See my Adoption BEWareness Month blog for details on my November mission: exposing the things people don't want to admit about adoption.
Why do people deny anger over adoption?
"Anger," like "grateful," is a loaded word, most often used as an epithet by the uninformed. "Why are you so angry?" people ask, when they find out you're an adoptee/a first mother/searching/reunited. Even amongst ourselves, members of the adoption triad feel we cannot express our anger for fear of being ostracized. Why? Why are those most impacted by adoption, adoptees and birth relatives, forbidden to express their true feelings?
Speaking from the adoptee perspective, I've always felt angry about adoption. At first it was a wordless anger, something simmering in the back of my mind that gave my child-self one hell of a temper. My adoptive parents frequently disdained that I was "always angry." Well, I was. I was angry at them for trying to be substitutes for the family I lost, despite being adopted as an infant and supposedly not old enough to remember. I was angry at my birth mother for not taking care of me. I was angry at a world that would allow a kid to be so completely cut off from anything recognizable and familiar on the blood level as "family."
As a teenager it was anger at those around me, for trying to fit me into the adoptee mold. I didn't call it that, not then; all I knew was that I wanted to be myself and others had enormous expectations of me, especially my adoptive family. When you're adopted, it's like you're expected to play a certain role in a stage play, except you've never seen the script and are thrust into the middle of Act 2 on opening night. And the audience is staring at you, so you better say your lines right or reap the consequences.
When, as an adult, I started searching for my origins, it became an acute anger toward the hitherto-unknown denial of my civil rights. I learned I have a birth certificate faked by the state, and that the laws that protect others' rights curtail mine. Worse, I discovered that my adoptive parents lied about what they knew; in fact my adoptive father continued to do so to his grave. The bureaucracy surrounding adoption records "access" has to be experienced to be believed. It seemed like everyone else in the world knew where I came from, except me. Some office flunky could sit at a desk with MY adoption file and yet I'm Not Worthy!
Lately it has become a deep and steady anger, one that keeps me explaining to legislators, reporters, adopters, agencies, and basically anyone who will listen what the adoption experience is truly like. Today I get angry that I have to do this at all, that I have to expose my private trauma in order to regain the same rights everyone else has. But then I hear from people who whisper to me in private email, saying thank you for saying what we didn't know how to say or were afraid to say. That's the only thing that makes the whole ugly experience worthwhile. I should say thank you to all of you, for the support you have given me.
Adoption is like a frozen lake. On the surface it looks beautiful, but underneath is a roiling turmoil. By ignoring the turmoil, we venture onto the ice at our peril. If we deny the anger we feel toward adoption, we deny our own experiences and wisdom. Let's use that anger constructively to make the adoption experience as rare (yes, rare!) and transparent as possible.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Illinois: Santa Needs Your Letters!
From the Rights Of Adoptees blog (see also my previous post):
Santa wants the letters received by December 5th. If bad weather would set in and icicles form on Rudolph's nose, it can take longer to travel.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Santa cannot bring anyone their OBC for Christmas but Santa CAN do something very useful to further adoptees' struggle to obtain the same rights as other state residents. By writing a "letter to Santa", you can also help to raise awareness of the inequities of Illinois law. If you are an adoptee, write a letter to Santa that requests your OBC for Christmas. If you are the parent, sibling (or other relative) or friend of an adoptee, write your letter to Santa requesting that he bring the adoptee his OBC for Christmas. Since we are constantly hit over the head with birth parent privacy as the reason adoptees cannot access their OBC, if you are among those who surrendered a child to adoption, you can help by adding that you never wanted to be anonymous to your own child. There are genealogists who have found adoptees on their family tree and they should write letters also. We welcome others willing to help with our cause. Keep your letters brief and to the point. Don't introduce information that muddies the water. Contents of a few of these letters will be shared with the media (with identifying information removed, of course). The letters will be delivered by Santa or one of his elves to the Department of Vital Records with appropriate news coverage to increase public awareness of this issue.
Please send letters to:
Santa
c/o Mary Lynn Fuller
109 W. Illinois St., Apt. 506
Urbana, IL 61801
Write today! Thank you and a blessed holiday season to all!
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Strange And Mournful Day
Next week is Strange And Mournful Day, a day to honor and recognize mothers forced to surrender their children during the Baby Scoop Era (BSE). For adoptees like me, these are our birth mothers. So if you see women wearing black, white, and red, ask them why.
Forty-Five Years Through Time And Space
I can't let today pass by without noting that it's the 45th anniversary of the longest-running science fiction show in history, Doctor Who.Doctor Who is a story about a time-traveling wanderer and his companions (human, alien, and otherwise). Through adventures in time and space, the show explores the full breadth of the human experience.
The amazing thing about Doctor Who is its resilience. It has been noted that the series, much like the Doctor himself, continually regenerates. The classic series started in 1963 and continued for twenty-five years, then was kept alive through novels, fan fiction, an American TV movie, and audio dramas until a new series rejuvenated the show in 2005. It is now a number-one programme in Britain, with two series spinoffs plus ongoing novels and audios that extend the classic series.
You may wonder what this has to do with adoption. For me, everything. I started watching Doctor Who when I was ten, around the same time I started wondering about my origins. I followed the show avidly through adopted adolescence and college, and into my adulthood search for my records. The bureaucratic nightmares in trying to obtain my origins, the eventual finding of my birth mother through an intermediary and her subsequent denial, are for me intimately linked with the Doctor's continual fight for justice, freedom, and the rights of the oppressed. Which is why, as you'll see at the bottom of the sidebar, the motto of this blog is, "What Would The Doctor Do?"
When it comes to stealing babies from mothers and identities from adult adoptees, shaming women who surrender, legalizing child abandonment through "safe havens," and the rest of the corruption in the adoption industry... these seem no less evil to me than Daleks, Cybermen, disembodied stone hands or blue bloodsucking Viking vampires.
So today, think of the homeless traveler in his old police box, his days like crazy paving. And ask what you, yourself, are going to do about the injustices you see around you.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Repeal Nebraska "Safe Haven" Law
Please contact Nebraska legislators and urge them to repeal LB157, the so-called "safe haven" dump law that has allowed over forty non-infant children (including those not counted in the official tally) to be legally abandoned. This bill may be voted upon as early as TOMORROW, so please write asap.
"Safe haven" laws purport to "save" kids, but as the Bastard Nation testimony (pdf) states, abandonment is no solution to the problem of families in need.
I speak as an adoptee and victim of the sort of law they are proposing, one that divides these kids into haves and have-nots based on arbitrary dates. I strongly urge Nebraska lawmakers to repeal LB157 in favor of legislation that provides support for keeping families together instead of more fodder for the adoption machine.
This is the Bastard Nation press release. And I'd like to send out a kudos to them for going to bat for these kids, yet another generation of disenfranchised adoptees.
"Safe haven" laws purport to "save" kids, but as the Bastard Nation testimony (pdf) states, abandonment is no solution to the problem of families in need.
I speak as an adoptee and victim of the sort of law they are proposing, one that divides these kids into haves and have-nots based on arbitrary dates. I strongly urge Nebraska lawmakers to repeal LB157 in favor of legislation that provides support for keeping families together instead of more fodder for the adoption machine.
This is the Bastard Nation press release. And I'd like to send out a kudos to them for going to bat for these kids, yet another generation of disenfranchised adoptees.
PRESS RELEASE
NOVEMBER 18, 2008
BASTARD NATION TO NEBRASKA:
REPEAL LB 157!
STOP CHILD DUMPING NOW!
AND DON’T BRING IT BACK!
CONTACT: Marley Greiner, 614-571-2999 or MEGreiner@gmail.com
Nebraska had it right the first time. It was the last state to pass a “safe haven” law. Nebraska can be the first to repeal this misbegotten law before any more families are harmed or even destroyed. Nebraska can lead the rest of the country in dragging itself out of this moral quagmire.
Bastard Nation Testimony, Nebraska Judiciary Committee,
November 17, 2009
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization yesterday called for the permanent repeal of Nebraska’s LB 157, which permits anyone to abandon any child of any age at a licensed hospital in the State of Nebraska. The special session of the Nebraska Unicameral was called this week to revise the age limit on children eligible for abandonment, is looking at two bills, LB 1 and LB 3.
Bastard Nation believes that dumping a child of any age is no solution to social isolation, fear, family dysfunction, and mental illness. The problems of parents, whether they are a frightened 15-year old mom of a newborn or a 55-year old grandpa caring for a mentally ill grandson, are very real, and they cannot and should not be solved by a quick fix, no-muss-no-fuss government–facilitated and promoted child dumping program.
In testimony submitted to the Judiciary Committee, urging repeal and renunciation of child dumping in Nebraska, Bastard Nation said:
Aging down LB 157 does nothing to change the message that it is OK to dump your child. By continuing to promote child abandonment at any age, the message will remain: it’s OK to dump your child.
Rejecting the idea that older child abandonment is traumatic, but newborn and infant abandonment harmless since newborns will have no memory or relationship with their families, Bastard Nation testified:
Apparently memory and articulation is what makes one class of dump “ethical” and “good” and the other not.
“Nine years ago, we warned that once these laws became institutionalized, they would be normalized,” says Bastard Nation executive chair, Marley Greiner. “Bad social policy for newborns and their families has now become bad social policy for all families. Nebraska is the culmination of bad practice.”
Greiner explains that the contemporary baby dump movement is a reaction to ongoing reforms in adoption, including the right of adopted persons to access their original birth records, putative fathers’ rights, and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) which gives tribal rights under certain circumstances, to children being placed for adoption. The conservative adoption trade lobby, the National Council for Adoption, where the ‘safe haven” concept originated, has stated specifically that “safe havens” are a response to the restoration of the right of adoptees to access their original birth records and identities. State facilitated baby dumps,” Bastard Nation says, “are nothing more than a return to secret adoption and sealed records.”
The testimony continues:
In the last few years, baby dumping, encouraged by the government, has become “just another option,” for parents who might otherwise seek out services that would assist them to keep their children, place them in temporary fostercare while they worked out their problems, or place them for adoption in a traditional informed process. Baby dumping, they are told, is easier.
In some states, the age of children eligible for dumping has edged up and drop-off sites have increased to make the process more “convenient” How-to-abandon your baby units are mandated in the curriculum of several states. There has been a steady increase in “drive-by relinquishments” by parents who have no intention of ever harming their children, but are looking for an easy way out or simply don’t know better, while the rate of dangerous discard and neonaticide remain the same.
Testimony cited a 2005 study done by the adoption reform group, California Open, based on a survey of county coroners the group did through pubic records requests that indicated that since the passage of California’s “safe haven” law, the rate of neonaticide has remained a steady 13-15 per year.
Nebraska has no newborn abandonment “crisis” Greiner says. Since 1996, 5 discarded newborns have been found alive (2-3 in relatively safe locations) and 1 found dead from unknown causes
The real problem, she says, is the failure of the state to deliver mental health care and other services to Nebraska families. Although services seem to exist on paper, the parents and guardians of many of the children turned in under LB 157 are vocal about their inability to access them, and see the legal child dumping of LB 157, as the only way that they can get help. “The state is taking broken kids and breaking them some more by tossing them into a safe haven hole. Make them better with repeated abandonments. This absolutely must stop.”
No child should be abandoned. Nebraska’ plan to divvy up children by age, into those worthy and those unworthy of abandonment protection is not acceptable nor best practice. Aging down to 30 days or some other arbitrary age creates a new set of abandoned children and their families who will suffer lifelong consequences.
For more information see Bastard Nation’s testimony at: http://www.bastards.org/bn-nebraska-testimony.pdf
Also see Children of the Corn: Reporting, Theory, and Writing on Nebraska Child Dumping, a one-stop source of information regarding LB 157. http://cornkids.blogspot.com
Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee's historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification
Friday, November 14, 2008
Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut
See my Adoption BEWareness Month blog for details on my November mission: exposing the things people don't want to admit about adoption.
I would like to expand upon the discussions that have developed in the adoption reform community, concerning a recent article claiming that reformers are mendacious, stupid, and most importantly... crazy.
As I commented on another blog, this is Rule #1 In The Adoption Game. If a birth relative or adoptee questions The Game, call them crazy.
Why is one person's "crazy" another person's "genealogical research?" Why are adoptees not supposed to complain when they are treated in a manner that, if occuring to anyone else, would be unjust? Why are mothers expected to forget they ever had a child? If a child dies, the mother is allowed her grief; vice versa if a child loses a parent. But if you're separated by adoption, tough, and if you speak out, you're nuts.
Note that the people calling us crazy are, primarily, adopters and adoption "professionals," the sole winners (and creators) of The Adoption Game. I say "professionals" in quotes because any bozo can sell babies, no certifications required. Adoption is a business, a for-profit venture, not a charity. It behooves them to make the people putting a dent in that business look like lunatics.
Because adoption reformers are just... people, everyday people you pass on the street. We run businesses, vote, go to war and patronize the same grocery store you do. I was surprised the first time I spoke with Marley Greiner, executive director of Bastard Nation and author of her personal Bastardette blog. I knew Marley only through highly skewed media articles, and was therefore expecting some kind of outre villain with Glenn Close-as-Cruella hair. Instead I discovered a well-spoken woman who seems as sane as anyone. But if you believe the latest gossip, I've been conversing with one of the frontrunners for the matriarchal anarchists, go figure.
Because the minute you breathe dissent, the moment you dare to suggest that adoption is not perfect, you are deemed crazy. You can't say one word against the status quo without being branded! It's like you're suddenly the leper in the room, with a big A-For-Adoption-Activist tattooed across your forehead.
I am used to being called crazy; for someone who believes in dimensional transcendentalism it's occasionally amusing. It started with my adoptive family, who considered me "crazy" because I was different from them. Kids at school thought I was "crazy" because I was adopted. Now I'm "crazy" because I, as an adult adoptee, assert my rights. But stealing babies from mothers, faking adoptee birth certificates and concocting conspiracy theories about reformers is "normal." Uh-huh.
I am an average person, your typical middle-aged working mom. If Ms. Saxton, the author of that little piece of vitriol, or someone like her were to pass me on the street, she wouldn't blink. However, I know that I am really a Bastard, because the world around me makes that abundantly clear. I am treated differently. I am not permitted the same rights. That is why I am an adoption reformer.
They said women were crazy for wanting to vote. They said that blacks were crazy for wanting civil rights. Now they say adoptees and first mothers are crazy because we reject what has been done to us. I happily accept the slur, because it means they are running scared from the progress we are making toward open records and transparency in the adoption process.
Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't.
I would like to expand upon the discussions that have developed in the adoption reform community, concerning a recent article claiming that reformers are mendacious, stupid, and most importantly... crazy.
As I commented on another blog, this is Rule #1 In The Adoption Game. If a birth relative or adoptee questions The Game, call them crazy.
Why is one person's "crazy" another person's "genealogical research?" Why are adoptees not supposed to complain when they are treated in a manner that, if occuring to anyone else, would be unjust? Why are mothers expected to forget they ever had a child? If a child dies, the mother is allowed her grief; vice versa if a child loses a parent. But if you're separated by adoption, tough, and if you speak out, you're nuts.
Note that the people calling us crazy are, primarily, adopters and adoption "professionals," the sole winners (and creators) of The Adoption Game. I say "professionals" in quotes because any bozo can sell babies, no certifications required. Adoption is a business, a for-profit venture, not a charity. It behooves them to make the people putting a dent in that business look like lunatics.
Because adoption reformers are just... people, everyday people you pass on the street. We run businesses, vote, go to war and patronize the same grocery store you do. I was surprised the first time I spoke with Marley Greiner, executive director of Bastard Nation and author of her personal Bastardette blog. I knew Marley only through highly skewed media articles, and was therefore expecting some kind of outre villain with Glenn Close-as-Cruella hair. Instead I discovered a well-spoken woman who seems as sane as anyone. But if you believe the latest gossip, I've been conversing with one of the frontrunners for the matriarchal anarchists, go figure.
Because the minute you breathe dissent, the moment you dare to suggest that adoption is not perfect, you are deemed crazy. You can't say one word against the status quo without being branded! It's like you're suddenly the leper in the room, with a big A-For-Adoption-Activist tattooed across your forehead.
I am used to being called crazy; for someone who believes in dimensional transcendentalism it's occasionally amusing. It started with my adoptive family, who considered me "crazy" because I was different from them. Kids at school thought I was "crazy" because I was adopted. Now I'm "crazy" because I, as an adult adoptee, assert my rights. But stealing babies from mothers, faking adoptee birth certificates and concocting conspiracy theories about reformers is "normal." Uh-huh.
I am an average person, your typical middle-aged working mom. If Ms. Saxton, the author of that little piece of vitriol, or someone like her were to pass me on the street, she wouldn't blink. However, I know that I am really a Bastard, because the world around me makes that abundantly clear. I am treated differently. I am not permitted the same rights. That is why I am an adoption reformer.
They said women were crazy for wanting to vote. They said that blacks were crazy for wanting civil rights. Now they say adoptees and first mothers are crazy because we reject what has been done to us. I happily accept the slur, because it means they are running scared from the progress we are making toward open records and transparency in the adoption process.
Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Adoption Activists, Fight Back!
Oh, yes, Adoption BEWareness Month has indeed begun, and all the insects are crawling out of the woodwork.
This article is the sort of insane drivel that gives me the holy heebie jeebies. I can't even read it all the way through without a heavy dose of something. Is that like an adoption reform version of the Drinking Game? One sip if the article mentions adoption, two if it only shows the viewpoint of adoptive parents... whole beverage if adoption reformers are reduced to rabid fanatics scurrying about the underbelly of society.
Yes, if you oppose being treated like a second-class citizen, being unable to obtain a driver's license or indeed even a usable birth certificate, according to this woman you are a raving lunatic who should shut up and go back to being silently ungrateful. Shame, shame, shame on every last one of us adoption reformers for standing up for ourselves because no one else will.
Thanks to Kite Kamp Girl for pointing this article out, I think. Now I need a barf bag.
And thanks also to Ms. Saxton. Your article goes to show that we supposedly psychopathic but apparently effective adoption reformers are making an impact that is being felt far and wide.
This article is the sort of insane drivel that gives me the holy heebie jeebies. I can't even read it all the way through without a heavy dose of something. Is that like an adoption reform version of the Drinking Game? One sip if the article mentions adoption, two if it only shows the viewpoint of adoptive parents... whole beverage if adoption reformers are reduced to rabid fanatics scurrying about the underbelly of society.
Yes, if you oppose being treated like a second-class citizen, being unable to obtain a driver's license or indeed even a usable birth certificate, according to this woman you are a raving lunatic who should shut up and go back to being silently ungrateful. Shame, shame, shame on every last one of us adoption reformers for standing up for ourselves because no one else will.
Thanks to Kite Kamp Girl for pointing this article out, I think. Now I need a barf bag.
And thanks also to Ms. Saxton. Your article goes to show that we supposedly psychopathic but apparently effective adoption reformers are making an impact that is being felt far and wide.
Babies Do Remember: Repeal "Safe Haven" Laws
See my Adoption BEWareness Month blog for details on my November mission: exposing the things people don't want to admit about adoption.
Before we begin, please read both Bastardette's and Baby Love Child's ongoing coverage of the Nebraska crisis and "safe haven" laws. They have done an excellent job of sorting through the chaff to find the real nuggets of truth in this crisis.
Later this week, Nebraska plans to age down their "safe haven" law, which has been used to dump at least 30 kids (not infants), some across state lines, some who were adopted and whose adoptive parents couldn't "handle" it anymore. All trashed like unwanted toasters in their time of need.
Aging down safe haven laws does NOT make them right.
The argument behind limiting Nebraska's law to newborns is the same as the thinking in other states, as expressed by Nebraska's Governor:
Thirty-odd years ago, I was a Healthy White Infant whose mother made what today would be called an "adoption plan." She sought out a kind doctor who gladly helped her through her pregnancy and birth. (Gladly, I'm sure, for whatever my adoptive parents paid for my gray-market self.) The assumption was, since I was adopted at birth, I would not remember.
The hell I don't.
My entire life has been overshadowed by the trauma that I experienced when I was an infant. I missed my mother desperately as a child (still do), although I was repeatedly told I didn't remember her. But my adoptive mother smelled wrong. She acted in ways I couldn't fathom, and vice versa. My adoptive father said at my christening that "oil and water don't mix." I was a month old; presumably I was acting in a way contradictory to good little tabula rasa infants, like pushing away and crying. Nobody bothered to consider that I might have been traumatized by being adopted. Today, I still suffer the consequences.
So do my children. They're biological, so I know from personal experience what being pregnant is like and the communication that exists pre-birth. My kids and I definitely knew each other at birth--why wouldn't we? We had been intimately linked for nine months. As newborns, my children could discern me, their mother, from other people. They knew my scent and my voice. If they had been taken from me they damn well would have borne the scars of it. And they, too, have been deprived of their family origins because they have the unfortunate luck to be the offspring of a Bastard.
Adoption is not a one-time event, it has lifelong, generational consequences. So does being abandoned in the name of "safe haven" laws.
There is so much scientific research today about newborns, yet "safe haven" advocates and sealed-records supporters would have you believe that infants don't remember. I find particularly disturbing the dichotomy between the new-parent materials I received when pregnant ("Play Mozart in the womb for mathematical prowess!"), what I was told as an adoptee ("You were too young to know the difference"), and what we are being told now about safe haven laws ("If they're babies they won't feel abandoned").
Pushing back the age limit on "safe haven" laws does nothing other than render mute those who are most affected by it. Eighteen years will pass before "safe havened" infants can speak their minds. Speaking as someone who quite easily could have been "safe havened" had such laws existed when I was born, I can tell you that abandonment at any age is trauma with no cure.
But why don't you ask those "safe havened" kids themselves, the ones who are old enough to voice an immediate opinion? One of them posted this on his MySpace page:
Before we begin, please read both Bastardette's and Baby Love Child's ongoing coverage of the Nebraska crisis and "safe haven" laws. They have done an excellent job of sorting through the chaff to find the real nuggets of truth in this crisis.
Later this week, Nebraska plans to age down their "safe haven" law, which has been used to dump at least 30 kids (not infants), some across state lines, some who were adopted and whose adoptive parents couldn't "handle" it anymore. All trashed like unwanted toasters in their time of need.
Aging down safe haven laws does NOT make them right.
The argument behind limiting Nebraska's law to newborns is the same as the thinking in other states, as expressed by Nebraska's Governor:
The Nebraska law has had “serious, unintended consequences,” Gov. Dave Heineman said. “This law needs to be changed to focus on infants.”And "safe haven" advocate/nutter Tim Jaccard is quoted as saying:
A national expert on safe-haven laws commended Nebraska officials for moving to impose an age limit, but he said action should be taken now to prevent older children from receiving the scars of abandonment.And it's not for a baby? Somehow, we are still living with the myth that "infants don't remember."
“It affects children,” said Tim Jaccard, president of the National Safe Haven Alliance. “When children are older they have the ability to understand what’s going on and they’re thinking, ‘Mommy and Daddy don’t want me anymore, so they’re throwing me in a hospital.’ That’s a psychological blow.”
Thirty-odd years ago, I was a Healthy White Infant whose mother made what today would be called an "adoption plan." She sought out a kind doctor who gladly helped her through her pregnancy and birth. (Gladly, I'm sure, for whatever my adoptive parents paid for my gray-market self.) The assumption was, since I was adopted at birth, I would not remember.
The hell I don't.
My entire life has been overshadowed by the trauma that I experienced when I was an infant. I missed my mother desperately as a child (still do), although I was repeatedly told I didn't remember her. But my adoptive mother smelled wrong. She acted in ways I couldn't fathom, and vice versa. My adoptive father said at my christening that "oil and water don't mix." I was a month old; presumably I was acting in a way contradictory to good little tabula rasa infants, like pushing away and crying. Nobody bothered to consider that I might have been traumatized by being adopted. Today, I still suffer the consequences.
So do my children. They're biological, so I know from personal experience what being pregnant is like and the communication that exists pre-birth. My kids and I definitely knew each other at birth--why wouldn't we? We had been intimately linked for nine months. As newborns, my children could discern me, their mother, from other people. They knew my scent and my voice. If they had been taken from me they damn well would have borne the scars of it. And they, too, have been deprived of their family origins because they have the unfortunate luck to be the offspring of a Bastard.
Adoption is not a one-time event, it has lifelong, generational consequences. So does being abandoned in the name of "safe haven" laws.
There is so much scientific research today about newborns, yet "safe haven" advocates and sealed-records supporters would have you believe that infants don't remember. I find particularly disturbing the dichotomy between the new-parent materials I received when pregnant ("Play Mozart in the womb for mathematical prowess!"), what I was told as an adoptee ("You were too young to know the difference"), and what we are being told now about safe haven laws ("If they're babies they won't feel abandoned").
Pushing back the age limit on "safe haven" laws does nothing other than render mute those who are most affected by it. Eighteen years will pass before "safe havened" infants can speak their minds. Speaking as someone who quite easily could have been "safe havened" had such laws existed when I was born, I can tell you that abandonment at any age is trauma with no cure.
But why don't you ask those "safe havened" kids themselves, the ones who are old enough to voice an immediate opinion? One of them posted this on his MySpace page:
**choose me** Im so damn lonley.We must protect the children who cannot speak for themselves, or whose words are disregarded. Repeal "safe haven" laws!
Thank You, RegDay Volunteers
I'd like to send hugs, kisses, and a big THANK YOU to everyone who participated in this year's RegDay event, especially those who were able to set up events in their own cities. I didn't have the wherewithal to try to do one here in Chicago, but I wish I had.
Check out the RegDay site as well as Ungrateful Little Bastard's blog for some of the coverage of this important event, which gets the word out about the International Soundex Reunion Registry and adoption search and reunion.
Check out the RegDay site as well as Ungrateful Little Bastard's blog for some of the coverage of this important event, which gets the word out about the International Soundex Reunion Registry and adoption search and reunion.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Adoption BEwareness Month
Here we go again. It's November, Adoption Awareness Month, time to be deluged by the message that adoption is the be-all and end-all of our modern civilization. A few years ago Origins-USA came up with a countermessage, Adoption BEwareness Month. In that spirit, my November blogs will be about the gotchas of adoption, the things people don't want to talk about.
We got off to a good (if it can be called "good") start at the end of October, with our discussion of adult adoptee Chynna and her experience being denied a Florida driver's license. This sort of humiliation is an everyday experience for many adoptees. You won't find out about that in the Adoption Awareness media blitz we'll all be enduring this month.
You also won't find out about SMAAC, a group of righteously pissed-off mothers shining daylight on the atrocities of the Baby Scoop Era. These atrocities continue today, something else not in the Adoption Awareness catalog.
Personally I am damn tired of hearing other peoples' opinions about adoption, people who often have no experience with it except through hearsay and TV movies. As an adoptee, I live adoption every day, and it's not the Disneyland ride people think it is. So I'm going to say something the Adoption Awareness folks don't want you to hear.
I hate adoption.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I hate adoption. I hate the lies. I hate the secrets. I hate that adoption has become about finding children for parents who want them instead of homes for children in need. I hate that people don't really understand how much adoption stinks. I hate the fact that adoption will probably always be necessary to some extent. I HATE our ridiculously aberrant closed-records system. I hate that I feel powerless to change much of the above, and that today, right now, another kid is turning into an adoptee and another mother is drowning in grief.
What bothers you about adoption? What secrets do you feel need to be brought to the surface? Post your experiences, and I'll be blogging about mine. Let's not allow Adoption BEwareness Month to pass by without shouting into its maelstrom.
We got off to a good (if it can be called "good") start at the end of October, with our discussion of adult adoptee Chynna and her experience being denied a Florida driver's license. This sort of humiliation is an everyday experience for many adoptees. You won't find out about that in the Adoption Awareness media blitz we'll all be enduring this month.
You also won't find out about SMAAC, a group of righteously pissed-off mothers shining daylight on the atrocities of the Baby Scoop Era. These atrocities continue today, something else not in the Adoption Awareness catalog.
Personally I am damn tired of hearing other peoples' opinions about adoption, people who often have no experience with it except through hearsay and TV movies. As an adoptee, I live adoption every day, and it's not the Disneyland ride people think it is. So I'm going to say something the Adoption Awareness folks don't want you to hear.
I hate adoption.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I hate adoption. I hate the lies. I hate the secrets. I hate that adoption has become about finding children for parents who want them instead of homes for children in need. I hate that people don't really understand how much adoption stinks. I hate the fact that adoption will probably always be necessary to some extent. I HATE our ridiculously aberrant closed-records system. I hate that I feel powerless to change much of the above, and that today, right now, another kid is turning into an adoptee and another mother is drowning in grief.
What bothers you about adoption? What secrets do you feel need to be brought to the surface? Post your experiences, and I'll be blogging about mine. Let's not allow Adoption BEwareness Month to pass by without shouting into its maelstrom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
