One Blood

Denene Millner has an article about her book in Pop Sugar that was published in September. LINK>How a Real-Life Adoption Secret Inspired Denene Millner’s Latest Novel. It’s a novel inspired by the questions Millner was asking herself, as she parsed her own story — having figured out at 12 that she was adopted, and keeping it a secret for years. Here is her story in her own words –

I was 12 years old when I found my adoption certificate in my parents’ room. They used to lock their bedroom door — I’m not sure why. Probably to keep us nosy kids out of their private, grown-up things. But my brother and I quickly figured out that if you tapped the door in just the right way with your hip — just a quick little aggressive bump — the door would pop open. I liked having access to my mom’s lipstick and her perfume, but what I was most interested in was this little gray, steel box my dad kept his bills and paperwork in. I was just naturally nosy and I wanted to know what was on all those little papers.

So one afternoon after school, I popped the door open and sprayed some of my mom’s perfume on my wrists, then dove into the metal box. There were mostly bills — Sears, Macy’s, the light bill, the mortgage, my parents’ marriage certificate, their birth certificates. And then at the very bottom were papers that I could tell held some kind of importance. By the weight of them. And the color. And how old they appeared to be.

When I unfolded the papers and read what they said — one was my adoption certificate, the other was a letter from a lawyer congratulating my parents on my adoption and letting them know my birth certificate was on the way — I was stunned. Like my heart felt like it had been dropped off the side of a skyscraper and hit the sidewalk with a big, explosive boom. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to react. I know I was scared. I was learning that my parents weren’t my birth parents — and in my 12-year-old mind, they were going to be mad I was snooping in their room and mad that I knew their secret and maybe my standing in our family was precarious and not so rock solid and permanent. I quickly put the papers back in the box and slammed it close and pushed it back underneath my parents’ bed and locked the door and never looked in that box again. I never spoke of it to my parents or brother until the day we buried my mom. That’s when I confided to my dad that I knew.

When she was still a child, she believed that – confronting the secret, and maybe making my parents upset, which could make them maybe want to give me up like my birth mother did. Doing so would mean I’d have to really confront what led my birth mom to give me up, and who my family or origin was and whether they were good or bad people and what of them I carried in me.

It would always irk me when I would go to doctor’s visits and I’d have to leave my entire health history on my medical chart completely blank because I didn’t know anything about my birth family — what ran in my blood. I would just explain that I was adopted, and then suffer through the awkward bumbling the doctors would inevitably reduce themselves to, I think perhaps understanding how stupid it is that adoptees don’t have access to their health histories.

Blogger’s note – been there, done that.

When she became pregnant, her feelings about that changed. Giving birth, allowed her to consider just what kind of sacrifice her birth mother had to make – to carry her child for nine months and then give that child away. She says that “I just couldn’t imagine the heartbreak of that decision.” Contemplating the whole thing also led her to consider what not being able to have kids meant for her mother — that desire and how she had to translate that into love for her, a child not of her mother’s blood but hers all the same. She admits – “My feelings on it are ever evolving.”

Blogger’s note – I understand. Learning the origin stories of my two adoptee parents set me back in some of my feelings for the family that was mine only because of adoption – grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. So, yes, the complicated, conflicted feelings do evolve as the new information is integrated into a person’s being.

I understand how important this was for Denene – I stumbled on information that led me directly to my full birth certificate, which had my birth mother’s full name, her address at the time she gave birth to me, the town and state she was born in, and precious information I didn’t have — the time of my birth, the name she gave me when I was born. She says – that allowed me to trace her and her family all the way back to pre-Civil War. Blogger’s note – I know how it feels as I traced my family’s back once I had the information to do so.

Therefore, her reasons for writing the book, she says – I wrote “One Blood” because I had questions — questions that I’d always wanted to ask my mother but never got the chance to because the relationship we had didn’t make room for me to ask her about her life and the choices she made as a woman in a time when we had very little power.

Blogger’s note – Even with as much information as I have now, after knowing nothing for over 60 years, I still have questions that can never be answered.

Denene’s book is a novel she says because “without access to my mothers and the information I longed for, I asked those questions of my characters.” It is true – “their pasts greatly informed who I am. And so it was a really emotional journey for me to ask the question and listen to the answers my characters gave me — some of them rooted in history, yes, but also some embedded in the struggle for Black lives, particularly those of Black women. I am convinced that both of my mothers were present as I wrote; I could feel their energy around me and I know that they embedded ideas in my dreams and in my subconscious, even when I was awake.”

Advocating

What I try to do with this blog is advocate for a change in the perception of people who are involved in adopting children or providing foster care for them. It is a small effort on my part to write something, anything, each day to keep the conversation going. Sometimes it gets noticed by someone and validates the effort.

One adoptee voice that I appreciate is Tony Corsentino who writes on Substack. His most recent post is LINK>Political Orphans and he makes a strong case for his perspective.

I saved some of his paragraphs for my own self –

“Many of us advocate on behalf of the adopted children of today: to change the legal and social landscape for them, to open the opportunity for a future that is better.” I thought, YES, this is what I am trying to do with the blog I write.

I found this fact sad – “Not even the country’s foremost civil liberties organization, the ACLU, recognizes adoptees’ rights to their original identities and genealogical histories.”

Being a Tolkien fan, this touched my heart – In politics, to paraphrase a wise old Ent, “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side.” Many adoptees understandably feel this way.

Tony says, “Political change in the direction of justice for adoptees is maddeningly slow. . . . Powerful interests, mainly religious groups and the adoption industry, are opposed to justice for adoptees, because justice for adoptees is perceived to clash with their goals of providing clean-slate babies with minimal baggage from as large an infant supply pool as possible.”

It caused quite a stir when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito added a footnote, to his draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, from a government report on the demand for adoption in the U.S., which used the phrase, “domestic supply of infants.” Though it’s inclusion is often misunderstood and misattributed in social media, it originated as a footnote to the Supreme Court draft opinion and was a direct quote from a 2008 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the decades preceding the report, societal changes led to a decrease in the number of children available for adoption. This is a fact. There is more detail at FactCheck.org – LINK>Posts Misattribute Phrase ‘Domestic Supply of Infants’ in Draft Opinion on Abortion.

One commenter, Jamie Scott, on his blog writes, “. . . real objection is that the adopted person is daring to challenge the myth that society adores, ie, that adoption is a wonderful thing. To suggest that adoption is less than wonderful is like suggesting Jesus was just a nice Jewish boy.” She also goes on to note – that whole “birth mothers were promised secrecy” thing is BS. I feel sad for her when I read, “Despite hearing me talk for years about the anguish of losing my child, . . . numerous friends and strangers tell me what a WONDERFUL thing I did in relinquishing my only child.”

I also write for the mothers who lost a child to adoption – both of my sisters are one of those – and both of my parents were adoptees. I have plenty of reason to participate in the effort to make things better for both adoptees and the mothers who gave birth to them.

It Is Their Mystery Too

Casey Vandenberg and Katherine Benoit-Schwartz

A woman in my all things adoption group wrote – A few years ago, I found my genetic biological dad on Facebook. On a monthly basis I look at his page. His pictures. His families profiles. The last few years I have really wanted to reach out but it’s never felt like the right time. I hesitate because he is married and I have no idea if his wife knows about me.

Blogger’s note – This really tugs at my heart. Often when children are surrendered, the father is left out. My mom’s genetic biological parents were married but separated when my grandmother returned to Memphis at the tail end of a massive flood on the Mississippi River. After being exploited and coerced by Georgia Tann to surrender my mom, almost as an after-thought Tann’s lawyer suggested they better get my grandfather’ signature on the Surrender Papers too, so he couldn’t turn up later with a claim for the child. The only thing I’ve heard that he said about my grandmother was that she was so young. Compared to him, that was true. Same with my dad’s genetic biological parents (his parents never married because he already was a married man and never knew about the son he fathered). Old men seem forever attracted to young women. Sigh.

Looking for an image for this blog today, I came across the heartwarming story that the image here comes from. It was published in Good Housekeeping, May 10 2016, by Stephanie Booth. LINK>I Found My Dad After 33 Years of Searching. Katherine was adopted in Quebec Canada. On her original birth certificate, her biological father was listed as “Unknown,” but the certificate revealed the full name of her birth mother. Sadly, when she reached out hoping to meet the woman, she was told that her mother did not want to know her. “I could never be cold like my mother!” she says. “I had to find [where] the side of me that was caring and had a heart [came from]. I had to know what kind of person my dad was.”

Using a Family Tree DNA kit, Katherine sent her sample in. Just over two months, after mailing in the sample, Katherine was watching TV when her phone alerted her that she had a new e-mail. “I just knew,” she says. “I began sweating, and my heart was racing. When I opened the e-mail, it said I had a match.” It wasn’t her father but a female relative with the same surname as his. She fired off a note explaining that she was looking for her dad and sharing the bits of information she had. The reply came right away: That sounds like my uncle Casey. The two got on the phone and chatted, and Gerdi promised to reach out to her uncle.

Casey was already 82 years old and retired. He was living in Cape Coral Florida. Minutes after having talked with his niece, Casey sent Katherine an e-mail introducing himself. “He told me he loved me and signed it Your dad,” Katherine says. “That touched my heart. I felt like my life had come full circle.” “There was an immediate bond,” Katherine says. “It was a shock to both of us, but we felt connected. I had no problem calling him my dad. I’d waited for him since I was a teenager, for 33 years.”

“We have an adult father-daughter relationship. There’s no baggage, just respect. We enjoy each other. Not everyone gets a happy ending, but I got mine,” Katherine says. Casey says, “She’s a hell of a gal.”

Blank Slate Debunked

I have written about this before but this morning I read a comment in my all things adoption group about it – “The blank slate theory is I think one of the most degrading things to subject a person to.” I agree.

A piece by the American Psychological Association titled LINK>Not-so blank slates notes that infants understand more than you might think. Scientists who explore what’s going on in those adorably tiny heads, find that babies have a surprisingly rich understanding of the social worlds around them. In the 1980s, Renee Baillargeon PhD, director of the Infant Cognition Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and colleagues developed a method to test what babies understood about objects and events in the environment around them. The technique is based on their finding that babies look measurably longer at events that defy their expectations.

Helpfulness, fairness and kindness are “prosocial behaviors” that research indicates may be detectable in babies just a few months old. In one study, 3-month-old infants were shown a googly-eyed circle puppet trudging up a hill. In one scenario, a helpful triangle helped push the circle upward. In another, a not-so-nice square knocked the circle back to the bottom of the hill. Later, an experimenter showed both characters to the babies. The infants preferred to gaze at the helpers over the hinderers. By 5 months old, after they’ve mastered more motor skills, babies actively reach toward the nice character over the mean one — suggesting that the 3-month-olds’ extended gaze was an indication of their preference. The findings suggest that babies can distinguish between good guys and bad guys before they can even roll over.

In one study, babies stared longer at cookies divvied up unequally between two animated giraffe puppets than cookies handed out in even rations. That is, the babies seemed to expect equality and were surprised if one puppet got shortchanged. Research indicates that recognizing fairness emerges between 9 months and 12 months of age. An early sense of fairness may have evolved to help humans work together to survive. Collaborative work is the cradle of equality. Babies understand the concept of “us” versus “them” from an early age. It seems to be fundamentally about a shared preference: You value aspects of the world the same way I do, so I like you.

As scientists continue to study infants’ social and moral development, one big question remains unanswered: Are social-moral principles learned, or are babies born with these systems already in place? So, the old nature vs nurture question has not yet been entirely proved or disproved. Steven Pinker wrote a book – LINK>The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Pinker has argued against a belief that the mind is essentially silly putty, and that commonalities and differences in how people think can be traced to commonalities and differences in their environments.

In The Blank Slate, Pinker endeavors to tell us why that belief is destructive and dangerous. Biological determinism is considered by many as heresy. Any suggestion that genetic factors play a role in shaping patterns of human behavior, including the scientists who study the heritability of traits like intelligence and aggressiveness, or who advance evolutionary explanations for some aspects of cognition, are commonly denounced as racist (or fascist or sexist), picketed, harassed, and sometimes assaulted by protesters.

Pinker believes that the Blank Slate belief has had socially and morally disastrous consequences, and he devotes the considerable force of his talent to demolishing it. Discoveries in neuroscience have shown that the mind comes equipped with various specialized functions, including those responsible for learning languages, estimating numerical quantities, picking out objects in the world, and attributing thoughts and intentions to other human beings. Some of these systems, moreover, vary from person to person in ways that are influenced by the genes. Behavioral geneticists have shown that about half of the variability in a trait like IQ is biological in origin, confirming the long-held suspicion that—all other things being equal—smart people tend to have smart children.

This is not to say that environmental factors play no role in determining how an individual mind works: for example: Japanese babies do not learn Japanese, if their parents speak English. However, if the “slate” were actually blank, nobody would learn any language, or possibly anything at all. One of our deepest anxieties about studying human nature: is the fear that free will may turn out to be only an illusion. Pinker believes the fear actually is existential – that our lives have no meaning or purpose; that all men are not really equal; that our nature is deeply and permanently flawed.

He establishes that our political ideals are safe: the fact that human beings are not literally equal does not justify discrimination; it does, however, force us to think about the tradeoff between freedom and material equality, and about how to ensure that the talented are not punished while the less fortunate are not cast down. Even if biology influences our behavior, every decision we make is the product of fine-tuned cognitive and emotional mechanisms designed to weigh temptation against the possibility of punishment. Pinker believes that morality must be based on a fundamental regard for the interests of each and every human being; and that we ought to punish cheaters who harm or exploit others for their own advantage. Pinker uses everything he can think of to make the case for an inborn and largely immutable human nature.

The science of human nature can inform us about the trade-offs involved in making decisions about what kind of society we want to live in. Whether or not we should take children away from the parents who conceived and gave birth to them is one that we really need to be analyzing based upon the experiences and voices of adult adoptees.

Georgia Tann’s Impact

Blond girl (not my mom) with Georgia Tann

From a blog by New Hope Investigations, LINK>How a Criminal’s Dark Actions Continue to Shroud Adoptions in Unnecessary Secrecy.

My husband said today, regarding my mom’s adoption facilitated by Georgia Tann, that my mom had been stolen. My mom believed that and had her own story about it. Mostly, thanks to Georgia Tann, my mom’s adoption was “closed” and the file “sealed”, which kept her from obtaining what I now possess (her whole adoption file including letters from my mom, her adoptive mother and her biological genetic mother). I saw falsehoods incorporated into alternate surrender documents to match my adoptive grandmother’s “specifications” for the baby girl she wanted to adopt (a Jill to go with the previously adopted brother, the Jack, in the children’s rhyme). My adoptive grandmother was a repeat customer of Georgia Tann’s, though she was actually more closely involved with Fannie Elrod, who was the superintendent of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society’s entire operation headquartered in Nashville.

The children’s rhyme is actually a dark one – Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Oh my !!

Ms. Tann orchestrated over 5,000 adoptions between 1924 and 1950, though the actual number is likely closer to 6,000. She kidnapped many of those children before placing them for adoption into families who were only screened for their wealth. Before Georgia Tann entered the picture, adoption was extremely uncommon. With her black market practice, she singlehandedly popularized adoption, kickstarting it into existence as we know it today.

Very unfortunately for adoptees even still today, Georgia Tann made it common practice to falsify adoptees’ birth certificates to reflect incorrect information. She did this to cover her own tracks and mask her sinister crimes. Legislators were all too eager to approve this practice with the supposed intent of sparing adoptees’ the stigma of illegitimacy. In all reality, many of those legislators turned their heads the other way because they themselves had adopted children through Georgia Tann.

Still today, all 50 states issue an original birth certificate to adoptees, as well as an amended birth certificate that reflects the adoptive parents as the birth parents. The original certificate is typically then sealed forever, unable to be accessed even by the adoptee him or herself. (blogger’s note – I am fortunate to actually have a copy of my mom’s original birth certificate.)

As the child of two adoptees who this affected, I grew up not knowing our biological facts, cultural history or ethnic make-up, and nothing of our family medical history. Some adoptees have only bits and pieces of knowledge about themselves. (blogger’s note – this was true for both of my parents at some point in their lives but never a complete knowledge before they each died 4 months apart, after over 50 years of marriage.)

(Blogger’s note – my mom definitely registered her DNA with Ancestry’s database in the hope of uncovering biological family members but it never happened for her. She tried to construct a family tree, based only on the adoptive families for both her self and my dad, but had to give it up because she simply knew it was not “real”. Adoptees are forced to live a false identity.)

Even when Georgia Tann’s crimes were finally publicly outed, she remained safeguarded because of the numerous politicians, legislators, judges, attorneys, doctors, nurses, and social workers who would have gone down with her. She had such a wide net of accomplices that to take her down would have also meant the collapse of a very widespread group of prominent citizens. Memphis was a terribly corrupt city at the time. Georgia Tann died from cancer on September 15, 1950 at age 59.

Certainly, this describes my mom’s mother’s circumstances – The majority of children targeted by Georgia Tann came from poor, white, single mothers who had no resources or support. During the era of Ms. Tann’s operations, and very much perpetuated by Ms. Tann herself, single mothers who kept their children began to be regarded as selfish. It became the norm for the majority of these women to choose adoption when they no longer received support from their families and were instead sent away for the duration of their pregnancies with shame attached to their “condition”. (blogger’s note – my maternal grandparents were married but the lack of financial support from her father or her husband allowed my grandmother to be exploited and coerced by Georgia Tann to surrender my mom.)

The terribly sad effects of adoption – identity crises, bereavement for the loss of their old lives, feelings of isolation, grief over separation from siblings placed elsewhere, depression, confusion, and a host of other negative feelings, behaviors, and difficult experiences – stay with adoptees into their adulthoods. In 1995, the state of Tennessee made original birth certificates available to adoptees who had been born IN the state. (Blogger’s note – that my mom was born in Virginia, although adopted in Memphis, was one of the excuses the state made to deny her the adoption file.)

Blogger’s note – In fact, it was because my mom knew a great deal about Georgia Tann by the early 1990s from a multitude of stories that came out in Good Housekeeping, on 60 Minutes and thanks to Oprah, that my mom believed she had been stolen from her poor, illiterate parents in Virginia and transported to Memphis to be sold by Georgia Tann. That was not the reality and I grieve that although the actual reality of her circumstances does not change the fact that she was adopted, she could have been allowed to know how much she was loved by the woman who gave birth to her and how she struggled to find a way to keep them together.

The New Hope Investigations piece notes in conclusion – “However, over 20 years after Tennessee’s victory, adoptees still face pushback and denial of access to their original birth records.” Also that they wrote their blog inspired by Barbara Bisantz Raymond’s book, The Baby Thief, and praised that she really did her homework having conducted over 1,000 interviews for her phenomenal book. Barbara Bisantz Raymond also previously contacted this blogger, thanks to my own efforts with this blog. When my mom died, still knowing nothing, I felt the responsibility to complete the effort my mom had made to learn her own origins. In having succeeded, I have honored my mom’s trust in sharing her feelings and beliefs with me. Sadly, my adoptee dad was unsupportive.

Adopters=Co-dependancy

An adoptive parent admits she is co-dependent. She was learning all about co-dependency, due to an unrelated (to adoption) life situation, when it hit her that adoptive parents are co-dependent. She writes – that she is ‘not always/not all’ aware, so no need to point it out. But she is certain there is a high likelihood of adopters being co-dependent AF.

She notes that the reason she posted this is – we can only grow and do better from what we know. And we won’t know we are codependent, unless we learn about it. Co-dependent people thrive on being needed. They find taking care of others more fulfilling than anything. They make other people’s problems their own. It’s more of a personality type, than a disorder but it can get unhealthy very easily, if we are not aware. She added – “My goal is to cause as little additional trauma to my kids as possible….I will learn and do better !”

An adoptive parent who is also a therapist notes – I see that as a theme with some who adopt. I don’t want to over categorize people, but the place I have noticed this the most is with those who adopt from other countries or foster care, after they have had their biological kids. That role appeals to them. It becomes part of their identity. And yes, it is important to see how that leads to wanting gratitude and other unhealthy patterns. One adoptee responded to that with this – “WOW! CAN YOU ELABORATE MORE?! I have become so hyper independent, it’s bad/sad. My adoptive parents had two biological kids and adopted me 15 years later.” Someone else understood – We learned to try and control the situation, so we could be safe.

A mother who lost her child to adoption writes – Yeah if I wasn’t co-dependent (as a result of trauma growing up) then, I’m sure I wouldn’t have given my son up. I would’ve had the confidence to say no and stand up for myself. Another responded – I would not have bought into the idea that another mother would be better than me.

The more common trait in adoptive mothers is narcissism. One wrote – the two are similar and it’s important we don’t try to diagnose ourselves. But those who try to break the trauma cycle are more likely to be the co-dependent one. Narcissists usually don’t have the self awareness or empathy to admit their mental health needs. If you’re curious look at covert narcissists. (from LINK>VeryWell Mind – A covert narcissist is someone who craves admiration and importance, lacking empathy toward others but may act in a different way than an overt narcissist. They may exhibit symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) but often hide the more obvious signs of the condition.)

Giving In The Spirit Of

Photo by LINK>Melissa McCraw-Hummer of Springfield Missouri (her daughter is in the photo).

Lately, I keep encountering positive inspirational stories about “ordinary” people who are doing good simply by doing what it is that they love to do. One is Bobby Brown who founded the Donuts With Dads support group for fathers. In the current Christmas themed New Mexico Magazine in an article about their 2023 True Heroes (10 people they selected to feature due to the good work they are doing). Sometimes, our world seems so dark I want to despair about the future of humanity and these features help me stay optimistic (Time Magazine often features similar groups of people doing good things in this world).

So it is that I’ve been primed to notice such stories and today in my all things adoption group I read this by Melissa the photographer for today’s image (which I think of as Christmas Magic). I share what she does with her talents and skills plus no small amount of creativity. I am also happy to know she lives in my own residential state – Missouri (though at the opposite end). I am glad to give her business a little bit of promotion.

She writes – In the past, I’ve done Foster Friday at Christmas for foster children to get free Christmas pajama photos. I’ve never allowed foster parents or their biological children to participate. I wanted it to be just for the kids in care so they have professional photos of themselves. I’m entertaining alternatives. Maybe Reunification Celebration for families who have reunited after foster care. I occasionally do income-based events but I always get way more interested families than I can serve, so specific sub-groups tend to do better. Single Parent Sunday was a good success this year. I just released registration in waves, so families in the lowest income bracket who didn’t have family support got first dibs.

Can Scapegoats Recover ?

Painting by Bea Jones

The short answer is yes. So often I read about adoptees who have been psychologically abused, usually by a narcissistic adoptive mother but it could just as easily be a narcissistic adoptive father.

There is so much to learn about scapegoating, when one goes looking. I read that the concept of a scapegoat has a very long history, some of it religious. It has even been an animal, a literal goat, upon which a community would place the blame for all of it’s sins. Then the goat was sent away.

One male adoptee wrote an essay for Severance magazine – LINK>I Am More Than My Fathers by David Sanchez Brown. He notes “I was not the dream son my adoptive parents envisioned I’d be. I was a clumsy, overweight kid with Coke-bottle thick glasses and learning disabilities who couldn’t seem to do anything right . . .” He later writes “I never connected my feelings about myself with having been adopted. I thought I was a failure and unworthy of unconditional love.” He also notes the common plight of many adoptees – “I didn’t look or act like anyone else in the family. I stuck out like a sore thumb and I became the family scapegoat.”

My interest in looking at this concept was triggered when I read this from a Facebook acquaintance – “I was a scapegoat. I knew I got blamed for things and then I learned it’s called scapegoating. And, I knew I had been scapegoated.” Then she notes – “I am now a recovering scapegoat.” Yet, owns this – “I’m just saying I find claiming what I can change empowering. I’m a scapegoat who is a massive people pleaser.” And many adoptees do become people pleasers in an effort to find acceptance.

Dr Elvira Aletta has some suggestions in her LINK>”10 Tips to Survive Being the Scapegoat at Home.” She ends this piece with “If you’re just beginning to understand how scapegoated you are, take it easy. Once your eyes are opened you might begin to see it everywhere.” Yes, it does seem to be rather common, sadly.

I end this blog today with some thoughts from the Daily Guide in the Science of Mind magazine – “You ae whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness you may not even know about. You are never alone. and you already belong. You belong to life. You belong to this moment, this breath.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

And this one might apply especially to adoptees – “All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes.” ~ Ernest Holmes, The Art of Life pg 9

The truth for every human being is that we are neither bad nor broken. We have the absolute ability to become clear, confident, aware and certain. We can chose wholeness over limitation. We can understand that there have been no mistakes but only opportunities for us to learn about ourselves and our world. We grow in wholeness as we learn to be vigilant, not assigning fault or blame to ourselves – or to others. Better to see everything that has happened or that happens, even the things we do not like, as a piece that fits in the fabric of what is our actual lived experience. It is ours to define.

Anonymous Sperm Donation

On Dec 3 2023, Emily Bazelon published an article in the NY Times – LINK>Why Anonymous Sperm Donation Is Over, and Why That Matters. She notes that while activists are trying to end secrecy for sperm and egg donors — it is a campaign that troubles some LGBTQ families.

The article begins with this story (and blogger’s note – I’ve read quite a few others with similar trajectories) –

A few years ago, when he was in his early 30s, Tyler Levy Sniff took a home DNA test he received as a gift. The results revealed a staggering truth: His father wasn’t biologically related to him. Levy Sniff confronted his parents, who explained that after years of trying and failing to have a baby, they turned to a sperm donor. Following the standard advice at the time, they decided not to tell him for fear of driving a wedge into their family.

Levy Sniff felt as if he’d found a key to his identity that he was looking for. “It made sense of why I felt different from my family,” he said recently. He wanted more information about the person he called his “bio father” to understand his genetic heritage. “It was so important to me to know my bio father’s life story, his personality and talents and struggles,” Levy Sniff says.

But by the time he found his donor, through relatives on two genealogy websites, the man had died — another revelation that shattered him, he says. To Levy Sniff, the value of knowing where you come from is self-evident. “A lot of influence comes from your biology,” he says.

Recent findings in behavioral science show the role of genetics in shaping certain individual characteristics. Questionnaires from doctors routinely ask for generations of family medical history. And learning about your genetic ancestry can be emotionally powerful — one reason millions of people buy inexpensive at-home DNA tests and sign up for genealogy websites.

Blogger’s note – in my own roots discovery journey, both Ancestry and 23 and Me, contributed invaluable assistance in my finding my own genetic, biological heritage and connecting with people that I am thus related to, though for over 60 years, neither they nor my self knew of one another. Adoption (both of my parents were adopted) robs us of important knowledge.

Lesbian couples and single parents make up 70 percent of the people who now use sperm donors, according to a 2022 study of an assisted-reproduction clinic. Some of these families fear that disclosure laws will open the door to recognizing biological donors in some way as parents — possibly granting them parental rights and more broadly undermining the legitimacy of LGBTQ families.

In sperm and egg donation, secrecy was the old-school choice — the one that seemed easier to many heterosexual couples as they raised their children. But now it’s nontraditional families who are most nervous about ending the practice of anonymous donation. It’s one thing for parents to choose transparency, but it’s quite another for the state to mandate it — enshrining into law, some fear, the notion that genetics are an essential part of being a family. In many states, if you are part of a couple raising a child, and you never marry or you get a divorce, and your partner wants to sever the connection, you can be deemed a legal stranger to a child you helped raise but with whom you don’t share a genetic tie.

Blogger’s note – Being honest about how one’s children were conceived tends to strengthen parent-child relationships. My family chose that strategy. My husband, our egg donor, and my sons all did 23 and Me DNA testing. That site allows for private communications (should my sons want that) with a donor they have had only minimal physical contact with in the past (several times we have had the opportunity to get together with her and at least one of her children). Thanks to Facebook, I have been able to show my sons photos of the donor and her genetic, biological children over the years – so that they have some sense of these other relationships that may someday be important to them (or not). They seem well adjusted to the reality.

Like Dominos Tumbling

Yesterday, as I was considering how the pieces of my own roots journey unfolded, I had this image of Dominos – one leading to the next. I had been in the dark about my own genetic, biological roots for more than 60 years. My mom had tried to discover her own but was denied and rejected when she made her attempts. My dad never seemed to want to know or maybe he was just afraid of what he might discover.

Never the less, one amazing revelation after another and in only 1 year’s time, I knew most of it. Some additional pieces have come my way since then but nothing as absorbing and amazing as that year since. Was I just lucky or was it just the appropriate time for everything that had been hidden and sealed off to reveal it self ? It was like there was an energy of disclosure that would no longer be denied.

From my mom’s biological, genetic mother and father to my dad’s biological, genetic mother and father, one after the other, doors opened and the truth was revealed. It feels very solid now – I know from whom and where I came from. Not that dark place of knowing nothing that I lived with for over 60 years.

I’m grateful for my success. I could have just as easily failed – or could I have ? Somehow, it was just finally the time for the truth to out itself. All I did was follow the bread crumbs, from one piece of information to the next, until there were not a lot more to follow – though some turn up from time to time – a relative in Denmark, where my dad’s father immigrated from. More recently from that same family line via Ancestry, the wife of another one who is highly interested in genealogy.

I will follow any that come but mostly I’ve arrived at wholeness and that has meant everything I could have ever hoped for. I believe I fulfilled the reason I wasn’t given up for adoption by my young, unmarried parents who were both adoptees (they did manage to get married before I was born). Thanking all that is good in this world.