The Tangled Red Thread

Born into the social experiment of closed adoption in the early 1960s, Noelle was taken home directly from the hospital at the age of three days. Her early life in rural Washington state seemed idyllic. With loving parents, two brothers, and her beloved pets, she had a childhood to be envied. But all that was ripped away, first by the violent loss of her innocence, followed by the slow death of her mother.

Essentially left to raise herself, she embarks on a lifelong journey of self-discovery, guided at unexpected times by “the voice” only she can hear. Even the most mundane choices, such as where to go to college, seem to be divinely directed.

Haunted by recurring loss, Noelle is determined to find her birth mother, to uncover the secrets of the feelings and visions she cannot contain or control. In surviving the breakdown of her husband and marriage, she realizes she has a psychic connection with the family she never knew, and in a series of incredible events reunites not only with them, but also eventually with her soulmate.

A true account of one woman’s life, existing as not one, but two people: one born and one adopted, and enduring the reality of not completely belonging in either world.

Elle Cuardaigh asks these questions, “If adoption is beautiful…

Why do people lie about it?

Why isn’t it the first choice for couples who want children?

Why has it been this way for less than one hundred years?

Why doesn’t everyone give up a baby to someone who can’t have one?

Why does rehoming not only happen but is completely legal?

Why does Biblical scripture have to be twisted in order to justify it?

Why does the Quran condemn it?

Why isn’t it done this way all over the world?

Why are people in other countries horrified when they learn what adoption means here?

Why have several “sending” countries banned international adoption?

Why are adoption agencies being sued or forcibly shut down?

Why do adoptees turn to DNA testing to avoid dating a sibling?

Why is family medical history still the first question asked at doctor appointments?

Why are records kept from the very people they pertain to?

Why is a court order needed to see the records?

Why are adoptees terrified to ask their adopted parents questions about it?

Why do adopted parents swear their families to secrecy?

Why did the Catholic church get rich off its corruption?

Why is coercion routinely employed to get “birth mothers” to relinquish?

Why are there consistently over 100,000 eligible children waiting years for “their forever families”?

Why do white children cost more than black children?

Why is it okay to think of children as commodities as in the above question?

Why do the American Adoption Congress, Adoptee’s Liberty Movement Association, Bastard Nation, Concerned United Birthparents, and numerous other organizations like them exist?

Why do so many adoptees search?

Why did the Australian government officially apologize for its role in it?

Why are adoptees who are murdered by their adopted parents still considered “lucky”?

Why were adoptees used for medical and psychological experiments?

Why are adoptees the punchline of jokes?

Why is it recognized as a childhood trauma?

Why are adoptees considered “as if born to” their adoptive family, yet are subject to conditional terms for incest?

Why in cases where the baby goes back to the natural mother is it called “failure”?

Why are teen adoptees overrepresented in mental health services?

Why do so many rely on it as an industry for their paycheck?

Why is it patterned after the system Georgia Tann – a known kidnapper, trafficker, child killer, and pedophile – developed?

Why is it used as a tool of war and cultural genocide?

Why can’t all adoptees get a passport?

Why are others deported?

Why are adoptees four times more likely than the non-adopted to attempt suicide?

Why can’t we have this conversation?”

The Damage of Neglect

Fatouma and Abdoul as children

This is a Canadian story but sadly, it can happen in any child welfare, foster care system, anywhere.

Fatouma and Abdoul were born in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia from Somali parents. When Fatouma was turning 6, their mother got sick and passed. Her grandmother died the same year. By the time the family was sponsored to come to Canada from a refugee camp in Djibouti, there were only Fatouma, Abdoul, and two of their aunts left. Months after arriving in Cape Breton, the family relocated to Halifax. It was there the children were quickly taken into the child welfare system. Fatouma was 8 and Abdoul was 6.

“What I remember,” Fatouma tells me, “was social workers: two of them coming to the door with ten or more police officers, and saying to my aunt that they were there to take me and Abdoul.”

“Nobody sat us down and gave us an explanation. They didn’t give us a translator. I remember my aunts saying, you are not taking our kids. I remember the cops tackling my two aunts and beating them in front of me. Abdoul and I looked at our aunt, and I said I wasn’t going to go. The officers were trying to put us in the police car and I was fighting with them, and I got slapped because I didn’t want to get in the car. And then I remember sitting in the hospital just waiting for where they were going to send me.”

After the hospital, the children were sent to a temporary foster home, but after a week they were removed from that house and sent to the Dayspring Children’s Centre. It was there that the process of alienating them from their language and culture began.

“Every time I spoke my language, the only language I spoke, I would be in a time out in my room,” Fatouma remembers. “They assumed that we were using it to communicate about getting into trouble.”

“I found out that we were moving and I had no idea where we were going. They just kept telling us they had a good home that fit us and it was going to be better than the Centre. Me and Abdoul were really scared and really nervous. We kept saying: we’re together, so we’ll get through it.”

“The social workers dropped us off on the doorstep and said, ‘here they are, these are their names,’ and then they just left us. I never saw them again.”

In that home, the Gal foster home, Fatouma would repeatedly report abuse. Police and social workers returned her when she ran away, and repeated what she told them to the family which resulted in even harsher abuse. Her warnings to social workers that the foster family were from a rival tribe in Somalia and that the placement would put them at risk were ignored.

It would be more than a year before she was finally removed. Abdoul was left in that home for three more years.

For Fatouma, there was no rescue. Removed from the Gal home, she was bounced between placements. In the group homes, beginning in Grade 6, she would report the men who came around, harassing her, stalking her, looking to exploit her. One of them forced her to come with him to Montreal. Walking home from school with a friend, one of the men followed her, terrifying the girls. When they spoke to the police, the officer warned Fatouma about attention seeking behaviours. The state that had decided they were better parents for the children than their family failed in every way to keep her, such a young child, safe.

“When I got removed from the Gal home, I got put in a home in Cherry Brook but that didn’t last very long. I ended up going into every group home. Finally, they put me in Wood Street because they said I wasn’t listening and I didn’t know how to follow rules. They said I needed to be put there — in a locked home — until I could be obedient. I got really sick in Wood Street, so they extended the 30 days I was originally placed there. They took me to court and got me three more months.”

“I found out I was pregnant in Wood Street. I was 14 going on 15.”

Fatouma reported to workers that she had been raped but, once more, nobody believed her. Instead, they noted in her files that she was a prostitute. She was never given any sexual education, information about birth control, or ever taught about consent.

“I got really sick and they were saying it was the flu. The nurse insisted I did a pregnancy test and it came out positive. When they called my worker, they said right away: we’re going to look for a home for your kid.”

“I said, you’re not taking my baby from me. And they threatened me. They said, you can’t even listen to the rules of the staff, you can’t look after a child. They were saying I was irresponsible. I begged and begged, ‘what do I have to do to show you?’ They told me to take all these parenting courses, but they wouldn’t show me where to go and what to do. By the time I got out of Wood Street, I was so far along in my pregnancy. I didn’t have much time, but I took courses at the Dartmouth Family Centre. I got the certificates and showed them to my workers.”

“Then they said I can’t keep my baby because I lived in group homes. They said there were no homes who wanted to take a teenage mom and a baby, they just wanted the baby. I kept saying no, so they got a woman who wasn’t trained yet and they placed me in her house.”

“I believe I was sent to her house the day I got out the hospital, and I only met her the day I had my daughter Nemiah. I went from the hospital to this woman’s house and within the first week and a half she was already complaining about wanting more money because I was using too much power and water. She wouldn’t buy me food and I was breastfeeding. I told my worker how she was treating me, and they said she was complaining about me. So I said I couldn’t stay there but they said I had no options.”

This sad story is typical of other stories even in the US.  There is so very much more to this story.  If you are interested, you can read it at this link – “There was no care.”

Reclaiming The Adoption Story

Ashley Billings

I’ve been running behind on everything all week and today is no exception.  Running out of time to do a blog today, I thought I would share Ashley’s own blog with you as she is an adoptee with her own story to share.  I met her through this blog and I follow her own blog too.

In her “About” section, she writes that she is 17 years old and was adopted at five days old. She describes her adoptive family as the most amazing in the world.  However, she also admits that being adopted has definitely brought up many issues and feelings. She says that she has found adoption is often told from parent’s and family’s perspective. Way too often, people don’t consider what the adoptee is feeling and going through. Most resources are geared towards parents and families.

She wants her readers to know – EVERYONE’S feelings are valid.

She wants other adoptees that find her to know that they are not taking this journey alone. She acknowledges that everyone’s story is unique.  Her purpose in writing the blog is to reclaim the adoption story by voicing her own journey through adoption.

Her latest entry is titled My Perfect Life. She writes that while everything on the surface of her life appeared very good, it was weird to her how she was still so sad all the time.  For her, discovering God through a friend has helped her continue forward with her life.

In another blog – I’m A Foster Aunt – she describes how she has struggled with a fear of being unwanted. Because she was given up for adoption, she always felt like, “Well, if my own mom didn’t want me before she knew me, why would anyone else?”  Many adoptees have abandonment and rejection issues.

In What Is My Tattoo – she describes it as right under her ankle and is It is a heart and a triangle overlaid one another. To her represents the love between the child, birth family, and adoptive family during the adoption process. She says it is a constant reminder to her that no matter what she believe at any moment, love went into her adoption. She says “I know my adoptive family loves me, but often I question if my birth family does.”

Adoption is complicated and every triad is different.  I can’t answer her question about her birth family but I sincerely hope that someday she knows the answer herself.

Motherless Child

I was listening to an African-American group called Sweet Honey in the Rock sing acapella the old spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child and read it dates back to the days of slavery when children were often sold off away from their parents and siblings.  My heart ached listening.

These lyrics caught my attention –

I’m a motherless child,
I can hear my mother calling me,
I can hear my mother’s voice calling me home.
Across the waters, come on home across the waters.

Of course, my thoughts immediately went to adoption and I guess not surprisingly to my own mother.  She yearned to find and connect with her mother.  She had a complicated relationship with the woman who adopted her.  Never felt like she quite measured up to the expectations.

She felt the loss keenly.  Especially when she learned the Georgia Tann story.  She never could reconcile the fact that she was born near Richmond Virginia but had been adopted in Memphis Tennessee as an infant.  She always believed that her adoption was somehow “inappropriate” as she politely worded it in a letter she wrote to the State of Tennessee trying to get her own adoption file.  She was denied on more than one technicality and although some years later a law was passed to allow her to receive that file, that information never reached her.

After her death, I did receive that file from Tennessee.  My mom’s belief that a nurse in cahoots with Georgia Tann had stolen her in Virginia and transported her to Tennessee wasn’t quite the true story.  But that kind of story did happen all too frequently with Tann’s baby stealing and selling scandal.

The real story is sad and my grandmother was definitely exploited in the midst of an impossible situation.  Her widowed father still raising some of his children as a poor sharecropper refused my grandmother support with her baby when she returned to Memphis.  She was a married woman.  Why she was estranged from her husband I’ll never know.  I have some theories.

He was WPA and the large hospital project that brought him to Memphis had ended.  He was widowed too and his mother had his children in her care in Arkansas.  His first wife had died 8 months pregnant on a cold and rainy December morning and her baby in the womb died with her.  The image shared with me by my cousin haunts me still.  A Phil Collins song The Roof Is Leaking makes me think of my grandfather. These lyrics caught my attention –

The roof is leaking and the wind is howling,
The kids are crying cause the sheets are so cold.
I woke this morning and my hands were frozen

My wife’s expecting but I hope she can wait
Cause there’s been signs it will be another bad one
But Spring will soon be here.

Too many sad maternal deaths.  My grandmother lost her own mother at the age of 11 with four other younger siblings, including the baby one, in the household at that time.

His employment ended, my grandmother was already 4 months pregnant and due in January.  My heart believes my grandfather feared for her and the baby’s well-being as he had no certain shelter to offer her come winter.  It may be that his own mother wasn’t happy he had married such a young woman, as young as his oldest sons.  She may not have been welcoming either.  Then came the Superflood on the Mississippi River in 1937 (at the same time my mom was born) and he was out shoring up the levees in Arkansas, when my grandmother arrived back in Memphis.

Whatever the real story is, that I can never know, my grandmother went to the Juvenile Court in Memphis trying to reach him.  No response.  Desperate, she took my mom to the storied Porter Leath Orphanage for temporary care.  The superintendent there alerted Georgia Tann to my mom’s presence.  My mom was the blond, blue eyed kind of baby girl that Tann most coveted for her clients.  And so began the pressure on my grandmother to separate her from my mom.

Four days after signing the surrender papers, my grandmother called Georgia Tann’s office trying to get my mother back.  “I have friends in New Orleans who will take us in,” she told them.  It was to no avail because Tann’s paying customer was already on her way by train from Nogales Arizona to pick up my mom.

My image today comes from a Facebook page titled Memoirs of a Motherless Child.  She relates a story about Brooklyn and it’s connection to her own mother there.  After her mother’s death, she writes –

I later blamed myself for never being able to meet her, know her, experience her because I didn’t go look for her, as if that would have done any good. She didn’t want to be found not because she didn’t love me (took me years to realize that but my inner child still can’t accept it wholeheartedly) but because she loved me so much she didn’t want to hurt or disappoint me. My inner child could very well be making that up too in order to spare me more hurt and trauma. What still hurts the most is I’ll never know what part of me was/is that part of you. So I’ll continue to travel this endless journey of uncertainty until our energies meet somehow.

I believe that is how my mom felt too because by the time she tried to find her mother, her mother was only somewhat recently deceased.  That devastated my mom.  Now that my own mom has also died, I believe she was reunited with the mother who never gave up hoping she would see her precious daughter again as well.  So much sadness when a mother and her child are separated.

 

Women’s Rights

The topic of abortion and it’s intersectionality with adoption comes up often in adoption groups as it does in religious groups, especially those that are strong anti-abortion.  Because every baby that isn’t aborted is a potential baby for sale to someone, usually a couple, who can afford to buy the baby.  And money is always involved.

Throughout history, men have made decisions about what a woman is allowed to do.  It goes back to biblical texts that support a patriarchy.  Most women of at least a certain mature age have spent a great deal of their life dealing with men who feel an entitlement to a woman’s body in one manner or another.  And throughout history, men have impregnated woman with no sense of responsibility for any conceptions that occur afterwards.

Abortion often comes up in conjunction with infertility.  Infertility has EVERYTHING to do with adoption. Abortion is also a topic discussed in a pro-choice adoption community group. Hopeful adoptive parents use their infertility to complain about abortion.

The most enlightened point of view is just because I can’t have kids, doesn’t mean another woman can’t decide whats best for her body, mind and soul.  I will always defend a woman’s rights – not just to determine whether to carry a pregnancy to term but for equal pay, for the right to be respected when she refuses to have sex with a man and to be free of the violence of domestic abuse.

In response to someone clearly pro-Life in my adoption group, one woman wrote – I am an adoptive parent who had fertility issues. While I would never choose abortion for myself, I will never judge a woman who does. That’s not my job. I leave all judgement to God.

As someone who had an abortion, that I still think actually was the right choice for my own self and for my male partner at the time, it is not an easy thing to live with.  It’s not “God” who judges me, but my own self, and I have reflected on it deeply many many times.  The pro-Life narrative that one can’t avoid doesn’t help with the paradox of believing in a human life developing in the womb and still making the decision that the life is not what is best for one’s self given one’s personal circumstances.

One woman wrote – I’ve been struggling with infertility for three years. It sucks. But I’m still very pro-choice. My struggle to get pregnant will never mean anyone else should be forced to go through a pregnancy.

A pregnancy is a long term commitment – 9 months – which is almost an entire year.  It impacts one’s ability to live their life according to their own trajectory.  If a woman carries the baby to term and then given it up for adoption, the impacts of that decision last a lifetime for the woman and for her child – and they are not happy impacts, even in the best of circumstances.  Like any horrific trauma, both may learn to live with it.  When a woman chooses an abortion, it is not the preferred choice, which would have been not to become pregnant to begin with.  In my case, work that kept me away from my pharmacy, meant I was late beginning that month’s birth control.

I also support society coming to the financial and emotion aid of any woman who carries a baby to term and wants to parent that child.  That is the intersection point where the trauma of mother and child separations could be prevented.  If one’s belief is in God, then perhaps the best perspective for a pro-Life woman dealing with infertility is that God chose not to make them a parent.  Acceptance, in other words.

 

Corky Jane

I do want to be very clear from the beginning – I do not recommend you turn to this wannbe celebrity preying out there in adoptionland.  She cares more about raking up followers on TikTok than about the families torn apart by adoption.  And she is everywhere.

Someone wrote in a FB group called Hopeless Adoptive Predators – “Why do so many narcissistic adopters blog about adoption like they are some type of saint? She claims to “help adoptees” but then blocks them after they comment. My expectations were low, and they were met.”

Another woman asked a logical question – “So I have no idea how tiktok works but how is she choosing her audience? Is she focusing on her videos on pregnant women?”  Count me among the TikTok clueless.  All I know about them is that our president hates them.  They have a lot of company in that regard.

Here’s the answer – TikTok’s user base is younger. Like many of the users are teens compared to other social media sites, such as Facebook. “TikTok has really hit the nail on the head when it comes to engaging with the youngsters of the world. It might be a bit of a head scratcher for the older generations, but TikTok is no news to the teens of the world. 41 percent of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24 (Globalwebindex, 2019)… To start off, the popularity of TikTok with the younger generation could be explained by the fact that the app creators decided to choose under 18 as their target audience from the very beginning.”  Yep, I am “older” – like 66 – no wonder I’m not “into” TikTok.

So the issue isn’t focusing Corky Jane’s content on pregnant women but more that she’s using a social media platform that is primarily for younger people and especially teens, meaning she is essentially being predatory and trying to find pregnant teens/young adults.

I went to her website (something easier for an old lady like me).  First of all, she cluelessly uses the term Birth Mother in a “Dear” letter.  Women who conceive and give birth to a child are that child’s MOTHER.  Period.  “Birth” when added to “mother” is viewed as a derogatory term by many woman who have lost their child to an adoptive couple.  I didn’t know that myself, until I began educating myself about all things adoption.  So, right there this woman loses all credibility with me as some kind of “informed” source.

These are the arguments often used by the adoption industry with expectant mothers to pry their baby away from them – “You are strong, you are brave, you are unselfish.”  All to make her feel better about the worst moment in her life which will haunt her for the rest of her lifetime.  Good ole’ Corky Jane goes on to admit that she worries about the woman when she doesn’t hear back from her, “I don’t know if you are grieving, or busy, or what the reason is, but I will always reach out to you until you ask me not to.”

It is an awful catch 22 for the mother.  Reminders of the child she isn’t raising.  Triggering grief and regret.  It is like rubbing salt into the poor woman’s wounds.  She probably ought to tell Corky Jane not to reach out to her but the morbid fascination of what is happening to her precious child won’t let her not look.  My heart breaks for her but not for Corky Jane.

The Family Preservation Project

Ever since I first heard the words “family preservation”, I have loved this concept.  I suppose because my family was fragmented by adoption – both parents were adoptees and both of my sisters gave up babies for adoption.  I often wonder what it would have been like for our family to have remained intact – parents with children – but then I would not exist, my sisters would not exist and they couldn’t have given up their babies to adoption.  Still, I do like the concept of family preservation and all of the efforts in these modern times to keep mothers and their babies together and if there is a dad present, him too.

So why the elephants ?  The Family Preservation Project‘s website answers that for me.

The Elephant is symbolic of the community this page would like to build. Elephants are a matriarchal society; that is, one that is led by a head cow, who presides over her herd of females. Each herd is made up of mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts. They are guided by the oldest and largest female of the herd. This herd sticks closely together, rejoicing at the birth of a calf and mourning at the death of a member.

The Family Preservation Project is not a community that necessarily excludes men, but one that celebrates femininity and the intimate connections made by women through motherhood.

FP365 is a family preservation movement and it is global. Their mission is to empower vulnerable, expectant mothers and prevent family separation. fp365 is dedicated to building a strong foundation of advocates willing to provide local support, networking and community involvement.  Additionally, they believe a critical piece of education and awareness is found by exploring the layers of lived experience. As we listen to those voices we will shift the current cultural narrative which promotes separation by adoption to one which celebrates the preservation of family. 

In the adoption community I belong to, the women have a mission to encourage expectant mothers to keep their baby and not rush into adoption.  They often mention Saving Our Sisters (SOS) as a resource.

SOS supports all members of expectant families considering adoption. We are committed to helping them make fully informed decisions based on information that so many other families have learned too late. We are dedicated to ensuring that they avoid applying a permanent solution to a temporary crisis based on partial or misinformation.

SOS is dedicated to direct action and education regarding the preservation of biological families whenever possible. This may include assisting expectant and new parents by locating resources, explaining the long and short term effects of adoption separation on everyone in the natural family, explaining the lifelong effects of trauma their infant will suffer if exposed to maternal separation, and connecting them with a local support person and mentor.

SOS welcomes volunteers, donations, and donors to join us in empowering and preserving families by preventing unnecessary adoptions and advocating for fair and ethical adoption laws, policies and practices.

If you want to learn more about how elephant families are like human families you can read the Elephants Without Borders pdf.  Throughout time, elephants have had a curious effect on people, creating a sense of reverence and respect. Of course, their massive size and immense strength is enough to demand it. But elephants and humans have much in common, including their intelligence.

Both elephants and humans love, protect, and nurture family members and educate the young with the skills and knowledge they need to survive. Like humans, elephants are not born with natural survival instincts and need to be taught these by their mothers and other female guardians. Lessons include how and where to feed, to use tools, what to be aware of and to understand their place in their social structure. (Much more at my link above.)

 

Losing My Grandparents

My Granny, My Dad and My Granddaddy

Both of my parents were adopted.  So the grandparents I grew up with in my childhood were never actually related to me.  They were influential though.  The two people shown above often cared for me and my sisters over weekends.  I think mostly to get us into their church, the Church of Christ, as contrasted with the church our mom was raising us in, the Episcopal church.  My dad didn’t go to church at the time.  He worked shift work in a refinery, often double shifts, and so was mostly asleep when he wasn’t at work, except for meals.  Maybe he would watch a little TV or read a news magazine or the local paper.

My mom conceived me while she was still in high school and my dad had just started at the university out of town.  I think these two people shown above made certain my dad quit his dreams of a higher education and married my mom and went to work to support his young family.  Not that he didn’t want to marry my mom.  They were married over 50 years until death did them part and they died only 4 months apart.  My dad’s adoptive parents insisted I have a biblical name to save my damaged soul because of my illegitimate conception.

All of my grandparents had already died – and in fact my parents had already died as well – when I went in search of my original grandparents.  Though I doubted I would ever know who my dad’s father was because his mother was unwed and he was given her maiden name at birth.  I do now know who ALL 4 of my original grandparents were, their names and their ancestry.  I didn’t expect, that in learning who my original grandparents were, I would in effect “lose” my grandparents (those people who adopted my own parents as infants).

But I did.

Though I know I have a “history” with these people who adopted and raised my parents, they no longer feel like my grandparents.  And my true biological and genetic grandparents have taken their place in my heart and imagination, even though I have scant knowledge (but some) of these people whose genes are in me and helped create who I am at the level of physicality.  I have connected with some cousins who share the same original grandparents and what I know of my original grandparents is thanks to anything they have shared with me about these people.

I don’t love the people who raised my parents any the less but they are so far back in my own past now.  Though I had occasional interactions with them up until their deaths, as living people they are receding for me.  They are fading . . .

My original grandparents didn’t lose my parents due to anything worse than poverty and a lack of family support.  That doesn’t say much for my parents own original grandparents, who did not seem to care about my parents very much.  I’ve only heard that my mom mattered to her dad, which was a happy surprise for me and quickly warmed my heart towards that man.  My dad’s father probably never even knew he existed.  His mom was self-reliant and he was a married man, so she just handled it alone.

It is strange.  I was robbed of my original grandparents by the Great Depression, Georgia Tann and the Salvation Army.  Both of my grandmothers eventually re-married.  If they could have been sustained somehow, I know they would have raised their children because every indication is that they loved their babies and mourned their loss until they died.

Nothing makes up for these losses really but at least, I do know where I came from – which is more than my parents knew.  They died completely ignorant of who their own original parents were.  And that is very sad.

When There Is Another Mother

Cinderella and her Step Mother

Step-mothers have an enduring place in the societal imagination and like natural mothers they come in all types from loving and kind to cruel and indifferent.

I often relate to original mothers who have lost a child to adoption.  In my case, I lost custody unofficially to my husband when he remarried a woman with a child and they proceeded to have another child.  Because my daughter grew up for the most part away from me, I suffered every bit as much as any mother who has lost awareness of her child’s day to day life.  I am grateful that I continue to have my daughter’s presence in my life though it is mostly at a distance and that for the most part our relationship is a good one with no more than the usual number of bumps along the road of our life’s path and unfolding.

When I was on a path of discovering who my original grandparents were, a big breakthrough was learning that my dad’s unwed mother had subsequently married and what her married name was.  I learned that thanks to finding a copy of a will on Ancestry.com that was her step-mothers.  It was clear between the lines that there was some kind of rupture in the relationship of the step-mother with her husband’s children by a previous wife who died when my grandmother was only 3 mos old.

When I discovered a cousin with the same grandmother thanks to 23 and Me DNA testing, she told me stories she had heard about my grandmother’s life with her step-mother.  How the step-mother would tie her to a tree in a lightning storm either to scare my grandmother into being compliant or in the hope the tree would get struck and eliminate the life of my grandmother.  Who can know now?  But it was traumatic for my grandmother.  Also that her step-mother put her to work in a rayon mill, barely a teen, in Asheville N Carolina when they migrated there from Oyster Bay Long Island.  Her step-mother would take the money she earned to assist the family’s financial support and while that is not unusual in itself for a family in poverty, it was still yet another area of conflict between them.  So my grandmother “divorced” her family in effect by refusing to return to N Carolina and instead stayed in La Jolla California with her aunt.  It was there that she met the father of my dad.

I was reading this morning about step-parent groups are as mean and nasty to original parents as some foster/adoptive parent groups.  I suppose it is a type of insecurity that would drive someone to bash the child’s original parent, want to erase the child’s original parents and want the child to replace those with the step, foster or adoptive parent by insisting the child call them mom or dad.  My daughter tells me that her step-mother always insisted my daughter maintain a relationship with me.  I can only guess regarding some of the less than happy thoughts my daughter may have had about me from time to time but as I said, I am thankful for the relationship I still have with my daughter.  Her step-mother died some years ago.  My daughter still honors her memory.  At the same time, I feel less competition, if that is the proper word for it.  I have tried to heal my own wounds around the situation.

One step-mother admitted that she hates it when her step child calls her by her given name. She has to explain to other people hearing that, why her step daughter doesn’t call her mom and is personally embarrassed. She thinks it’s disrespectful of her step daughter because this step-mother accepted her step daughter as her own child. She considers her step daughter her daughter.  I think the most hurtful thing that ever reached my own ears related to my daughter’s step-mother is that she told my daughter that I gave birth to her so that the step-mother could have her instead.  Not an exact quote but close enough.

Regarding these online groups, one woman said of the mommy groups and step parent groups that they can be awful. The entitlement. The control issues. When you marry someone with kids, the kids have parents already. You’re accepting the ex and the child or children. It is very important to never bash the ex partner who is also the child’s parent or have unrealistic expectations about how your step-child relates to you. You came into the child’s life uninvited.

Much the same applies to adoptive and foster parents as relates to a child’s original parents.  Many wounds come from this negativity in an effort to build up one’s own ego.

Licensed

First it was the Gotcha Day announcements and parties related to adoptions.  Now the promotions have moved into the field of foster care.

Starry eyed.  When someone thinks getting a foster care license is such a difficult accomplishment that it needs to be celebrated publicly as this huge deal, that’s a red flag. Truth is, it’s easy to become a foster parent.

The stork with the baby and the baby bottle images hint at a broader agenda and that is – to participate in what is known as foster to adopt – which is often an easier path to adopting an infant or young toddler than traditional adoption.  And the “no cravings” remark must be alluding to pregnancy and the well-known strange cravings for certain foods a pregnant woman experiences.

And it seems to be a thing also to have a “foster shower” and an Amazon wish list when announcing that one intends to foster children.

As a reality check, when becoming licensed to foster children, as the graphic indicates in its unique manner, you have to define age groups and number of kids. You have to have beds and maybe change some rooms around for the age requirements.  You can’t get licensed for specific ages without having space and furniture (beds) for that age group. If you wanted to be open to all ages, you have to have a crib (and basic baby supplies), toddler bed and twin bed minimum.

One foster parent did say however, “when older siblings of little ones we were fostering came into care we were able to take them with minimal fuss, no additional training required.”  Which is a good thing.

People approaching foster care like the announcement suggests often claim they have worked through the loss of being infertile completely. Once they are finally “called” to foster with the expectation they will adopt a newborn, they need baby announcements with storks, do gender reveals and big baby showers, seek attention and have professional photo shoots in hospital beds and wheelchairs.  Doing it all – so it appears to be the same circumstance as someone who has given birth. It’s delusional and not the same.

And finally, I can’t help but ask – didn’t their “training” mention to them that the objective of fostering is family reunification ?  This expression is actually celebrating the worst tragedy and trauma this family of origin is likely to see. Comparing it in any fashion to birth, pregnancy, a stork dropping a baby at your door is tone deaf and gross. Given that these kids needs are provided for through a government stipend, I also cannot imagine asking anyone for gifts.