Two Adoption Related Fantasies

I really wasn’t in the mood to write during my daily session at my deceased in-laws cabin. I suppose it is the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg last night that has me de-motivated and distracted.

I thought – how to honor her life then. I remembered seeing “STEINEM” in large letters at the top of the spine on a book in my mother-in-law’s bookcase. I was aware of her as a feminist when I was coming of age in the early 1970s. My mother in law was a lifelong feminist. So I thought, I won’t try to write, I’ll just read a little today.

I chose the essay – Ruth’s Song (Because She Could Not Sing It) – because. It should be obvious why. I read this –

My ultimate protection was this: I was just passing through, a guest in the house; perhaps this wasn’t my mother at all. Though I knew very well that I was her daughter, I sometimes imagined that I had bee adopted and that my real parents would find me, a fantasy I’ve since discovered is common.

~Gloria Steinem, from her book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

It is common for adoptees to have fantasies about their natural mother finding them. My mom wanted to find her mother but when she got the tiniest bit close to that goal, she was told that her mother had died a few years earlier.

Much of this essay is about Steinem’s mother’s mental illness. I can relate. My youngest sister is seriously mentally ill. And my mom had this obsession that each of her daughters was mentally ill. We each ended up in an institution at least briefly. I was dragged in by my dad for observation. After about 3 days, I was released as I was not a threat to anyone except perhaps my own self. My parents were never willing to financially invest in mental health care for their children, even when it was warranted.

I also know my mom once seriously thought about committing suicide. I don’t know what the trigger was but she changed her mind because she actually did care about her daughters. At least, that was what she told me.

Adoption can have a psychological toll. It is known that adopted children are more likely to struggle with emotional or behavioral disorders ranging from depression, anxiety, and ADHD to suicidal thoughts and substance abuse.

Adoption is the difficult process of gaining a child by removing him or her from another family. There is trauma associated with separating a child from the mother in whose womb the baby developed. Children are commonly unable to vocalize or even identify what they are feeling and so it is unlikely they will ask for help.

Symptoms of mental illness in children can be difficult to identify. Signs of emotional or behavioral disorders, like outbursts and sleep issues, are common in many stages of development without adoption as an added issue. As a parent, pay attention to age-inappropriate emotional responses, as well as symptoms that last longer than normal or don’t improve regardless of continued efforts. Seek professional help.

Hedging Parenthood Bets

I don’t know anything about this publication but it fits my mood coming into today’s essay.

Read where one woman wrote – “We spent the last 1.5 yrs going thru the foster care process to be told during the home study that we are not eligible since we are still trying to conceive thru IVF. Either way, we still want to foster and adopt and really don’t want to wait much longer. We are 43/44 yrs old and have also been trying IVF for close to 5 yrs. Does anyone know a group that would allow us to foster or adopt while we continue IVF?”

I can honestly relate. I conceived my oldest son at 46 thanks to IVF and another son at 49. I won’t say it was the perfect way to have children but they would not be who they are or exist otherwise. I love them dearly and so, can’t regret the effort behind having them. While I had to give up passing on my own genetics to conceive them (I had actually already been there, done that, with my daughter, so it was perhaps easier for me to accept, than it is for some people), I do believe the route we took was far better than adoption. I’ve had lots of opportunity to observe adoptees (both of my own parents) and birth mothers who gave up babies to adoption (both of my sisters).

The comments coming back to the woman above (the comments by others are not in response to my own situation) were not kind.

One wrote – what it sounds like to me is time is running out for us so we want to collect as many as possible to fill our desires before it’s not possible anymore! Also problematic because I’ve heard many adoptees talk about how they were raised by older parents and the huge generational gap caused even further issues. Older people expect old fashioned things, they don’t fit to be parenting in these times, let alone parenting traumatized children.

Well, we are older parents. However, what I find comparing my two lives (parent at 19 and then in my late 40s) is that we are more willing to give up our own desires to meet our children’s desires where they express themselves. There is a lot of wisdom and sometimes patience and often an intolerance for what doesn’t seem needed but we are there 24/7 for our boys. I would not call my sons traumatized the way adopted children always are. They do know the full truth of their origins.

I do remember my own OMG moment related to age – when I turned 60, my youngest was 10. I thought when I turn 70, he’ll only be 20. That startled me, though at 50 giving birth to him did not. And one other thought about older parents – I know a lot of parents who died when their children were young. These parents were not old. Truth is we are all born to die, we are not guaranteed a particular length of life. Life is what it is and no two lives are the same. Also many of us live distantly from our offspring. I don’t always see my grown daughter or grandchildren even once a year. Money just isn’t there, though the visits when I am lucky enough to have one, are always precious.

One woman assessed the story above this way – #1 they are likely trying to find a child to ease their pain from infertility and replace the child they can’t have, #2 they are likely hopeful adoptive parents and will sabotage reunification from the git go which is part of any foster care effort and #3 they are likely only accepting 0-3 year olds.

Another noted – It’s really sad that you cannot conceive, but please don’t traumatize an entire family of people with a lot less privilege than you have in order to satisfy your fantasy of a perfect life. If you want kids so much, divorce your partner, and marry a single parent with a child.

On that note, when my husband wanted to have children and I discovered how low my own odds of successfully conceiving were, I was privately sobbing, you need to marry a younger woman, but that was not what he wanted to do.

And finally, I do agree with this point of view – nobody should be trying to adopt or foster and do fertility treatments. Foster kids and adoptees aren’t backup plans. Also, nobody should try to do domestic adoption and foster to adopt. This is why therapy should be a requirement. There’s no reason to continue IVF if you want to adopt. I’ve seen couples do IVF literally weeks after adopting. They shouldn’t adopt.

Trauma And Polyvagal Theory

Trauma is a FACT of being adopted or of giving up a child to adoption. While adoptive parents may believe they are traumatized by behavior they don’t understand, their trauma is more a lack of understanding than an event that happened to them at an age when they had no conscious ability to understand what was being done to them.

This concept of Polyvagal Theory is new to me today, so this particular blog will not be complete in the sense of connecting all the dots but a dear friend I trust has made a point of bringing me to an awareness of this and so, I am sharing it for whatever good it might do someone else.

Polyvagal Theory can help with –

Understanding trauma and PTSD

Understanding the dance of attack and withdrawal in relationships

Understanding how extreme stress leads to dissociation or shutting down

Understanding how to read body language

Emotions are responses to a stimulus (internal or external). Often they happen out of our awareness, especially if we are out of touch, or incongruent, with our inner emotional life.

Our primal desire to stay alive is more important to our body than even our ability to think about staying alive. That’s where polyvagal theory comes in to play.

The nervous system is always running in the background, controlling our body functions so we can think about other things—like what kind of ice cream we’d like to order. The entire nervous system works in tandem with the brain, and can take over our emotional experience, even if we don’t want it to.

Animals are a great example of how we handle stress, because they react primally, without awareness. They do what we would, if we weren’t so well tamed.

If you have ever watched a National Geographic Africa special, you’ve seen a lioness chase a gazelle. A group of gazelles is grazing, and suddenly one looks up, hyper aware of what is happening around him. The whole group notices and pays attention.

After a moment, the lioness starts her chase. The gazelle she’s singled out runs as fast as he can (sympathetic nervous system), until he is caught. When he is caught, he instantly goes limp (parasympathetic nervous system).

The lioness drags the gazelle back to her cubs, where they begin to play with it before they go in for the kill. If the lioness gets distracted, and the gazelle sees a moment of opportunity, he’s up and sprinting off again, looking like he suddenly came back to life (back into sympathetic nervous system response).

When the gazelle was caught, with fangs around his neck, his shutdown response kicked in—he froze. When he saw the opportunity to run, his fight or flight kicked in, and he ran.

Polyvagal theory covers those three states—connection, fight or flight, or shutdown.

During non-stressful situations, if we are emotionally healthy, our bodies stay in a social engagement state, or a happy, normal, non-freak-out state.

I like to call it “connection.” By connection, I mean that we are capable of a “connected” interaction with another human being. We are walking around, unafraid, enjoying our day, eating with friends and family and our body and emotions feel normal.

It’s also called ventral vagal response, because that’s the part of the brain that is activated during connection mode. It’s like a green light for normal life.

In fight or flight, at some level we believe we can still survive whatever threat we think is dangerous.

When our sympathetic nervous system has kicked into overdrive, and we still can’t escape and feel impending death the dorsal vagal parasympathetic nervous system takes control.

It causes freezing or shutdown, as a form of self preservation.

I have Dr David Puder’s podcast text to thank for today’s blog. You can go there for more information.

There is also this audio by Deb Dana: Befriending Your Nervous System that my friend offered me (I haven’t listened to this myself yet).

Doing The Previously Unthinkable

People change. With all that is known about the effect of adoption on children, why is it that adoptive parents don’t work towards reuniting the family ? This is exceedingly rare if it happens but things are changing and it is beginning to be considered by a relatively few.

Here’s one woman’s thinking –

I adopted through foster care three years ago. I believe my child’s parent has changed tremendously since the termination of parental rights. Am I allowed to let her have overnights with the parent? Or would that be considered endangerment because of the reasons written in the termination of parental rights ? Also, what if we choose to allow her to live with her parent ? Can I dissolve the adoption to give the child back to their parent ? I think that the child living with their parent might be a ways off, but the child is still young, and I can see them wanting, in the future, to live with their parent. I’m trying very hard not to be possessive of my child. And if their parent is safe, who am I to keep them from their parent and why would I do that anyways ? I don’t know, I just want to start giving the parent more control of their child, but I’m also afraid that the state would have something to say about that. I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing over here (mostly because I don’t). Has anyone here given their adopted child back to the child’s birth parents ? What did that path look like for you ?

Immediately, an adult adoptee replies – what you’re considering is beautiful and shows true love. I just want to commend you for that.

Generally speaking, I believe this is true – once the adoption is finalized, the child is considered “as if born to” you. If you want to place the child for adoption, you have every legal right to do that (that’s why “second chance adoptions” are legal). The birth parents (or hopeful adoptive parents in this situation) would have to go through the same process as any other hopeful adoptive parent. So if they can’t pass the background/home inspection, they probably won’t be approved to adopt their own child back.

Though not the happiest answer, states do allow adults to be adopted. So the birth parents could adopt the child back when he/she turns 18. There is no vetting process then.

So immediately the question arises – would it be possible to allow her to live with parent until she turns 18 ? And would I have to have my rights to her terminated after she’s 18 ?

Someone with apparent experience replies – you can give guardianship back to the parents but if the parents neglect the child in any way, it will come back on the adoptive parent for giving the parents guardianship back. Only a judge can give guardianship back without the adoptive parent risking liability, if something happens to the child in their parents’ care.

And one person did a return of guardianship without going to court but a judge still had to approve the paperwork created by lawyers – after child protective services was out of the picture. However, the adoptive parent had to sign a paper saying they were aware that they were still liable for any potential neglect or harm the child might suffer when returned to their original parents.

Some believe that anyone can usually do guardianship, which would allow their parent to take care of all of their child’s needs, those that require a legal adult (school, medical, etc). Then, when the child is an adult, they could choose to have their parent adopt them, thus becoming their legal parent once more (that sounds weird but for legal purposes, as a parent is never not the parent).

One positive to all of it is that guardianship would still offer the adoptive parent a role in supporting and a continuing connection, if original parent and their child needed that. For example, if the parent relapses for a period, the child could go back with the adoptive parent again, while their original parent is being treated, thus keeping everyone safe, healthy, and out of the child protective services system.

There seems to be some validity to the thought that once a child has been adopted through the state and the child welfare case is closed, then it’s as if the child was born to the adoptive parent. You are allowed to let your child have sleepovers at other people’s house’s, as long as you feel like those people are safe. The child can visit people without you being there. The child can even go on a vacation with someone else, if you have decided is safe for them to be there.

And perhaps before even embarking on such a course, an adoptive parent would do well to consider this perspective –

As an adoptee, I would be really messed up if my adoptive parents wanted to give me back. It’s one thing to allow overnights and even let her live with them, change her name back, etc, but if my adoptive parents pursued legally surrendering me without my consent, I would feel betrayed and like everything they ever told me was a lie. I would never be able to stop wondering – did they just get sick of me and didn’t want me anymore ? I would rather the adoptive parents live with any feelings of regret and remorse about the adoption – while allowing me to have a relationship with my family of origin – than hear they ever even thought about legally abandoning me.

What would really make me happy would be to see them all happy, healthy, and getting along – knowing that I could freely interact with any of them with everyone’s full love and support, no matter what *my* ultimate decision about where *I* belong is.

Bottom line though – if an adoptive parent is serious about seeking this possibility of reuniting a family previously torn apart, then speaking with a family lawyer in your own state would be the best advice before doing anything – legally.

Temporary Assistance

What could go wrong ? We’re family. One of us needs help temporarily. An older family member is willing . . . but the outcome is not what we expected.

I know this up close and personal. When I was struggling to support myself and my young daughter, an opportunity arose to make some significant money but it would require me to travel and it was not a situation that I could pack my toddler daughter along for the ride. I didn’t even know if I could do that work. And I didn’t know how long it would last. I just knew that increasingly my financial situation was becoming a crisis and I had to do something . . .

So, I left her with her paternal grandmother with the intention of that situation being temporary. Over time, it became permanent but not with the grandmother, with my ex-husband who remarried a woman with a daughter and eventually they had a third child born of their union. Therefore, even as my circumstances changed, I did not seek to intervene, believing that being in a family with siblings (and I did know that from a young age my daughter had wanted at least one) and which I, as a single mom, could not provide – was the best option for my daughter. I didn’t know until very recently that the situation was not entirely as good as I once believed. But she and I survived and remain close – thankfully.

Today, I read about a woman and a similar but different situation –

27 years ago my great aunt was supposed to watch my mother’s sister’s newborn for a few weeks because she was only 16 and unprepared. When she tried to get her baby back, my great aunt basically loaded her with court costs until it was prohibitively expensive for her. We weren’t allowed to tell her adopted daughter that she was adopted. The whole family thinks of my great aunt as a savior because the birth mom’s life didn’t turn out great. I wonder if losing her child is a big part of the why.

The rest of the story –

The girl didn’t find out that she was adopted and who her birth mom actually was until 2 years ago. Her birth mom was diagnosed with cancer. The mom passed away last year.

We don’t always see where our actions are taking us. For many adoptees once given up, there is a constant stream of reunions with genetic family that does some of the healing work that tearing a family apart causes. I do believe we all do the best we know how in the moment we make a decision. The reality is where things go from there and that is not always foreseeable.

Emotional Detachment in Surrenders

It is completely understandable to me that when a woman in the midst of pregnancy has already decided to surrender her baby to adoption, that she would also choose to wall off her heart from the child growing in her womb. Here is one such story . . .

It took me almost 10 years to come out of the fog. The biggest reason is that I had emotionally detached from the situation even during pregnancy.

Last year I had a complete mental breakdown because I suddenly started having flashbacks from being raped at 6 years old and I didn’t even know it happened until I began reliving it. This sudden onset of PTSD was a catalyst for turning my emotions back on and finally feeling grief about the adoption. I’d forgotten most of the events of my life, and the things I remembered were pretty numb.

I’m insanely lucky to have chosen adoptive parents who have actually kept the adoption open. With all of these personal changes, I’ve been trying to open myself up to my first daughter and actually connect with her.

A lot of people suppress their trauma. The hurt from adoption cuts both ways – mother and child. Unless you have no emotions, and it is the emotional pain of separation that causes detachment, you could not let a child you brought into this world be raised by someone else without suffering from guilt, shame or self-blame.

Here is another story –

I gave birth 2 weeks ago. And I had made an adoption plan, with a good friend. Baby is currently with her and I have 2 more weeks to change my mind. But when I had the baby I felt no emotional attachment to her. I didn’t feel like she was mine. I haven’t had any regrets yet. She is with an amazing family that I know without a doubt I will have contact with for her entire life.

She asks other women who have experienced this if they later had regrets.

One replied – I felt the same way when my daughter was born. Like when the doctor gave her to me, I thought, “why are you handing me her baby?”

Another response was this – It’s emotional numbing/detachment. It’s a trauma response to try and protect yourself from the pain of losing her forever. It will catch up to you, HARD, and it can cause a lifetime of trauma for you if it’s not dealt with quickly. Your daughter only wants you, and being given up will traumatize her for life. I beg you to reconsider. And this suggestion – try parenting her, with no contact with the hopeful adoptive parents for the next two weeks.

And there is this very sad story – I had some severe anger issues and no support which would have made it dangerous for him to stay with me. I begged my mom to adopt him until I was older but she refused. In my case, the adoptive parents weren’t total strangers, they were long time friends of the family. It’s my truth though, and I hate that that whole part of my life ever happened. I hate that I was convinced not to get an abortion. I hate who I was and everyone that had abandoned me back then. And if my son hates me too, then I deserve it.

Bottom line – You don’t just give your child away and not regret it. It may take years or decades. Emotional detachment often catches up to you with the painful truth.

Yes, This Is A Thing

This celebrates a child leaving foster care because they have been adopted.

To be certain, any sort of celebration of adoption day is only for the adoptive parents… adoption day for adoptees is a loss. It’s a legal severing of an adoptee’s ties to their biological family and biological roots. It is the culmination of trauma, and is the start of new traumas. It also feeds the savior image of foster/adoptive parents, which is terribly insulting to adoptees and isn’t accurate. In the cases where non-kinship adoption is unavoidable, it should be done privately and discretely. The story belongs to the adoptee, only they never had the power to decide or say what they actually wanted – in most cases, an intact family into which they were born.

Children’s brains and emotional intelligence that aren’t fully developed yet. Their nervous system is screaming “yay permanency! Woot woot!” And the only way a kid knows how to celebrate is a party; or a certificate; or gifts; or social media posts; and whatever else they’ve seen other former foster youth or adoptees do.

What they ARE NOT able to process is 1) adoption DOESN’T guarantee a ‘forever home’ at all 2) what’s happening to them is trauma– not a celebration 3) even if they DO end up with a forever home, it may be an eternity of pure unadulterated hell (mentally, emotionally, relationally) 4) the “permanence” also means their actual biological family history and heritage and traditions, etc are now permanently gone and the list goes on and on. They’re unable to look at it from a 30,000 ft view and understand the gravity and finality of it all.

Really the issue comes down to NOT celebrating a child’s adoption publicly and not even within the family if possible. This doesn’t mean to invalidate whatever feelings and emotions a child may be having – especially about getting out of the uncertainty of foster care and multiple placements. However, adult adoptees will tell you that as they aged and could reflect from a mature perspective – being adopted is always fraught and traumatic – even in the best of circumstances.

Many adoptees spend much of their life in a “happy fog” trying their best to be grateful for this un-natural thing that happened to them – not in their control nor with their conscious approval – usually by adults and the legal system. Best to go as minimal and low-key about it all as you possibly can, no more than privately within the immediate family, if celebrated at all.

Adoptive Parents Being Bad

This is sad and cruel but this actually happened in a group of adoptive parents. Their answers will stagger you –

hugging a porcupine!

Or Superman holding cryptonite!

Trying to row a boat with one arm

Speaking a different language

Having a root canal with no anesthesia

Talking to a brick wall

Talking to a room of screaming monkeys who throw things at me

Talking to the wall and it doesn’t respond

Panning for gold

Reasoning with a rock

How repulsive. These women shouldn’t have any children in their care.

These comments occurred in what is termed a “safe space” for adoptive parents to vent their frustrations.

An adoptee shares in response to one I didn’t include above – “I dont know (cause thats the only response i get!)” that this is an adoption trauma response. If an adopted child doesn’t feel safe, they learn not to give opinions because that puts them at risk for abuse. To those who thought that whole experience was a lark (or a laugh) – Your adopted child is showing traits of trauma, that isn’t a funny joke.

One women admitted – I’ve joined some of the RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) groups. It opened my eyes to how much a large number of Adoptive Parents seem to really hate their children. And have zero clue how the typical child behaves. Always ranting and raving about how bad their “rad” is when half the behaviors are things my neurotypical zero trauma biological kids do. I’m so disgusted by these people but I can’t make myself leave the groups.

So . . . this is just one reason why adoptees are forever scarred by the experience.

Being Charitable

What are you actually saying to your adopted child as an adoptive parent about what your motives were ? There are cases – I suppose – like true orphans. However, among the thoughts about reforming adoption in general, instead of buying a baby to raise as your own, is the radical idea of helping the mother in danger of losing her child. Her crime may simply be lacking the financial means to raise that child.

Clearly, if you can plunk out tens of thousands of dollars to obtain another woman’s baby, you could go very far in your ability to charitably help keep a baby and mother together. Sadly that is not the kind of thinking that motivates most adoptive couples. Most are self-absorbed, only thinking about what it is they desire, and rarely considering the emotional price and mental anguish someone else (and often more than one someone else – the original mother, the adoptee, any subsequent siblings) will have to bear for you to fulfill your personal desire.

You will be held accountable for every decision you make regarding adoption.

Don’t you think your adoptees will have enough sense to realize that in 9 out of 10 cases you could have helped their parents keep them vs adopting them ? Do you think you’ll never be asked this question or held accountable ? In cases where infertility was the reason for adopting (as most cases actually are), don’t you think these children will have enough sense to realize they were your second choice ?

It is still a rather new perspective and some adoptive parents have been able to own the facts and own their culpability in the messed up institution of adoption. What is done is done but things could be done better going into the future and that is why the idea of raising awareness and talking about ways that would be more life and family affirming is happening now.

If you do want to understand adoption trauma, then here it is – I have seen this for myself in an adoption triad group with thousands of members (all 3 sides of the adoption equation) – there really are a lot of very angry adoptees. Ask yourself, why is that, if adoption is such a perfect answer to everyone’s problems ?

For adoptees unfortunate enough to have been the victim of a shady adoption, the truth will probably come out in this modern day and time (much of that kind of story did not come out during Georgia Tann’s illicit 3 decades long scandal from the 1920s up until 1950). There will be damage that you (as an adoptee) may or may not ever be able to repair. The damage is deep – and comes out in bits and pieces – and in ways that are not always obviously related to the adoption directly.