A Lot of Tears and Hurt

We don’t always see the flip side of adoptee reunions but I do read about them sometimes in my all things adoption group. Here’s one I read about today –

I found my birth family 2021. It’s probably been more painful to find them, than great. It has brought me a lot of tears and hurt and confusion to be honest. My birth mom is in Jail and will be forever. I will never meet her. On the other hand, I have a large birth family. My adoptive parents are wonderful people, My adoptive mom is African American and my adoptive dad is white. Upon finding my birth family, turns out they are extremely Mexican. Although, of course, I’m Mexican by blood, I have no idea of the culture or even the Spanish language. I have found it harder to fit in and to feel like “one of them,” I had been told I have an older sister. Let me tell you, I thought it’d be rainbows and unicorns….NOT. It is so hard to break through her high wall. She is very introverted and private. I know she’s trying but there’s been times she shuts me out, whenever she goes through whatever stuff.

I just feel as if, still today, they all don’t feel at all like “family,” as much as I want them to. I feel like such an odd ball around them, when they talk about childhood memories and all… I just sit there feeling like an outcast. I didn’t have a sibling growing up, so I think I’m craving that more than the sister I have found … She grew up with siblings, so she doesn’t crave the same way I do…and it sucks. Anyway, I found out the other day that my birth aunt is on Hospice. I was invited to go and say my goodbye’s. I’m not heartless but I just feel as it’s not my place, since I have only talked to her 3 times since I found them. I don’t wanna offend anyone by not going. But I honestly don’t want to go… and I’ve just been dealing with my own stuff. I hate to hurt other people’s feelings, I mean if I don’t go, would they think less of me or that I just “don’t care ” or ..

Another adoptee replied – it bothers me so much when people say “oh they can just find them when their adults” because like you said, you missed out on so much and feel like an outcast. My birth mother has dementia and other medical issues and her niece is very controlling and just when I thought I had made some headway with being able to see her, she went in the hospital and no one told me, until I was on my way to visit on Christmas day when I texted my uncle. Then, I didn’t know where she was because it was being kept a secret from other family members (who I don’t even talk to). Anyway, sorry to spill part of my long story but just so you know, I understand how you feel.

For myself as well. Not an adoptee but the child of 2 adoptees who has found family that my parents were robbed of ever knowing. It is true, one can’t make up for all those missing years of family interactions that one doesn’t have, after living apart for decades. I find that I now don’t feel truly “related” to all my adoptive family and I don’t feel a part of my genetic family. It sucks really.

Only A Minor Request

$160 at Amazon

I find the perspectives shared by this story so very sad and so, I share it as well.

I’m a support worker in a specialized care home. The company I work for takes on kids with high needs and challenging behaviors. My job is basically to support the kids that I work with in any and all aspects of their lives from personal care to playing (and anything in between). We just recently had 2 kids placed back in our care after reunification almost 4 weeks ago (not their fault and not their mom’s fault). The youngest who’s 8 is a non-verbal autism spectrum disorder (ASD) child who requires constant supervision. She also requires sensory stimulation!! I absolutely love the company I work for but holy fuck!!!! I’m about to go bat shit crazy advocating to get this little girl the things she needs to self regulate!! The unit she’s in has a massive basement that could very easily be set up with sensory activities and stuff that she 100 percent requires to function in her daily life, yet the company I work for and the agency have both said they don’t want to waste money on something for a child that might only be here for 3 or 4 months!! I’m sorry what??? When did it be come a waste to see a child thrive, even if it’s only for 3 or 4 months? We constantly deal with ASD kids, why would a massive sensory room go to waste?? Why do these kids have to suffer, in order to get their needs met? It irritates the hell out of me that kids in care get shit on unless their placement becomes permanent!! And all I asked this company to do for this little girl was get her a little indoor trampoline and a ball pit!!! Her mom said that’s where she hangs out at home!!

PS – we find out next week how long these kids are with us and I’m so hoping it isn’t for months!!

It’s Not A Couch

I’m in a natural birthing group and a woman who’s 30+wks pregnant has been married for over 5 years. Both the woman and her husband come from a conservative community where procreation is expected, even though neither of them felt drawn to parenthood. They decided to give it to God. After so many years of marriage, they are expecting and neither is excited nor do they feel connected to the baby.

The amount of COMMENTS FOR ADOPTION in that group were INSANE. She didn’t come for that suggestion. She asked if anyone else had issues before delivery with feeling attached to their child – if anyone wasn’t really a kid person – if those feelings changed when they delivered their own child, etc. She was looking for emotional and mental support from a group THAT DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE HORMORMAL AND BONDING PROCESS and YET, people were STILL SUGGESTING IF SHE DOESN’T FEEL IT, JUST GIVE THE BABY AWAY! The poor mother hasn’t even had the bonding chemicals come into play yet. This “give the baby away” suggestion was WELL LIKED .

(blogger’s note – what is written above and below this is NOT my own story but because adoption is encouraged in evangelical circles, the above really does NOT surprise me.)

The woman writing about this incident is a former foster care youth and adoptee. She continues – Y’all I freaking LOST IT. I told them to NOT suggest TRAUMA to a mother, which will last throughout her LIFE as well as impact their baby, when the couple just needs the TOOLS TO HELP THEM PARENT.

Boy did I get attacked. I was actually quite nice about it all, and people told me I was shaming her (I didn’t, I actually told her I also struggled with bonding and attachment due to the ADOPTION AND FOSTER CARE INTERFERENCE) and wasn’t being harsh with the woman at all. I was harsh with the insane notion that before birth, these folks who are supposedly seeking to help, are just like – “oh, don’t feel attached ?, oh well, just give it to someone who wants it.”

It’s not a couch that you got that didn’t fit though the door and you’re pawning it off on your neighbor. It’s a child, who will look for you one day (most likely) and wonder why they weren’t wanted.

Beware The Scams

Safe to say, I detest scams of any kind, any where, for any reason. No surprise they also target parents desperate to get their kids back from Child Protective Services.

Today I read about LINK>Francesca Amato-Banfield. Her website claims – We specialize in convoluted cases that come to us after the courts/cps makes a mess of them! She is an author of a book Punished 4 Protecting, subtitle The Injustice System of Family Court.

It is true that many families have been adversely affected by the child welfare system that is supposed to be protecting children from serious harms. My all things adoption group indicates that “The sovereign citizen nonsense will ensure you never see your kids again.” And she is quick to indicate a sympathetic compassion – “I understand the desperation.” Sadly, it appears that all these people are doing is exploiting that desperation and scamming already hurting people out of money. There is no group or organization that has some magic ability to instantly get your children back, if you just pay them to join. If it’s too good to be true, it is not true. The ONLY way to reunification is through the courts, with good representation, and following a case plan.

The whole sovereign citizen movement is so so so dangerous. One of their core beliefs is that the US government does not have jurisdiction over citizens, without some consent, and that your social security number is actually a serial number issued by the government. They will suggest nonsense like trying to claim maritime law or defining children as property illegally seized by the government.

The adoption community is well aware that Child Protective Services DOES illegally seize children but going into court and claiming your children are your physical property is not going to go well.

Francesca “guarantees” the immediate return of your children by using her “proven” methods of filings. What this actually ends up doing is damaging your case, destroying your credibility to the court, and prolonging cases with nonsense filings that will still end up with a Termination of Parental Rights.

The LINK>Sovereign Citizens Movement is terrifying. They are not lawyers but a loose grouping of litigants, activists, tax protesters, financial scheme promoters and conspiracy theorists, who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and believe that they are therefore not subject to any government statutes or proceedings, unless they consent to them. I believe I once ran into some of these people at an annual regional fair suggesting how not to pay taxes.

Betrayal Trauma and Attachment

Two of my friends have recently drawn my attention to issues of attachment and betrayal. One wrote in response to a self-betrayal graphic – The thought to comes to mind is that from a young age children are likely to experience examples of this when parents are perceived (rightly or wrongly) as not acting in their best interest. The possibility of this type of ‘betrayal’ is then opened in their minds and then acted out.

The other provided a LINK> to a Neurobiology of Attachment pdf and specifically pg 4 re:the infant’s brain. Families can recover from childhood emotional wounds when all members discuss openly the mental conditions of the parents as a regular family health routine… growth & compassion for all. We learned that ‘communication’ could actually happen through the placenta, in which the adrenaline and cortisol that’s coursing through the mom’s veins wind up crossing the placenta and affecting the development of the brain. “Our connections with other people are critical for being able to tolerate and regulate our own emotional responses.” “This sense of connection occurs through nonverbal communication.”

This caused me to reflect this morning on my two adoptee parents who were relinquished in infancy by their mothers into closed adoptions. They both died without knowing much of anything about their origins – which fortunately, I now know quite a lot about the people and circumstances, though clearly with the passage of time and the deaths of all 4 of my genetic grandparents, I can never fully know.

In trying to put myself into my parents hearts/minds and inner beliefs related to their adoptions, how could they not feel betrayed by their first/original parents ? They had no way of knowing their mother’s stories or challenges or reasons including being coerced (and yes, I will always believe that BOTH of my grandmothers were coerced in the 1930s into giving up their firstborn children) that resulted in my parents being adopted. I sincerely believe that no adoptive parent can truly undo this sense of betrayal by the parent in the child they conceived and birthed. In the case of my grandfathers, it is more complicated. Definitely, one never knew he fathered a son and it turns out he never had any other children (it was the same for my mom’s mother who never had any more children).

I’ll never be able to know exactly why my mom’s father abandoned her and her mother (when my grandmother was 4 mos pregnant, nor why he did not come back to rescue her, infant in tow and financially destitute). So, the line above about communication through the placenta could definitely been my maternal grandmother’s mental/emotional struggles without her husband (they were married, in the case of my dad’s parents, they were not – his father was a married man having an affair with a much younger woman).

No matter the reasons, being relinquished for adoption and never knowing why, is betrayal trauma for the adoptee. I do believe modern trends that keep birth parents in the loop or the effects of reunions instigated by adoptee searches are some mitigating factors to the sense of betrayal that, whether they acknowledge it precisely as that or not, exits within the adoptee.

Besides the pdf linked above, I found two articles via google search that may be useful to some of my readers. [1] LINK>The Effects of Attachment and Developmental Trauma and Ways to Heal the Adoptee from the Adoptions from the Heart’s WordPress blog. (Basically, they are an adoption agency). [2] LINK>From Abandonment & Betrayal to Acceptance & Forgiveness: The Gifts of Memoir by Julie Ryan McGue and Judith Ruskay Rabinor at Adoption & Beyond (a 501c3 non-profit child placement agency licensed in both Kansas and Missouri). The reader is welcomed to consider the source when reading either of these.

Loss After A Reunion

Today’s story (not my own) –

Some of my adoptive family did not treat me well after reunion. Not being happy for me. My adoptive mother is having her own insecurities and blaming me for saying I was wondering about my birth family when I were younger and throwing it in my face as an adult, saying “how do you think that made me feel.”

I was adopted in 1975, not sure what they were told but I almost think it was somewhat…these are your kids and they will never see their birth family again. I also have adoptive siblings who are biological to my adoptive parents. One doesn’t even talk to me anymore… That’s another story.

Why are we treated this way for finding our truth and deciding how we choose to live our life and who we choose to include in it ?

A Form Of Activism

Disclosure – I have not read this book but I will admit I am intrigued by it. My first awareness was a mention in my all things adoption group – Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Demon Copperhead is the story of Appalachia from the viewpoint of a kid in foster care. Excellent book. Trigger Warning for folk who have been in neglectful or abusive foster care situations.

So I went looking. There is much about this that hits close to home – as in Kentucky is next door to my home state of Missouri and one learns to watch out for Copperhead snakes here. The opioid crisis and unwed teenage mothers, as well as abject poverty, matter to me. I find the Oprah has chose this book for her book club, LINK>Oprah’s Book Club Author Barbara Kingsolver Writes the “Great Appalachian Novel.” An interview there with the author gave me today’s blog title. Barbara Kingsolver’s writing is a form of activism, of righting wrongs. She wanted to address an injustice. Demon Copperhead is a social novel.

In the interview, the author says – I’m committed to writing honestly and respectfully about this region that is widely ridiculed or just invisible in mainstream American culture. Appalachia is beautiful and culturally rich, but a long history of exploitation has left us with structural poverty, limited opportunities, and educational deficits that outsiders tend to laugh at. In the latest of these tragedies—the opioid epidemic—pharmaceutical companies deliberately targeted us for their poison pill. Seeing the devastating effects here where I live moved me to look for the bigger picture and write about it.

In retelling Dicken’s David Copperfield, a boarding school for indigent boys becomes a beleaguered tobacco farm where foster boys are brought in to do unpaid labor. A shoe-black factory is a meth lab. The dangerous friend Steerforth is now “Fast Forward,” a high school football star with a narcissistic streak. Et cetera. She notes – A scary percentage of the kids in my region—as high as 30 percent—have lost their parents to prescription drug abuse. They are wards of the state, or are living with grandparents or others who might prefer not to be raising them. That’s the case with my fictional hero, Demon, and his ragtag band of friends. They want so badly to be seen, in a world that wants them erased.

When asked if she had a special interest in foster care, she replied – To write about a modern generation of kids orphaned by poverty and addiction, I had to dig in and understand the systems that support them—and those systems are inadequate. I was stunned to see how inadequate. DSS workers are absurdly underpaid. Turnover and caseloads are such that a child may not even know the name of his legal guardian, and vice versa. Cruelty and abuse are ongoing options. By telling some awful truths in the story and voice of Demon, maybe I can engage some hearts and minds to make a difference.

There is also a review in The Guardian – LINK>Dickens Updated. From that review – Kingsolver’s hero Damon Fields, known as Demon and nicknamed Copperhead for his red hair, is born to a drug-using teenage single mother in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia. Even in this deprived neighbourhood they stand out by being almost destitute, living between a coal camp “and a settlement people call Right Poor”. Since his mother is in and out of rehab, Demon is partly raised by the sprawling, warm-hearted Peggot clan. It’s all there in Dickens: the weak, infantile mother, ripe for abuse; the dead father and the disciplinarian boyfriend turned merciless stepfather; the bad odds against which no child stands a chance – and also the outsiders, some loving and others less so, who offer only a limited form of help.

Demon becomes a casualty of the “monster-truck mud rally of child services”: case workers who don’t read his file; foster parents who are only in it for the security cheque. Where David is packed off to gloomy Salem House, run by the sadistic Mr Creakle, Demon is quite literally farmed out to “this big old gray-looking house, like Amityville”, owned by a tobacco farmer called Crickson. Demon’s battle to achieve sobriety and to transcend the failure of those around him “to see the worth of boys like me, beyond what work can be wrung out of us by a week’s end. Farm field, battlefield, football field.”

Progress in Washington State

Washington House Bill 1747: “Keeping Families Together” would encourage guardianships over termination of parental rights when possible. Black and Brown families are especially vulnerable — in Washington, Indigenous children are 2.7 times more likely and Black children are 2.4 times more likely than white children to experience the termination of both parents’ rights. This bill would help to reduce racial bias and inequities in the child welfare system.

Jamerika Haynes-Lewis who wrote an op-ed, LINK>HB 1747 Offers a Pathway to Keeping Families Together, for the South Seattle Emerald a year ago in January 2022 write – I think of my own experience as a foster child in the system. My world completely changed at 5 when I stepped into my first foster home. Though I had relatives and other people that could have served as guardians, this option was not considered. Instead, adoption was the only choice. This event led me to moving from the Eastside of Tacoma to becoming one of few Black children in Poulsbo, Washington. Away from my family and community connections, I suffered immensely from racism and an identity crisis. And I had to experience this alone, on my own.

I am unable to determine the current status of HB 1747’s effort. I did also find Washington House Bill 1295 at The Imprint LINK>Hidden Foster Care, which would guarantee legal counsel for hundreds of parents ensnared in “hidden foster care” — informal placements arranged outside of court oversight. In a practice deployed to varying degrees nationwide, social workers with the state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families offer parents the option of voluntarily handing over their children to friends or family. In exchange, parents can provide input on where they would like to have the children stay without the dictates of a formal foster care placement. Legislation introduced by Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self (D) would provide public defenders for those parents, who currently face separation from their children through contracts with the child welfare agency known as “voluntary placement agreements.” Such arrangements have been criticized by social work scholars and child welfare advocates, who say they can be coercive and strip parents of their due process rights.

“When you look at representation for such a critical decision in your life — whether or not to place your children in the care of the state — we just want to make sure that parents fully understand what they’re stepping into and what their options are,” Rep. Ortiz-Self said in an interview last week.

Optimistically, I believe that activists will continue making progress and will endeavor to remain informed as well as sharing what I learn here.

Messy Complicated and Beautiful

The joy and heartache of friendships. We love our friends and they can break our hearts – just being the messy, complicated and beautiful human beings we all are. That said, some lives are much more challenging than ours. And when our dear friend has such a life, out of love, we do our best with the reality. This is one such story.

I’ve adopted two little girls from a childhood friend. They are ages 5 and 3. The five year old, I brought home when she was born, her mom was very ill at that time. The 3 year old came to me through the foster care system, when she was 9 months old at her mom’s request. My friend had stage 4 cirrhosis during both of the pregnancies, as well as substance abuse and varying illnesses and had been homeless most of her life, was suicidal and with a history of violent behavior. She was in and out of jail. She passed unexpectedly in December two years ago.

I knew the girls had 3 older sisters who were adopted out by the state years ago. I had promised their mom I would look for them but today, they found me. They are 16, 18 and 19. They were looking for their mom. They asked me point blank if their mom was still alive. I answered that and a few questions. I did let them know that she loved them and missed them and thought of them every day and wondered how they were doing. She had hoped to connect with them again. I let them know they had little sisters We exchanged photos.

I just don’t know how to navigate this. I don’t want to give them a negative image of their mom. I’m thinking of just letting them know that she had had a lot of trauma that led to her addictions and illnesses, kind of a negative spiral she got caught up in but that she was a beautiful, amazing person with a big heart and a brilliant mind who was funny and creative and one of a kind….

Some responses to this sad story about life’s more difficult realities.

You tell those sisters that she was a human being that battled a war. With her self, her world, and still loved her children. Even while she fought. There’s something terribly strong and loving about that.

Let them know the truth as much as age appropriate for them to grasp. The real truth is people are messy & complicated & beautiful all at the same time, and that’s something they can grasp at any age, regardless of depth of details.

Please tell the older girls everything – the good, the bad, the ugly. They can handle it and it’ll be valuable information as they navigate their own trauma and mental health issues (and questions about their lives).

The woman replied – I’ve talked to two of the older girls and answered their questions. I sent them videos of their mom telling her life story, about her paintings and stuff.

Safety Security and Protection

I was intrigued and drawn in by this graphic image but wasn’t really finding what my heart was calling for from Dr Shaw. However, I did find this – LINK> Attachment Explained by Sarah Mundy. I had previously been exposed to Reactive Attachment Disorder in my all things adoption community. Sarah notes regarding “attachment” that “with different approaches and a number of terms banded around it can feel so confusing.” Sarah is a Clinical Psychologist with over 15 years of experience in the field. She also admits that as the mother of three, she has learned that theory does not always feel that easy to translate into practice.

Attachment theory was developed by Psychiatrist John Bowlby in the 1930s. Shaped by their experiences of being parented, children develop an internal working model, a template of how they see themselves and the world. Humans learn to behave in ways that will help maximize their chances of getting their needs met.

Sarah goes on to describe 4 attachment patterns – Secure, Insecure/Ambivalent, Insecure/Avoidant and Disorganized. It is clear to me now from 5 years of reading the thoughts and experiences of adoptees now that many of these challenges show up in how they were parented.

As a parent, I am well aware of those times when I feel that I did not do as good of a job parenting as I might have wished. Sarah says, “Try to remember that secure attachment relationships may be what we aspire to, but they are not actually that normal! Please try not to worry – nearly half of us lean towards insecure attachment relationships – they are adaptive ways to fit with the parenting that we have experienced.”

It is reassuring to know that a recent study on infant attachment found that parents need to be “in tune” with their babies about 50% of the time in order for them to develop secure attachment relationships. The benefits of developing a secure attachment are multitude – when we are safe in our relationships the world feels more exciting and less frightening. We can be vulnerable and know that others can help us, we can be curious and find joy more easily.

Sarah has more to say at the link.