Adoption - Truth Telling

I wish this month for people to try to better understand what adoptees go through in life adopted.  I hope for those of us adoptees blogging we can reach those who have only heard and understood the voice of the adoption industry and believe adoptees with "bad" experiences are simply anomalies in adoption.  I pray for a change in the system of adoption policy, procedure, and law to openness and honesty.

What I would LOVE to happen is for everyone to STOP telling adoptees how to think, feel, and live.  It's hard enough to take from the world who has no idea or conception of what adoption really is, does, and the ways it continues to affect us in our lives.  We as adoptees not only have to spend enormous amounts of time and energy making sure everyone around us is "ok" with our reactions to adoption, but we are expected to make sure what we say and how we feel makes strangers "ok" too.  Who we really are as adoptees gets lost beneath the unrealistic expectations, preconceived notions, and myths thrown out there by those who need to keep control of the system of adoption.

This week once again, a first mom gave us adoptees a lecture on terminology.  We were not talking about anything other then OUR own experiences about OUR own personal situations.  Many of us adoptees have been treated poorly and unfairly by many persons biological and adoptive in life.  We have been silenced, disbelieved, and dismissed for telling OUR own truths.

I am who I am because of adoption.  It isn't something I can remove or have taken out.  I will no longer deny it or spend my life hiding behind masks.  When I talk of my adoptive and biological family I am speaking of MY experience and sometimes yes, the experiences of those I know to show it's did not just happen to me.  But, that's the problem with adoption it has always been about agencies, and lawyers, and religious institutions, and adoptive parents, and biological parents first and foremost.

Adopted children have had little say, little voice, and very very little support.  Those times are over.  Adopted children have grown up into adopted adults who are speaking out and will not sit down and take what is dictated to us by others any longer.  Is the truth about adoption hard for people to hear, certainly.  Are the lies, secrets, and falsehoods harder to live, ABSOLUTELY!  Allow adoptees to tell you the truth about adoption and help grant them the same rights every other citizen has.



"I never gave them hell.  I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." -- H. Truman 

An Adoptee's Divided Heart

I laughed out loud, one of those throw your head back, chuckle and snort kinda laughs, when I saw this graphic above.  It's SOOOOO me.  And, part of life is discovering who we really are.  Celebrating the parts we are proud of, and hiding the parts we are not so proud of, and laughing about them too.   And sometimes, denying the really really scary parts we don't know what to do with.  When you are adopted this can become difficult if not impossible when the knowledge of where you came from is withheld from you.  I will always remember getting my non-identifying information stating my birth grandmother was an extremely nervous and anxious person.  And I thought AHA it's NOT a character flaw I inherited it!!!

There are many parts that make up my adopted self.   There is the stronger and more healed version of the “new me” I've become since adoption counseling, workshops, seminars, conferences, and support groups.  There is the “angry me” that comes out of hiding when my feelings and emotions are dismissed or ridiculed, especially by those who buy into the adoption industry propaganda and myths.  There is the “activist me” who comes alive at the first sign I can educate or inform anyone about adoption and adoptee rights.  Lastly, there is the “lost and wounded me” who has been rejected and abandoned and is still at age 52 trying to find her place in the world.  The “little girl” who is never far away and is just below the surface waiting to be triggered by harsh criticism, judgment, ridicule, oh.....and Holidays.

I am many things besides an adoptee.  But it seems that being adopted affects the other parts I am wife, mother, friend, teacher, and writer etc... But I think sometimes being an adoptee there is a portion of you know one ever sees.  A part that we never give away of ourselves that is reserved and held back.   It's self preservation plain and simple.  If I don't fully open myself up to the world then I can never be fully hurt, or rejected, or abandoned...again.

I just have not come to terms that I will never know who my biological family is. Much of that I credit to watching people find and be reunited after decades of search.  A larger part is denial.  In such huge monumental life situations it really can be a great coping tool.  Hopefully someday I can take all the segments of me and combine them into one solid person.  For now, I wait, and I hope, and I write.

I think a lot of my adoption poetry is sappy and syrupy.   But, it is also part of me. The part that is dealing with the trauma of childhood and adoption and the adult I've become because of adoption.  It is probably the closest anyone will ever get to truly knowing who I am as an adoptee, including myself.

Divided Heart

Pieces of me live between what I expose and what's unseen.

Unable to reveal my dread I keep it locked inside instead.

Afraid to show the chasm depth, half-filled with hours that I've wept.

Oceans full of pain I know, and agony I refuse to show.

This shattered soul still hidden well, conceals the terror I have felt.

This fear that I can't bring together the segments that have long been severed.

Until I bridge these separate parts.

I live in this divided heart.

The Powers That Be - Closed Records Adoption

I will never understand the pro-adoption groups and people who promote the system of closed records adoption.  Why is it the truth is important in every other aspect of our lives with the exception of adoption?  People divorce over lies in a marriage, good parents raise their children to be honest, and if you take an oath in court and don't tell the truth it's called perjury.  However, it is widely accepted practice in adoption to keep secrets, withhold facts, and cover up an adoptee's background.

The birth certificate I have is falsified.  It does not contain much reality in it at all.  My "real" authentic birth certificate is sealed by the state.  I am not allowed access to it even with several court petitions.  This is blatant discrimination.  No other citizen of this country is denied their original birth certificates except adoptees.

I wrote this below after my first court petition denial in '99.  It may seem extreme to those who aren't bound by the system of adoption.  Adoption took from me the knowledge of my family of origin.  It took too the truth about my life.  And, it took my ability to know where I came from and to know who I really am.

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!

Adoption subtracts and divides

I touched briefly yesterday on the links in life that adoption severs.  My posts during NaBloPoMo and Adoption awareness month will be brief due to my arm injury.  So, I'm going to post another poem and may do so for the remainder of the month, at least until I'm better.

Adoption does not guarantee a child of a good home.  It just offers them a different one.  I fell through the cracks of adoption.  My mother at age 17 wanted me, no one else wanted her to keep so I was relinquished to adoption.  It was not a money issue it was a social stigma issue.  My adoptive parents couldn't bond with me.  I lost out on belonging in two families.  It didn't have to be that way but adoption dictated it did.

Sometimes all the words in the world get lost in translation.  Art can speak volumes.  I hope the poem below does that for those who can't comprehend the darker side of adoption.  This side so many of us live.

Equations

They say that one and one makes two but I'm not sure if this is true.
In this case one and one made three explaining how I came to be.
Then three came in between the sum divides them back to one and one.
These equations seem to break all the laws of give and take.
But life not always plays by rules, nor by facts we learned in school.
I know this all so very well and only hope to "show and tell".
When one and one took separate paths that no one needs to "do the math".
To know this story problem's mine.
I'm the remainder left behind.

National Adoption Awareness Month - I'm all too aware

Being rejected by family is not unusual.  Most families have their problems and issues.  And, it's tough to take.  In adoption the emotions multiply, because many of us are rejected by not one, but two families.  And, several times over at that.  From birth, to adoption, to search, to reunion, it can be confusing, overwhelming, frustrating, and I can go on with adjectives but you get the "picture" as provided above.  Adoption is not the cure all for unplanned pregnancies.  It does not "fix" what is wrong.  It simply changes it.  As adoptees, we need to be heard, and understood, but mostly, we need the truth.


Life's Links

As flower to bee, as leaf to tree, as cloud to sky and rain.
As foot to toe, as face to nose, as person to a name.
Together these like fish to sea forever will belong.
Just as notes an artist wrote, or lyrics to a song.
Like tracks to a train this perpetual chain is what the world's based on.
There's links between each living thing, and dusk that turns to dawn.
A lost key to a lock, a stopped hand on a clock, are vital connections gone.
Like pasts left behind that we need to find in order to carry on.
I hope you know what I'm trying to show, the point I'm attempting to make.
Like a child to its mother, or sister and brother, some bonds aren't meant to break.

And The Truth Shall Set You Free - Except in Adoption

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.  ~Aldous Huxley

And when you realize the lack of ethics and truth in adoption it does!  Most people who really have never looked at adoption through the eyes of an adoptee, or other parties involved first hand, have only the sugar coated terms and vocabulary to use that has been fed to the masses by the adoption industry for decades.  The adoption industry has been incredibly convincing of the great wonders and magic of creating families by adoption, but are not ever very forth coming about the harsh realities it revolves around.  Why would they?  Their jobs, income, and future depend on maintaining control of adoption in whatever capacity they can.  Damage control comes in many forms with "National Adoption Month", Press Releases, and happy stories of families who were brought together by "God".  However, they fail to mention first they were separated by "man".  Plus they sprinkle their preconceived notions and expectations with terms of “grateful” and “thankful” and promote the happy adoptee image who was “given a family who wanted them”.  They don't tell you how many tens thousands of dollars they earn from buying and selling our human rights, and off of separating us from our families of origin.

There is just so my hypocrisy between what we are taught and told in regards to how to treat other people and deal with the rest of the world, and how the business of adoption functions. Most people either don't realize, or over look these problems and issues, because they are convinced by the industry propaganda who continue to want to be the exclusive authority about how adoption is supposed to function.  The truth is adoptees are bound by written law, policy, procedure, and by the expectations of others who profit from it, and continue to control adoptees lives past and future.  Here are just a few examples of the contradictions between reality and adoption.

“Tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth."  We pledge this on a bible in court and if caught not doing so we can be charged with perjury and punished.  This is what our legal system is based on truth telling, facts, and not fiction.  My ammended birth certificate is a fictitious and falsified government document.  My biological parents are lieing to their children about my existence.  My life is based on lies, but I am expected to adhere to honest behavior and will continually be held accountable for it throughout my life.

“Thou shalt not lie” one of the great ten commandments . I was raised by this one.  Although it seems to be forgotten and over looked in adoption.  What part of lieing to adopted children and adults is healthy for them?  I thought good parents led by example?  I found out that my adoptive parents had been withholding information, crucial, vital, life changing information from me about my adoption that could have made a huge difference in my life.  It has taken awhile but I have forgiven them.  They were also victims in the “blank slate theory” that was fed to them by the industry, as well as, the ownership premise for the children obtained by adoption means. 

“You are only as good as your word”.   Many adoption agencies, social workers, and lawyers too lie, cover up, and deny adoptees, biological parents, and adoptive parents the truth in many adoption situations.   If you don't believe me look up how many law suits have been brought against The Gladney Center for Adoption and how many have been settled out of court. Count how many adoption agencies have been closed down for fraudulent activities, and corrupt lawyers who have been sued, disbarred, and charged with illegal transactions in adoption.  Child trafficking is not something that happens in a country “over there”, it is alive and well in this country and thriving being labeled as “adoption”.

 

Money talks and I can certainly attest and bear witness to its power in adoption.  It's a harsh reality and one that is hard to truly comprehend, except for those of us who have experienced it up close and personal.  There should be integrity in adoption not the manipulation and subjugation of adoptees by the industry.  I will never, ever, give up fighting for the restored rights for adoptees to access to their original birth certificates along with the truth that has been hidden, covered up, and stripped from us for decades.

If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on.  ~Stopford Brooke

 

 

 

40th Birthday Card from my Mother

In 2000 my mother and I exchanged non-id letters through the adoption court.  Mostly, we described ourselves and our lives, our likes, our habits, and our hobbies.  In that first letter I told my mother a handful of things like I enjoy collecting baskets and shells, I loved to garden, and especially loved writing.  And, my favorite color has always been green, the color of both of our eyes.

She responded back to me which I blogged about recently http://assemblingself.blogspot.com/2011/08/letter-from-my-mother.html.  It was heart wrenching but her words were beautiful and her message heart felt and honest.  I told the CI her letter was the greatest 40^th birthday gift I could even imagine receiving.

A month later I received an envelope from the adoption court and opened it to find a card inside.  The front was green, the color of our eyes, with a basket full of ivy, shells, flowers, with a pen and a pencil laying at its side.  I looked immediately on the back.  It was in fact a Hallmark.  It was signed “Happy 40^th Birthday.    Love your Birth Mother”.

Overwhelmed would be an understatement.  I thought of the amount of time it took her to sort through cards to find the perfect statement she wanted to make. It was so much more than “Happy Birthday” or “Thinking of you” it was “I was listening”.  Which translates to rejected adoptees as “I care, I paid attention, your words were important.”  I didn't get much of that in my younger adopted life.

Unfortunately after that, communication was shut down by her and it's been twelve years since I have had any news or mail from her with the exception of one updated family medical request.  She had requested time to tell her immediate family and close friends about me.  Obviously something changed her mind, much to my devastation.

I have kept hope alive in some capacity all of these years.  I think it's self preservation.  Confronting the truth that I have been abandoned by two families is just too much for my adopted mind to grasp.  My search information is posted and easy to find.   I wonder if she has looked up adoption reform work as I had told her I was involved in it. I pray someday maybe there is another mother who speaks to her of her own relinquishment, and can get my mother to open up about hers.

Fifty two years have passed and the shame and stigma of a pregnancy out of wedlock still hold so much power over people.   We lost each other that long ago because of adoption.  We've lost decades of knowing one another and her allowing me to know my siblings.  I'm about out of hope that will ever change.