"Wishful Drinking" by Carrie Fisher and "Wishful Thinking" by an Adoptee

Today I opened Carrie Fisher’s book “Wishful Drinking” my friend loaned me for some summer reading.  I have always loved her acting, comedic sense of humor, and her writing.  “Postcards from the Edge” is one of my all-time favorite movies.  Movies and books….ok and soap operas, so two out of three ain’t bad, have always been a healthy escape for me since I was young.  Growing up feeling like I was out of place and obviously not wanted the way I was (meaning genetically incorrect) in my adoptive family, I lived vicariously through the characters in novels and film.

Although many children feel out of place in their own biological families, there are extreme situations like being adopted that can leave the most loved and cared for child feeling like an alien.  Upon reading the first chapter of “Wishful Drinking” it was like hearing the exact words and feelings many adoptees like myself, have a hard time getting others to comprehend (understatement).   Most of us don’t want to continue to be misunderstood, judged, and labeled.  And, most of us want to know we are not alone in what we do feel.

When I opened the book and read the first line:  “So, I am 52 years old” and (I will turn 52 next month) I knew this book was meant for me.   I was not wrong in thinking that whatsoever.  The next few paragraphs of the first chapter stuck home and I have to share them with you.  And even though Ms. Fisher is discussing being a child of Hollywood and being Bi-polar which isn’t being adopted, the similarity of the situations sound uncannily familiar.

“I could tell from watching how normal people lived—normal people as depicted by Hollywood and burned into our consciousness—I understood that my life was unusual.  Like many others, I grew up watching television shows like “My Three Sons” and “The Partridge Family” and “The Real McCoys.  And based on the lives depicted on those shows, I knew my life was a different sort of real. It was the only reality I knew, but compared to other folks—both on television and off—it eventually struck me as a little surreal, too.  And, eventually, too, I understood that my version of reality had a tendency to set me apart from others.  And, when you’re young you want to fit in.”

Wow, that’s absolutely how I felt growing up.  Life was surreal.  I looked around and didn’t see children growing up without their biological parents and families.  I didn’t understand why I had to pretend being adopted was a normal life style choice.

“Like real life is this other thing, and we’re always trying to determine what’s going on in this distant, inaccessible, incomprehensible place.”

Exactly!  Where are my biological parents?  Do I have siblings out there?  Are they dead or alive?  Where do I belong in the grand scheme of life without roots and knowledge of my heredity?  And, why am I being kept in the dark about all of it?

“As a consequence, I find that I don’t have what could be considered a conventional sense of reality.  So, as I said, my reality has been formed by Hollywood’s version of reality.  As a child, I thought “Father knows best” was real and that my life was fake.  When I think about it now, I may not have been far from wrong.”

In meeting up with the adoption community online and offline I’ve established that I too, was not far from wrong in knowing that being taken from my family of origin and planted into a different family with no recourse for information isn't normal.  At least for those of us who feel out of place, unaccepted for who we are, and continually told “being adopted doesn’t matter”.    

“I find that I frequently feel better about myself when I discover that we’re not alone, but that there are, in fact, a number of other people who ail as we do—that there are actually a number of “accomplished” individuals who find it necessary to seek treatment for some otherwise insurmountable inner unpleasantness.”

And there you have it.  Summed up and laid out in print what many adoptees struggle with on a constant basis.  No matter if the homes we were adopted into are good ones, adoptees are tired of playing “pretend” with their lives under terms created and dictated to us by others.  We realize now as adults, we are told that by those that have no idea or clue about what we feel, or should feel.  And, we are finally able to step out of our comfort zones, well really uncomfortable zones, to let the world know.

So, thank you Carrie Fisher for writing "Wishful Drinking" and laying your life out there for the world to see.   It helps so many of us who are battling personal demons in life, and feeling alone and isolated.  Hopefully, in the sharing of this experience with truth and honesty, it will help many others to find the courage to speak out.  "Wishful Thinking" for this adoptee is that we can to enable more adoptees to find their voices and help make the drastic changes to law and policy that have been needed in adoption for far too long.

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.

Rejected Adoptees

No one not adopted can understand how the rejection can and does affect you each and every day. Today I am home sick...again. The only thing I have ever been in trouble with at any job was absences. With all of my health issues all it takes is one little virus, a virus most people can handle and work through and throw off, and which can inflame the rest of the problems wrong with my body. 

If I miss a day before or after a holiday I have to bring a doctors note. Well, I ride the bus so going to the doctor is an outside 2 hour ordeal getting to and from at least and not to mention right now I don't have the money to do so, until Friday payday...neither does my husband or he would give it to me. Doctors can really do nothing for me I need multiple specialists and testing first. I have to wait on health insurance to kick in and then pay the deductibles and premiums which will take weeks if not months. Time off from work is considered a weakness no matter what. It does not matter how much over time I work for them or how much I give really. It's all about stats and time and performance. A lot like being adopted.

Everyone thinks I am strong, intelligent, and capable. I am, true. My body is not. It never has been. It was weak and sickly at a young age. And what I've had to endure growing up ill is much more than even "regular" people can comprehend. Throw adoption into the mix and you have a "I don't want to be here" scenario brewing every day. These people at work are not really supportive they are supportive of company profits and success that makes THEM look better. I am a cog in the wheel. As I was in adoption.

Example: I was at work recently and the weather reports began to progressively worsen. My boss let me leave 1/2 an hour early and I know, as I always know, there is a chart of "gives" and "takes" at work being kept. Nothing comes for free. As I learned in adoption.

As I began to walk from work, and run to catch the bus as usual (one of two other connections I have to make to get home) the lightening began. I don't fear many things in life....severe lightening is not one of them. The tornado sirens begin to go off. I am scared, trembling actually. But, I calm my fears and reason with myself about stats of people hit by lightening or those that die in stormy weather. A nice older lady asks me as I wait under the cover at the gas station looking out for a bus siting if I am “ok”. Oh, if I only had the time to tell her. I say I am waiting on the bus and she leaves....all the while wishing she was the mother I never had. One who cared, and one who I could care for. And, wondering WHY in the hell life left me bereft of relatives.  As adoption often does.

The tornado sirens begin again and I lose my cell phone signal and contact with anyone who can give me a weather report on what is going on where I am at. I can not call a cab now. Luckily, with my dollar store umbrella I see the bus coming and after a 1/2 an hour of hell waiting 20 yards from the tornado sirens I bolt for the bus. I reach the rail station only to be grasping for the button on the train to open the doors when it pulls away. There I am alone, cold, wet, scared and too friggin frightened standing at the dryest place I can find as the crackles of lightening bear down upon me. I locate the best place I can between the ticket machine and the over head cover post....and I break down and cry.

I swear had I have been swept away by the weather and have perished and could have come back to watch the bereavement in my afterlife role I would have heard my adoptive mother say “If she would have stood under the OTHER pillar” or “If she lived her life by the word of God the weather wouldn't have hit her" and my adoptive father would have said, par for the course, nothing. I will never measure up or be enough because I am not their child. It's pathetic their excuses for not taking any responsibility for loving their adopted children, it's still our fault we didn't turn out in the capacity they expected. And Capacity = exactly like them.

I would never have heard the things most parents say about the child they lost. But, I don't count because I'm not their child. I never really have been and I never will be. I am no one's child and....I hate being adopted.

"Selfish" Adoptees

Is just one of the labels/names we hear when we, as adoptees, attempt to reform and change the way adoption operates.  It still shocks me that anyone could believe having your biology and genetics taken from you and held hostage by government and religious entities is alright and could actually be approached with such a nonchalant attitude.  Adoption, sperm and egg donation, and IVF is in fact a booming business, and not the altruistic operation it is usually perceived to be.

It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to adopt a newborn infant.  Nonprofit agencies that facilitate these adoptions bring in millions of dollars each year and the BOD incomes from these can range upwards of six figures.  Egg donors are paid a high price for their donations.   In Vitro fertilization techniques leave unused embryos in freezers to languish when no longer needed and or given away as donations to other infertile couples.  Anonymous sperm donor banks are supposed to put limits on the amount of children conceived and born this way and yet sperm donor registries dictate otherwise.  All of this is a much unregulated industry, an industry out of control.

I shake my head in disbelief that we play God with life and lives every day, and refuse to look at how we got there.  Are we really going to continue to justify the  means to the end when we are dealing with manipulating gametes that become embryos and human beings?  And then turn our backs to the repercussions and ramifications these actions dictate permanently into the lives of adoptees, sperm, and egg donor children?  How is it people can expect adoptees to feel grateful when we are treated like commodities and interchangeable parts?  And when we as adoptees stand up for our rights and the rights of future children brought into this world by whatever means available, and usually most affordable, we are met with harsh judgment and cruel ridicule?

Money, profit, and power have obviously become more important in creating a family than ethics.

And we are the selfish ones?  I think not.

Remembered on Mother's Day

Remembered

Never forgotten, never lost.
Never far from mind or thought.
Not left behind, or in the past.
No image fades, the memory lasts.
You're seen in smiles my children give.
Always within my heart you'll live.
Remembered now, forever here.
'Til close of life, and end of years.

I've been very busy lately starting a new job, moving, getting settled in both.  I had not even thought about Mother's Day and the extra emotion it brings being adopted and separated from the mother who gave you life.  I had a few rough moments that brought tears to my eyes last week with a very moving quote from an adoptee who we lost this year.  She wrote incredible books that almost every adoptee can relate to, and BJ put into words what so many of us haven't been able to say, or define about our adoptive experiences.

Those who know their mother cannot imagine what it is like not know the woman who brought you into this world. What it is like to be forbidden by law to see her face, hear her voice, know her name. No one can imagine it because it is unimaginable.- BJ Lifton

And then I open the Sunday paper.


http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20110507-essay-a-son-gets-to-know-and-love-the-mother-he-never-met.ece

And....

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Mothers-Day-Has-Double-Meaning-for-Adoptees--121392439.html  

Even though my biological mother can't step out of the past and let go of the secrets and shame I will always think of her and wonder if she thinks of me.  As a mother, I don't see how she could not.  And, as an adoptee I'll never give up hope someday, I will be able to know who she is.

Adoptee Triggers

Orphan Eyes

Locked outside and looking in on where I don't belong.
Watching life through orphan's eyes pretending to be strong.
Plastic smiles I've worn so long to cover frozen tears.
Feeling lost and incomplete so many wasted years.
This stranger in a foreign land searching for her roots.
To heal this hole within my heart and fill it with the truth.

I haven't blogged in a month although I've been blogging in my little adoptee head for weeks now so this is going to be a long one.   I've been working a new job with lots of over time, so please forgive all grammar and spelling errors I'm simply too tired to care right now.  I'm moving my residence, along with the company I work for, soon and am in complete coping and organizational survival mode.  Don't for one minute think or believe my adoption issues are not hanging over my head and haunting my every day.  Most of the time I have to go on with the dark cloud of double adoption rejection looming over my head but only felt and seen by me.

Most people don't understand what can be triggers for adoptees.  Because I don't feel I fit into the world walking into a new job setting with others who have known each other and worked together for years like a well oiled machine makes me feel like the proverbial fish out of water.  No one would ever really notice that though, because we exude so much energy working our chameleon like ways, making others feel good about themselves, and or overachieving.  And all too often we end up spent, tapped out emotionally, mentally, and physically, and then angry, depressed, and resentful that we have nothing left to give to ourselves.

And, all the while we are walking around pretending to be ok.  And, I guess we really are as ok as we can be considering the strange circumstances our lives revolve around.  Vastly different than the nonadopted world, I feel as though I live in a Twilight Zone episode most days.  It's all so "unreal", and seriously, that's exactly what it is.  My adopted family relationship was forged, or not forged, by a whacky social experiment gone wrong.  Adoption, which takes a child from one family and placing them into another and expecting instant bonding and love without questioning or recourse of what came before. 

We are constantly trying to blend into an adoptive family you share zero genetics with (or hopefully so adoption connections unknown can be stranger than a lot of fiction), searching for biological roots and trying to construct healthy relationships with natural family members, and performing a balancing act between the two all the while trying to figure out just exactly where we belong, or more importantly...don't.

It's draining, it's exhausting, it's mind numbing and heart wrenching, and most of us do it without any in the "real" world knowing that one small trigger such as change, or pending rejection...imagined or real and feared either way, can set us on a downward spiral.

Writing is one of my coping tools along with support groups and adoption activism.  It's no wonder at all I spend so much time involved in adoption forums, chat, and private emails helping people searching, talking about how it affects us, celebrating triumphs of finds and new family relationships, crying alongside those who have found rejection, tragedy, and are mourning, and revolting against a corrupt, unfair, money based system that has caused all of this to happen to so many innocent people.  Because of the people I have found in adoption support, activism, and reform I can survive.  And, I can help change things for others and prevent anyone else from enduring what I have.

I'll close with one of my favorite quotes from Christopher Reeve.  “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”

I am overwhelmed with joy to know and work with so many heroes in adoption reform.

"Writing" and "Righting" the Adoptee Struggle

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you" ~Ray Bradbury

I borrowed this quote from my friend Trace (thank you Trace) because it is speaks to me of how I have dealt for years with being adopted.  It's no surprise why so many adoptees blog, write books, or spend a great deal of time in support forums writing and sharing their experiences, emotions, and anger.  It's obviously a surprise to the "nonadopted" world.  But, the realm of writing allows a safe place for adoptees to express themselves if only for them, and others who understand.  I know it has been a great vehicle for healing for myself.

I wrote a poem years ago about my frustration at the system of closed records adoption.  I never claim to speak for anyone else, but I will today for so many I do know feel as I do.  I hope they don't mind.  In fact, I hope they are pleased by it.

Twelve years later after petitioning the adoption court I still have no names, no cities, not even a state where my biological parents are.  The government has no right to keep this information from me.  It is mine.  No, strike that and I will speak for adoptees right now, it is "ours".

Rights in adoption are not about reunions or relationships.  The nonadopted world continually convolutes and twists what we are asking for into imposing ourselves into others lives and ruining them.  As I told my adoptive mother I will tell the world "I didn't know being related to me would be so bad".  I don't really need any further rejection in my life after not fitting in in any capacity in my adoptive family, nor would I welcome it with anyone else related to me or not.

There are adoptees who just want information and medical background from their biological families just as there are those that want contact and communication from their families or origin.  We simply do not need outside entities or other persons involved in making decisions about who and what we can know.  That right will always belong to us.

The Struggle

Struggling to move onward through the future's open door.
Still caught up in mysteries of what has come before.
I feel another part of me was lost somewhere in time.
I'm searching for the reasons and all answers I can find.
To sever unseen shackles locking me up in the past.
And hold within my hands the keys to truths found at long last.
Impeded by the secrets that so many keep from me.
In pursuit to solve this puzzle and at last to be set free.
Between my heart and mind there seems to be eternal war.
Near defeated by this conflict, drained and weary to the core.
I stand here with my head held high not yielding to these thoughts.
That lead me to believe these long fought battles will be lost.
Ignoring drones from ancient tunes that say I have no right.
In quests that seek to find these missing pieces of my life.