Freedom for Adoptees

I was thinking today about the Fourth of July celebration and freedom.  Freedom is something most adoptees don't have when it comes to obtaining our original birth certificates, and having access to identifying information about our biological families as other citizens can, and do.  Our rights and freedom to do so are held and controlled by outside parties and interests.

I've been blogging over at the Lost Daughters blog lately and enjoying doing so very much.  I am continually humbled and surprised by those that look forward to what I write and what I have to say.  Because for most of my life that was not the case and in fact, I was told that almost everything I had to say on any subject was wrong.  Or worse I was crazy.

But, I was not wrong or crazy.  I was adopted.  And adopted into a family where genetically no two parents could have been more different from the child placed with them.  The blank slate theory's failure, the theory "sold" to adoptive parents for decades by adoption agencies and social workers, could not have been more evident in adoption than in our home.
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My adoptive parents constantly undermined and berated me for not being more like any other child in the neighborhood or classmate they could name.  I was loud and they were quiet.  I was social and they were introverted.  They were very traditional and I was very VERY contemporary in how I approached life.  It became more evident when my adoptive parents had a biological child who fit right in and still does.  I was the "product" of a whole other set of genes.  I had a whole unknown biology I was created from.  But, when it was questioned I was quickly shut down.

My voice, feelings, and opinions may have been stifled as a child and into my younger adulthood, but that is no longer the case.  I am still shocked when non-adopted people speak about on how adoptees should feel, live, and what rights as adoptees we should have.  I don't get as angry as I used to I have come to realize it is simply ignorance and the adoption industry's perpetual myth building.  I do however fight back with the knowledge and experience I have gained in adoption education and reform over my lifetime. 

And, I have gained a great deal of wisdom from life in my adoption experience.  I also continue to learn from the experiences of others.  Our stories put together build an overwhelming amount of evidence than adoption as it has functioned is not working for the children it is supposed to provide for, but is also ridden with fraud and corruption and managed and controlled by those the profit from it.

It used to be that we were the ones who were not listened to when we spoke out about all that was wrong with adoption.  But now we are turning the tables on everyone that tells us it doesn't matter, be thankful, be grateful, and don't rock the boat.  Not only are we rocking the boat we are taking the oars and steering it in the right direction.  Our voices will not be drowned out and over powered by those that have no "business" dictating to us what we should, and could, be able to know about our very own biological relatives and genetic history.  To all those naysayers and those who fight against us in our quest for the truth about OUR lives this is what I have to say to them now.

~ Freedom of speech is wonderful – right up there with the freedom not to listen.