while, if ever.

• The Nation: Shotgun Adoption

For a corollary, check out Divine Caroline:

• The National Council for Adoption: Mothers, Money, Marketing, and Madness

And here's another good article, which is about the addiction many adoption specialists and mental health practictioners have these days to so-called "attachment disorder", which I think I'll call DWA ("Driving While Adopted").

• Attachment issues causing anxiety for parents

Labels: abortion, adoptees, infant adoption, media and adoption

There have been a lot of articles lately that do an excellent job of describing what is wrong with adoption as it is practiced today. I'm sure I'll miss some but here is a list of those I have encountered recently. Many of these concern international adoption, but the lessons learned could be equally applied to domestic adoption. With so many articles like this, I wonder if we are seeing a change in the perception of adoption as 100% warm happy fuzzy rainbows. I hope so because I, for one, would welcome some fresh perspectives on the subject.

• Transnational Adoption and the “Financialization of Everything”
  
  
• EDITORIAL International Adoption and the Fight for Human Rights
  
  
• Liberia: What happens to the Child When Adoption Fails?
  
  
• Holt International’s price for children
  
  
• Another country, not my own
  One overseas adoptee explains: Parents’ embrace of the ”home” culture can have its costs
  
  
• TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION Some Visions I Have Seen...
  
  
• THE PRICE WE ALL PAY Human Trafficking in International Adoption
  
  
• Netherlands: Money plays too big a role in adoption

Labels: adoptees, international adoption, media and adoption