The Purpose of the Navel

I started reading the book Tao, The Pathless Path by Osho last night. In reading what he said about the navel, I just had to share that here because it is meaningful to this blog and so much that I try to achieve here. I had never quite thought of this part of every body quite like this before. Osho writes –

If you go to the surgeon and ask him what the purpose of the navel is in the body, and if he dissects the body, he will not find any purpose. The navel seems almost useless. What is the purpose of the navel ?

It was purposeful when the child was in the womb: its purpose was that it related the child to the mother, it connected the child with the mother.

But now the child is no longer in the womb – the mother may have died, the child has become old – now what is the purpose of the navel ? It has a transcendental purpose. It is the mark that the past has left (the child was connected with the mother).

Every adoptee can look at their navel and know this is the truth of their connection with the woman within who’s womb they grew to become an independent human being. It is a permanent reminder of that truth – a connection that even being removed from her absolutely cannot erase. It is there forever on the body as it is there forever in the heart and mind of the adoptee.

Osho says to drink the meaning of it, the poetry of it, the music of it – forget the story. Carry the significance of it. It may seem odd that I make a point of this but for every person who has lost their mother – from death, due to adoption – it is a very special reminder of this truth. The mother is with you always, even when not physically present any longer.

Fear of Abandonment

Very short on time today but I came across the image above and went looking for more from Dr Heidi Green. Not that I found much. But I do get the concept that it isn’t just the bad stuff. It is the good stuff that could have been but couldn’t be because of having been adopted and raised by strangers instead of the family you were born into.

What I did find from Dr Green gave me the title for today’s blog –

Where does fear of abandonment come from? For most people, it comes from trauma related to early childhood relationships, especially with our primary caregivers. If you couldn’t depend on your parents to be there for you and meet all your needs (physical and emotional) as a kid, you might very well be an adult who also thinks you can’t depend on people to be there for you. This creates the anxiety-driven behaviors of codependency, people-pleasing and self-abandonment in an effort to do whatever it takes to keep others from abandoning you.

Both of my parents ended up adopted. Back in the 1930s, the child might be older than newborn. At least that was the case for my parents. My mom was probably 6 months old. My dad was 8 months old. Both of them had some period of time to be in a relationship with their original genetic mothers. I can only imagine what their baby brains interpreted when mom disappeared and a stranger took her place.

I think more so for my mom, than my dad, there was no small amount of people pleasing and I have acquired a lot of my own behavior in that regard from being my mom’s daughter. However, back to Dr Green’s point – neither of my parents could totally depend on the people raising them to be there for them. My dad even experienced more than one adoptive father and was adopted a second time and his name changed yet another time when he was much older and his adoptive mother remarried, after throwing an abusive husband out of the house.

Got to run now but I hope I can spend more time on this blog tomorrow.

Claiming Ignorance

Is your adopted child 20 years old? Because if they are not, then you have no damn excuse for not “knowing”. You screwed up, not anyone else that didn’t “tell you” about adoption trauma.

It’s disheartening and disgraceful to hear that so many adoptive parents still claim ignorance about the potential trauma and negative aspects of adoption for the child when they adopted. We need to acknowledge that this information has been available for well over a decade.

In fact, twenty years ago, the book “The Primal Wound” shed light on the emotional challenges faced by adoptees. It highlighted the deep-rooted impact of separation from birth parents and the lifelong journey of healing and identity formation. Since then, numerous studies, research papers, and personal narratives have further contributed to our understanding.

So what is your excuse?

You didn’t dig deep enough?

No one told you?

You assumed?

None of that matters, because when you are seeking to bring another human into your home and you are strangers and that human is losing their entire family, you should have KNOWN! I don’t care what year it was. It’s logical. That should have been an automatic red flag that “hey, this could be hard for this child, maybe I better research more”.

That’s what a selfish desire does, it suppresses the reality.

The ones that don’t own that need to rethink that stance. You screwed up. Before you take that personally and share how you are the exception, really think about it. Did you do the work before you adopted? Or did you just take the word of others because you wanted what you wanted.

The above are thoughts posted in my all things adoption group. Thinking about ignorance – I went looking and found this – LINK>What It Means to Claim Your Ignorance (there is much more at the link). A couple of excerpts . . .

Ignorance without a desire to do something about it is avoidance. We simply do not know everything, nor can we expect to. Maybe we never learned, or we were exposed to only one part of a larger ecosystem.

I am willing to claim my ignorance because it opens me to learning what I don’t know. I am willing to claim my ignorance because it helps me open my ears and my heart for deeper listening. It opens the door for those (adult adoptees) who have experience and expertise to share what they have to contribute.

A Very Mixed Bag

Angelina Jolie with all 6 of her children

I recently saw LINK>Angelina Jolie in the movie The Bone Collector. I was fascinated by what has been defined as her “bee-stung lips.” I remembered she had adopted children from several countries. So I thought, as I had never written in this blog with her circumstances in mind, I would give it a go. I wondered about her ethnicity and did a deep dive down the rabbit hole of her parentage. It is no wonder she is a humanitarian because her mother, LINK>Marcheline Bertrand was. Her mother was involved with the activist John Trudell at the end of her life. It is worth spending some time looking into the Wikipedias for both Jolie and Bertrand for more insight. I was never a huge fan, though I have seen more than one movie that she acted in.

Today, I will focus on her children and an intersection with her humanitarian work – Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt who was born in Cambodia, Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt who was born in Vietnam, and Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt who was born in Ethiopia, are all adopted. Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born in Namibia. Her twins – Knox Léon Jolie-Pitt and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt were born in France. Her twins were conceived via in-vitro fertilization and she gave birth to them via caesarean section at the age of 33.

In an article at LINK>Harper’s Bazaar, Angelina Jolie discusses her adopted children. There is more at the link but here are a few quotes attributed to her – “All adopted children come with a beautiful mystery of a world that is meeting yours. When they are from another race and foreign land, that mystery, that gift, is so full.” She has also been quoted as saying – “They are not entering your world, you are entering each other’s worlds.”

Regarding Maddox, she has said “Cambodia was the country that made me aware of refugees. It made me engage in foreign affairs in a way I never had, and join UNHCR. Above all, it made me a mom.” Jolie has said that “Each (adoption) is a beautiful way of becoming family. What is important is to speak with openness about all of it and to share. ‘Adoption’ and ‘orphanage’ are positive words in our home. With my adopted children, I can’t speak of pregnancy, but I speak with much detail and love about the journey to find them and what it was like to look in their eyes for the first time.”

She has been heavily involved in humanitarian work, something her mother was known for. She has created with her wealth various foundations – the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation which created Millennium Villages in Cambodia and Kenya as well as funding schools, roads, and a soy milk factory in Kenya. Some of the employees in Kenya were former poachers who are now employed as rangers. She is also a patron of the Harnas Wildlife Foundation, a wildlife orphanage and medical center in the Kalahari desert. She established the Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Foundation to support conservation work by the Naankuse Wildlife Sanctuary, a nature reserve also located in the Kalahari. She has also funded large-animal conservation projects as well as a free health clinic, housing, and a school for the San Bushmen community at Naankuse.

I have read more than one op-ed by Jolie in Time magazine related to her United Nations work for refugees and the welfare of people living in conflict zones. I don’t intend to judge her for anything related to her very public life, including her marriage to and divorce from Brad Pitt. Whatever one thinks of her and her life, they also cannot deny she has made a difference in the world.

No Man In Sight

At least one mom in my own mom’s group decided to have a child with no man in sight. For same sex female couples who want children but want to be ethical about doing the right thing, what are the options ? One offers her experience.

I’m a queer parent to a donor-conceived child and also have adopted kids through foster care.

The topic has come up before but is always interesting to me and just inherently homophobic—that women who have conceived a child by having sex are encouraged to keep and raise the child – no matter what: mental health issues, extreme poverty, abusive partners—but then, queer people are told there’s no ethical way to have a child. So somehow sex with a man makes it ethical and idealized?? So having sex gives you a right to parent – no matter what, and if you can’t get pregnant by having sex, you have no right to have children and should go mentor kids….there’s just no way to view this stance as anything but homophobia.

The ethics of sperm donation, in my opinion, based on learning from donor conceived people and also my experience as someone abandoned by my father, is that anonymous sperm donation is not ethical. I chose to conceive with a known donor who has no interest in parenting/co-parenting but is a known and present figure in our lives. [blogger’s note – I agree that any reproductive donors ought to be known. Every person should have access to their genetic background.]

Fostering is a different story. When we went into it, we were open to adopting (if things went that way) but really tried to approach it as us supporting a family in crisis by being that safe healthy person who could watch the kid(s) until the parents got back on their feet. We fostered 8 children and have adopted 4, which statistically is in line with our state’s averages that 50% of placements reunify. Our first adoptee has 3 siblings in two different families, neither of which was willing to take her. Our second adoption is a sibling set of three, with few healthy family members, a lot of criminal involvement and in incarceration, and years of trying to find a way for parents or family to be a resource. There were only a couple of healthy family members but they were unwilling to take on 3 young children. Unlike the usual assumptions, we had zero plans to adopt them and would have gladly welcomed family for them. Yet if we didn’t adopt them, they would have been moved again to non-relatives, which would have increased their trauma, so we did the right thing for them. I don’t say this for any accolades—I say it because the reality for these kids is that at this moment in time, we’re their best option.

So yes, in my opinion, there are ways to ethically raise children, even if you can’t have sex with a man.

Society’s Unseen Realities

For some time now, I’ve been slowly reading through The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. I’ve always been fascinated by the science of physics, even though I may not totally understand a lot of it. I’ve almost finished Capra’s book and the big thing I took away from it is how interconnected EVERYTHING is.

So it was that I was attracted to a Medium piece – LINK>Exploring Quantum Connections in Adoption by Shane Bouel. You may or may not be able to read it. I will excerpt some parts in case.

Shane notes – “The state of one entangled particle instantly influences the other, similar to how the separation of a mother and child through adoption can have far-reaching emotional consequences.” The separation of a mother from her child leads to complex emotions and psychological challenges for both of them. Adoptees may experience conflicting emotions as they navigate their relationships with both their birth mother and adoptive family. Birth mothers, too, may grapple with complex emotions related to the decision or lack of, to place their child for adoption. He says that “Ultimately, the goal is to create a more empathetic and compassionate environment for adoptees and their birth families.” His goal is my goal in publishing this blog as well.

An intricate web of relationships connect individuals to their environment. Quantum mechanics finds that particles are interconnected and influence each other’s states – regardless of distance. The concept of attachment has a parallel in the idea of entanglement. Particles are intrinsically linked. Adoptees navigate the uncharted territory of identity and belonging. The separation experienced by adopted individuals parallels the entangled state of particles. The emotional journey of adoptees . . . is intertwined with societal perceptions, recognition, and acknowledgment.

Dr Sue Morter delivered the message at Agape last Sunday and photons were very much a part of how she described energy acting. Shane writes – “Quantum mechanics, traditionally applied to the microscopic realm, is gradually revealing its influence on macroscopic effects, including DNA interactions and biophoton communication within the body. This bridge between the quantum and the macroscopic echoes the connection between the unseen emotional trauma of adoption and its far-reaching implications on adoptees’ lives.” And in fact, in Capra’s book, he describes the understandings being applied on a large scale to the whole cosmos.

Shane emphasizes – “The historical instances of forced adoption and exploitation highlight the need for societal acknowledgment and reconciliation.” In conclusion, he says “. . . the emotional threads of adoption connect lives in ways we may not fully perceive.”

Shane’s writing seeks to lift standards of ethics and morality related to adoption by sharing the truth he perceives and has experienced.

If The Heavens Have Feelings

Kati Pohler with her adoptive parents

The story tells of an intense desperation to hide a pregnancy. You can read the full piece at this LINK>After Receiving a 20-Year-Old Letter, Woman Discovers the Truth About Her Birth Parents. Due to China’s one-child policy, a couple pregnant with their second child hide by moving from place to place, eventually living on a boat at the end of the mother’s pregnancy. Out of fear, they deliver their own child on the boat with the father using a pair of sterilized scissors to cut the umbilical cord himself. Next, they left the baby in the market with a note attached –

“Our daughter, Jingzhi, was born at 10am on the 24th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, 1995. We have been forced by poverty and affairs of the world to abandon her. Oh, pity the hearts of fathers and mothers far and near! Thank you for saving our little daughter and taking her into your care. If the heavens have feelings, if we are brought together by fate, then let us meet again on the Broken Bridge in Hangzhou on the morning of the Qixi Festival in 10 or 20 years from now.”

The Qixi Festival is a Chinese festival celebrating the annual meeting of Zhinü and Niulang (the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl) who are characters found in Chinese mythology. They appear in a Chinese folk tale about the romance between them. The festival is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh lunisolar month on the Chinese lunisolar calendar. This story became a BBC documentary titled Meet Me on the Bridge.

I encourage you to watch the YouTube. It gives the perspectives of the birth parents, adoptive parents and the adoptee. I read that Katie returned to China to learn more about the country she was born in and is teaching English. I don’t know whether she is still there or not.

Kid Grows Up, Adopters Never Do

An adoptee writes – She said something about people adopting, then the kid grows up, but the adopters never do. How many of you felt like the “Grown up” in a house, having to care for your adoptive parents? I remember as young as 4, thinking “I’ve got to get out of here.” I think in the 60’s, they were so happy for kids to be adopted, they gave them to anyone. I was supposed to make my adoptive mom “well”. She was seeing all her friends with babies. The hope was, if she got one, she wouldn’t be so crazy.

Another adoptee replied – Most of us were forced to deal with the mental and emotional malfunctions of the infertile people who had purchased us. No big surprise that little children are totally incapable of coping with and fixing adult problems, although we continually were blamed for this failure.

An individual not involved directly in any adoption aspect still notes – parenthood is NOT therapy. Basically treating a child as an emotional support animal. That would mess with anyone, even when it’s your birth mother. To adopt a child, just to do that to them… just terrible.

Another adoptee says – I remember at age – like 5? Writing a letter to my adoptive uncle saying “can I live with you. I understand if you don’t love me, nobody does”. My adoptive parents “bought us a house and furniture” but “if you play by the rules the furniture is yours”. It’s a control game with them. Needless to say I haven’t spoken to them since Christmas, when I finally learned to stand up for myself and gave them a chance to change, sadly realizing they don’t see anything wrong with their actions or playing victim.

Yet another adoptee notes – any “help” from my adoptive dad comes with major strings attached.

And another adoptee says – Yes, parentification is a thing. (Parentification occurs when parents look to their children for emotional and/or practical support, rather than providing it.)

One who considers herself an ex-adoptee notes – I felt a crushing weight to parent them and be their in-home therapist and emotional support for everything, for 10yrs (9-19). Now at this point when I’m out, I can hardly meet my own emotional needs.

Another adoptee shares – recently, I fractured my arm. I’m out of work for 4 weeks because of this. I need both arms to work and I only have 1 at the moment. I don’t know how I’ll make ends meet, after my savings run dry, if my short term disability doesn’t get approved. Recent conversation with my adoptive mother –

Her: “How are you doing financially?”

Me: “not good, I don’t think I’ll be able to pay all my bills”

*context is my adoptive parents have a lot of money*

Her: “That’s too bad. Not my problem though, can’t help you out there.”

Then she hangs up on me. If I didn’t have my fiancé to help support me, I don’t think I’d be here, I’d have already given up.

Yet another adoptee – This is my life with my adoptive mother. If you weren’t letting her groom you, you were the problem and she used either circumstance to dump all her unprocessed shït on us. She kept me from therapy as a child because the counselors believed me over her. Just a reminder – abusers are just as good at grooming allies as they are at grooming victims – I could never understand why Child Protective Services didn’t see through all the BS. She used my anxiety, depression and PTSD against me and to shame me – in childhood and adulthood. She wants authority. Not to be a parent. And refuses to understand the difference. Even her biological son (16 years older than me) was very low contact (or outright no contact) with her when I was in grade school because of her behavior. But then of course, her having me in her grasp since I was 3months old, still left her enough room to blame my biological parents for my everything. Unless it was something good, that I actually I inherited from my biological parents, then my adoptive mother claimed it was from her and retroactively tried to claim it was her traits, that she passed on to me. (We were often forced to sit and listen to her and her biological family literally uplift and embrace their shared genetics in front of each other) When my own kids were born, who are the first biological relatives I’ve been able to know, one of the first things she conditioned my adoptive father to say to me, upon meeting them, was how much they’d be like her.

One confirms – There was emotional surrogacy in the home where I grew up. My adoptive father expected me to protect my adoptive mother’s feelings, during her wildly fluctuating emotional states, but didn’t protect me from the emotional abuse. He never expected her to seek mental help. I first felt it around age 8-9. But the stark reality of it hit home at 14, when I asked him for comfort after one of her unreasonable outbursts. He told me quite plainly to “behave” because I “know how she is.”

Even one with a “good” adoptive home notes – I love my adoptive parents, but I was always the adult in the house. ALWAYS.

Another one says, My adoptive mom likely has Dependent Personality Disorder. She’s a chronic child and it’s like she she wanted me to mother her. She struggles to do basic things that adults should be able to handle. I learned to cook at 5/6 because this was the best way to make sure I had food to eat that wasn’t rotten and wouldn’t make me sick. At 7, she starts telling me details about her sex life, like young women share with close female friends. At 10, I started cooking Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner myself – so we could have Thanksgiving without having to find a restaurant open. At 12, I was regularly being woken up past midnight on a school night because my adoptive parent’s got into a fight and my adoptive mother needed reassurance that everything was going to be ok. By 13, I started to realize this wasn’t normal.

Finally, an adoptee says, My boyfriend is adopted and his parents absolutely didn’t pay for an adult child. Just a baby. And tried to keep him that way. My adoptive parents tried with me. And it worked for a while. But I was very resistant. My brother, also adopted, same story. They treat him as a perpetual baby.

A Happy Reunion

Jimmy Lippert Thyden with his mother, María Angélica González

Though so much time may have been lost, I always love reunion stories. Both The Guardian LINK>Hi, Mom. I love you and USA Today LINK>Virginia man meets Chilean family.

From USA Today – It has been 42 years since María Angélica González saw her son. He was a newborn. A nurse told González he needed to be put in an incubator because he was premature. Not long after, she returned with devastating news: The baby was dead.

For 42 years, that’s what González believed. For 42 years, it has been a lie. Gonzalez’s son, Jimmy Lippert Thyden, was stolen from González, adopted out to unwitting parents in the United States and raised in Arlington, Virginia. For 42 years, Thyden believed he had no living relatives in Chile, where he was born.

Then one day in April, Thyden read a USA TODAY story about a California man who had learned he was stolen from his mother in Chile and illegally adopted out to an American couple. It got Thyden thinking: Could the same thing have happened to him? Within weeks, Thyden learned the truth. And last week, González finally got to hug her son.

From The Guardian – Under the brutal 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, tens of thousands of babies were taken from their parents and adopted by foreigners. Thyden was raised as one of three siblings in a loving, two-parent household. Thyden knew he was born in Chile. He grew up to serve with the US Marines for 19 years and established himself as a criminal defense attorney. But he and his adopted family believed he had no living relatives left in the South American nation.

Human rights groups believe more than 20,000 babies were snatched away from mostly low-income mothers in Chile and then put up to be adopted by people in foreign countries who paid what they believed were legitimate fees – yet who had been lied to about the babies’ circumstances. Midwives, doctors, social workers, nuns, priests and judges all had roles in the plot, which was financially lucrative for its participants as well as Pinochet’s government.

Thyden made contact with an organization named LINK>Nos Buscamos, which means “we look for each other” in Spanish. The group’s volunteers use DNA tests donated by the genealogy platform My Heritage to reunite families who were separated by Pinochet. In 2014, reporters for the Chilean investigative news agency Ciper exposed the human trafficking operation that existed under Pinochet. In addition to his biological mother, he also has four biological brothers and a sister.

Regarding his adoptive life, he says – He was grateful that his adopted family gave him “every opportunity” to thrive in the US. “They … spared me nothing,” said Thyden, who lives in Ashburn, Virginia, with his wife and two daughters. “I had a loving home, opportunities, strong values and a great education.” However, regarding his genetic mother, he says – “To know [her] is to know she is a loving and caring person,” Thyden remarked. “It becomes very real. We feel as though we have fit in all along – like a missing puzzle piece now found but meant to fit all along.”

Kristin Chenoweth Reunion

Kristin with Mamalynn

Kristin’s birth mother has passed away but thankfully, she was able to reconnect with the woman and spend 10 years knowing her. She tells the story (about the 3:50 mark) in an interview with Katie Couric in 2019) that her uncle said to her birth mother “There’s a girl on there (Jay Leno’s show) that acts just like you.”

She has spoken about meeting her biological mom for the very first time – “I walked in the room and she went, ‘It’s you?!’ And I said ‘hi!’ and [it was] just like looking in the mirror.”

blogger’s note – I’ve had similar moments when I saw photos of my mom’s birth mother and my dad’s birth father – how much my parents were like their genetic parents. It’s that genetic mirroring that is so often lacking in an adoptee’s life with their adoptive parents, and sometimes extended families. Each of my parents had one sibling who was also an adoptee.

Chenoweth has said in interviews before that her adopted parents always made sure she knew she was adopted and loved, while growing up as a child. “They always said, ‘The lady that had you in her belly could not take care of you the way she wanted to, and she loved you so much.’”

Kristin goes on to describe her birth mother as an incredible person. She notes that upon the two of them meeting, her birth mother asked her “Can you forgive me?” Which she does and says “I’m so grateful for her.”

Chenoweth goes on to say “So many things became clear to me about myself when I met her and came to really know her. Those of us who knew her loved her light. Her love of music and all things artistic. An artist herself!”

Kristin adds, “In her belly, I became fans of Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Doyle Bramhall, Jimi Hendrix, and, of course, Billy Ethridge – my bio dad. The two of them gave me the innate artistic ability I have today,” Kristin continued.

(LINK>Bassist Billy Ethridge replaced Lanier Greig, shortly after ZZ Top was first formed. Ethridge was a bandmate of Stevie Ray Vaughan. He quit because he didn’t want to sign with London records, so Dusty Hill took his spot. )

On her birth mother’s passing, Kristin notes – “Mamalynn prayed for me every year on my birthday, hoping I was having the most perfect life, which of course, I was.”

“I snuck away and prayed for her too, wishing that someday I would be allowed tell her ‘thank you,’ Which I did on 12/12/12. A beautiful day!” she said, adding that the two “didn’t leave anything unsaid in the end.”

“I will miss her till the end of my days,” Chenoweth continued. “But then, I will fly into the sky, where she will be waiting to greet me, and she will say, ‘start singing Babygirl!’ And I will. RIP Mamalynn.”

“Kristin, I’m so sorry for your loss,” Rita Wilson wrote on the tribute. “What a blessing you got to know each other over these past years. And that she got to know you. Your gratitude in this tribute is so bright and clear. Love you. May her memory be eternal.”

blogger’s note – my mom was a singer – she even sang and played her guitar at my wedding. She and my dad both died knowing next to nothing about their genetic parents. I did think that each of my parents met their birth parents after they passed and instantly knew more – than even I know now – about their genetic ancestors. What I know now is hugely more than my parents knew about them during their own physical lifetimes.