Secrets And Adoption

I heard an interview with the author on the radio yesterday and this is a story of adoption and the secrets that often are kept to protect the adoptive mother. Like my own self, the author is the natural daughter of the adoptee.

In 1929, a little girl was kidnapped, snatched off a beach in England. Five anguished days of searching ensue, and then she turns up in a neighboring village perfectly fine, wearing a red dress instead of the blue one she’d had on when she disappeared. She was only 3. She had no memory of it. And she didn’t even learn of it until she was well into middle age.

Her parents knew exactly who kidnapped her, and they knew why. And they never told. When she was 13, she was on a little country bus – little green country bus going through her very, very flat landscape from school to home one afternoon – short journey. Front of the bus is a woman in black. This woman comes down the aisle of the bus towards her and says, your grandmother wants to see you. And my mother didn’t have a grandmother, so she immediately knew something terrible was wrong. Everybody on the bus except her knew who the grandmother was. And the woman in black had in her hand when she said these words a tiny, little sepia Brownie camera image of my mother.

She goes home to her mother, and her mother says nothing and summons the father. And eventually, there’s a scene and – the mother and father sitting opposite my mother. And they just tell her that they took her in as if a kind of kindness – that she was a sort of waif or a stray and, you know, it was a charitable act. So she immediately began to feel that nobody wanted her.

My book is a campaign against collective silence. And why ? I think that they were protecting one particular person – my mother’s adopted mother. Had they not all been so kind to her and protected her, she might have felt shame. I think that it damaged my mom in ways she can’t even see. You know, there were traits that she has – she’s incredibly socially anxious. I know why.

Betrayal

It may seem harsh but for a lot of adoptees, the giving up was a betrayal. The handover that can be felt by the adoptee, continually felt throughout their life. The rejection. The abandonment. The unanswerable questions.

It is a forever loss – permanent.

Even in the pre-verbal infant – adoption – is “remembered” on an emotional, cellular level. This in turn causes lots of behavioral and self-worth related issues. Often the adoptee can not explain why they feel as they do. Why they act out like they do. Their anger is in a very deep place that cannot be released because the adoptee is unable to express the emotional context of their feelings in language.

It is impossible to proclaim adoption good or bad in all circumstances. There are true orphans and then there is the exploited single mother. There is the profit motive to take her baby and sell it to a couple who has the means to meet the demanded price.

All children are priceless but the adoptee has been priced and that price paid, not only by the adoptive parents but by the original parents and their kin – and most especially, always, by the adoptee’s own self.

Finding Out One Was Adopted

Above is a segment of my Dad’s original adoption papers. He was actually adopted twice (his adoptive mother divorced the first husband and remarried, changing my Dad’s name when he was already 8 years old). Upon discovering one of my Hempstead relatives, the first thing she noticed had entirely been missed by my own self, the Salvation Army appeared to “own” him and his mother’s name was nowhere to be found on the document.

I don’t know how old either of my parents were when they learned they were adopted but I believe each was as old as they needed to be told. I think they always “knew” even before they consciously knew.

There are many ways an adoptee can learn they were adopted. They might accidentally overhear a conversation. They might develop a serious illness that requires accurate medical information. They may discover papers in their adoptive parents’ files after their death or a stranger may come into their life (thanks to DNA testing) and claim to be related.

Most human beings have a need for love and a sense of belonging, also for self-esteem and a recognition of their value. It seems the almost all emotional wounds need these and some also highlight safety and security and I believe that is true of adoptees as well.

There are so many sad, false beliefs that filter into the heart of an adoptee – something must be wrong with me because my “real” parents gave me away, I don’t belong anywhere, I probably never should have been born, I don’t know who I am and if my “real” parents could abandon me, anyone could.

An adoptee seeking reunion with their original family fears another rejection. If they were adopted into a family with children already, they may believe they are loved less and many fear they could be taken away from their adoptive family and even fear that it might be the original family recovering them.

Adoptees suffer many side effects of having been adopted. They may be subject to mood swings, they feel less equal within a family unit, they may be obsessed with the past, struggle with a sense of identity, see how they are different than the adoptive family they are living within, have a hard time saying good-bye, may be always trying to prove their worthiness, may expect to be deceived or engage in risky behavior and may exhibit behaviors indicating a subservience.

That is a lot but it actually is not the end of it – they may experience anxiety or situational depression, they may need to double-check facts for accuracy, they develop various insecurities, they may be cynical and reject the adoptive family. An adoptee may fantasize about a reunion with their “real” family and actually seek them out.

On the plus side, an adoptee respects honesty and openness. It may have been emphasized to them that they were chosen, even if they had a hard time accepting that as a positive aspect of having been adopted. They are adaptable, analytical, appreciative, centered, curious, diplomatic, easygoing, empathetic, happy, private, sentimental, supportive and wise.

They are as complex as any human being could be.

The Life Cycle Of An Adoptee

What is it like to live as an adoptee ?

A tiny baby who didn’t consciously know what was happening to it.
The child who loved their adoptive parents.
The unsealed records finally arriving but causing an emotional wound.
The adult still trying to figure out what it all means.

My mom was a people pleaser. It could have been driven by a fear of being given back or given away – again. This is simply a logical extension of what the child may have been told – “Your birth mother loved you enough to give you up, and now we love you.” Seems simple and appropriate on the surface.

But what is an adoptee supposed to think ? It would not be surprising if their silent response was – “So you could give me up too ?”

My mom may have been aware that she was the fulfillment of her adoptive mother’s dream of becoming a mother. I have my grandmother’s letters to the adoption agency in the file I received. She was over the moon happy and thought my mom the most brilliant child. So, my mom may have wanted to do a good job of being the fulfillment of that dream. In her teens, she didn’t feel she measured up to my grandmother’s expectations.

My mom never got that reunion with her original mother that she yearned for. I have gotten “some” of that reunion joy as I have met cousins and an aunt on each side of my parental adoption equation. And honestly, it has filled in a gap that I couldn’t even know as clearly as I do now that I am whole.

I literally had to wait many decades to reconnect with my original family.

Adoption – Open or Closed – What’s Best ?

Today, in modern adoption, there are more open adoptions than there were in the past.

In an open adoption, a young adoptee may grow up alongside the parents who conceived them and gave birth, though these parents are not part of the family household the adoptee grows up within. Even so, there is sharing time together, visiting and writing to one another. In an open adoption, you see and get to know your original parents but you don’t have them as your parents.

Up until recently, most adoptions were closed and so, in order to know the people an adoptee was born to, they had to seek a reunion after they became an adult; or at the least, a much older child, as in a teenager.

If it were actually possible for any adoptee to compare the outcomes they would have experienced with each method, what would they choose in full awareness ? Would they want to know their original parents throughout their whole lives ? Do they think that knowing them would make their lives better or worse ?

Of course, there is no such choice for adoptees. Open adoption seeks to make the adoption experience better by taking away the secrecy and shame.

Are the issues the same for an adoptee whether it was an open or closed adoption ? Or does an open adoption simply create a whole new set of issues that didn’t exist within
the close adoption system ?

In a good reunion process, the adoptee is able to explain to the original parent(s) – their feelings of hurt, abandonment and/or anger – which were all caused by the decision of their original parents to surrender their child for adoption.

Can any child go through something as traumatic as being given up and still process it all at the same time – are they able to talk to the original parent about the feelings common among all adoptees at the same time as they are being experienced ? This is not an answerable question as the two kinds of adoption experience do not allow such comparisons.

It can be quite painful for an adoptee to hear about a birth mother who is satisfied with having relinquished her child for adoption. Yet, many such mothers were absolutely convinced at the time they made that choice that they were doing the best thing for their child.

Years later, many birth mothers wish they had kept their child, and that is why there are groups of adoptees actively working to encourage young unwed or troubled expectant mothers to make an effort to parent first before making a decision to relinquish their child to adoption.

The fact is – adoption exists – and it will likely always exist because there is a need and/or desire for that in some circumstances. The hard truth is that not all parents to be actually want to devote themselves to raising a child.

In seeking to reform the practice of adoption, the more we are able to ask piercing questions, explore with those involved the reason for their decisions and just plain understand at a very deep level all aspects of the experience, the better we will be able to shape the future of adoption into better outcomes for all concerned.

Nature and Nurture

Almost 20 years ago, as I lay in the hospital recovering from the cesarean section that delivered my oldest son, I had this book and was reading it. It was a realistic and eye-opening perspective on motherhood throughout the ages including child abandonment.

In her book, Hrdy strips away stereotypes and gender-biased myths to demonstrate that traditional views of maternal behavior are essentially wishful thinking codified as objective observation. As Hrdy argues, far from being “selfless,” successful primate mothers have always combined nurturing with ambition, mother love with sexual love, ambivalence with devotion. In fact all mothers, in the struggle to guarantee both their own survival and that of their offspring, deal nimbly with competing demands and conflicting strategies.

It is any parent’s job to nurture the child’s nature. While my two sons are mash-ups of the same genetics, they are each quite different from one another. As parents, it is our job to respect their individual differences. It is our job to provide the nurturing most appropriate for their innate personalities.

A genetic connection allows parental recognition that yields useful insights about how we handle certain situations. Our boys are their natures. That’s the essence of who they are. We hope they enter adulthood with a solid sense of self and identity.

The adoption system is not set up to help adoptees understand or connect to their own natures and true selves in any way. It’s an identity and sense-of-self guessing game.

The adoptive parents are unable to offer a genetic connection insight. Adoptive parents are required to nurture a nature that is unfamiliar and new to them.

There are unique needs to parenting an adoptee. If there are expectations that the adoptee is able to go against their essence, it can become a struggle.

Nature is with all of us from the moment we are conceived. Each of us is programmed by the genetics and the womb that we grew to independence through.

Raising an adopted child is not the same as raising a natural child.

The most successful adoptive parents find a way to step back and observe the child they are raising so that they can encourage the child’s nature to blossom.

It is NOT a competition. Nurture does not need to fight against nature in a battle of wills to win it’s perspective. A child’s nature only needs to be nurtured in a way that is respectful with an understanding of their life’s circumstances.

Words Matter

I hadn’t fully realized until just the other day what the phrase often encountered in adoption issues – “given away” – indicates. The truth is most original mothers did NOT give their child away.

Many were coerced in some manner. My maternal grandmother was definitely pressured by Georgia Tann after falling into a trap. I’m fairly certain my paternal grandmother was pressured by the Salvation Army. I know one of my sisters was influenced by our own adoptee mom as unbelievable as that seems now that I know more about the emotional wounds most adoptees suffer to some degree or another, even when they end up in a “good” adoptive family (which I can say about all of the adoptees in my own family).

The truth is, however, in all of these cases the babies were “taken away” from their original mothers for some “reason” or other. That has a very different connotation from a mother actually, willingly, consciously, wanting to “give away” her baby.

When a child ends up being raised by anyone who is not their original parents, they have been separated from family. It is true that some children end up abandoned and that is a truly sad state of affairs when it happens. And some mothers simply do not believe they are good enough, worthy or deserve to have the child they birthed, for whatever reason.

Anyway, I realize better now that words matter.

They Would Abandon You Too

It was important to stay on the adults’ good side.
There was no one else to take care of you,
and if you questioned them too adamantly,
you’d probably get sent to your room without dinner,
or they’d drive a stake through your ankles
and leave you on the hillside above the Mobil station.
~ Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Many adoptees have a lifelong fear of being abandoned – again. Whether they remember their earliest days or not, it is buried deep within them that someone important once left them behind.

Logical reasons for their adoptive state do not always soothe an adoptee. After all, if it happened once, it could happen again.

Cutting Ties

There is one simple and critical fact – the adoptee was there, experienced being “left” by the biological mother and handed over to strangers. It makes no difference if the child was a few minutes or a few days old.

For 40 weeks he shared an experience with a person with whom he likely bonded in utero, a person to whom he is biologically, genetically, historically and psychologically, emotionally and spiritually connected.

~ from The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier

If the above is true, and my heart tells me that it is so, then how much more intense was the separation for both of my parents who had been with their natural mothers for months.

In the picture of my maternal grandmother holding my mom for the last time, after she had already been left in the Porter-Leath Orphanage – only for temporary care while my grandmother tried to find some way to provide for them both – I see the joy on her face. I see her head craning in the direction of her mother as the nurse holds her so they can make some photos of her for my adoptive grandmother to approve as the little sister she was seeking for her previously adopted son.

I am told my dad’s mother was still breastfeeding him when my Granny took him home with her. What must he have thought the next time he was hungry?

I can understand the need for children to be adopted when they are true orphans without family or being honestly abused. However, poverty should not be the reason women lose their children. In my family, that was always the reason a child ended up adopted.

One reform that has been suggested (and based on comments by adult adoptees in a Facebook group I belong to, seems relevant to their own feelings in maturity) is that there be only a form of guardianship where the child keeps their own name and heritage but has the security of a permanent home.

My parents were forced into false identities with made up names and altered birth certificates and not allowed to discover the truth even after well into their adulthoods, and truly, they died not knowing anything about the families they were born into.

The flaw in that “reform” idea is that it would be too much like foster care, robbing the child of a sense of family. In reality, the only real solution is finding methods of keeping mothers and their children together whenever possible.

Abandonment and Loss

Bonding doesn’t begin at birth,
it is a continuum of physiological,
psychological, and spiritual events
which begin in utero and continue
throughout the postnatal bonding period.

When this natural evolution is interrupted
by a postnatal separation from the
biological mother, the resultant experience
of abandonment and loss is indelibly
imprinted upon the unconscious minds
of these children, causing a primal wound.

~ The Primal Wound – Understanding the Adopted Child

by Nancy Newton Verrier

This was not well understood until quite recently. It’s effect on adoptees is profound, even when the adoptive family is a good one and does everything in the best possible way for the well-being of the child. Some adoptees don’t even realize it’s effects on their own lives until well into adulthood.

In learning to understand this, I was also able to recognize the unconscious wound in a person who wasn’t adopted but had experienced a betrayal of his earliest romantic love. Decades later, an unrelated event sent this person into an emotionally breakdown, when circumstances triggered a fear of another abandonment looming. Though it wasn’t the truth of the situation or the relationship.