Why So Many Adoptees Don't Love Adoption!

Why do we not love adoption?  Ohhhhh let me count the ways.  No really please LET ME. 

Well beside the uneducated advice and opinions of those "well meaning" people who dictate to us how thankful and grateful we should be someone wanted us, and how lucky we are we weren't tossed in a dumpster or aborted, there are so many other points to cover on why adoptees do not love adoption.  So many of us do not fit into complete opposite biology from our own in our adoptive familes.  So many of us are then further rejected after the cute baby adoptee grows into the genetic person they are.  Then, so many of us encounter much to our dismay the fact that we are treated like commodities subject to government rule and regulation.  Shocking, untrue, and unfounded you say, how could this be adoption is wonderful?!  Just wait it gets even more unbelievable.

Let's begin with the religious entities that govern and facilitate adoption and the fraud and corruption within them, that also involves a great deal of immorality and lack of ethics.  I'm not a full blown search angel but I do help others and try and guide adoptees as to where to go, who to talk to, and where to start searching.  In the last year, and especially in the last month, I have been in touch with several adoptees I tried to provide help for that aren't "found" in the system of adoption.  They hold ammended birth certificates and have adoptive parents who have given them identifying information including birth names, and some even have adoption paperwork in hand.  STILL no one can find them and they are told they don't "exist" in the system.  There is no recourse for information, family history or background, let alone the chance to obtain current family medical history for themselves or their children.  Many search with that little they have for years without ever finding biological family.  Try "finding" with last names that are 20-30 or more years old like Smith, Jones, or Miller and first names of Jane, John, or Bill and mothers who have married and remarried and changed their original last names.

Other adoptees, too numerous to count, have registered with state and local adoption agencies looking for information and or connections to their biological families.  Many biological families have contacted the previous mentioned looking for the same.  Both sets of people are turned away told that no one has contacted them, or they are not entitled to that information, or no matches have been found for them.  Later, sometimes years later they find one another outside of these systems only to realize they were given incorrect information or NO information pertaining to the fact that these people were desperately attempting to reconnect.  And sadly, more than sadly, many find they are too late and one or MORE of the parties is deceased and the chance at reunion and relationships have been lost.  The damage and fall out from this can be devastating I know, I lived without much of that information that could have changed and saved parts of my life for decades.

The majority of these religious entities, and there are hundreds registered as non-profits and are tax exempt take in large amounts of money beyond the non-adopted persons true comprehension, who continue to profit off adoptees in post adoption situations such as Confidential Intermediary programs, the request for non-identifying information, or for reunion services.  Private adoptions in Texas via lawyers can operate under the table and without scrutiny and transparency making them much more fraught with illegalities and at risk for young woman and children being taken advantage of.   More recently International Adoption fraud has been in the news in countries such as Australia, Spain, and China just to name a few.   The much loved Gladney Center for Adoption has been sued several times over including a class action suit brought by adoptive parents for lack of disclosure to pertinent and accurate information about the children they adopted and their biological family background.  Settled out of court....of course.

What we as adoptees here in the United States know all too well is how rampant it runs within our own country's system of adoption.  Most adoptees don't have the time, energy, or are monetarily equipped to go up against these adoption agencies, parties, and entities legally because these large wealthy non-profits and government institutions DO have plenty of time and money to keep anyone accusatory tied up lengthy legal battles.  However, some adoptees have sued and won, or even had their adoption reversed and declared illegal.  I could state case after case but there is google for that if you don't take my word for it.  Or, contact me privately and I'll give you an ear full.

What is so very disconcerting and disgusting is the propaganda by which these agencies are allowed to advertise children complete with price lists and legal costs to adopt babies still yet unborn still in the womb!  Crisis pregnancy billboards, bumper stickers, and even posters on the walls of planned parenthood expounding on the virtues of adoption are prevalent here locally.  Pregnant girls and woman are continually being primed for sainthood for unselfishly giving up their children into better circumstances and then kicked to the curb and their open adoption promise closes when the ink on the relinquishment papers dry, and the door to contact with their child is shut tight on them.   All of this done in the name of creating families but in reality it is child trafficking. 

I've only touched the tip of the proverbial ice berg here in regards to the lack of ethics and morality and fraud in adoption.  And most of the time it's not going to be broadcast in head line news, in workplace conversation at the water cooler, or in friendly conversations.  It is best known and lived in the hearts and souls of adoptees.

The Powers That Be

You took away my family.
You took away my home.
You erased away my history and most of it is gone.
What gives to you the right to do this injustice unto me?
How can you be so blinded?
How is it you can't see?
You're stealing from the innocent are you so unaware?
You're playing God with all our lives, did you think we wouldn't care?
Who gave to you authority to decide how we should live?
Who granted you this power?
It was not theirs to give.
You treat us as possessions.
We are not yours to own.
How did you get the notion you can tell me where is home?
Do not dictate to me about how I should live my life.
Or who I can call mother.
Then take away my rights.
The answers to life's questions you say I need not know.
You're asking the impossible the questions only grow.
What it is I'm asking for is for you to understand.
Until I have those answers I can not know who it is I am! 

Being adopted - Emotional Homelessness

I remember watching this as a child and relating to Marilyn on the show well.  She seemed to handle being so different in a very scary family with ease.  I always wondered if she was pretending as I was in my adoptive family, or if she really did blend in well.  And if it was the latter just HOW did she do it???  Inquiring adopted person wants to know!

I am pretty much nothing like my adopted family I even go so far as call it 99% the exact opposite.  Since our genetics in every way were and are so different, and people didn't talk about adoption and the issues it brought into family situations, I was always the one at fault for not fitting in.  Throughout my childhood and teens years it was evident everything about me was wrong according to what expectations were of who I was supposed to be.  I wish I could say that I was one of the few adoptees who experiences this but I am far from it.  There are so many of us out there who are rejected by not one but two families for simply doing nothing else than losing at the adoption "lottery".

Lately, it has gotten to where I can't talk about the recent developments in my adopted situation with anyone but other adoptees.  No one gets it, and I know they can't, but the fact that comparisons are made frustrate me.  I realize people feel they don't belong in their families, or they are not accepted as they are, or they are rejected by blood relatives.  But they know where they came from, they were not cut off from their biological roots and birth, and they at least had some kind of bonding in some capacity with people they share genes, family history, and genealogy with.  I'm really growing weary of trying to put the two into the same category.  I'd say it's like comparing apples with oranges but it's not.  It's more like comparing apples to a huge steaming pile of crap.  The big steaming pile of crap to many adoptees is adoption.

Ever since I can remember I've tried to figure out how to be someone else that was acceptable.  I've had to lie and cheat and steal.  Lie about who I am, cheat myself out of trusting who I really was, and steal identities and the traits of others to create myself throughout the years.  I had to wait until 39 years of age to get a glimpse at my biological family information and at 52 and three court petitions, one in progress, I STILL do not have names, cities, or states where my natural parents are, nor do I have the ability to tell my blood siblings I exist.

It's not just me who has suffered but my children as well.  They lost out on a whole other side of a family too.  "Family" is what you make it but it never replaces what was lost.  There are people who have lost the use of their legs and are glad they still have arms but that doesn't mean they take the place of the legs that they no longer have use of.  Even the great spiritual guru and leader Wayne Dyer talks of growing up in orphanages and the long search for his biological father and in finding a grave he at last found peace and closure.

Losing ties to your own, biological and or adoptive, parents can bring even the strongest and greatest person to their knees.  I harp on this a great deal but it's true.  There are two things that are important in life family and health.  When you lose both as I have, you can lose nearly everything.  Not only income, or careers, or educational opportunities, homes, and relationships but when you are adopted and have lost not just one but two family connections you not only can become physically homeless, but emotionally too.  For me, the latter has been worse.

The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.  ~Richard Grant




 

Adoptee Tales from the Darkest Side

Over Cast

A gloomy gray surrounds my soul and covers hope from which life grows.
With murky tints in hues of black and darkened tones where colors lack.
I know no sun or sky of blue eternal night my only view.
In shades of doubt my heart beats on where I exist but don't belong.
Lost chances and unrealized dreams paint the landscape that I see.
Defeating endeavors to escape the desolate hours that are my fate.
Upon the surface all is well most never see my private hell.
I struggle daily to survive and squelch the anger deep inside.
I try before it is too late to douse these fires of raging hate.
That burn eternal flames that kill my hope, my prayers, my very will.
Can't seem to win or too succeed exiled from life that others lead.
I wrestle with the endless doubt that I will find my way back out.
Where one day I will hope to find a peaceful and unburdened mind.

I wrote this a little over ten years ago when I was rejected by my biological parents, found out my adoptive parents had been withholding pertinent information to help me obtain crucial current family medical history for doctors (and had been for years), battling multiple health issues, single mother struggling to take care of her children alone, lost, and depressed.  I am not suicidal, although I have been at points in time in my life.  I look back now and how far I have come a long way from the lost, hurt, angry person I was.  However, adoption "stuff" can hit you when you least expect it, out of the blue, and slam you down to the ground so hard you think you'll never get back up.  The above poem cries out with the depths of despair adoption issues can bring you to.

I've spent a lot more time than I'd like to reflect on living in very dark places.  Feeling like a huge cosmic mistake born to one set of parents who gave me away and now want no contact with me let alone to release their names or to tell my siblings I even exist.  Adopted by two parents who obviously couldn't bond with who I was our genetics so extremely opposite, abused, and rejected.  Existing for my children but going through the motions in life and numbing out when and where I could.  Languishing ill in and out of doctors and hospitals battling for my very life and still, no one there to really care.  A good majority of my life has been a nightmare a black hole sucking the very energy and will to live right out of me.

Fortunately in part due to a counselor well versed in adoption issues and largely to so many adoptees who are supportive and understand I am a different person today.  I bounce back a lot more quickly when struck by the pain and loss adoption brings to my life table.  I write, I support other adoptees in the search and healing, I work in adoption reform and education when and where I can and implement coping tools shown to me by other adoptees.  I've become more stubborn and hell bent not to allow my adoption situation to destroy me, or any other adoptee, and continue on as a survivor.  I strive to be everything my adoptive and biological parents are not.  I refuse to be a person that continues to bury their head in the sand and ignore the truth.

People are quick to judge and label adoptees when they have no comprehension of the depth of what has happened to them, nor do they seem to want to, because of adoption.  They believe adoption is a wonderful solution to a "bad" situation.  You just take a baby whose parents are in a difficult situation i.e. young, uneducated, impoverished, and you transplant them into a family who wants a child right?  WRONG!!!

It is complicated for all parties involved, but mostly for the children who are separated from their biological families.  And when these difficult issues for adoptees are ignored and shoved under the rug all kinds of problems can occur.  It is well known and has been widely published that adoptees are over represented in psychological settings and rehabilitation centers.  This is unacceptable.  It must be changed and more importantly PREVENTED.  You don't "get over" being adopted.  Adoption is not a one time transaction it is a lifetime event.

I truly believe that it's not what happens to you it's how you deal with it.  But, for far too long adoptees have not been able to voice their pain and angst over the issues adoption brings them.  Or worse, their voices are stifled and quieted by a society and industry that dismisses them or worse, shames and blames them for simply feeling what they feel.  Adoptees are now speaking out, writing, and joining the effort for reform and education in adoption to end the silencing of these voices of reason.  The days of hiding in the dark, in fear, afraid to speak out well that time, is now over.

"When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing." - Rabindranath Tagore

Adoptees and the Facts of Life

'You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life'.

And that was what came to mind when I was thinking of recent events that have taken place in the adoption community.  After 13 years being involved in it, watching, learning, and advocating I feel somewhat educated enough to throw my opinion into the arena.  And all the time remembering too what they say about opinions.  So, here goes.

The adoption community is multifacted melting pot of differing religious, political, ethnicities, egos, ages, and genders.  Adoptee's stories while having amazing similarities are as unique to the individual who experiences them.  There is one binding factor I find in most all adoptees that we are instantaneously understood by most immediately without hesitation, accepted for the adopted persons we are.  It IS a pack mentality and maybe the first and only one adoptees ever feel they really belong to.

We fight to expose the dirty, corrupt, and fraudulent underbelly in adoption that exists in ways only we bear witness to every day.  We work to educate the world on the plight of adoptees, NOT what the system of adoption tells the world it is, and bring our voices to change the system that has functioned without listening to us.  The process of adoption and how it functions as human trafficking great disturbs me, hell it out right PISSES ME OFF.  If you knew babies and children were being treated as commodities for profit in the name of adoption it would piss you off too.

Pack mentality is what has changed the world for hundreds of years, even longer.  Pack mentality is what has created numerous grassroots organizations all over the world, and in adoption as well.  Pack mentality is what started adoption reform and created the first progress towards adoptee access to OBCs.  That said there are also varying versions of pack mentality within adoption and all groups have their varying reasons for functioning and operating and how they see and view the issues.  As much as we can agree with any adoptee on how to proceed in adoption education and reform, we can also find ourselves as polar opposites. 

Do I support hate speech, or personal or private attacks, and revenge NO I do not.  What I do support is an adoptee's right for once in their lives to stand up and speak out against the horrors of adoption and the very people who are promoting the industry.  When we try to get people to conform to our idea of how this should be done we once again control them and or label them.  That has been done enough as it is already.

I watch and witness constantly the battle between pro-adoption and anti-adoption.  We as adoptees find our place in the battle to educate and reform.  I have found it therapeutic and empowering to change the world and the lives for others.  While I may or may not agree on how one group proceeds if I don't like it I can certainly state my opinion and walk away and simply not take part or get engaged in certain ideas or behaviors.  Just as there are far left, middle, and right winged politicians so there are adoptees working within legislative and educational activism.  No movement as large as this is ever going to be on the same page at the same time.

The depths of emotion that we carry as adoptees goes beyond explanation even for us much of the time.  We are navigating VERY uncharted territory.  There is going to be controversy, and disagreements, and blatant dislike between individuals and unfortunately groups.  Just as there is in any other "family" type situation.  It's how these differences are met and dealt with that make the difference.  Have I spoken out and gone too far YOU BET.  And, when I have been wrong I have taken responsibility for it.  We ALL have done it and it goes with the territory.  More importantly the old adage "It's not what you say it's how you say it" comes into play here.

I don't agree with everyone or every action I never will.  You can aim and shoot the messenger but really the messengers are numerous and on going and always will be.  What I take issue with is public shaming and blaming and singling people out and making them scape goats and turning on one another.  And this is no passive agressive type statement directed towards anyone.  I feel we are all parts of a whole and when any one of those parts is damaged or breaks it hurts.   It is what the industry counts on is our weak wills and inability to come together to facilitate change.  And those are the facts of life in adoption and what adoption reform and education is about.  Adoptees deserve to regain the very facts of life AND rights that have been stripped from us by the system of adoption.

"Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno".  All for one and one for all!

The Ghosts of Adoption aka Living Haunted

Silhouettes

A silhouette without a face these ghosts I chase from place to place.
Shadows playing hide and seek elude my call evade my reach.
They come and go within my dreams, looming near but never seen.
Just when I think they've gone away I realize they are back to stay.
Haunted by similarities, in the mirror this face I see.
It is mine but comes from where?
I find no peace, only blank stares.
Few clues to riddles lost in time.
Can't capture what I can not find.
Pursuing what I can't deny.
The truths from days that have long gone by.

I hear so much well intentioned, and some not so much so, "advice" doled out to adoptees about their adoptive situations.  Mostly in search and reunion, or more importantly the lack thereof.  I think as adoptees we are always searching even if we have found our biological family and roots.  We search for our place in a family we are not connected to by genes and heredity.  We search for our place in the world as we watch other families operate out of this commonly shared heredity.  And we search for your place within our biological family if we are lucky enough to find them, and be accepted by them.

Most know both of my biological parents have refused to release their identities to the courts.  And, although my biological mother sent a non-identifying letter and a 40th birthday card both of my biological parents want to carry on and keep the secret that is my existence.  Just how does one ever forget about the roots and genes they come from?  Rhetorical there.

You don't, you can't, and you never will.  You can live in denial, you can push it as far to the back of your mind as you can, but at some point in time it will come up and confront you and most of the time without notice.  I believe it's better to address it when it comes up or burying the emotions and denying them, at least for me, have worse consequences at a later time. 

I turned off the computer and the TV the other day and decided to take my mind off of adoption and do something else.  Not an hour it seemed that went by as I changed channels that there was not some adoption themed show on or topic that came up in conversation on news and talk shows.  I switched to a Science channel show to watch Penguins (they are so very cute).  Ten minutes into the show what do you think?  YEP the narrator began talking about orphaned penguins whose parents never returned from fishing and the penguins whose babies died and how they tried to adopt the orphaned ones!

I just laughed and shook my head.  I know I will never be able to look into a mirror for any length of time and not wonder where I got my eyes, my nose, and my hair.  I will always jump whenever someone says to me "You remind of someone I used to know" and begin with innocent questions about who and where they are.  I will always wonder who my mother and father are who are responsible for my being in this world.  I will always wonder if I will ever be able to know my siblings, or for them to have the chance to know me.

I now know from my non-id information and the letter from my biological mother where so much of "me" comes from.  I have assimilated it into who I am and it has given me a foundation of confidence I never had before.  I am such a more integrated person how could anyone not be?  But, I will always want the rest of "my" story.

Although I don't have names, or cities, or even a state to search in and all tracks of my existence and birth have been covered up, I will always continue to search in some capacity and wonder almost every day who I really am.  I will always be a part of another family whether I am a secret or not.  And, if anyone comes across a 60 something woman, 4' 10" tall, just under 100 lbs., with green eyes and brown hair, feel free to let me know. ;)

When in Adoption?

When?

When will it be alright to mourn someone that is unknown?
When will it be o.k. to yearn for places most call home?
When will it be enough to fill this void and empty space?
How do they think that parents are commodities replaced?
How can it be the world believes that all of this is fair?
How can we make them understand or make them more aware?
How is that each day it seems we witness endless change,
as our names are taken from us and our lives are rearranged?
If only we could make them see, if only they could know.
That these questions never answered will not stop.
They only grow.

Adoption is so misunderstood even by the people who are involved with it firsthand.  The misconceptions are numerous and the magnitude of their impact is over looked and dismissed by those NOT adopted.   I've come to realize that people really need to see the separation of children from their biological families as some kind of divine intervention to create another family as some sort of "blessed event".  All the time they are ignoring the ways and means this is done, and then justifying it some way, shape, and or form, as "building" families. 


Children unfortunately lose parents or other relatives before or soon after they are born.  They will never know these parents or people and they will never be in their lives, but they are allowed to ask questions and have information about them.  They will be provided with photographs and explanations about what happened and allowed their emotions and feelings about it.   Adoptees who lose both of their parents, along with all other family members, at birth are expected to forget and for it not to be important to them who they came from.

If a child loses its family to divorce and parents remarry, children are not asked if they are glad their family was torn apart to create new ones.  They are not expected to be "grateful" or "thankful" for the tragedy that is the demise of a family unit when they obtain a newer one.  When will it be widely accepted AND believed that adoptees under go a huge monumental loss at birth that will affect them for a lifetime?

When will the laws and rules of  that govern regular families apply to adoptees as well?  When will adoptees, who are told and expected to be like "everyone else" actually have the same rights as "everyone else"?  When will the struggle to have access to the truth of our origins be granted us, and not continually denied?

When the government and religious organizations who profit from adoption are exposed for who and what they are.  When the public is educated to the harsh and hard to hear truth and facts about what adoption really is.  When I can hold my original birth certificate in my hand.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.
Eleanor Roosevelt

An Adoptee's story of survival

 
I want to share something with everyone that hopefully will help lend some encouragement on this difficult, painful, and confusing path of being adopted.  Although each of our stories have similarities in them they are also unique.  I have learned so much over the last thirteen years from others and hopefully my experience can shed some light on the hope that always exists even if it can't be seen or felt right now.

I have struggled with strange and mysterious undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and untreated health issues since the age of 15.  Without current medical family history that could have saved me time, money, and effort navigating the health care system without it and many times without insurance, my life has been one of continual loss.  Two things are important in life and that is family and your health.  Since not having the support of either family, knowing I was ill, and with no answers or information to provide doctors, I lost jobs, relationships, homes, and the ability to provide and care for my children.  I also lost hope, faith, and the belief in myself as a human being.  Because of the judgment and condemnation that comes from people believing you are a hypochondriac, or your health issues are a result of drugs and alcohol (as you sit sober in a room so ill you can't get out of bed for days being accused of all kinds of things), or you simply make it all up to be lazy or get attention, and in pain and agony for years who wouldn't want to end it all?  That, is not life.  That, is slowly dieing.

Well, I tried that once.  I wrote two letters one to my exhusband regarding my daughter, and one to my current abusive boyfriend and laid down to not wake up.  Only I did.  And, once again not to concern, or caring, but once again to judgment and condemnation.  My boyfriend even laughed and said "You can't even kill yourself right don't you know you're supposed to mix alcohol and pills?"  Yeah, I picked people in my life that imitated exactly what I knew growing up.

When you grow up with parents like this how do you know what good people really are?  When you are told everything is your fault you begin to believe it.  When you are continually rejected, abandoned, and not taken seriously, what to you do?  You learn to escape, and not in healthy ways.  I had tried being good growing up but was constantly and continually told I was not.  So, since it seemed I was failing at being good, bad became so much easier.

One of the serious health issues I battled for over a decade was a rare genetic gall bladder disease.  I was always tiny but tall.  Around the age of 25 I began to have a hard time eating, nausea, sometimes vomiting that year after year increased in intensity and duration.  I was o.k. as long as I had drugs and didn't eat.  Only, no one can last that way for a very long time being ill.  I got too sick to work any longer and was spending many days in and out of the bathroom being sick.  It eventually became the first thing that started my every day.  I found that if I didn't eat anything at all it helped.  But once again, that wasn't a long term solution to the problem I just got so weak I couldn't even function.

Doctors could find nothing wrong with me.  I finally physically broke and wound up in an anorexia/bulimia hospital in a psych wing with doctors trying to convince me, and my husband, I needed intense treatment for this disease.  Fortunately, we found out that our insurance would not cover it and they immediately let me out.  I weighed 97 lbs.  I am 5' 6" tall.  I knew in my heart I did not have an eating disorder.  I loved food.  The good news is that is when they were able to diagnose me with PCOS and found a mass in my liver they couldn't explain and an impact wound from my liver that had been apparently bleeding for quite some time.  They said it wouldn't hurt me.  But, all the time I wondered and worried about what was really wrong with me.

At this point in time I was away from hard drugs and alcohol as my body could no longer tolerate them well at all but marijuana became my best friend.  I could zone out and it soothed my stomach.  But, it was also a lead weight around my ankle and my attachment to it kept me from functioning in any normal adult way.  Doctors were begging me for updated family medical history and I had nothing to give them.  My adoptive parents were of no help either I only heard "we don't know".  I would later find out this was a complete lie.

Several years later and another marriage I finally had health insurance.  Not that anything happened over night.  I was still told nothing was wrong with me, it was all in my head, I was making this up and the old voices of the past came back to haunt me.  "You are crazy" was the loudest.  I became pregnant with my son and became even more ill and at 5 and 1/2 months went into premature labor and was on bed rest and in and out of the hospital for most of the pregnancy.  I tried to quit smoking pot.  Every time I did I spent the next three days unable to keep any food down at all and so sick I would wind up in preterm labor again.  My husband at the time began to believe that there was in fact something wrong with me.  We began to call pot "my medicine".  As soon as I took some I could scarf up, and in fact did, huge platefuls of food and I was fine.  Still, doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me.

My son was born and quickly afterward my health took a huge turn for the worse.  I could no longer tolerate any food at all unless I was stoned.  I had loved pot in my 20's it took me out of my horrible childhood memories and pain, and into a whole other world of bliss.  I was now 35 and felt attached to a ball and chain of smoking to survive.  I would wake up every day, throw up, drink what coffee I could, cry, and then smoke and cry some more.  It was a nightmare I felt I would never wake up from.

I went through all kinds of phases with religions, praying, holy water, prayer clothes, psychics (one who actually diagnosed my gall bladder condition and gave me the date of my surgery two years down the road and was exact but that's a whole other story) you name it, in desperation trying to get well or some answers to why I was so sick.  After all my adoptive mother told me "if I would only live my life according to the word of God" been there, done that, didn't work.  And then, after two months of doctors, and specialists, blood workup, and testing and testing and testing and testing, I finally got a surgeon who diagnosed me with a rare GENETIC gall bladder disease that only 6% of people have.  It is a disease of the whole organ, no stones, and does not show up on any medical test at all.  It is USUALLY found in people's family medical history!!!  I had the surgery and in no time was up, eating, and working.  I now know why there is a need for medical marijuana.

I was still in a bad marriage and living very dysfunctional.  I knew I wanted better.  I got into counseling, got an adoptive mother for a counselor who encouraged me to search to find the answers I needed about my biological background, and not just for medical reasons.  The next year we got a computer and after getting lost in AOL chatrooms (anyone that knows me is laughing right now that big loud chortle snorting kinda laugh) I plugged in adoption into the search box and VOILA.  My life changed forever.

With the support of the online and offline adoption community I found the court I was adopted out of and obtained half of my updated medical history.  I found out my biological mother was 4' 10" tall and weighed under 100 lbs., and my biological father was 5' 6" and around 125 lbs.  I got my father's height and my mother's weight and add a gall bladder disease and what do you get?  Someone who LOOKS anorexic!!!  I also found out numerous hereditary disease run on one side of I also inherited PCOS is one of them and at the same age my biological mother had surgery for it.

I finally realized that it was not ME who was crazy it was the closed records system of adoption that was.  And, I found people who were working to change it.  I joined up, learned, read, wrote, and healed so much over the next two years.  I was still living in a dysfunctional relationship but I was finally stronger physically, and so much more emotionally than I had ever been in my life.  I wanted a better life, I knew I deserved it, and by God I was going to get it.

I'll never forget the day I left to attend another adoption conference this time in Nashville.  My husband rolled me a joint to take with me as I was going to be gone for five days.  I took it and packed it away deep in my suitcase, loaded it into the trunk, and left.  I spent the next five days surrounded by the movers and shakers, the writers, the lecturers, and the leaders in the adoption reform movement.  I was also amongst those who understood without question what I felt and had all of my life.  There was no need to explain it was just absolute unconditional acceptance and support.  My head and body were buzzing with the intensity of all I was feeling.  I felt free, and alive, and GOOD.  No drugs needed.  O.K so some cocktails, but there's nothing wrong with that.  Especially when you get to share them with those you have watched and admired for years.  I'm not going to drop names but I still look back and am amazed at it all.

I hated leaving and I didn't want to go.  I cried before departure.  I wanted to bottle up those five days and drink it each and every day for the rest of my life.  I came home walking on air.  I also came home and brought my bags out of the car, picked out the joint I had in my suitcase walked into the living room and tossed it at my husband.  His jaw dropped.  He said "You didn't smoke for five days?"  I said NOPE nothing.

And this is my story of survival.  One that almost took a turn down a very long and horrible road with a terrible ending.  I owe most of it to the people I have met over the last thirteen years.  It has not only saved my life, it has changed it for the better.  I don't tell my story for sympathy I tell my story because hopefully it will give others courage to face what has happened to them.  It is an example of an adoption gone wrong and a life full of health problems without any help or recourse to obtain vital and crucial medical information for doctors.  I am still working on getting the other half of mine after thirteen years.  This is unacceptable.

I have suffered and my children have suffered unnecessarily.  I refuse to quit working towards the right for adult adoptee access to THEIR biological family background and information without interference, great cost and time, and control by the adoption industry, agencies, lawyers, and social workers.  It is our right and no one else's to dictate to us what we can or can not know.  It almost killed me, and some adoptees or their children have lost their lives because of it.  I owe my life to those who took me by the hand and showed me the way.  Whatever I can do to stop happening to anyone else, what happened to me, I will.


The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2000-06-08/news/prying-open-the-past/