Adoption Knowledge Affiliates

I stumbled on this organization, LINK>Adoption Knowledge Affiliates AKA, today and am just passing along some information about them in case it is useful to anyone who reads these blogs.

AKA recognizes that adoption is a lifelong journey. If you have listened to adult adoptees at all you know this. They realize that only only people with a direct connection to adoption can really understand how wide reaching being adopted is. They are inclusive of the foster care and donor conceived community as well. They are a community of people who understand that the feelings connected to separation, identity, and loss can come up again and again for any member of our community.

Their site includes a blog. I found the most recent addition there useful – LINK>The Big Empty (But Don’t Talk About It). It was written in support of the theme – “Disenfranchised Grief and Ambiguous Loss.” She goes on to define what those two terms mean when she encounters them. The term “disenfranchised grief” refers to not being socially entitled to grieve. Ambiguous loss refers to those left without answers, without closure.

She mentions that “I heard those terms bundled up like a two-fer and applied to members of the adoption constellation. Loss is the foundation upon which adoption is built, sometimes forged atop unresolved infertility grief. Birth/first parents are told to move past what little grief they’re permitted. Adoptive parents are told to act “as if” this new child had always been theirs.”

“And adoptees… Well, we’re left to live in that house constructed by everyone but us and, for the most part, don’t question what it’s made of. And we darn sure don’t peel back the wallpaper. Okay, enough with the house metaphor. You get it, right?”

Judges Pro Narrative

Mary Rhodes Russell, MO Supreme Court Chief Justice

Our weekly local newspaper, The Democrat-News (hilarious if you realize how red Missouri is) had an op-ed by our MO Supreme Court Chief Justice, Mary Rhodes Russell, that was a pro-adoption narrative given legal standing. Really not a surprise. Many judges LOVE the great PR value of an adoption finalization hearing.

I’ll spare you all the sweet retelling of the incident. To her credit, she explains the three ways that the adoption of a child takes place. [1] Private agreement (in my family, there were two kinds – one an attorney represented and one a religion represented). She mentions an organization pairing the adoptive parents with an available child. [2] Step-parent adoption (fairly obviously straight forward). She does indicate “after the other natural parent has abandoned the child or otherwise has legally given up parental rights.” My daughter did have a step-mother helping my ex-husband raise her. Though there were times when I was not reachable that could have been considered abandonment, the truth is I was frequently in touch most of her childhood and contributed funds when asked (though when I had custody, my ex refused to make child support payments).

Lastly, there is [3] is an aspect of the juvenile justice system in the state of Missouri. These are cases of the child having been abused, neglected or abandoned and considered “in need of a permanent home elsewhere.”

She shares how a judge goes about deciding a case. Recommendations by the Division of Family Services and the results of a home study by one of their personnel. The local juvenile office provides the judge with their report. The child has a guardian ad litem appointed (to act as their attorney). She brings up the foster care system, noting there are not enough foster parents to meet the demand for them. It is only when the child can not be reunified with their genetic, biological parent that an adoption can occur. She also mentions the CASA volunteers. CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates. She believes these volunteers bring about shorter foster care periods for the child they represent.

Coercive Trickery

Kim Rossler with baby Elliott

I stumbled on this story. It isn’t new and I am unable to find out any current status. It is a cautionary tale for any expectant mother who is conflicted about giving up her baby for adoption or choosing to parent. Rather than go over all the details of this case (which sadly is common to many other such cases), I leave you with a few links to read more if you are interested in it.

Between 2015 and 2019, the story did garner some very public and at times controversial reporting (depending upon which side of the adoption issues you find yourself leaning into). I did see that the Huffington Post had a two-part article by Mirah Riben. LINK>Part 1 was published July 7, 2015 (Rossler gave birth on May 28, 2015 in Mobile County, Alabama). It was followed by LINK>Part II. At three weeks old, an Alabama sheriff removed the baby from his mother, while she was breastfeeding him.

It is the story about what can happen when a predatory adoption agency and an intent to adopt woman get together to derail a decision to parent by a woman who was previously considering giving her baby up for adoption but changed her mind.

LovingFamilies on WordPress published LINK>Update Baby Elliott Case. I also did find that LINK>in 2019, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a Facebook page go back online. I did try to locate it but did not find that it went back up.

This is NOT how adoption is supposed to work.

How Did It Happen To You ?

In a group I am part of, a mother asked – Is there any birth parents in here that didn’t want to do adoption and was forced into the decision and in a way destroyed them and need some support ? I’m trying to find someone similar to my situation as there’s no support groups.

Some responses – The Dept of Human Services stole my kids when they were younger. Another woman notes – my grandson was stolen too.

One woman notes a handful of support groups that she is aware of on Facebook – “Birth Moms Support Group”, “Birth Moms Today”, “Find Birth Parents, Siblings, Adoptees and Family”, “Birth Mothers Support Group” and “Caring for Birthmothers Support Group”. To which the woman who first asked responds – I mean yes but not Child Protective Services (CPS) related or parents who had many years to raise said child. For me, it wasn’t a choice. I mean I’ve been looking but nothing seems to fit my actual situation. I haven’t found a single parent until I made this post.

One adoptee noted that the mother would be hard pressed to find sympathy there, especially from the adoptee members. There are other groups that might be more understanding.

Another suggested – “Birth Moms Broken” or “Birth Moms Forced Adoption”. When someone else suggested – Just type in ‘ birth parents support group’. Several options come up. Another woman shared – you have to be careful. I left one when I found out they have agency workers in there.

One suggested a group that I have a lot of appreciation for LINK>Saving Our Sisters. She also suggested Anti-CPS groups, saying that “there’s more than you may realize”. The woman who first asked rejects Anti-CPS groups because they are mostly about CPS cases. To which someone else responds – I don’t think you realize how much you are in the same boat with parents fighting with CPS. They are coerced into signing their rights away. Most of those cases are against low income parents who were not guilty of abuse and who don’t have the financial means to hire a good attorney. She then suggests – Another one that comes to mind is “Concerned United Birthparents”. My thought process has always been that if there were more unity, instead of focus on the differences, more could get changed.

Here’s one who had the experience – They made the decision for me. They separated us all. I had a high fever in November of 2015. The teacher got my daughter. Div of Children and Families some Academy School teachers wanted my children. I was labeled delusional due to my fever which was 103.3 to 104 degrees for 3 weeks. They had zero mercy.

The woman who first asked shares more – the foster parents had it out for me. They worked in the same office my case was out of and I was pushed into a corner, where I felt I had no choice. Everyone told me that if I didn’t, then it wouldn’t stop. That this was better.

Someone else shares – My girls got totally screwed being adopted. I thought I was doing the right thing but in the end, it was terrible for them…they got molested and the adopted mother covered it up. She had 14 kids that the state let her adopt. All of them. She made good money on that. To this day, she doesn’t take the younger kids to the doctor, feeds them crap food that’s not good for them . . . the list goes on and on. The things they did to my babies !

A couple of other support group suggestions – Adoption Knowledge Affiliates and National Association of Adoptees and Parents.

Separating The Two

I received a nice message from an adoptive mother who found this blog. I do try to be realistic about adoption. But for adoption, I simply would not exist. Both of my parents were adoptees. Also, both of my sisters gave up babies for adoption – both of these now grown individuals – a niece and a nephew – have met the family who’s genetic inheritance is part of their own. I am glad for these reunions.

An adoptee I respect wrote – I have recently been reminded of the importance to distinguish adoption from the industry and criminal practices that have confused and conflated the two. To regain clarity, it does start with recognizing this distinction between adoption and the industry.

He continues – The challenge comes when we start dismantling the way modern adoption works. The very definition states “the fact or act of legally taking someone else’s child and raising it as your own.” This definition does not identify orphaned child, falsifying birth records, coercive tactics of separating the child from their origins, baby farming, child harvesting, colonization, cultural eradication, and war crimes, leaving it conveniently vague as “legally taking” which all the above has been identified as adoption.

Domestically, foster care is used as a means to adopt, where states have been incentivized to remove children and terminate parental rights which makes them eligible for adoption. Again, this is due to the industry and practices of recruitment, supply and demand, and sustainability of a waning human market.

The majority of laws and policies are focused on making these practices more streamlined and ethical. Curious why this is an issue when it comes to child protection and child welfare, especially since it has been well documented for generations. Books like The Child Catchers, The Girls Who Went Away, American Baby, Relinquished among others have brought up adoption as an industry in great detail.

The problem that remains is how the US continues to be a stronghold for the industry. Those in leadership positions have used pro-industry propaganda: “adoption is an option” and “best interest of the child because it gives them a better life” – continuing to conflate adoption with the industry and its criminal practices.

I have been saying that we need to call it for what it really is… only then can we begin to offer solutions. The first step to problem solving is identifying the problem. To your point, adoption is not the problem, it’s how adoptions are being conducted. Removing children from living parents and relatives through force, threat of force, abduction, kidnapping, coercion, deception, falsifying documents, transporting and “rehoming” and exploitation for profit are all elements of another term: trafficking. Sadly, the vast majority simply refuse to acknowledge this despite the overwhelming evidence. Even with admitting the truth, people argue “but not all adoptions are trafficking” – but we’re no longer talking about adoptions at this point are we?

I want also to share this from a kinship adoptive parent – I feel like a lot of this comes from our consumer mentality (as a nation). Because we’re such capitalists, we think that money is what makes one home better than another. Instead of supporting mothers who are struggling, we often perpetuate the lie that their child will be better with someone who can afford to give them more. So little of the industry centers around children and what’s best for them. Over and over, studies show that mom/family is best whenever possible, but our foster and adoption system don’t follow science.

The adoptee above responded to this with – children (born and unborn) are the focus of the industry as the products/commodities it’s selling. The propaganda diverts attention from this crime by focusing on the buyers and making it into a human rights issue of reproductive rights.

We Called Her Mastodon

New Orleans is special in my own heart because my maternal grandmother fled to that city in her effort to undo the surrender of my mom to Georgia Tann, to prove she had the necessary support to raise my mom. It failed, of course. Georgia Tann was a force that could not really be reckoned with as so many stories from her reign of terror attest.

In Missouri, we actually have a state park dedicated to the Mastodon. But the creature for today’s blog comes from a story in The Guardian by Jason Berry – Link>‘We called her mastodon’: infamous New Orleans orphanage’s abusive history ran deeper than ever known. It is not about the storied animal but a perverse kind of human cruelty. My baby mom spent some time in the orphanage in Memphis known as Porter Leath Orphanage but she was not harmed in the way this story details. However, I do believe the orphanage my mother was in, was how how Georgia Tann discovered my mom, thanks to the superintendent there alerting her.

Here is one sad story from a man, Geo, who is now 64 years old. “My childhood was horrific,” he says matter-of-factly. “My father was an abusive alcoholic, my mother diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Madonna Manor was a place where dysfunctional parents dumped their children. My mom was subject to electroshock therapy and thorazine. She lost a baby. She had a psychotic breakdown and was placed in a mental hospital. The state took me over.”

Madonna Manor and its sister facility, Hope Haven, occupy Spanish mission-style buildings on opposite sides of Barataria Boulevard in the New Orleans suburb of Marrero. From the time he entered the now-shuttered complex, says Geo, the “sexual and physical abuse was constant”. Sister Martin Marie was “a huge, ugly, mean woman we called Mastadon behind her back”, he said of a nun who worked there. “The nuns had a sadistic streak. Martin Marie liked to whip out a fold-out army shovel and beat us.”

Almost unbelievable is the story of a bus driver, Charles Earhardt, who began molesting Geo immediately after the boy arrived. Even the home dismissed him, remarkably he managed to adopt two boys, who sadly he abused. The abuses ran from the 1940s through the 1970s. A memo written by the attorneys for 18 of the orphanage victims led to a $5.2 million settlement between the church and orphanage abuse claimants. The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020. Unresolved claims of abuse at Hope Haven and Madonna Manor are on pause because of the bankruptcy.

The sheer scope of the institutional sexual abuse that the Catholic church in New Orleans concealed at the orphanages alone beggars belief. More at The Guardian link above.

PS Geo sells his artwork via an Instagram page, Geo.J.Fineart.

A Sad Truth

I read about this today – We adopted an 8 year old in June. She is not taking it very well. We decorated her room the way she asked. We are sending her to a fabulous school in September. We tell her we love her and we buy her toys. My parents came around with tons of gifts for her and my husband’s dad came to see her as well (his mother passed away).

She refuses to give her granny and grandpa a kiss. She refuses to call us mom and dad. We are trying to be patient but after waiting so long to have a child, we finally got a child but our child does not want us.

She thinks her mom is coming to get her. She was put into the system at the age of 6 due to neglect. Her mother is an alcoholic and her father isn’t around. Her mom forced her to steal alcohol and she got caught. I’m only sharing this because I don’t understand why our daughter does not want a regular mom and dad.

I just walked into her room to collect her laundry and saw her crying. When I asked her what the matter was, she told me that she has her own family who are her “real” family and my husband and I are a “pretend” family.

So, I came up with the idea of teaching her about ancestral magic. Maybe she will be able to feel a connection with her ancestors. That might help her feel that we are also a part of her biological family (watching over her). Do you think this might help ?

blogger’s note – I found this in a book advertisement – LINK>Ancestral Magic by Kirsten Riddle. Empower the here and now with enchanting guidance from your past family history. It is described as “A positive and practical guide to discovering not only your family roots but also your purpose and the magical healing energy available through connecting with your ancestors.”

On to some comments in the group where I saw this –

From a kinship adoptee – my heart breaks for this child. The void & sadness I felt from wanting my mom was almost too much to bear at times. I know what it’s like being that young & longing to be w my real mother.

From another adoptee – this is horrible to read. How do they expect this to go?? It’s a child. A human. Not a product. Ffs. And as a Christian, what if her real family is Christian and they’re going to be shoving this ‘ancestral magic’ nonsense down her throat? Nauseating. And trying to force her to KISS them??? They did that to my daughter who was medical kidnapped as a newborn and tried to force an adoption for 2.5 years and now she has cold sores every month. Sick people. Thank God my adoptive parents never forced me to KISS them, even as a newborn adoption just hugging makes me uncomfortable.

Another writes – Adoptive parents should go through mandatory counselling prior to adopting. This adoptive mother has no idea of the physiological damage she is causing that little girl. Its heart breaking.

Another person asks – so she wants to teach her about deceased ancestors to brainwash her from loving living ancestors ? This is disgusting.

An kinship adoptive parent and the sister of an adoptee suggests – how about some trauma therapy and empathy magic instead?

And a reality check – I understand they love her, but she is not just MAGICALLY your child. She is going through so much trauma being ripped away from her mom. I don’t know why this is a hard concept for this woman to understand.

Nonverbal Learning Disabilities

Many of us learned by witnessing the effect of non-verbal learning disability in the reaction of Gov Tim Walz son while his dad was making his keynote speech this week at the Democratic National Convention. I saw it. What I noticed was how his mother and sister immediately supported him.

My youngest son was uncontrollably emotional when he was very young. So much so, that we avoided triggering a crying spell as much as possible. I do not believe he has this disability but my heart really does understand it. I am thankful he has outgrown that tendency.

All 3 of my guys are most likely Asperger syndrome people. They are very highly intelligent and quirky in their own ways. Probably also a bit OCD. Heck, I may be a bit of all of that myself. LOL

My youngest is also my love bug and would often console me when his older brother upset me with I ❤ U notes to put against my chest. He still prefers a peaceful environment and not upset.

In a cruel shameless fashion some far right persons issued critical comments about Gus and his emotional love for his dad. I’ve seen my own husband tear up with something emotional really touched his heart. I’ve always thought that beautiful.

Because I am familiar with certain quirky personality traits in my own home, I went looking for more information about NVLD. If you would like to know more, here is a link to get you started – LINK>Possible Signs of NVLD.

Moving Forward

A woman writes – For as long as I can remember, my adoption has been a defining part of my life, shaping my identity and experiences. Over the last six months, I’ve been on an intense journey to uncover the truths hidden within my past.

It has been a time filled with pain, confusion, and a desperate need for answers. I’ve come face-to-face with the trauma that has been quietly influencing my life for years, and I’ve realized that some of the people closest to me—those who claim to have no trauma—are unwilling or unable to face the truth alongside me.

For the first time in my life, I’ve had the courage to stand up for myself, to ask the difficult questions that have been weighing on my heart. I’ve come to understand that if the people who say they love me can’t acknowledge or address this part of my life, I can’t let that hold me back.

My journey of healing and self-discovery isn’t dependent on anyone else. I’m moving forward, with or without them, and for the first time, I feel empowered in my decision.

And receives encouragement – It’s a hard journey, but learning our truths is so important. When I went through something similar, I started to feel like an adult and not a little girl. Here’s to the next chapter of your life. Including this from another one – It’s such an eye opener to see how much that experience defines one’s life, we start to identify with it. Sounds like you’ve reached a point of much needed clarity. You deserve truth, kindness and understanding. We wish you the best in this next journey of your life! And this from another – Getting to this point is not for the fainthearted. It takes so much strength and pain and reflection and honesty huge amount of bravery.

I really liked this analogy – life is like you are on an elevator. And there are a group of people on that elevator car with you. Sometimes you stop and a few people get off and others get on. Along the way those who get off may get back on again… or they may not depending on so many factors. It’s ok if people who were on that elevator car get off. Sometimes they need to for you to continue on your way. Sending strength.

A Warning About Delay – Some wait for so long to look for some information and/or answers, that they are no longer obtainable. These wish they had done it sooner.

Let Them Live

An expectant mother writes – I’m currently pregnant and felt there was no way to parent. I was referred to an agency called Let Them Live. They got me a car, a house, and are going to pay my rent until 3 months after the baby is born. They have fund raisers for moms upwards of 30k. They also do tons of workshops from financial planning to meal planning everything in between but those are not required. The only requirements are attending 2 support groups a month, which are done through Google Meet. No money is paid to you directly, only to cover your expenses / purchases.

Another woman responds – I’m glad that you were able to receive assistance. I’m not sure that Let them Live is a super reliable resource, given their lack of fulfillment on their promises to some women. Just advising you to be cautious. (blogger’s note – I immediately discerned red flags when reading about all the stuff the woman received – what was the catch ?)

Doing a Google Search on the organization, I found this at Business Insider – LINK>Anti-abortion group Let Them Live to pay $10,000 it never gave to women who agreed not to terminate pregnancies.

An anti-abortion couple promised pregnant women thousands of dollars if they didn’t have abortions. The women had their babies, but the couple didn’t always hold up their end of the deal. Business Insider investigated. Now Let Them Live says it will pay out the nearly $10,000 the women never got.

The Details – Let Them Live is an Indiana-based nonprofit. They promised the three women thousands of dollars of support in contracts that a lawyer described as “abusive.” The group offers women financial assistance, if they are considering having an abortion for economic reasons, “The Catch” as long as they sign a contract vowing not to terminate their pregnancy.

The women said Let Them Live failed to deliver on $30,660 in support, which it had promised them for childcare, food, rent, and utilities, leaving one considering suicide and another having to “ask on Facebook” for diapers. of All the women said they were at least five months pregnant, when they were told the support would be cut, meaning their options for abortion were narrowing. “I feel conned into keeping this baby,” one told Business Insider.

The organization’s founders are a millennial, anti-abortion, Christian couple who have deep connections to the conservative movement. They claim to have “helped” more than 700 women cancel their abortions, since it was founded in 2019.

Philip Hackney, an expert in nonprofit law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said Let Them Live’s contracts were “abusive” because the women were obligated to conditions including giving up “significant” health privacy rights.

You can read Business Insider’s full investigation report at this LINK>I feel conned into keeping this baby.

(Note – you will be asked to create an account and there IS a paywall. I used my Facebook account and they only asked for my name, profile picture and email address. Then, they asked me to pay.)