Adoptee's Genetics Speak - Please Listen Carefully

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”  ~Bill Gates

I grew up within an adopted family genetically opposite of everything I was and grew up believing that everything about me was wrong.  Being relinquished for adoption and transplanted into another family with which you share zero genetics or biological traits can be extremely confusing.   Being told you are just like every other child is not the truth, nor is the denial of the very basic facts of life everyone else has.  The lack of recognition of these issues too complicates bonding and forming functional and lasting relationships with members of your adopted family because they have no understanding of your loss, pain, and ongoing frustrations with trying to fit in.

I hear from many people when I talk and write about  how being adopted can feel say they feel like adoptees do too unwelcome, or rejected, like a foreigner even when surrounded by their biological family and relatives.  The difference is that as ostracized as they can feel, they at least grew up with and or have the knowledge of who they are and where they came from.  What they can not understand is the foundation they were given that when taken away or denied adoptees, can have negative and devastating impacts.

I do not think that my adoptive family and I could be any more different.  But, that is the lottery system of adoption.  Even with trying to match backgrounds genetics speak loudly and clearly.  Unfortunately the "voice" of an adoptee's genetics are usually ignored, the blank slate theory, and expected to be drowned out and unheard and rematched to those of the family they are placed in. 

My adoptive family is the polar opposite of me.  Neither is wrong or right, they are just VERY different.

They are a soft carefully patterned paisley.  I am a boldly colored bohemian print.

They are a predictable, well manicured, and designed English garden.  I am wild flowers growing where the wind blows me.

They are a safe, secure, home in a small residential community.  I am a city abode bustling and surging with lights and sounds and energy.

They are stoic, quiet, and reserved.  I am emotional, loud, and demonstrative.

The information I have received, even if not names, photos, or anything identifying at age 39 about my biological family changed the way I saw myself, my place in the world, and abolished immediately all the unfounded beliefs and incorrect theories I had compiled since childhood about myself.  The surprise of it is almost always reassuring and empowering to finally understand yourself as a unique individual yet belonging to a larger whole, and as a person most other people have always known themselves to be.  After growing up and living without any awareness of any of that, or comprehension of how crucial and vital is it, how positively life altering it can be once obtained and realized. 

However, I will never recover those lost decades of feeling incomplete, unaccepted, and disfavored and feeling somehow it must be my fault.  And that is a huge tragedy in adoption.  A tragedy only adoptees have known and lived for far too long.

How to not think about being Adopted - NOT

It's there no matter how you try and avoid it all the time.  Most adoptees do try but quickly realize it's futile.  Adoption is everywhere it seems.  Below are some of the ways, in no particular order, that it's nearly impossible to put being adopted aside for any length of time, despite what others believe it's possible for adoptees to do.

1.  General daily conversations - Between various people talking about their "Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Grandparent" etc...and thinking about how you have two sets of parents and grandparents to deal with along with doubles of extended family member, the complication from all of that, and all the missing people you have never been able to find, might not ever be able to find, or who passed away or will pass away without you ever having the chance to meet or know them.  And, how no one around you can understand the complications being adopted brings to your life.  Sometimes I almost can not bear to hear what others can have and take for granted, that is denied me every single day.

2.  TV/Movies/Commercials/Social Media -  It's enough with the "bad" adoptee themes, killer adoptees, stalker adoptees, vengeful adoptees, the stereotypes are maddening to say the least.  Soap operas are filled with themes of adoption long lost children, baby selling plots, and mothers with amnesia however this is probably the most realistic of the TV/Movie adoption story lines, still hard to watch sometimes.   I SWEAR I have contorted my aging body in ways I never thought possibly in the last few months to mute the Ancestry.com commercials.  I will dive over couches, leap coffee tables, and if they continue I see a real possibility of a broken pelvis or a dislocated hip in my near future.  Facebook is FILLED with adoption agency agendas and blatant promotion of adoption but only the hearts, love, and teddy bears side without allowing adoptees to voice the most intelligent arguments otherwise.  Even one of my favorite hangouts Pinterest has Pro-Adoption related photos and quotes so escaping there to get away is not an option either. 

3.  Holidays - All of them.  My favorites are Valentine's Day, May Day, and Fourth of July.  Non family related celebrations.  Helps to avoid all the triggers and hide from the festivities you do not belong to in either family or relative you are not accepted by.  And, if you do belong to both how to play diplomat to each by dividing time equally and fairly without pissing off a multitude of different people. 

4.  Search - For many adoptees search is a life long journey to find names and the people who were hidden from you by altered and falsified government documents, also called ammended birth certificates.  Endless preoccupation with ways to find your biological roots, patiently awaiting government and agency adoption documents and the results of court petitions for identifying information, or for responses from family members located by email, phone, or letter is nerve wracking and nail biting and can send the strongest adopted person to the nearest liquor store, pharmacy, or  into a carb or sugar induced coma and addiction to soothe the over loaded brain and nerves.

5.  Adoption Billboards, Signs, and Bumperstickers - These are everywhere in Texas.  Adoption is big business here, literally.  Beside Freeways, on Church lawns, and on cars of all kinds the promotion of adoption is blatantly promoted everywhere.

6.  Birthdays - One of the biggest adoptee triggers ever.  Our birthdays are not about a celebration of life they are often about mourning the loss of knowledge, family members, and the separation from your family of origin.  And, nonadopted persons don't get this without lengthy explanations so instead we usually just plaster on the mask, it's easier than explaining.

7.  Your children's school family tree projects - It was tough enough enduring them when you were child and being told to "lie" (which it was) and use your adoptive family's background, but now you have to explain (if you are into truth telling and as adoptees we mostly HATE lying to anyone let alone people we love because it's been done to us and we know the damage it does) to your children about adoption, what it means, and how it affects them.

8.  Mirrors, Photos, and Belly Buttons - Sounds silly doesn't it?  It's not, it's our life peering into mirrors, searching photos of ourselves for resemblances and biological family members.  Growing up and even now not knowing who the person is who carried you inside her, who you were connected to for nine months, and who gave you life.  It's just surreal and weird to say the very least.

9.  Children and Grandchildren - Some adoptees only have their children and grandchildren to see any recognition of themselves in. I am in that category and may remain there for the rest of my life.  It's almost inconceivable if it weren't so true.  Sometimes I stare at my children, armed with only with the scraps of information I have received about the physical traits of who I came from, and pick out the similarities.  It's a constant piecing together of a never ending puzzle.

10.  Waking Up - That's all it takes to start the above nine items I have mentioned running through adoptee's minds.

These are just ten I thought of I'm sure there are more but seriously, I am exhausted from thinking about it....at least for the next three minutes anyway. ;)

An Adoptee's Hidden Past

 

Hidden Past

How do I see my future when I can not find my past?

How can I build foundations that I know are going to last?

With bits and pieces missing and secrets kept from me.

How do I stop the questions, and find serenity?

My mind is always traveling down roads that I create.

Where quests are finally finished, and much sought answers wait.

Scenarios repeat themselves with solutions changed each time.

I roll the imaginary film and all endings I could find.

My head is always in the clouds my feet not near the ground.

Can you hear my constant secret prayer the song that has no sound?

My heart will always be tied to another time and space.

Until I find the passage to the secluded hidden place.

Where it started long ago, or once upon a time.

Each day until I find my way I'm searching for those signs.

The ones that will point out the way the direction I should go.

To solve this life long puzzle and the past I need to know.

Adoption is a life long journey, one that never ends especially as an adoptee.  And unfortunately in being adopted, these emotions and issues are not addressed or discussed, allowed to be acknowledged for the most part, or ever understood by adoptees themselves.  Living a life under the weight of nondisclosure, secrets, and lies can impact an adoptee in a great variety of ways.

For me it's not just about my biological parents who want nothing to do with me in their lives and no relationship.  I got over the need to be a wanted child long ago I am an adult now.  But I am continually reduced to being treated as an unworthy child by the actions of adults who with hold vital life altering information from all of their children, not just the one they relinquished.

It's not just about the separation from the parental factor in adoption most people who are not adopted think about.  I  have grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, but most important to me are the siblings who have never been told I exist.  Have we ever crossed paths, has their FB profile blinked across the screen at one point in time, do we have mutual friends, and what would they do if they were told about me?

These decisions that are OURS to make have been taken from us and are being controlled by people without our consent or say.  Our rights are being trampled over and on continually.  And, when will it be too late?  There is no guarantee of reunions decades from now life happens and it happens in adoption each and every day as people are losing one another, the knowledge of each other, and the chance to FIND one another.

When abandoned and rejected by family, friends, and significant others  in life, even if not intentionally done, there are several choices one can make.  Long ago the choices I made were forced denial, suppression of emotions, addiction, and codependency.  Now I speak, I write, I talk, I promote adoptees rights when and anywhere I can and hopefully help other adoptees in their journey and in healing.  I also cry, my heart bleeds, and I quietly and internally pray that someday and somehow I will find the people who are the answers to my questions and connect my past to my future with whatever time I have left.

“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.” ~Adrienne Rich

Silencing Adoption Reformers - What the Industry of Adoption doesn't want you to hear

Today on my Facebook news feed I saw an adoption agency FB page posted by an adoption reformer friend (Not naming site names there are too numerous to count).  They had postings for babies available for adoption listing PRICING in dollars along with their "ads" and the usual promotion of how wonderful adoption is.  Wonderful maybe to those who have not been involved with it firsthand.

The Adoption Industry does not want anyone knowing how much money they are making, that they are selling adoptees back their own information in post adoption services, and how much fraud and corruption is involved in adoption.  A system of adoption that was initially supposed to provide children with homes and has turned into blatant human trafficking.  Human Trafficking strong wording you think?  YEP and very necessary to truly describe adoption these days.

Not only were our comments about our experiences and knowledge of adoption deleted but we were banned from posting further.  None of my comments contained cuss words (only in my head lol) or were attacking anyone on the page.  Numerous other adoption reformers were silenced in the same way.

The Adoption industry is silencing us all the way to the bank.  They don't want the truth about adoption to be known, only the propaganda they spew that keeps them in business.  They are "banking" on the fact they can keep the public in the dark to the realities of adoption so they can continue to profit.  

If this were the first time, or if it were a few times, I've witnessed this activity I could chalk it up to a handful of unscrupulous adoption agencies.  Unfortunately advertising in adoption is way out of control and babies are now being marketed with dollar signs next to their profiles.  It's running rampant in adoption because the availability of newborns being placed for adoption is at an all time low and the amount of parents wanting to adopt continues to rise.  It's supply and demand and adoption agencies are having to go to extreme measures to coerce pregnant woman in delicate and difficult and often TEMPORARY situations to get their hands on their children.  The Billboards, crisis pregnancy bumper stickers, and now online and social media advertising are drawing in more and more innocent victims into the web of adoption industry lies.

Are there children in need of good homes, absolutely.  Is adoption the cure all solution these agencies want you to think it is, NO.  They want you to believe that adoption is the fairy tale ending to a bad situation for a child and its parents.  It is far from that.  I read it in my Adolescent child psych book in college "Orphaned, neglected, and adopted children often have the same issues of abandonment and rejection".  The system of adoption does adoptees no favor too in adding to these issues by putting a price tag on our head, placing us into the lottery system of adoption, selling us back our own family information later in life in post adoption services, and sealing our original birth certificates from us.

Many adoptees are further rejected by their adoptive families.  Babies and children are cute but they grow up and into their own genetics, often very very different from that of adoptive families physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Adoptees are not chess pieces to be played by others and then expected to be grateful for it.  We are human beings with voices that won't be silenced about what has happened to us because of adoption.

By trying to silence us the Adoption Industry is only really revealing the depths of their fear that their control over the profits from adoption will disappear.  I wonder how many of these non-profits and pro-life/pro-adoption agencies will continue on "for the sake of the children" once their large incomes and salaries are diminished and cut back.  Rhetorical there.

We won't back down.  We won't stop speaking out.  We won't be silent.

"Never be bullied into silence.  Never allow yourself to be made a victim.  Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.  ~Harvey Feirstein

Adoptee Roots

 

People really have little idea how much of their lives, thoughts, and communications revolve around family.  Family that is living and those who have passed away or previous generations.  The recent genealogy fervor is proof of that.   Many adoptees are all too aware because of the lack of having it.

Adoptees recognize and understand this behavior in others, as they long for it themselves.  Habits, hobbies, careers, physical characteristics are passed along from generation to generation, and parent to child.  Over the years of watching reunions between adoptees and their families I have heard countless remarks such as "We both bite our nails the same way", "We both gesture with our hands exactly the same way", "Now I know where I get my love of such and such" comes from and the evidence is overwhelming that genetics DO make us who we are.  Just as nurture impacts who and what we are, so does nature not just in physical characteristics like hair and eye color.

I found out at age 39 that my dream of becoming a Prima ballerina or a concert pianist was inherited.  My mother's favorite past time is dancing and my biological great grandmother was a concert pianist and music teacher.  I was teaching children and music privately while pursuing a degree in dance and music therapy before I found this out.  I've always been a high strung person (NOOOOO say it isn't so lol) and found out in my information taken about my biological family before I was born my grandmother was described as a very anxious and nervous person.  It's not a character flaw it's in my GENES!

My biological mother sent a letter to me through the adoption courts describing in detail everything she could about her without giving away her identity.  My friends cried upon reading it stating "Karen if I didn't know better I'd say you wrote this yourself".  My exhusband noticed even our handwriting was the same. 

Adoptees should not have to waste time, energy, and money to find out where they came from.  We should not have to grow up or spend our lives guessing, imagining, and navigating life without pertinent and life affirming information.  Rights and reunions are two separate issues.  I have a right to my family history just as others do, even those who search via genealogy records.  People who say being adopted doesn't matter don't know how much it DOES matter.

Only in adoption are genetics whitewashed as unimportant.

Adoptees Denied

DENIED - By The Government

I plead though they ignore my cries.
The record's sealed is their reply.
Time and time again I ask.
I'm told to put it in the past.
I can't get them to try and see.
They have what belongs to me.
I beg for truth but no one hears.
It only falls upon deaf ears.
I get no matter how I try.
The same stone cold response DENIED.

Before the days of internet and social media there were not any other adoptees I knew and no one that understood anything about adoption.  It was back in the days of hush hush, keep it behind closed doors, and don't air your dirty laundry in public, including the shame and stigma of where adoptees "came from".  I understand those times just as I remember the days of pregnant girls being sent away.

In those days the subject of out of wedlock pregnancy was never broached except some whispers in the hallways and quiet conversations between friends beginning with the usual "Did you are about (so and so)".  Girls would come back from school as if nothing ever happened as if there was not this child out there somewhere.  We just assumed it was gone, along with the "problem".  No one discussed it and everyone pretended it wasn't happening.

This is a different time, world, and age now.  With public records, media, camera phones, anonymity has almost become a thing of the past.  Celebrities and public figures do their best to hide, some do not, but it has become big business for TV, movies, print, and literature.  Hollywood figures are adopting even as single parents and it's become a fad to want to adopt.  My point is that adoption is out in the open and public information blazed across magazine covers, TMZ, and the subject matter of current talk shows.

So why are adoptees still not allowed by law to information that is THEIRS?  Why are our records sealed by the government and hidden like some secret confidential matter that if released would bring families and the world to their proverbial knees?  There is big money in post adoption services for the government and nonprofit adoption agencies, and plenty of job security based on this system too.  The system of adoption has commodified children by putting a put a price tag on their head, and sold their rights for great profit.

There are stalking laws already in place for people who don't want contact with one another.  In states like Tennessee where adoptees can access their OBCs upon adulthood, a biological parent can file a contact veto which is punishable by law to the tune of large fines and jail time IF you contact that biological parent and OR any other family member.  No other adult citizen in the country can be legally forced and kept away from adult biological family members by ANOTHER adult family member.  No other citizen in the country has the legal right to keep family members apart.  ONLY in adoption is this law of inequality present.

I have petitioned the adoption court four times and shown "just cause" to receive identifying information about my biological parents.  They have denied my request over and over.  My biological parents relinquished any rights to me decades ago, why do they hold my rights in their hands now?  It is unconstitutional.

No other person in this country is legislated against in these ways this way but adoptees.  It is discrimination.  It is an adoptees civil right to have access to their original birth certificates.

Adoptee Masks

Masked

They perceive this shell but can not see, deep inside the real me.

The one who's lost, afraid and weak, things I dare not reveal or speak.

They think I'm really someone else, this front, facade, false prided self.

Little is the world aware what slivers of my soul I share.

I keep it hidden very well behind the safety of this shell.

Protecting weaknesses unknown the sealed off part of me called “home”.

For like chameleons who hide beneath the camouflage unspied.

I cover up what I can't show with secret masks concealed below.

The naked eye can not detect these fortress walls built to protect.

Within my dwelling unrecognized a stronghold they can't criticize,

nor ridicule, or realize, or know how much that I despise.

This vulnerable person that I am, so alone in alone in silent pain I stand.

I picked the photo above out of a long list of available choices because it really symbolized to me the blank feeling you can have about yourself as an adoptee, and the different masks we often hide behind.  This is not a self protective characteristic only adoptees utilize to cope in life but we can often feel further displaced because we have been separated from our origins.  Too often too when we speak up, ask questions, or express our inner angst about being adopted we are told "it doesn't matter", or "to get over it", or a myriad of other judgments and criticisms regarding how we "should" feel.

Growing up detached from biology and genetic roots leaves us much of the time to create and outer personna to hide behind.  We rely on a plethora of personalities we've gleaned from our family, siblings, and or peers, sometimes good and sometimes bad but the reality is they are usually not "ours".  Because, if we don't "act" our parts as good and grateful adopted children, do we risk being rejected and given away again?

It magnifies our separation anxieties and intensifies our need to fit in, and can severely compromise our development into a solid sense of self because we have little or no knowledge what that really is.  We are genes, habits, hobbies, and physical components of other people who are unknown to us.  We are navigating life from birth without important information other people have.  We fill all that in with masks we create to cover up our fear and we quickly learn to shut down and become introverted about our adoptive experiences, internalizing how we really feel rather than to risk further condemnation and or misunderstanding.

It took me until the age of 39 to be able to obtain information about my biological family that I was able to identify with, relate to, and understand who and what was really "me".  It changed my whole life and who I have become now.  Adopted children have a different set of circumstances upon birth than other children and when recognized and dealt with in an open and honest way it can make all the difference in their lives.  Including; the right to ask about being adopted, the right to speak out about being adopted, and the right to know where they came from. 

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be.  We all become what we pretend to be.” ~Patrick Rothfuss "The Name of the Wind"