A Letter To Washington State: Why Are Some Adoptees More Deserving Than Others?

When I found out my adoptee peeps in Washington State are facing disclosure veto legislation, my heart sank. Several years ago when a similar bill passed in Illinois, supporters of clean legislation predicted that it would be held up as a dubious "standard" for adoptee birth certificate access. Sadly, we were correct. You can read about what we faced with the Illinois legislation and my own personal experience with the suckitude that is Illinois' veto-happy law.

The job of a clean adoptee rights advocate is never done. Not only do you have to face strident opponents, disinterested legislators, and nosy reporters, but you also have to fight your own team when people turn deformer and support bills that will leave some adoptees behind.

What the hell is so hard to understand, people? Don't support bad bills. We can restore birth certificate access to ALL adoptees if you get off your asses and stop allowing yourselves to be herded like cows into the second-class-citizen barn.

This is the letter I sent to Washington State's legislators. Whom, I might add, failed to respond save for two lone auto-responder bots - not even a "thank you for your message" from a staffer. So much for common courtesy. I guess bastards get ignored as usual, especially if you're not a constituent. Hey, left-behind adoptees - feeling disenfranchised much?

You can read more about what's going down in Washington State:

• Daily Bastardette: Washington Battleground: The Annual Murder of Adoptee Rights Continues
• First Mother Forum: OBC-access bill with 'birth mother' veto may become law

Dear Washington Senators and Representatives,

I understand you are considering an adoptee rights bill, SB 5118 / HB 1525, which contains a "contact veto" clause allowing birth mothers to deny adoptees access to their original birth certificates. Before you rush to pass such a bill, I hope you will consider the inequality of restoring access to some adoptees at the expense of others.

I am an Illinois adoptee and have been denied my birth certificate because my birth mother signed the veto in this state. I am the face of that supposedly small percentage of adoptees who will be permanently denied birth certificate access under this proposed legislation.

Rep. Orwall explains the need to favor the many over the few: "How sad it would be for some adoptees to not obtain this information while a birth parent may still be alive."



What about those adoptees left behind by veto legislation? Why isn't it sad that we cannot obtain our information as well - and in fact are permanently barred from it?



What makes some adoptees more deserving than others?

I was involved in the attempts to halt a similar bill that ended up passing here in Illinois. I have heard the arguments in favor of compromise legislation before: "Well, at least this will help the majority of adoptees." The assumption is that those vetoes will be such a small percentage it won't matter.

But the reality is that no state that has ever enacted veto legislation has gone back for those left behind. There's no sunset clause, no mechanism by which these adoptees will later have their birth certificate access restored.

Rep. Orwall is worried that birth families may die before adoptees have a chance to find them. But this isn't about search and reunion. It is about access to a critical piece of identity: our original birth certificates.

With increasing security in this post 9/11 world, many adoptees are discovering that their adoption paperwork alone isn't good enough. Discrepancies in the paperwork, i's not dotted or t's not crossed, and adult adoptees suddenly find they are unable to obtain driver's licenses, passports, and other critical documents.

I had a friend walked out of the DMV because she presented her amended birth certificate. She was told to bring the original - which, being adopted in a closed-records state, she has no way to obtain.

Veto legislation consigns some adoptees to this oblivion of non-access. They have no recourse, no way to obtain proof of their own identities. They are permanently banned.

The matter of birth mother privacy is irrelevant. My birth mother relinquished all rights to me when I was given up for adoption. Why does a stranger now have the ability to come back years later and deny me access to my own birth certificate? Not every adoptee who wants a birth certificate is looking to search. Search is a matter of personal choice and has no bearing on the civil right to obtain one's documentation of birth.

The only equitable solution is to restore to ALL adoptees the same equal access to original birth certificates as non-adoptees. This has been successfully done in Maine, where everyone follows the same procedure, adopted or not. Everyone pays the same basic fee. No one is left behind.

Maine has suffered none of the dire consequences so drastically described by opponents of original birth certificate access. Adoptees in Maine can walk into the courthouse, heads held high, and be treated the same as everyone else. That is all we want. If Maine, why not Washington?

I invite you to view Maine's legislation here:

http://www.adopteerightscoalition.com/2011/07/adoptee-rights-sample-legislation.html

It's no less sad or unfair for vetoed adoptees to be denied birth certificate access than it is for those whose birth families age and die while legislation is being considered.

Because that "small percentage" so casually dismissed? Those are real people like me. We're not statistics. We exist. And we deserve the same equal rights, too.

Please vote no on SB 5118 / HB 1525.

Sincerely,

Triona Guidry

Secondary Rejection In Reunion: An Adoptee Perspective

Claudia D'Arcy has written an excellent post on her Musings Of The Lame blog: Secondary Adoptee Rejection In Reunion: Hearing The Rejected Adoptee's Pain.

Claudia is a first mother, adoption rights activist, and all around groovy person. It may be one of the best things she's ever written. And it was also the most difficult for me to read, because I live it each and every day.

Secondary rejection happens. It's one of those things adoption dissolution (aka the "returns department") that the adoption industry doesn't want to admit.

Claudia reminds us, rightfully so, that adoptees who are rejected twice are not rejected for ourselves. We are rejected because our mothers simply can't handle being mothers. They were told to go on, to forget it (us!), that their lives would "go back to normal." Some of them need to believe it so much that they must deny anything that threatens it.

But there is no normal in adoption. And, despite understanding on the philosophical level that it isn't about me... I don't think I will ever be able to convince myself of that.

To understand my perspective you need to read my story: Caveat Emptor On Confidential Intermediaries and Case Closed! Another Adoptee Becomes A Confidential Intermediary Statistic (which has a timeline of events).

To be surrendered for adoption is one thing. To be rejected twice - to be rejected as a person, not a theory; to be rejected as an adult and not as an unexpected pregancy is something totally, utterly, abhorrently different.

When your contact is limited by laws and intermediaries, you feel like you have to pack a lifetime into a brief window of opportunity. You're afraid you won't have another chance to ask the questions to which you've always needed answers. It's a horrible Catch-22 and one of the reasons I despise intermediaries and compromise legislation (that, and the fact that they criminalize us for demanding rights that are basic to all human beings).

I may never know why my mother chose to deny so abruptly and completely. But I know how it feels to me. It's so much worse than simply being adopted. It is to say to your mother, "I exist" and for her to respond, "I wish you didn't."

It wasn't like I was expecting some kind of rosy reunion. Upon hearing my story, some people think I was demanding that she come and be my mommy. Believe me, after my experience with my adoptive parents, the last thing I wanted was another parental unit. All I wanted were answers. All I got was a door slammed shut. Worse - a door partially cracked, then slammed shut. Which only makes me feel all the more like it was something I did, something I said, something I **AM** that makes me unworthy of the same basic rights - identity, heritage - that other people take for granted.

It does no good to hear people, even someone I admire and respect as much as Claud, say "it's not you." My brain understands that. My heart never will.

Some may not like my use of the word "rejection" (see Claud's post for the reasons  why she chose to use it). I'm using it because that's how it feels to me. Yes, I know, my first mother didn't really reject me when she surrendered me for adoption, but it's another one of those brain-heart matters that adoptees understand on the philosophical level but not on the emotional level.

How can we? Breaking the mother-child bond is the most destructive thing that can happen to either mother or child. We shouldn't be cavalier about it and invent euphemisms that make it sound less bad. That's the adoption industry's party line, to make adoption more palatable.

The truth is, adoptees often feel rejected, no matter how good their adoptive circumstances are and no matter whether they eventually reunite, happily or not, with their original families. We have to deal with issues of rejection and abandonment every moment of our lives (and no, I'm not saying first mothers abandon, I'm saying this is how adoption makes many adoptees feel). Getting rejected twice feels like a confirmation of all those bad feelings.

To me, it was proof of what my adoptive mother used to say when I would come home crying because the other kids teased me for being a weird adopted nerdy girl (and yes, some of the teasing was specifically due to being adopted). I would be sobbing and she would roll her eyes and say, "You must have done something to make them not like you."

I must have done something to make my mother not like me.

To all you first mothers and adoptees out there who may be considering a secondary rejection: Don't. However you may feel, whatever happened to you - we're not to blame, and rejecting us again hurts so very much. We're not trying to "out" you or make your lives miserable. All we want is existence. All we want is for someone to say, "Yes, you were wanted. Yes, you were loved. Yes, I will answer your questions."

My first mother may one day change her mind, but I'm not holding my breath. I think she is in such a state of denial that she simply can't accept my existence without her entire world falling apart. It's as though, by denying contact, she erased me from time and space - if I was ever there to begin with.

Sometimes you have to back away from a relationship if it's toxic. I know some first mothers and adoptees who have had to do this because the other party overstepped or refused to accept boundaries. That's a different matter. I'm talking about rejecting to keep the blinders on, to maintain the falsehood, to pretend the big nasty A word never happened. All that does is foist your baggage onto someone else. We all have to deal with our own shit, no matter how much it stinks, and we are better off for it once we do.

And, for the record, those denial of contact vetoes that are so helpfully mislabeled "preferences"? They put a permanent ban on the adoptee's ability to gain access to their original birth certificate, which may prevent them from renewing drivers' licenses or getting passports (or, in the latest twist, running for public office). There is a real and legal implication for the adult adoptee that the Powers That Be may not have explained.

Please have some basic human compassion when - not if - your adoptee or first parent seeks you out. You don't have to embrace them wholeheartedly into your lives, but don't send them back out into the cold with no answers. It's cruel and unnecessary on top of all the other cruel and unnecessary aspects of adoption.

UPDATE: Claudia's started a listly on this topic, you can read more here and be sure to add your blog if you've posted on this topic.

Adoption Reunions: Secondary Rejections & Why Things GO Wrong

View more lists from Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy

Image courtesy of dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Who Controls Adoptee Narratives?

I have been thinking a lot about Amanda's recent posts at Declassified Adoptee. Through her experiences as an adult adoptee and her training in social work, she brings a lot to the table on how practices can and should be changed.

But, reading her blogs about adoptee narratives and the responsibilities of social workers to maintain them (here and here), I have to ask: What happens to adoptee narratives when agencies and social workers aren't even involved?

My private adoption was handled by three people: the delivery doctor, an attorney who took my mother's relinquishment... and my adoptive father, also an attorney, who handled all other legal aspects of my adoption including the altering of my birth certificate and the sealing of my adoption file.

Someone is going to tell me that a social worker had to get involved at some point. There was a social worker who came and did the home study on my adoptive parents, prior to the finalization of the adoption - which amounted to glancing around their picture-perfect home and declaring everything A-OK. As far as I know there were no social workers or agencies involved in my surrender. Certainly there was no one advising my first mother of her rights or options.

Instead, there were three laymen who had absolutely no interest in maintaining my narrative (or hers), and a vested interest in burying it.

They also had no training in social work. Basically you had three amateurs who were able to use loopholes to facilitate a private adoption, under the radar of those governmental entities whose job it is to make sure kids are safe.

I have no narrative prior to my adoption. I was born, my mother surrendered me to the custody of the delivery doctor, I stayed with him and his wife for a week, I was picked up by my adoptive parents. That's it. No agencies, no social workers, nobody double-checking to make sure i's were dotted and t's crossed.

It took most of my life for me to learn that much. My adoptive father lied to me until I forced the issue in my late twenties. He told me he knew nothing of my past other than the fact that my mother was Catholic and wanted me raised that way. I haven't been able to confirm that. What I did confirm, and what he was eventually forced to admit, is that he handled all aspects of my adoption and therefore knew the complete contents of my file. He also had a copy of my original birth certificate, which he appears to have ordered destroyed upon his death.

Not only did these men not perserve my narrative, they actively went out of their way to destroy or conceal as much of it as possible.

As it stands now, I'm in limbo. I am legally barred by denial of contact from obtaining my original birth certificate. The narrative these men worked so hard to deny me may be forever out of my grasp.

I worry that, as long as secrecy is a staple of the adoptive process, there will always be situations like mine where the people who control the narrative are the same people who want it suppressed.

The ONLY solution is to cease altering adoptee birth certificates immediately, and to restore the rights of ALL adult adoptees to access their original birth certificates. Only then will the power to control narratives be returned to the people to whom they belong.

How Conditional Birth Certificate Access Rewards "Good Adoptees" And Punishes Bad Ones

In her classic book Lost And Found: The Adoption Experience, renowned adoption expert and adoptee BJ Lifton describes how adoptees are classified, by the adoption industry and by society, as Good Adoptees and Bad Adoptees.

"We have seen that adoptees played the Adoption Game in various ways... Some were aware that they were trying to be the Good Adoptee, while it seemed to others, in retrospect, that they were always trying to be the Bad Adoptee... The Good Adoptee was placid, obedient, didn't ask too many questions, was sensitive to his parents' need to make believe he wasn't adopted. The Bad Adoptee was rebellious and constantly acting out at home and in school."

Here is how she describes the Adoption Game. She quotes author R. D. Laing in his book Knots:

"They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game."

I am an advocate for clean adoptee access laws - laws that restore the rights of adult adoptees to access their original birth certificates in the same manner and for the same modest fee as non-adopted adults. The reason I refuse to accept compromises like passive registries, confidential intermediaries, and mandatory counseling is because conditional access is specifically designed to reward Good Adoptees while punishing bad ones.

Here's how the game works. Good Adoptees aren't supposed to search for their origins because doing so questions (and threatens) the Great And Powerful Adoption Industry. So the way you weed out Good Adoptees from Bad Adoptees is to find out which ones want to search badly enough to defy that industry - and then punish them when they do.

Adult adoptee access is in its naissance in many states. As a result, adoptees who are early adopters (ha!) of their state's access procedures pay the price for those who follow. There are no mechanisms to redress this injustice or to go back for those adoptees who had the misfortune of being their state's beta-testers.

The Bad Adoptees who prove their disloyalty by being too eager for their information get the dregs of access: whatever the adoption industry feels like trying to shoehorn into whatever conditional crap legislation they come up with.

This is a disgusting and evil mindgame that has gone largely ignored in adoption reform circles, just as left-behind adoptees go largely ignored by those who either don't realize or don't care about clean access. What boggles my mind is that some people (deformers) are perfectly willing to continue to play this game as long as they get to reap the rewards of being the Good Adoptees.

This insidious industry strategy pits adoptees against one another, and is a cause of the infighting and backstabbing we see in adoption reform. You have one set of people who want to pass legislation that's almost-but-not-quite-good-enough-we'll-fix-it-later, and people like me who insist upon holding out for a clean law each and every time, even if it means yanking bills if they become tainted.

As an adoption reformer you typically don't end up on the clean-law-or-bust side unless you've had personal experience with the system in its most broken form. Or, in other words, if you're a Bad Adoptee. So once again, the adoption industry turns us against one another by pitting conditional-legislation advocates, the Good Adoptees, against the clean-law advocates, the Bad Adoptees. We might as well have team t-shirts.

(You could also say that the same process turns mothers into Bad Birth Mommies and fathers into Bad Baby Daddies - at least those who question the adoption industry or try to assert their rights within it.)

Great And Powerful Adoption Industry, this is Dorothy on speakerphone. I call shenanigans on your bullshit.

See, I'm already labeled as a Bad Adoptee, so I can get away with this. I was an early adopter of Illinois' conditional access. I paid thousands of dollars and spent over a decade of my life attempting to assert my rights using the legal procedures provided to adoptees in this state. I played by the rules of the game and I lost, my first mother lost, other adoptees and mothers who went through that system lost. Today adoptees can get what I strove for, but I can't because the system that was in place when I tried prevents me from doing so. I shone a spotlight on the flaws in Illinois' system by forcing them open their procedures to adoptees born in Illinois but adopted out of state. Mine was the first Illinois Confidential Intermediary case of an adopted-out-of-state Illinois adoptee.

(more on my story here and here)

And I was punished, like other Bad Adoptees in this state and elsewhere, because by asserting my rights I branded myself a troublemaker, a bad seed, a naughty girl trying to buck the system.

This is ancient thinking about the psychology of adoptees which is completely outdated and yet still guides legislative decisions about adoptee access. It's why adult adoptees are constantly referred to as "adopted children", even (especially!) in legislative session. If an adoptee speaks out, shut 'em down. If a bastard tries to act like a human being, put them in their place.

When you support conditional legislation, you support this. You aid and abet an industry which doesn't care one whit for you, and will turn on you as quickly as a rabid dog. And you assist that industry in dehumanizing your fellow adoptees and first mothers/fathers.

(Comments welcome but moderated against spambots and trolls. Bear in mind if all you're trying to do is convince me why conditional legislation works, don't bother. After my own personal experience I refuse to support anything less than clean legislation.)

I'm Not Going To Day For Adoptee Rights Chicago 2012 - But I'm Still An Angry Adoptee

I'm not going to Day For Adoptee Rights in Chicago this year. That may strike some as strange. I've been a voice for Illinois adoptees for years now, so people are expecting me to be there. I've gotten a few emails from a few people asking my plans, so I thought I'd explain why I'm not going.

Although there has been controversy about DAR in the past, my reasons for not attending are solely personal and have absolutely nothing to do with that. I'm not going to address past issues since I wasn't involved then and really don't want to be now. This is about me and where I am on adoptee rights.

There are lots of logical reasons I should go. The little voice in my head keeps reminding me that it's right here in Chicago for pity's sake - I live out in the sticks but it's still only a couple of hours away. There are lots of people I'd like to meet in person. There are a handful of people I REALLY want to meet in person and am kicking myself over missing the opportunity.

I keep reminding myself that I should be there to stand up for left-behind adoptees, in Illinois and elsewhere. I should be there to remind the Illinois politicians that we're not done with adoptee rights in this state, and to tell other states not to do it this way. I should be there to warn everybody to stay the hell away from the Illinois CI program. I should be there to do my part for adoptee rights.

But I'm not going to, and the big reason is...

Fear.

This has been a year of major personal crises for me. I suffer from depression and anxiety at the best of times, which these are not. I'm not feeling much like marching off waving the Class Bastard banner at the moment.

There are other reasons. It's close to one of my kids' birthdays, and I've already had the experience of worrying about adoption crap through one of my kids' birthdays. I'm not going to do that again. And I have things that I should be doing here, although truth be told I could get around that if I tried.

The thing is, being an adoption reform activist - a volunteer of any kind - is a sucky deal. You have to be in a good place in your head to deal with what comes at you, especially if you are advocating from an unpopular position - in my case, that of being a left-behind adoptee. Everybody's against you: politicians, lobbyists, fellow activists, the general public. You have to explain your position, over and over, with a polite smile and a stack of literature, while they spout every goddamn stereotype until you want to strangle them.

I am not in the mood at the moment to listen while people repeat the myths about birth parent privacy, or refer to adult adoptees as "children". I am not in the mood to put up with jubilation over Illinois adoptees getting their birth certificates because not all of us are. I don't want to talk to legislators. I don't want to talk to reporters. I don't want to be the token left-behind Illinois adoptee in every conversation.

And then there are the people who should be on your side, but who for some bizarre reason have decided to compromise away all sense of self-worth, not to mention bona fide civil rights. I'm not in the mood to be polite to deformers, and I know some will be there - people who supported the compromise bill in Illinois, people who supported compromise bills elsewhere. I am not sure I could keep my mouth shut in their presence because I think it is absolutely abhorrent to barter away somebody else's OBC access just so you can get your hands on yours.

I'm sure people who are less than fond of me are rubbing their hands with glee, seeing this as a capitulation on my part. Go right ahead, if it makes you feel better. This does not, by any means, indicate that I am done with adoptee rights. On the contrary, I'm continuing to advocate for full and equal rights for ALL adult adoptees in ALL states and for our internationally adopted peers, as well as for the rights of first parents and families.

I intend to remain an angry adoptee with a blog, which is sort of like a madman with a box only not as much fun.

One of the ways I am contributing to the cause is by writing. I'm a freelance writer by trade so it's a good fit. If you have a publication, blog, or site and want me to write for it, let me know. You can see my professional writing clips here - most of my adoption-related stuff is not on that list but it will give you an idea. However, bear in mind that I am a GDI (god damn independent) with a lot of loudmouth left-behind-bastard opinions about adoption that I don't censor. Also, I am not affiliated with, nor will I affiliate with, any particular adoption reform organization. Freelancer to the core, that's me. If that sounds good to you, great. If not, then I suppose I don't need to worry about writing for you.

Now, if you want to see what I'm really up to, come on over to my fantasyworld blog and we can talk science fiction geekiness until our little fandom hearts explode. After all, who wants to deal with legislators when you can read the latest Pern novel and the Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover comic?

As for my next moves in the adoption reform world, I'll leave my detractors to wonder what they may be...