Author: debyemm

Almost Aborted ?

This story got my attention – LINK>My Family Oversimplified My Brother’s Adoption Story by Carrie McKean in The Atlantic. She writes –

My brother arrived in my life like the rain always did: after fervent prayer and petitioning. With the matter-of-factness of a child suddenly convinced of her cosmic power, I greeted God with a new request: “Can I have a little brother or sister?” True story from this blog author – before our sons were conceived, I prayed for my husband to want children. The rest is obvious (though I never told him about those prayers).

Then, our old family doctor in a neighboring town, a man familiar with my mom’s longing for another baby, asked if my parents would like to adopt a newborn boy. It was to be a private, closed adoption, as requested by the infant’s birth mother, who faced an unexpected pregnancy in a rigidly conservative and nosy town.

In truth, I don’t think my parents ever knew much about the circumstances leading to my brother’s adoption. They never met William’s mother, so the doctor was the only narrator, which left plenty of room to fill in the story’s gaps with details that suited them.  

At a local crisis-pregnancy-center fundraising event, when her brother was already a teenager, her father called her brother up to the stage and announced – “His birth mom wanted to get an abortion, but the doctor wouldn’t do it.” It was the perfect fairy tale for the occasion, featuring a thwarted villain, clear protagonists, and a satisfying resolution. She writes that she joined in the applause. We were the heroes. We’d saved him. We would save them all, if we could.

She admits that – For most of my adulthood, I haven’t thought much about the fact that my brother was adopted. But in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned, I find myself considering his entry into my life yet again. Watching the gleeful moods of many in the pro-life community post-Roe, I see glimpses of my past. Believing that your brother was “almost aborted” has a way of crystallizing one’s convictions. Growing up in a conservative evangelical community, I was taught that morality was black-and-white. It was an orderly worldview with no room for messy complications; those were hidden behind closed doors. 

She goes on to share – People like me were “single-issue voters,” and the voter guide in my church bulletin told me which politicians were pro-life. Just like so many within the pro-life movement today, we were blinded by our convictions to the uniquely complicating circumstances and considerations in each unwanted pregnancy. 

In the middle of the extremes of a polarized country, the majority of Americans believe that at the least, abortion should be legal in some circumstances and illegal in others. Many lawmakers seem more interested in pleasing a vocal base than they are in having nuanced and thoughtful policy discussions. No person should be reduced to a political pawn. When it comes to aborted or not – we can’t objectively weigh the life we have against the one we don’t. Even in my case, I can’t weigh what my life might have been like had I been given up for adoption because I was not.

Regarding her brother’s adoption, she recognizes regarding his birth mother that – It is possible that adoption was her Plan A, despite the story we grew up hearing. Or maybe she wanted to keep her baby, but her parents pressured her into a different decision. In my own family, my mother pressured my sister to give up my niece. My youngest sister was always going to give my nephew up for adoption. Both were true of the birth mothers in my own family.

The story’s author says – These days, considering that my brother’s mother might have bravely endured a set of circumstances she never wanted because she had no other choice sends my emotions spinning wildly. I move through anger, indignation, and sorrow for the circumstances she faced, for the personal agency she might have been denied, for the losses my brother and she have always had to live with, for the persistent grief that comes from severing a primal relationship. But the spinning can stop in only one place: gratitude for the abortion she did not receive, for the brother that I have. For the family that we’ve made.

Adoption tends to run in families – I know it has in my family – abundantly. The author adopted her youngest daughter. At the age of 10, this girl has begun to grapple more and more with the fact that she doesn’t look like the rest of her family. Her adoptive mother notes – “For weeks, she’d been dissecting our family tree and figuring out how everyone fit together.”

One day this daughter said to the author’s adopted brother – “You’re not my real uncle,” she said, keeping her voice falsely nonchalant and tossing her head so that her long black hair fell to cover half her face. “Because you’re not my mom’s real brother.” He quickly glanced up and caught the author’s eye. They both heard what she was saying between the lines about herself and her place in their family. The author realized that her brother knew better than she ever could, what this daughter was feeling, so she stayed quiet and let him respond. 

“Hey,” his voice softened as he leaned over to gently bump her shoulder with his. She didn’t budge. He playfully kicked her cheetah-print Converse with his mud-caked work boot and she finally looked up to catch his eye. “I’m here, aren’t I? Doesn’t get more real than that.” I looked up at the sky and blinked back tears. His voice, gentled by his West Texas drawl and infinitely tender heart, landed like rain on the brittle places.

Of course, as this girl matures, there will be more questions. It is good that there is another adoptee in the family that she will grow up close to as those questions demand answers.

Better Than Punishment

From an editorial by Dr Ruchi Fitzgerald in LINK>The Hill – It is unimaginable to think that seeking medical care could lead to losing custody of their children, yet this devastating predicament is all too real for pregnant women with addiction in the United States.

In our nation, the systems that aim to protect children from the negative effects of parental substance use often prioritize punitive approaches over proven public health strategies. Fear of being imprisoned, stigmatized, or having their children removed makes many pregnant women with substance use disorder (SUD) afraid to seek medical care, contributing to poor maternal health outcomes. Some state laws, including the law in Illinois where I practice medicine, even mandate that health care professionals report cases of detected controlled substances in a newborn infant as evidence of child neglect. While the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) has no such requirement, CAPTA’s overall approach has led to significant variation in how states, counties, and health care institutions implement its reporting requirements when substance use is involved during pregnancy.

Threatening child removal from a birthing parent with SUD without a risk assessment or evidence of danger to the child is not ultimately improving outcomes for children. Research has long shown that children affected by the trauma of family separation tend to experience worse long-term outcomes on a wide variety of indicators, including education, health, housing, employment, substance use, and involvement with the criminal legal system. With over 400,000 children in foster care across the US, the trauma of separation is widespread.

Forced separation also brings unimaginable pain to new families – triggering in some parents such despair that it deters them from seeking or continuing medical care, including treatment for their SUD. Study after study shows child removal is associated with parental overdose, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and return to substance use. Public health-oriented policies that can result in better outcomes for families are part of the solution.

As an addiction specialist physician, I am involved with the medical care of pregnant people with SUD, and I have seen counterproductive child welfare and criminal investigations launched after a newborn infant tests positive for a controlled substance. Too often, parents become hopeless about recovery once their children are gone.

Current policies and practices related to substance use during pregnancy also result in serious health inequities. Pregnant and parenting people of color are much more likely to be impacted by forced separation than their white counterparts. Black parents are more likely than white parents to be reported for substance use to the child protection system at their child’s delivery despite similar rates of drug use, while Black and Native American children are overrepresented in foster care relative to white children in the setting of parental substance use.

Meanwhile, health outcomes are unnecessarily worse for mothers of color. Since 80% of maternal deaths are due to overdose or suicide, we can save lives with policies and practices that encourage treatment, not punish pregnant women with SUD for seeking it. Policymakers need to remove controlled substance reporting requirements that overreach and contribute to the current punitive approach.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) encourages child protective services agencies not to use evidence of substance use, alone, to sanction parents—especially with child removal; supports eliminating in-utero substance exposure language in child abuse and neglect statutes, and supports policies that extend social services benefits and financial support to families in need.

The US Senate will contemplate reauthorizing and reforming CAPTA this year. Health care professionals who treat pregnant people with medications for addiction, like methadone or buprenorphine for opioid use disorder, do not need to involve child protective services for that reason.

Recovery is possible with the right medical care and support. A pregnant person with addiction seeking medical care deserves a chance to heal and recover with her children. If we want pregnant and parenting people with addiction to access the evidence-based treatment they need, our decision-makers must embrace public health over punitive policies.

Dismantle The Systems

A mother who lost her child to adoption writes (she is also a family preservation activist, which I am too) –

I recently infiltrated a local foster/adoption support group (FASG), and I just want to point out the obvious difference in atmosphere between that group compared to the average mom/community group.

Any time someone in the FASG needs/wants ANYTHING — crib, diapers, formula, respite care, help with electric bill, clothes, high chair, a new bike, you name it — it’s provided, no questions asked. I’ve never seen so much free stuff passed around. It was a bit of a culture shock for me, to be honest.

But when a struggling mother asks for help, she is almost always demonized. I’ve seen women dragged through the mud and their social media accounts doxxed and overanalyzed just for asking for help. (e.g., “I see you got your nails done 6 months ago. I guess you can’t be struggling *that* bad. Maybe you should reprioritize your life.”) The personal attacks are always almost immediate.

If we helped mothers the way we help fosterers/adopters, there would be no need for the foster/adoption system. I agree. We do not do nearly enough to help struggling families survive in our current society.

She explains further – I believe our society’s general lack of knowledge surrounding women’s rights is (at least partially) to blame. And by “women’s rights,” I’m not referring only to abortion. Did you know that it wasn’t until 1988 that it became illegal for a husband to rape his wife in Arizona? And it wasn’t until 2020 that a rape survivor could terminate the parental rights of her rapist when the rape resulted in the conception and subsequent birth of the rapist’s child.

Children have been weaponized against women/mothers. Since we’re no longer the property of our husbands/fathers, they’ve gone after our children as a means of controlling us. We, as women/mothers, have GOT to do better to support one another. Because clearly no one else is going to do it.

Adding to this… I am in no way trying to deflect from the lived experiences of adoptees. I created the Hell that my placed daughter and other “kept” children will have to live in (and their children, spouses, grandchildren, etc). I’m merely suggesting that we should do more upfront to prevent the separation of families to begin with.

Funeral Anxiety

Today’s story (not my own) –

I’m an adoptee who didn’t find out I was adopted until I was 24…I turned 40 in May (major trauma obviously, but that’s for another time). I’ve met my birth mother, maternal grandmother, birth father, and a couple (not all) of my siblings. Novel made short, my birth grandma died last Thursday. Her celebration of life is set for next Friday and I am struggling really fucking hard as to what to do.

Yes, I knew (?) and loved her. I THINK I want to be there. But I also don’t want to be the proverbial long lost child/grandchild/sibling who comes waltzing in. I have so much guilt, I’ve carried it since I first met my birth mom (another long story). It’s such a tricky relationship, on all sides, and I hate this. I wish more than anything I had someone to just tell me what to do; to hop on that flight and do this, or to stay home as I am so sick and conflicted already that it wouldn’t be well for my mental health. My birth mother has always made me feel horribly guilty. My adopted mother does the same. So I just kind of keep all of the moms at arms length for the sake of my mental health. My Granny was different. I only saw her a literal handful of times, but she was strong and kind and she validated me. Now that she’s gone, I don’t know what I want anymore.

It’s just weird. It’s a weird place. Being adopted is weird period, and I mostly despise it.

One response from another adoptee – I wouldn’t want to miss it and regret it. Family events are hard for me because biological family is all gathering, and it is a painful reminder of all the family events I was not a part of. You aren’t obligated to stay. If you feel it’s too much to handle, you could leave at any time. I’d check into nearby coffee shops/diner/regular shops that are in walking distance in case I needed an early escape. I didn’t know my maternal grandma for long but I did spend her last moments with her in the hospital. I am glad I did.

Someone else suggested exit strategies – Opps-forgot my sweater in the car. (5 min break). Tylenol is in the car too. How forgetful. Sigh. Need some caffeine to stop this headache. (Walk to coffee shop, 20 min break) Oh no, I cleared the day but work really needs me to resolve an issue. Can we catch up in a couple of hours over dinner? Also, if it would be helpful, bring a support person who can just listen to you (and serve as a buffer if you need one).

Another adoptee points out that funerals are for the living. Do what’s going to bring YOU peace and screw what anyone else thinks. Don’t overcomplicate your decision with the intricacies of your relationships with your birth family. Either you want to be there for YOU or you don’t. I hope you find peace in whatever decision you make.

Another asked – Would you regret it if you stayed home? Would you later look back and think you should’ve gone? Go with the option that leaves you little to no regret. You deserve to be there, this is your family and I’m sure you’re very wanted. The original poster answered – I’m truly not sure if I would regret it. She’s already been cremated, so I could always go on my own time, alone, and save myself some chaos. It’s just a tricky relationship with my birth mother …odd at best. I’m putting it very nicely, too.  I don’t like feeling manipulated.  It’s been rocky, and then some.

Simply Thankful

So often in this space I am focused on all of the things that are not quite right in adoptionland or within the foster care system. I do care about how adoptees feel about their state of being which began involuntarily and those complex feelings extend to donor conceived persons, especially those who may not have known about their origins until much later in life. I believe we can ALL do better and many who are similarly educated by the realities of life are now speaking out – to help the rest of us understand that the truth is complex and diverse but usually not the fairy tale narratives that adoption agencies prefer for everyone to believe.

My education about all of these related aspects has been brief and intense since my adoptee parents (yes both of them were) died in late 2015 and early 2016 (just 4 mos apart after over 50 years of marriage) and I made my own roots discovery journey. I am certainly grateful for what I learned that made me feel finally “whole” and for the genetically related family I am now acquainted with. They are all precious to me and totally human with flaws and positive attributes like we all are – myself included. And I still have a love in my heart for my adoptive grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins because they were the family I knew and grew up with. They are who I often celebrated Thanksgiving with throughout my childhood and early adulthood.

The thing I am honestly most thankful for is that I was NOT given up for adoption. It is my own personal “miracle” because adoption was so common in my family as to feel natural to us (though I now understand that it never was “natural”). My mom was a high school junior, unwed. My dad had just started at the University of New Mexico in Las Cruces. Yet, I was preserved in the family in which I was conceived. This may explain one of the reasons that family preservation is so important to me personally. I had a good enough childhood. Sometimes we were a bit financially challenged. Sometimes my dad’s anger was a bit too short fused. My mom was unhappy enough at one time to contemplate suicide. My youngest sister ended up homeless. My other sister lost her first born to his paternal grandparents in a court of law and my own daughter ended up being raised by my ex-husband and his second wife. Even so, I am thankful for every CRAZY experience of my own life because it has made my understandings of human nature so much deeper and more reality based.

May you too be counting your own blessings this day.

Miracle Of Science

Lydia Ann and Timothy Ronald Ridgeway were born on October 31 2022

What makes this a miracle is that these twins were gestated from embryos frozen more than 30 years ago. This achieves a new record for the longest-frozen embryos ever to result in a successful live birth. The LINK>National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) is a private faith-based organization that has helped birth more than 1,200 infants from donated embryos. Their previous record-holder, Molly Gibson, was born in 2020 from an embryo that had been frozen for nearly 27 years. An estimated 1,000,000 unused human embryos are currently stored in the US.

The twin embryos had been created for an anonymous married couple using IVF. The man was in his 50s and reportedly relied on a 34-year-old egg donor. They were kept in storage at a fertility lab on the US west coast until 2007 when the couple donated them to the NEDC in Knoxville, Tennessee for another couple to use.

Issues related to being donor conceived persons continue to evolve. An egg donor writes – Just a few years ago, I would have been like every other uninformed person praising this story as a scientific miracle and thinking how wonderful this outcome was for the recipient family.

She continues – Knowing what I do now, this story is heartbreaking. Add the age of the genetic parents at embryo creation to 30 years of freezing. Then add 18 years until the donor conceived twins reach the age of majority when information about their origins could become available to them – and given the anonymous aspect of their embryo’s creation that is a big IF.

Even so, any possibility of these donor conceived persons ever having contact their genetic parents has been rendered impossible. There may be one or more genetic siblings living who could be open to contact. The reality is that there will be a 30-year age difference between these twins and any genetic siblings. Given the anonymous part, any genetic siblings may not know anything more about their own origins that they could pass on the knowledge of.

With advances in technology, it really is necessary to see the complications with more clarity than simple amazement. Although the ability to know their genetic mother and half-siblings remains open to my two donor conceived sons, it was a bit of a shock to my own sensibilities when I turned 60 and realized that my youngest son will only be 20 years old when I turn 70. However, our sons have had us in their lives 24/7 and we’ve shared many traveling and experiential adventures. I will never regret having them and I hope they never regret we did. They are creative and highly intelligent. Although we are unlikely to be in their lives as long as our own parents were in ours, I have every confidence that they have brilliant and interesting lives ahead of them.

Ending November

National Adoption Awareness Month can mean an adoptee feels heard. Or it can be an opportunity with the spotlight shining on adoption to discuss the trauma of being adopted. Some adoptees prefer to share what they feel are the positive things and people being adopted brought them. Every adoptee has a different story to tell but maybe the greatest relief is knowing there are others out there with the same experiences, that we are not alone. Less than 10 days left in this year’s adoption awareness month.

Mardi Link writes in the Traverse City Record Eagle on Nov 20 2022 – LINK> Happy National Adoption Month – “Being adopted isn’t just for babies, it doesn’t last for a single month and the brief burst of celebratory attention lavished on an institution designed to ‘save’ people like me feels jarring.”

She acknowledges – The press releases, celebrity baby adoption photo spreads and international infant rescue stories leave no space to narrate the lifelong complexity of a system which often provides adoptees with no agency over their own lives. For example, I’ve been on a 30-year mission to obtain every page of my medical, adoption, foster care and genealogical records. I’ve had some success at this mostly because I haven’t stopped asking after being told no.

Mardi notes – As a baby, I spent months in foster care before I was adopted. Somewhere, there are records and I want them. They’re mine. If National Adoption Month was really meant to raise awareness about the lifelong requirements of adoptees, the folks behind this celebration would have developed a mechanism for us to use to access our records.

She affirms – We’re also not going away. I’m still filing Freedom of Information Act requests on myself and I’m still writing polite letters. We have to be polite — we can’t ever appear angry or even conflicted about a system everyone else seems to celebrate.

This is the kind of reality that is an every day occurrence for adoptees – Last month, an Michigan Department of Health and Human Services adoption analyst responded to my latest inquiry with a copy of a typed telephone message delivered to the Children’s Aid Society in December of 1961. “Booth hospital telephoned to report Patricia delivered a baby girl at 8:15 a.m. Birth weight six pounds and seven ounces.” That baby was me. Until last month, I didn’t know what time I was born or what my birthweight was.

In my going nowhere efforts with the state of Virginia where my adoptee mom was born, that is the kind of information I would have liked to have received – the hospital’s name, the time my mom was mom, what she weighed. But alas, no. Not without a court order and that means an expensive legal representative and no guarantee of success. Sometimes, we just have to let some details be unresolved. Like why my grandfather abandoned my grandmother and baby mom. Like why my grandmother was sent away from her family in Tennessee to Virginia to give birth to my mom. When she left Tennessee and when she arrived in Virginia. Where she went to wait out her pregnancy until my mom was born. All I can do is make up stories.

Mardi ends her article with Happy National Adoption month. I question whether happy is the right word to attach to it – unless you are an adoptive parent who got what they wanted – someone else’s baby.

Why?

One of my newest and quickly a favorite, adoptee writers is Tony Corsentino. In this essay, LINK> Wtf Is Wrong with That? he shared the Tweet imaged above. He writes, “I took to Twitter in what might have looked like a fit of pique, though for once I wasn’t piqued.”

Every adopted person who searches for their biological parents could answer – why. His answer ? “I decided I needed to learn the identities of my biological parents because, after being diagnosed with cancer and, soon thereafter, becoming the father of two children, I realized that I was no longer content with telling doctors that I knew nothing about my medical history.” I remember those days myself and both of my adoptee parents could never tell medical professionals about their own medical history. This is one of those inconvenient truth about being adopted in a closed, sealed record type of adoption. 

“All men by nature desire to know.” ~ Aristotle I certainly wanted to know, my mom certainly wanted to know, my dad claimed he didn’t. He cautioned my mom against opening a can of worms. I think he was afraid to know.

Tony notes that this knowledge is forbidden. Certainly, my mom tried and was forbidden to know by the state of Tennessee. Tony notes, “I decided, somewhat in the manner of Huckleberry Finn, that if I was courting damnation to do this thing, then so be it, let me be damned.” You have to love that spunk !!

I remember long ago learning not to ask questions but to let people tell me what they wanted me to know on their own initiative. Tony says, “Questions are not obnoxious or offensive in content, but as asked in particular contexts. Imagine being asked if you cheat on your partner, or why you don’t have children. If you and I are more or less strangers and I put those questions to you out of the blue, you would of course be right to protest that it is none of my bloody business.”

Tony suggests that “question intrudes on a zone of privacy that people should respect. There may be no knowing what pain lies underneath an adopted person’s relation to the decision to search, or not to. To ask the question could be a trigger. Compare this to ‘Why did you terminate your pregnancy?’ or, of course, ‘Why did you relinquish your child for adoption?’ Whole histories of hurt might have preceded, and culminated in, these decisions.”

He goes on to share his thoughts about justice and power –

He adds – “To the extent that severance causes such harms, and that discovering one’s genealogical identity can help (or even be essential) to assuage these harms, then we can give real content to the idea of needing to know our genealogical identities.” Then adds, “part of what I was suggesting in these tweets is that we must separate needing to know from deserving to know.” ie Normative ideas grounded in our overall picture of human dignity and freedom.

He concludes by saying “if people better understood how deeply adoptees like myself are committed to reclaiming our moral dignity, and how central to that dignity the question of knowing really is (and is it really that difficult to see?), then we would not need to practice so much forbearance.”

Tony did have more to say than I have shared. The link is at the beginning of this blog if you care to read it all.

Autism and Foster Care

Children with autism are more likely to end up in the foster care system. Long- and short-term outcomes for children in foster care are not good: Children who spend any amount of time in foster homes are less likely than their peers to graduate from high school and more likely to end up homeless, in the criminal justice system or in long-term residential care. Foster care may be an even less desirable place for children with autism, given their special needs. Although foster parents may receive some specialized training, it is generally not nearly enough to help them adequately care for these children.

7.3 percent of Medicaid-enrolled children with autism were in foster care in a 2008 study. This is well above twice the proportion of all Medicaid-enrolled children in foster care. The prevalence of children with autism in foster care started out at 7.5 percent in 2001. It climbed to 10.5 percent in 2005 and then declined to 9.1 percent in 2007. Children with autism were 2.4 times more likely to enter foster care than a typical child.

Raising a child with autism is stressful for families, as the condition is unusually difficult to manage effectively. Some parents may simply not have the skills and resources to do so. This may result in neglect or abuse — and placement in foster care. Alternatively, families may voluntarily place children with autism in foster care because they can’t handle the children’s behavioral problems. Third, parents may relinquish custody so that their children can obtain Medicaid-funded or residential care that they otherwise cannot afford.

I will always be for family preservation. To lower the chances that a child with autism will land in foster care, clinicians working with these families should talk openly about the stresses of raising a child on the spectrum. They should ask how that stress is manifesting in the family, and assist the family members in getting the support they need. All US states should offer home visits from professionals or short-term breaks for parents of children with autism. (Only a handful currently do.) Home visits and respite services have been shown to lower the chances of psychiatric hospitalization among children with autism, and also may reduce the risk of foster care placement.

Foster care arrangements can cost between $30,000 and $50,000 in taxpayer funds per child per year. That money could be more wisely spent supporting the needs of these families. Society has an ethical obligation to help families care for their children with autism. We can and must do better to help these most vulnerable children and their families.

Thanks to David Mandell and his essay in  LINK> Spectrum News for today’s blog. I started with an interest in how neurodivergent issues relate to foster care and a google search ended up with that essay.

It’s The Insecurity

Two people talk about seeing their daughter but the adoptive parents won’t let them now, even though they agreed to an open adoption. If you are an expectant mom being given promises of an open adoption, I would caution you not to believe them. It is so common for an adoption that starts out “open” to quickly become closed. Some adoptive parents are so insecure. It seems like they are afraid that when the real parents are in the picture, the kid will love them too much and that it’ll just remind the child that the adoptive parents aren’t the real parents.

From an adoptee and former foster care youth who is in love with someone who is a First Dad. His ex gave the baby up out of spite and religious differences. It was an open adoption and they involve his ex but not him. He has to beg for updates and has never seen his daughter. He doesn’t know what to do and feels helpless because they are lawyers with lots of money. 

This happens a lot with foster care adoptions. Sometimes it’s offered as a deal – if the parents sign away their rights, they get a say in who adopts their child, or they get to keep the older child and are promised an open adoption with the baby. Some parents don’t even bother trying to get their kids back, they just sign away their rights. Willing relinquishment is rewarded, while parents who put up a fight get punished for being uncooperative, even selfish.

One adoptee shares – I wasn’t supposed to mention being adopted to teachers, doctors, therapists etc. We lived hard in the fantasy… except for when my adoptive mom got pissed… then that fantasy was shattered and my adoption was thrown in my face. So this is how I now picture every adoptive parent who closes an open adoption. That they are being like my adoptive mom firmly trying to shame the genetics outta me and brainwash me to view her and only her as someone who cares.

A birth father who was also a former foster care youth shares his experience – my daughter’s mother is in active addiction and had been told Child Protective Services would not let her keep our baby. She had adopted out her first child, and we decided it would be best to at least have two siblings together, and the adoptive parents have been great with keeping in contact with her… but she is very low contact. She feels tremendous guilt, so she does not make contact and does not reply most of the time. I was promised throughout the entire pregnancy that it would be an open adoption and my daughter would live with them but she would have a relationship with me and with the children that I have full custody of myself, that I’d get pictures and video calls, and she would learn about my family and carry on the traditions we follow. But after they left Texas, they sent me a letter saying they would be severing communication with me because they wanted my daughter to grow up with “less confusion.” They did not go into any further reasons but did tell me they knew it wasn’t fair to me. They thanked me for all that I did to care for her during the pregnancy. I was told quite bluntly by the doctor that our baby only made it because of my involvement in caring for her and her mom. I got to hold my baby once – for an hour supervised at the adoption agency – two days before they flew out. The adoptive parents send photos to her mom, and she forwards them to me once and a while. One of the workers at the adoption said they know it’s unfair but they are powerless after the adoption is finalized. She told me that adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents cause “as much damage, if not more” than birth moms and that they are very selfish. My daughter’s mother lives in poverty and has little contact and no means to ever visit Virginia in person. They don’t see her as a threat. I’ve been sober for ten years and I work hard. They see me as a threat, even though I am not, therefore they cut me out.

An adoptee suggests – Please keep tabs on them, I wouldn’t stop reaching out either. I see dads who stop all action due to where they stand legally. But who you are biologically matters to your children, not legalities. Journal and document everything you can now, keep them included in your journey and future plans. One day you can present them with the truth vs the fairytale.

Here’s a little story for you about dads’ impact through biologies: My daughter is almost 4, her father is an addict and has not been in her life since before she was one. She knows dad is unwell and does not think like we do right now. Tonight before bed she said she wanted to see her dad. I told her I wasn’t sure where he was right now but one day she’ll see him. She asked if she would see his house. I said “maybe, but don’t you want to talk on the phone to get to know him first”. She gave a little giggle. “I do know him, it’s my dad. He’s our family.” I snuggled her tighter and told her “yes he is”. That small conversation spoke volumes to me. I could understand and relate. This was why I personally felt the way I did when I was little as I had the same longing and family feeling about relatives I’d only ever heard of. They were in fact my family. Those adoptive parents that have your baby may try to mask those feelings and reality but they are tucked inside. I hope one day you get to see you’ve never been forgotten.

I know what an enormous impact it had on me personally when I learned that my mother’s original father’s family knew about her and often longed to have contact with her. It turned my perceptions of that branch of my family totally around.

One about male domination – my children’s father signed away his rights, after intentionally getting the kids put back in foster care. He’d told me if I ever left him, he’d manipulate Child Protective Services to make sure I lost the kids forever. That they’d be brainwashed to hate me. His sister adopted the kids and has allowed him to see them. She throws a fit if I post anything about them on Facebook. I’m just hoping they’ll see through the toxic fog eventually.

“My child is confused” is the favorite justification by adoptive parents when they’re about to close the adoption.