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/

 

It's A Matter Of Rights!

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” ~Elie Wiesel

I'll never forget one of the most memorable days in my life.  The day I received, at age 39, the non-id handwritten letter from my biological mother via the adoption court.  I finally after 39 years of wondering, waiting, and searching, found out who I was in part, where some of my physical traits came from, my likes, dislikes, tendencies, and personality traits.  It has totally changed the way I see myself, how I feel about myself, and how I see myself fit into the world.  Everyone deserves that right!

I have been angry that I did not fit in where I was placed at adoption, and the fact that both of my biological parents refuse to release their identities.  But, life is not fair I learned that long ago.  Adoption is so far from fair it is downright dysfunctional, corrupt, and fraudulent in how it functions.  The system of adoption steals basic human rights from one group of people without a voice and hands control of them (sells is more like it) over to another group.  THIS is not unfairness it is blatant preventable discrimination.  It's not about reunions it's about RIGHTS!

I know I can't change the past I can only change the future.  I know all too well anger can eat you alive and take your life from you without you even realizing it.  I know that I can't stand the thought of other adoptees struggling for the truth and being treated like second class citizens.  So, I will do what I can to help do that for others.  I will take anyone along with me that wants to go.

I'd like to brag a little now.  There are parts of my life that I am not proud of and choices I made due to circumstances I did not understand nor what to do about.  When I began to understand what did happen to me I grew angry, and the more I learned about the adoption industry the angrier I grew.  Now, I CAN do something about it and adoption reform and education have been a large part of my life for thirteen years now.  Below are some adoption protest pictures from one of the many events I've had the privilege in being involved with.  These photos are from 2008.   My son came along and held a sign too he's the cute blonde guy, and the handsome one in the black jacket is my husband who was adopted at birth by his stepfather, so both of them have been affected by adoption too.

Above I am educating someone who approached with questions about why we were there and what we were doing.  We all got to speak to many people and hand out informational fliers.  Many people driving by stopped their cars and got out to ask questions about searching and or to tell their adoption related stories.


Since I began this journey in adoption reform so much has been accomplished.  It may seem painstakingly slow to many, but when I joined up only Oregon had been fully opened to adoptees for OBC access.  Now, thanks to the persistent effort and work of too many people to count, other states who have reopened access to OBC's for adoptees.  We are far from done.  And I'll end with one of my favorite quotes. 

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." ~Margaret Mead

Who Am I?

 

Who Am I?

I am an enigma tangled up in a mystery.

I am the lost puzzle piece swept under the rug.

I am a missing link in a chain of life.

I am a tumbleweed blown in the wind calling home wherever the breeze takes me.

I have no roots.

I am a chameleon changing colors to blend into my surroundings.

Who am I?

I am an adoptee.

As a child I was loud, hyperactive, talkative, emotional, demonstrative, and extroverted (I still am).  I was adopted into a family the exact opposite.  I spent decades trying to fit into a mold that I was not made to fit.  I was chastised, criticized, ridiculed, judged, and labeled because I was so very different.  Instead of celebrating and honing the gifts of heredity and biological I had inherited, I grew up hating myself and who I was. 

Something had to be wrong if a family gave me away, and I didn't fit into the "new" one where I was placed.  I learned very young to pretend to be someone else, I was good at it to.  Mostly because I didn't know "who" I really was.  I spent years and decades not believing in myself and searching for my biological parents and my true identity.  I lived, lost.

Even for adoptees who have access to knowledge about their biological families are still separated from them on a daily basis.  This can cause gaps and holes in the fabric of our young souls that leave us feeling not good enough or incomplete for the rest of our lives.  Much of the time our questions or fears go unanswered, ignored, or overlooked as just simple curiousity.  It is far from just that. 

So many people in life are running away from themselves.  Adoptees are doing their best to run towards themselves and whatever tidbits of truth they can get about who they are.  But, there are many who think we don't deserve the same rights as others, or that we should just be thankful...period.  We run into brick walls, into unknowns, as there is no map or compass to find these pieces from another time.  We lose time, we lose money, and we lose what other non-adopted persons take for granted everyday.  It can be very lonely and confusing being an adoptee.

I will always wonder who or what I could have become had I have grown up knowing that my genes and nature were not wrong, they were just different.  How terribly sad and preventable.  Lies and secrecy are not the way to raise children or create families.  So, I'll continue to work, as many of us will, for the rights of adoptees to know these valuable and life altering truths about themselves.

It's terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken.  It's particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

To My Adoptee Friends on Thanksgiving

Many years ago I used to spend the Holidays alone, in silence, and many times it was by choice.  I didn't have to pretend, or hide my pain, or be something I was not.  I found pretending to be far more exhausting than being alone.  My children have always had their father's family to go to and enjoy extended family they didn't get from me.  I encourage that because I know all too well the importance of family, and wouldn't want to deny them that, or for them to ever feel the magnitude of that kind of loss..

There are many adoptees who are ostracized from their adoptive families.  There are many adoptees who are rejected by their biological families, or can not locate them, or they passed away either before or after being found.   There are more adoptees than I care to count, that have neither family in their life.  This is such an over-whelming tragedy for an adoptee who did nothing other than be born.  It is difficult to comprehend, wrap your mind around, and deal with.  But, life can be cruel, and adoption can be a life long sentence without parole.

This time of year can be horribly painful and definitely depressing for adoptees who continually long for acceptance in either of their families.  For me, I have found solace in the adoption community.  They have been there in good times, and in bad times, through search, denial of contact, refusal of further communication, and during times of the year that are tough for us such as Birthdays and Holidays.

It's hard for those not adopted to understand this inner turmoil we experience.  It isn't surprising then that adoptees band together and support one another as they face and endure this time of year.  It's the greatest gift I've ever been given.  So, I'll end with a piece I tweaked from one of my favorite movies "Bruce Almighty"because it really does almost say it all for me.  To adoptees who are working for reform and education in adoption you ROCK.  To adoptees who are new and struggling I say HANG IN THERE!  We need as many of us as we can working together towards the right for all adoptees in this country to have their OBCs!!!  I am thankful for all of you today, and always.

"I have to say, I am so proud to be a part of our adoptee community, and I think, in a lot of ways a great community is like a great recipe.  You take some hardworking citizens, some caregivers, maybe a few nuts.   All sprinkled with the love and support of our good people.  Ultimately that makes the adoptee community one sweet place to be."