Little Fires Everywhere

Just in time for Mother’s Day, I finished reading Celeste Ng’s book. I don’t think any author could do a better job of weaving in EVERY topic I’ve ever spent writing a blog about in this effort. She manages to address transracial adoption, abandonment, infertility, surrogacy and abortion before the book is completed. Race and class underline all the characters and how they interact with each other.

I spent the last few days unable to attend to my own research for my own manuscript in process because I was so very engrossed in this story and could not stop reading.

I will try not to spoil it because you should read it for yourself. I learned about it through an adoption group I belong to and not because of the book per se but because of the TV series. I don’t know how close that series was able to stay to the book but I don’t get commercial TV here.

It is a story about mothers and today we celebrate Mother’s Day. These women’s stories interweave and clash in different, sometimes shocking, sometimes deeply moving ways. At the heart of the drama is a court case trying to resolve the difficult question of who “deserves” to be a mother. I would say there is no such thing as “deserving” to be a mother. One either is or one is not.

The author has friends who’ve conceived easily, who’ve struggled to conceive, who’ve adopted or gone through invasive IVF procedures or used surrogates, or who’ve decided not to conceive. Ng says – “The main constant seems to be judgment. Motherhood seems to be a no-win battle: however you decide to do (or not do) it.”

She continues, “Someone’s going to be criticizing you. You went to too great lengths trying to conceive. You didn’t go to great enough lengths. You had the baby too young. You should have kept the baby even though you were young. You shouldn’t have waited so long to try to have a baby. You’re a too involved mother. You’re not involved enough because you let your child play on the playground alone.”

“It never ends.” And I personally know ALL of that is true.

Ng concludes her thoughts with this insight – “We give women less information about their bodies and reproduction, less control over their bodies, and less support during and after pregnancy – and then we criticize them fiercely for whatever they end up doing.”

Celeste Ng writes in such a skillful manner that I feel humbled in my own attempts in comparison. I cannot recommend her book enough to do it’s brilliance justice but do – read it – if you have not already.

Sadly Needing A Second Chance

It is a sad fact but more common than anyone could ever wish for that some adoptions fail and give rise to attempts to have someone else re-adopt a child. What are the issues?

Audrey recently turned 8 and was adopted domestically when she was 6. She has a very strained, competitive relationship with the other child in her adopted family and has failed to form a healthy attachment to the family. They feel that Audrey will be happier, calmer and more likely to attach to a family who has no other children in the home under the age of 12 (a mature child). A family who is familiar with attachment issues would be a plus! Her family is willing to consider a single parent without other children to take their focus away from Audrey, as well as a 2-parent family.

Yet, consistently, these second chance “offerings” go on to describe the child in very glowing terms.

Audrey’s adopted parents describe her as creative, funny, sometimes stubborn, flexible, playful, helpful and artistic. She enjoys playing with Barbies and practicing her mothering skills with her Baby Alive doll. She is a great helper when she is one-on-one with someone. She likes to help with food prep, cleaning, and laundry, and likes to hear that she’s done a good job. Audrey has a set bedtime and falls asleep quickly. She sometimes likes to read a book before lights out. She enjoys painting and often uses drawing as a means of communicating her feelings and memories. She loves to play board and card games. She can be very funny and sweet, especially when she feels that you are giving her your full attention. She is a mix of girlie-girl and tomboy—she likes dressing up in her mom’s high heels and wearing makeup; but will also play in the mud, climb trees and ride her bike. She is keen on taking off her training wheels soon so she can ride her bike independently!

Audrey has a good imagination and can easily entertain herself. She is a fairly organized child—neither messy nor overly organized. She likes to read and is currently enjoying Fancy Nancy and Dr. Seuss books. She is obsessed with unicorns, so if she can find a book about those, she will read it too! Her favorite foods are peanut butter, pizza and Indian food. She has a different favorite color for every day! Her adopted mom will say, “What’s your favorite color today?”

Audrey is in the 2nd grade, does very well in school and loves school. She gets mostly A’s. She loves the structure, the friends, the teachers and the social aspect. She attends a private school with a small teacher/student ratio and she thrives in this environment. Math is her favorite subject; she enjoys the challenge of solving problems. Her teachers report that she is “a joy to have in class—wonderful and sweet!” She is a worker bee—she loves to be given a task to accomplish for the teacher.

What is it about adoption that causes such a contradiction in the description of a child’s personality? It is the fact that trauma is present and too often adoptive parents don’t want to work through the core issues with patience and tolerance. They only want harmony and so if an adopted child is seen by them as the source of disharmony in their family – then they will seek to be rid of the child as though human beings can simply be thrown away if their use is not satisfying.

A Growing Problem

It is possible for parents to love their children dearly but be unable to kick an addiction that endangers their ability to parent.

Nationally, neglect is the most common reason for the removal of children from their parents (62 percent). These cases often involve other underlying factors such as drug or alcohol abuse or parental mental health problems, which may not be reported or even known by child welfare agencies at the time of removal.

The threshold for indicating parent drug abuse as a reason for removal varies among, and sometimes within, states. For example, some states require a formal diagnosis of drug abuse for parental drug abuse to be listed as a reason for removal, while others maintain lower thresholds such as a positive urine screen or investigator suspicion. States also do not report data on informal arrangements in which a child stays with relatives or family friends without formally entering foster care.

In 2017, the rate of children entering foster care due to parental drug abuse rose for the sixth consecutive year to 131 per 100,000 children nationally—a 5 percent increase from the previous fiscal year and a 53 percent increase since FY 2007. Of the 268,212 children under age 18 removed from their families in FY 2017, 96,400 (36 percent) had parental drug abuse listed as a reason for their removal. 35 US states have experienced an increase in both the number and rate of children entering foster care due to parental drug abuse. Federal law does not require states to specify the type of drug abuse involved in a child’s removal from the home and so the role of opioid addiction is not quantified.

Challenges for keeping families together include a lack of resources to provide appropriate treatment for parents battling addiction and a shortage of foster homes to care for children while their parents are in treatment.

Addiction is an isolating disease. Due to the pandemic, AA and other 12-step groups have moved online, and some methadone clinics have shifted to phone meetings and appointments. The coronavirus may make it harder for parents who have struggled with addiction to stay in recovery. The pandemic has changed some long standing rules for treatment – it is recommended that clinics stop collecting urine samples to test for drug use. Many patients can now get a 14- to 28-day supply of their addiction treatment medication, so they can make fewer trips to methadone or buprenorphine clinics.

It’s too early to tell what long term effects this unprecedented time we are living through will have on families. Compassion, understanding and whatever support can be given under pandemic restrictions may be critical to the long term outcome.

Second Chances

I not talking about what is known as second chance adoptions as sad as that reality is. I’m talking about the second chance life gave me and I hope those who have suffered their own failures at parenting will take heart.

This Sunday, we will go out into the forest among the Wild Azaleas and make a photo of myself with the two boys I am lucky to have in my own life. We have done this every year without fail since the older boy was born. You see, when I was young, I gave birth to a daughter who was and remains very dear to me. Yet, I struggled to support us and in doing so, inadvertently lost the opportunity to parent her and have her in my life during her childhood. I remember as the years went by looking for birthday cards for “my daughter” and that causing despair because they did not describe the unique kind of relationship I had with her. Thankfully, we are close and I am grateful for that much.

When I remarried late in life and after 10 years of being with my husband who never wanted to have children – he changed his mind. Over Margaritas at a Mexican restaurant he announced to me that he actually did want to become a father and it wasn’t easy for us because I was too old to conceive without medical assistance. To conceive, I had to accept the loss of my genetic connection to my sons. They would not exist any other way and they would not be who they are otherwise.

Yet, they grew in my womb and nursed at my breast. I have been in their lives 24/7 with a few minor exceptions. Parenting boys has been challenging because I grew up the oldest of three girls. I was unprepared for the boisterous behavior of male children and through it was far from perfect – they and I survived it. I was told as I struggled in their younger time that boys are more difficult when young and girls more difficult in puberty. I don’t know if that is true but the boys are a joy and easy to live with now. Whatever has caused that blessing, I am grateful.

I am also grateful to know I can actually parent. It is a life-long sorrow that I lost that time with my daughter. Children don’t stop growing and you can’t recover what is lost in your absence. Happy Mother’s Day to all moms.

May Is Foster Care Awareness

I don’t often write about Foster Care because honestly I don’t really have experience with it. I do have some awareness and that is thanks to an adoption group I belong to that includes many former foster youth.

Everyone has the right to a safe and happy childhood. Sadly, not every child is blessed with that as their experience.

Every child should have –

Protection from physical, sexual and emotional abuse

Access to proper healthcare and education

A safe, healthy and stable childhood

This is not a dream but it is a goal. Society is woefully behind in making it a reality.

23,000 children age out of the foster care system every year. Of those, less than 60% will graduate from high school, 20% will become homeless and half will be unemployed when they reach the age of 21. The FBI determined that 60% of the children that have been recovered from sex trafficking in their raids came out of foster care.

I pledge to resist negative and hurtful myths about kids in foster care. I support change that recognizes that there are no throw away kids.

There are many books written on the experiences of youth that have aged out of the foster care system. I will read Foster Girl, A Memoir by Georgette Todd as one way that I can begin to inform myself about the true nature of this system. I will report back after I have read it.

Separating Siblings

Life is messy and stuff happens. It is sad that siblings grow up never knowing one another. My dad had 3 half-siblings he never knew. My mom had 4 half-siblings she never knew.

Parental rights get terminated for a variety of reasons. In these cases, there are often multiples of siblings who end up torn asunder.

Take a very complicated case. 8 children in 5 different homes. Each situation with a different perspective on the circumstances. One of the most worrying is a white grandma with a baby who’s mother and other siblings are from an African-American heritage. The grandma delayed adopting because she wanted to see how “white” the baby would be. It doesn’t end there because people who know about these things suggest – this child is likely going to get darker as they get older and their hair may get kinkier as well. This grandma has no interest in staying connected to mom, mom’s family, or any of the siblings/adoptive families. She has been pretty standoffish.

One set of 3 yr old twins is being raised by an enlightened adoptive mother who is desperately trying to somehow maintain a connection among all of the siblings and admittedly, there is never going to be a huge amount of interaction among these children until they are mature and then it will be up to them to try and locate one another and build a relationship that basically includes not having grown up with one another in a similar environment.

Two of the siblings remain with their mother in a different state from all of the rest. One child was adopted by a family that has other children. This family is very open to a relationship. The adoptive mother of the twins had to track them down herself… because of privacy rules. This woman’s story proves that if there is the will to do the right thing then a way will open up.

Finally, two of the other siblings were adopted by a couple that has no other children. They are in contact with the adoptive mother of the 3 yr old twins but will be moving out of state this summer.

8 children in 5 homes is not ideal. Other than the 2 siblings that remain with their mother, she is entirely shut out of 3 of the other families. Grandma doesn’t allow contact with the baby and the two other adoptive families never knew her and and are not interested in being in contact with her even though the termination of her parental rights happened before they took placement of the kids.

Some empathy came to this adoptive mom trying to do the right thing from a woman who was one of seven kids total between the two parents. Not unusual in what is called blended families. She was the only one who was put up for adoption. She has two sisters and a brother on her mother’s side and three brothers on her father’s side. She admits that “It’s hard to maintain a close sibling relationship with them, even as an adult. We are currently in 5 separate homes.” None of these children have the same two parents.

Her perspective is this – “I feel like complete understanding of the situation from a younger age would have helped with this, but separate homes is just really hard to get around, especially when it takes a road trip to visit. It’ll require a lot of time to keep them close to one another.”

Life is messy and it is so very sad that children get caught up in the middle of chaos and yet still grow up and must find a way for their own selves if family connections matter to them.

Family Contact Matters

I understand this as the child of two adoptees. The adoptions for both of my parents were closed and my parents both died knowing very little about their origins or the details behind why they ended up adopted. Since their deaths, I have been able to recover a lot of my rightful family history. I now know of genetic relatives for each of the four grandparents. It has been quite a journey. It wasn’t easy (though maybe easier for me due to our unique circumstances than for many) and it required persistence and determination to see it through.

Certainly DNA testing and the two major matching sites – Ancestry as well as 23 and Me – were instrumental to my success. Since the genetic relations I was coming into first contact with had no prior knowledge of me and I am well over 60 years old, seeing the DNA truth that I was related to them, I believe it mattered. It is hard to refute when it is right there clear and certain.

My mom had four living half-siblings on her father’s side when she was born. One died young of a sudden heart failure. I barely missed getting to meet my mom’s youngest half-sister by only a few months. I was lucky to connect with her daughter who had all of her mom’s photo albums and possession of a lot of family history, including written accounts. One afternoon with her and I felt like I had lived my Moore family’s history. The family photos I now have digital copies of are precious treasures.

Though my Stark family was the first I became aware of and within a month, I had visited the graves of my grandmother and her parents east of Memphis in Eads Tennessee, those living descendants were the last I finally made a good strong connection with. The reality is that I simply can’t recover 6 decades of not living with the usual family interactions with my true genetic relatives. All I can do is try and build relationships with whatever time each of us has left. The personal memories of my grandmother that my mom’s cousins possessed (she was our favorite aunt, they said) made her come alive for me.

The Salvation Army was somewhat forthcoming with information about my father’s birth at one of their homes for unwed mothers in the San Diego California area just walking distance from the beach and ocean. They were able to give me my father’s full name and the missing piece of how he got from San Diego to El Paso Texas where he was ultimately adopted. Once I knew my grandmother’s first married name (born Hempstead including my dad, later Barnes, Timm at death) and a cousin did 23 and Me, my discoveries were off and running. Her mother, my dad’s youngest half-sibling, was living only 90 miles away from him when he died. Mores the pity.

I thought I’d never know who my dad’s father was since his mother was unwed but the next cousin I met who I share a grandmother with had her photo albums and she left us a breadcrumb. Clearly she had no doubt who my dad’s father was. His father, Rasmus Martin Hansen, was an immigrant, not yet a citizen, and married to a much older woman. So, he probably never knew he was a father and that’s a pity because I do believe my dad and his dad would have been great friends.

I now also have contact with my Danish grandfather’s genetic relatives. If it had not been for the pandemic, they would have had their annual reunion there in Denmark. I haven’t heard but I would not be surprised to know it is postponed. My relative (who I share a great-grandfather with – my dad being the only child of my grandfather) planned to make the Danish relatives aware of me.

To anyone who thinks not knowing who your true relatives are – if the adoptions were more or less good enough, happy enough and loving enough – I am here to tell you that not knowing anything about your family (including medical history) and being cut off from the people you are actually genetically related to DOES matter. Adoption records should be UNSEALED for ALL adult adoptees at their request. Sadly over half of these United States still withhold that information. I know from experience as I encountered this problem in Virginia, Arizona and California. If my mom’s adoption had not been connected to the Georgia Tann, Tennessee Children’s Home Society baby stealing and selling scandal, I would not have gotten my first breakthrough.

A Sad Holiday

For many adoptees, Mother’s Day is a complicated holiday. For many children in Foster Care it is the pits of unhappy reminders.

All my life, Mother’s Day has been a happy one. When we were young, we made my mom breakfast in bed. When I had my oldest son in 2001, that next Spring during the month of May in celebration of Mother’s Day, I began a family tradition of taking my children out among the Wild Azaleas that are at the peak of their annual blooming for “see how you grow” photos. It is cherished by me that we have not missed a single year with my oldest son now 19 years old.

Truth be told, it was my mom’s adoptive mother who started the tradition. She had grown up in Missouri. Her childhood location is some distance to the west but is very similar in rural wildness to where I live. One year she came to visit me before our sons were born and I took her on hikes around our farm. She cherished the experience because it brought back memories of her own childhood in Missouri.

When she learned the Azaleas were blooming, one morning she dressed up (though she was always fully dressed with jewelry and make-up before breakfast). She chose a pink blouse to wear and a spot to sit framed by the Azaleas blooming all around her. Later during that visit, she took me to see her own childhood home and I was surprised to see her farmhouse was very much like our own. We were fortunate because the owner of that house allowed us to go inside and my grandmother shared with me what remained the same and what had changed over time.

As an adoptee, my mom yearned to have a reunion with her own mother. She knew that Georgia Tann played a prominent role in her own adoption story. When news of the scandal resurfaced in the early 1990s, she contacted Denny Glad who lived in Memphis and helped the victims of Georgia Tann’s questionable adoption methods. My mom learned about her from watching a 60 Minutes special about the scandal that had aired on TV around that time.

Adoption records were still sealed in Tennessee as my mom tried without success to learn about her origins. Devastating news was delivered to my mom that her mother had died several years earlier and they would not release her adoption file because the status of her father, twenty years my grandmother’s age, could not be determined (in truth he had been dead 30 years but the state didn’t try very hard at all).

Mrs Glad was instrumental in getting adoption records opened late in the 1990s for Tann’s victims but no one ever told my mom. My mom died believing she had been stolen based on anecdotal stories she read or heard. That wasn’t far from the truth but in reality Tann’s network of suppliers made her aware of my mom and my grandmother, through only the best motivations of a caring mom, got trapped.

Since my mom was deceased before I began to learn so much about adoption overall, I can’t ask her the questions that weigh heavily on my own heart about how she honestly felt about a lot of the issues related to her adoption. She didn’t speak about it to anyone else in our family beyond acknowledging that she had been adopted. That is, except with me and with me her feelings about it were definitely conflicted.

When An Adoptee Becomes A Mother

Adoption is a lifelong process, and becoming a parent adds a layer of complexity as it causes adoptees to revisit, or consider for the first time, the losses that go along with adoption.

This can be surprising for adoptees that were comfortable with their family situation for a couple of decades. I do remember (since both of my parents were adopted) that we had no medical history at the doctor’s office but we knew there was an explanation – adoption.

Adoption can be a delicate subject. The spectrum of the adoptee experience is vast, and the conversation often feels dominated by adoptive parents who have deeply ingrained fears about losing their child or children. This is why I focus more on the adoptee and the original parents who usually have a diminished voice in society.

Feelings and issues are bound to come up when adoptees become parents themselves. Questions arise about family and cultural histories, medical concerns and the role of identity in the parenting experience. An adoptee frequently wonders, “Who am I, really?”

One adoptee shared this – “If there was a part of me that yearned for something – a hole that was difficult to fill – I didn’t connect that with being adopted. I struggled with anxiety and trust, and that worsened as I grew into adulthood. But I was certain I wanted to have biological kids — to create them, to grow them, to birth them. I didn’t know why I needed that, or why I was lonely and struggled to trust others. I just knew I needed to fill this hole, to find this missing piece.”

I have felt this with each of my three biological children – it is an emotional response when I see my baby for the first time, feeling a definite bond to that child. It is a tidal wave, taller and more powerful than falling in love. When an adoptee experiences this it is much more – like they had missed something their entire life but didn’t realized what it was until that moment. The adoptee may even wonder if their mother felt something like that for them. Or if she didn’t. What did that say about their worthiness to be loved ? I wonder if my adoptee mother had these sudden realizations. She is deceased now and I can’t ask her about it.

An adoptee may struggle with how their own original mother could carry them for nine months and then simply let them go – permanently.

For many adoptee moms, this grief is new, something they don’t understand until they become pregnant themselves. New ways of thinking about their adoption often heighten the myriad emotions experienced during pregnancy and birth.

All adoption is rooted in trauma. Being separated from your original family, and from the woman who you grew inside of, is trauma. The baby does miss that heartbeat, that smell, that undeniable bond. For an adoptee during a pregnancy, it may feel quite novel to realize they are about to meet their very first blood relative. Adoptees often experience an added layer of appreciation and gratitude for as well as an added connection to their children.

The Saddest Moment

One of the saddest things was a video of a brand new baby being presented to a woman, everyone in tears of happiness, excitedly saying, “the mother just signed away all rights!” I mean this is a video of the saddest moment of that baby’s life, and they truly don’t seem to have any awareness of that.

There sometimes seems to be a real disconnect. Adoptive parents in their ecstatic joy totally clueless about what is being done to the mother who just gave birth and what will be a lifelong sorrow not only for her but for that child as well.

It has become well-known that a fetus bonds with the woman carrying it in her womb during the 9 months of gestation. When it leaves the womb, this baby still knows its mother. A newborn infant is not a blank slate with no awareness or memories. That is what people thought for a long time and the well-meaning lie that was fed to prospective adoptive parents.

Georgia Tann who was involved in my own mother’s adoption in 1937 believed this and told her clients this was the reality but we now know that the baby knows differently. In desperation as she tried to work through the difficulties of obtaining financial resources as an abandoned mother (she was married, but her husband had left her, and her father refused to help her and my mom), my grandmother turned to the Porter-Leath Orphanage for TEMPORARY care of my mom. In doing this, she was being a responsible mother.

In doing this, she fell into a trap whereby she lost custody of my mother. After being pressured, exploited and coerced to give up her very valuable little white blond baby girl to the Tennessee Children’s Home, my grandmother was allowed one last visit with my mom who had not seen her own mother for some days/weeks.

The joy expressed in my little mother’s body at seeing her mother is something real to behold as she was only about 8 months old at that time. Throughout her life, my mom never stopped longing for the woman who gave birth to her. When she tried to make contact, she was told her mother had died some years before. My mom was devastated and heart-broken.