The image I have used is modern but back in the day, Georgia Tann discovered that many hopeful adoptive parents would respond to getting a baby for Christmas.
“Yours for the asking! George wants to play catch but needs a Daddy to complete Team “Catch this ball, Daddy!” How would YOU like to have this handsome five-year-old play “catch” with you? How would you like his chubby arms to slip around your neck and give you a bearlike hug? His name is George and he may be yours for the asking, if you hurry along your request to the Christmas Baby Editor of the Press-Scimitar. In co-operation with Miss Georgia Tann of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, The Press-Scimitar will place 25 babies for adoption this Christmas.”
Recently, one of my “The Baby Thief” blogs (there have been 3 actually but one has gotten an amazing number of views that I am not accustomed to receiving) about Georgia Tann has been getting renewed attention. You can read it here – https://missingmom.home.blog/2019/03/06/the-baby-thief/.
This reminded me that Tann originally discovered that advertising sells babies for her. And knowing how over the top some hopeful adoptive parents are about publicizing their efforts I went looking a bit for something that would convey that in the context of Christmas, since we are now in that season.
My thanks to unearthedmemphis.com for the examples of Tann’s use of advertising.
ChildWelfare.gov has an article titled “Use of Advertising and Facilitators in Adoptive Placements.” They note that in private or independent adoptions (without agency involvement), (hopeful, prospective adoptive) parents may choose to advertise their interest in adopting. Birth parents also may advertise their interest in placing their children for adoption. In an effort to protect the interests of all parties, especially children, and to avoid the possibility of an illegal placement, many States have enacted laws that either prohibit or regulate the use of advertising.
Advertising is defined as the publication in any public medium, either print or electronic, of an interest in adopting a child or if a specific child is available for adoption. Public media include newspapers, periodicals, radio, television, telephone book listings, the internet, billboards, or print fliers. Approximately 33 States currently have laws that in some way limit or regulate the use of advertising in adoptive placement.
You can learn more about the specifics at the ChildWelfare.gov link above.
“Creativity is the urge to wholeness, the urge to individuation or to the becoming of what one truly is.” ~ Jean Houston in Public Like A Frog
Creativity is the spiritual drive in us, just below the surface of consciousness, so that you as a personal becomes extended into the universal. An adoptee experiences an immense yearning. An adoptee (if they know they were adopted, and I believe, even if they don’t) knows that they are part of something that is missing and the only remedy is to find the missing part(s) and finally become whole. I know that experience intimately in my own life and circumstances (both of my parents were adopted, knew next to nothing about their origins and so could not pass that information down to us – leaving it my destiny to fill in the missing parts in order to become whole, and by extension, return wholeness to all of my parents’ descendants.
Identity issues – there is a lack, not knowing where and from who we came into being. Certainly, I knew (as many adoptees do not) who my mother and father were (thankfully). But beyond them was nothing but a black hole, a void. To not know this affects self-esteem, even if it is not understood to have that effect. We lack something that almost all other people have so effortlessly that they take it entirely for granted.
Here are examples of situations that adopted children can find themselves confronted with, either during childhood or after they enter adulthood.
A. A woman discovers that her birth mother is alive even though her adoptive parents told her she was dead. In point of fact, her adoptive mother had tried to contact her and the adoptive family from the time she was five years old and onward.
B. A young woman from a war torn Asian nation was adopted by a white American family. She will not search for her parents and family because she is convinced they are dead and she does not wish to “betray” her American parents. She comes to therapy because she has difficulty maintaining intimate relationships and feels quite depressed.
C. An adopted girl is convinced that her parents are her natural parents. However, they are unable to explain to her why she is in their wedding photographs, when they had told her she was born a year after they married.
D. A male baby is adopted by a Jewish family and is raised in the Jewish religion. There are no records anywhere of his birth parents and he knows nothing of his genetic origins.
Even though a lot more is known today about the importance of the adoptee learning about their natural parents and their genetic histories, many individual and family issues involving the people who do the adopting, interfere with good child development and adult adjustment.
Issues faced by adopted persons:
1. It is very common for those who were adopted to feel rejected and abandoned by their birth parents. This is accompanied by feelings of grief and loss. There is no set time or age when these feeling surface but, sooner or later, they do.
2. Feelings of loss and rejection are often accompanied by a damaged sense of self esteem. There is an understandable tendency to think that “something must be wrong with me for my birth parents to have give me away.” It must be understood that these feelings and thoughts are unrelated to the amount of love and support received from the adoptive parents and family.
3. Guilt accompanies loss and grief because the adopted individual believes that they are being disloyal to the people who adopted, loved and raised them. They do not want to hurt or betray their adoptive mother or father. Feelings of guilt and fears of being disloyal were what prevented the girl in case “C” from asking the obvious question, “why am I in your wedding pictures if I was not born yet?”
4. In cases B and D there is a disconnect with the original heritage of the birth parents. For the Asian young woman, raised in a large family with many siblings, the obvious racial differences did come to “haunt her” later on. While she wished to visit the Asian nation of her birth, she was so totally identified with being American, and even “while” that she feared stirring up her past. She, too, did not want to cause any hurt to her adoptive parents. However, it must be said for them, that they encouraged and offered to help her in her search. Despite this encouragement, she was not ready to do any search. Long discussions in therapy never revealed what she feared.
5. According to the great psychologist, Eric Erikson, adolescence involves a search for self identity. While this search is difficult for most teenagers, it presents special problems for adoptee. Assuming they never met their natural parents and family and have no idea of their genetic background, they are left with a gigantic gap in their search to answer the age old question, “Who am I.” Of course, the more information available to young people, the less of a gap there is in the information they need to formulate a real sense of themselves. In all of the cases above, a huge gap existed in this information. Except for the Asian young woman, all were denied any information, mostly because the adoptive families, either wittingly or unwittingly, did not provide necessary facts.
6. Missing genetic information is important for obvious medical reasons. It is important for everyone to have knowledge of the medical history because it can provide clues to genetic diseases. For example, in case D, the patient entered psychotherapy unaware that he had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. His family was unaware of this as well. If more had been known about the birth parents, it might have been possible to predict his childhood problems at home and at school. It was only after entering psychotherapy that he was evaluated and diagnosed with ADHD and appropriately treated for this. The information was relieving to both him and his adoptive parents because everyone now knew that he was never “bad” or “dumb” but afflicted with this disorder of the brain.
7. Many adults who were adopted struggle with fears that they will be disloyal to their adoptive parents if they search for their natural parents. In my experience, the only real exception to this is when adoptive parents make the very deliberate and conscious effort to inform and encourage their child to do a search and to let them know how important that is. Unfortunately, as illustrated in cases A and C, there are people who discourage such a search and even lie to their adopted child about their origins. In the end, lies and distortions never succeed and often result in feelings of anger at the adoptive parent, sometimes causing a breach in the relationship.
Why do a few adoptive parents hide the truth? And even if they do not (both of my parents knew they were adopted from childhood but that did not provide them with any information that could have informed their sense of self-identity) there can still be such a gap in what is known as to be functionally useless (as it was in my parents case until I went to work to find out the details). There are cases where the adopting family lives in a state of fear that, somehow and someday, they will lose their child. This fear of loss, often irrational, is a powerful motivation to keep the adopted child as close as possible.
The truth is that, adopted children who search for their natural parents, have no reason for shifting their loyalties and feelings. They set out on the search because there is a deep-seated need, as there is for most of us, to know as much as possible about our history, both racial, cultural, personal and genetic.
Like a majority of families who’ve adopted children, I wasn’t mentally prepared for the surprises. You know, the chaos inside Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The manipulation and triangulation inherent to attachment disorders. The invisible insanity associated with developmental trauma.
When the bad seemed destined to overshadow the good, I quietly questioned my decision – as well as my worth. It wasn’t exactly the wonderful life that I expected. What would have happened to your children if you hadn’t opened your home and your heart? If you hadn’t adopted? I’ve given that “what if” question serious thought more than once. The possibilities are dark – when envisioned through real stories of children that were never given a chance.
He goes on to detail what each of the 6 children he adopted would have experienced, at least as he imagines the not unbelievable outcomes for each because it is the fate and outcome for some children in the system. Clearly, he still believes in adoption. He admits – They were never perfect children and I was never the perfect parent. But together we meticulously and mindfully built a forever family in every sense of the word.
He writes – “My three youngest sons (22, 23 and 24) still feel safe after 20 years in my care and appreciate living under my roof. They desire independence yet aren’t ready to take on for the world. Someday perhaps.” And I am happy to read that his perspective on parenting is much like my husband’s and my own – we don’t care if our sons never leave their childhood home nor would we trap them here. We’ve said as much directly to them.
Donald Craig Peterson has stories to share about his successes as well as learning experiences in raising his six children to adulthood. It has been his goal to convey unconditional love throughout the years. He understands the ups and downs of learning challenges, special education, psychotropic medications, ADHD, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Bipolar Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder, sexual abuse, juvenile justice, residential placement and more. His blog is here: https://adoptingfaithafathersunconditionallove.org/.
Such an irresistible story, I just had to share it today. The story is “old” but still sweet. The baby that tore two Kentucky teen-agers apart 25 years ago united them in marriage in August of 1991. Mark Kitts officiated at the wedding. His adoptee effort to reunite with his birth parents prompted them to speak to each other again for the first time since his mother learned she was pregnant.
“I’ve always been in love with him,” Karen Caldwell said of her high school sweetheart and now husband, Roger Caldwell. “I’ve never been in love with anyone else.” Karen Waterfill was a 15-year-old Western High School cheerleader in 1966. Roger Caldwell was an honor student and a basketball player at the same high school but by then a freshman at the University of Kentucky.
This is so much like the story of my parents. My mom was a junior in high school and my dad was a freshman at the U of NM at Las Cruces when I took up residence in her womb. My story turned out happier (I believe) than their son Mark Kitts, though he has no complaints. My parents were also high school sweethearts – both of them adoptees – and they remained married for over 50 years until death did part them.
Karen was sent away to a Lexington home for unwed mothers. On Sept 11 1966, she gave birth to a boy. I will always be forever grateful that this didn’t happen to me and my own parents. It could have so easily been my story as well as that was the norm in the mid-1950s. “I remember him crying, but I never got to hold him,” Karen said. The baby was adopted within a week.
A few months after the birth, Roger Caldwell, who did not know the child’s birth date or sex, married another woman, joined the Air Force and left town. But he told his wife, whom he divorced in 1988 after they raised two children together, that he really loved someone else. Karen eventually would say the same thing to two husbands. About six months after the baby was born, Karen returned to the home to ask about him. They would tell her only that he had been adopted by “good people.”
This is so much like what happened to my mom’s mother with Georgia Tann who wouldn’t tell her anything about who adopted my mom or where she went.
Mark’s adoptive parents were Gene and Linda Kitts of Lexington, who adopted their second son, a baby they named Mark. In all, the Kittses, who lived in Louisville when this story was published, eventually had six children — five of whom are adopted and three of whom have found their birth parents. It was a search that the Kittses supported. Linda Kitts said that she often wondered about the women who gave birth to her children.
John Ellis was a mutual friend of the Caldwells in high school. Karen and Roger each quizzed Ellis about how the other was doing. Roger occasionally drove by Karen’s house, hoping she would be outside. Karen got dressed to go to the visitation after Roger’s mother died, but then changed her mind.
When Mark’s wife Dee-dee became pregnant, he start thinking about his own birth. He obtained a court order for the state to attempt to locate his birth mother. Karen Williams was married and living in Frankfort. She eventually agreed to meet Mark Kitts and to see whether Roger Caldwell would meet him as well.
They agreed to meet and discuss Mark’s request. So. Roger came to Kentucky and picked Karen up. The couple cried and talked, then began seeing each other every day. Their relationship went so smoothly that when they met Mark, he thought, “Wow, this is odd. This couple really gets along well.” Karen said it was like giving birth to Mark all over again. Only this time Roger was by her side.
Karen Caldwell also had a 22-year-old daughter and a grandchild living in Frankfort but she quit her job in Kentucky to marry Roger and move to Tennessee. Karen filed for divorce — something she says she had been considering anyway — and then Roger asked her to marry him. Three days after the divorce became final, Mark officiated at the couple’s wedding in Covington, Kentucky.
Mark said, “I’ve been very happy with my life. I don’t wish it was different. We’re trying to build a relationship on the future, not the past.”
Spreading a bit of inspiration today to lead optimistic lives – I take a look at a few adoptees (many with kinship or step-parent type adoptions) who made some difference or achieved something worthwhile with their lives.
[1] Babe Ruth – was sent to an orphanage at a young age along with his sister. There he was taught and encouraged to play baseball. Ruth eventually spent 22 record-breaking seasons playing baseball and became one of America’s greatest baseball players.
[2] Eleanor Roosevelt – by the age of 15, Roosevelt was a double orphan. She was then adopted by her grandmother. Roosevelt would become the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, as well as a United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She has been called the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.
[3] Steve Jobs – Surrendered and adopted shortly after birth, Jobs was a successful entrepreneur who became the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. He has personally been linked to the technological revolution that has swept the world.
[4] Melissa Gilbert – After being adopted as a baby, Gilbert went on to star as Laura Ingalls Wilder on the NBC series, Little House on the Prairie,from 1974 to 1984.
[5] John Hancock – Raised by extended family after the death of his father, Hancock became a prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. His signature is so well-recognized from signing the Declaration of Independence that the term “John Hancock” has become a synonym for signature, which point was made in the Will Smith movie Hancock.
[6] Michael Oher – Adopted at age 17 after spending years in various foster homes, Oher went on to play offensive lineman for the Ole Miss Rebels and then was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft. He is the main character in the movie, The Blind Side,which won an Academy Award movie.
[7] Nelson Mandela – Raised by a tribe chief after his father’s death (when Mandela was 9 years old), he was President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. He was known as a revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist.
[8] Leo Tolstoy – Raised by extended family after the death of his parents, Tolstoy became a famous Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, and philosopher. His written work is still widely read today.
[9] Nancy Reagan – After her parents separated, Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins) lived with an aunt and uncle during most of her childhood. She eventually reunited with her mom and took her stepfather’s last name, “Davis.” She was the First Lady during her husband’s administration.
[10] Dave Thomas – Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to a young unmarried woman he never knew, Thomas was adopted at 6 weeks old. At age 5, when his (adoptive) mother died, Thomas moved in with his grandmother. As an adult, Thomas became the founder and CEO of Wendy’s restaurant chain.
[11] Edgar Allan Poe – Born in 1809, Poe’s father abandoned the family in 1810. His mother died the following year. Orphaned, he went to live with the Allan family in Virginia, who then raised him to adulthood. He was an American writer known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his mysteries. He is considered the inventor of detective fiction.
[12] Gerald Ford – Leslie Lynch King Jr was only 16 days old when his parents went their separate ways. A couple of years later, King’s mother remarried and they changed Leslie Lynch King Jr’s name to Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr, in honor of his stepfather (whom Ford says played a wonderful role in his life). Ford was our 38th President of the United States.
[13] Simone Biles – After spending time in and out of foster care, Biles was adopted by her grandparents who helped her pursue her dream to reach the Olympics. As an American gymnast, Biles became the 2016 Olympic individual all-around, vault, and floor gold medalist. As an integral part of the “Final Five,” she is currently the most decorated American gymnast with nineteen Olympic and World Championship medals.
Pro-Adoption advocates are likely to cheer the increased availability of newborn infants for adoption if the Supreme Court does basically, at least in effect, overturn Roe v Wade. Adult adoptees will mostly mourn the likelihood.
On this day, I found an interesting blog titled – Christians: We’re NOT READY to Abolish Roe v Wade. The author admits – “I am a man. I am an adopting father. I am a minister. I am Christian. These are my inherent biases right at the top.” He also writes – “as I’ve observed pro-life culture throughout my adult life, I’ve noticed a problem – We’re not ready for it. We’re not ready for all the babies. Literally.”
He adds this thought – If Roe v Wade is overturned, many of these new babies could eventually end up in the foster care system or be put up for private adoption. And not just once, but every single year. The foster care system as it stands today is already stressed – 400,000 + children are already in a system that is underfunded, understaffed, and suffers from a lack of certified families available to foster and adopt. An additional 600,000-1 million children every yearwill overwhelm the foster care system in every possible way.
He asks – Are you willing to put your feelings aside and sacrifice space in your heart and home for children who need stability while their family situation is sorted out, knowing they could be reunified with their birth families? Are you prepared to give up several weekends to undergo the education necessary to foster? He also asks – Are you prepared to spend thousands of dollars to adopt privately?
One of the problems I have had with the whole Pro-Life movement is that it is NOT about quality of life. It is only about getting babies born – and then, who cares what kind of life they or their mother have after that?
These babies that result from ending Roe v Wade may not be white infants; and if coming through foster care, these will likely be children with a host of behavioral, mental, emotional, and spiritual problems. When these children age out of foster care at the age of 18, they will likely end up incarcerated and having babies of their own who will then also end up in the foster care system. Imagine having nowhere to go during Christmas. Imagine having no family to celebrate your birthday with you. That’s what it’s like for children who age out of foster care. Foster care children (in the literal and legal sense) are refugees in their own country.
This one could get some Conservatives’ attention – To be ready for all these post-Roe v Wade babies, we’re going to have to pay more in taxes, mostly on the state level. Many conservatives want abortion to end, but also want to cut the government programs that help mothers and families who decide to keep their babies to survive financially. This would also include stipends from the state that go to foster families to help them cover the additional costs of caring for these children. Are you willing to say that the babies need to live, but need to do it without the aid that sustains them? I believe that this question actually repeats the primary goal of the Pro-Life movement – birth but no financial aid for families.
He then asks – Christians, are you willing to accept that comprehensive sex education beyond abstinence must happen to reduce pregnancies?
Reality bites, doesn’t it ? In conclusion – If you are NOT prepared to do more than vote and post on Facebook concerning abortion, then stop calling yourself pro-life. You are pro-birth. You want the children to be born, but you’re not willing to do anything for them after they are born, and thus you condemn them to a life where they’re much more likely to be mired in poverty, crime, incarceration, and a continuing cycle of giving birth to unplanned children.
When Jennifer Teege, a German-Nigerian woman, randomly picked up a library book off a shelf, her life changed forever. Recognizing images of her mother and grandmother in the book, she discovered a horrifying fact that no one had ever shared with her: Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List, a man known and despised the world over.
Although raised in an orphanage and eventually adopted, Teege had some contact with her biological mother and grandmother as a child. Yet neither revealed that Teege’s grandfather was the Nazi “butcher of Plaszów,” executed for crimes against humanity in 1946. The more Teege reads about Amon Goeth, the more certain she becomes: If her grandfather had met her—a black woman—he would have killed her.
Teege’s discovery sends her, at age 38, into a severe depression. My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past details her quest to unearth and fully comprehend her family’s haunted history. Her research takes her to Krakow—to the sites of the Jewish ghetto her grandfather “cleared” in 1943 and the Plaszów concentration camp he then commanded—and back to Israel, where she herself once attended college, learned fluent Hebrew and formed lasting friendships. Teege struggles to reconnect with her estranged mother, and to accept that her beloved grandmother once lived in luxury as Goeth’s mistress at Plaszów.
Ultimately, Teege’s resolute search for the truth leads her, step by step, to the possibility of her own liberation. The chronicle of her struggle with her haunted past unfolds in her memoir My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, co-written with journalist Nikola Sellmair and newly translated from German.
Teege visits her grandparents’ house in the Płaszów neighborhood of Krakow, Poland. It is the only dilapidated house on quiet Heltmana Street. And she writes – there is a coldness that creeps into your bones. And a stench.
Over a year has gone by since I first found the book about my mother in the library. Since then I have read everything I could find about my grandfather and the Nazi era. I am haunted by the thought of him, I think about him constantly. Do I see him as a grandfather or as a historical character? He is both to me: Płaszów commandant Amon Goeth and my grandfather.
When I was young I was very interested in the Holocaust. I went on a school trip from Munich to the Dachau concentration camp, and I devoured one book about the Nazi era after another, such as When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, A Square of Sky and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. I saw the world through Anne Frank’s eyes; I felt her fear but also her optimism and her hope.
You can read the entire piece my blog came from in – my Jewish Detroit. I have a smidgeon of Ashkenazi Jew in my DNA and have always felt drawn to Jewish culture. I would like to read her book sometime. Also because I am interested in learning more about the experience of Black people. In the USA, we have much to learn and white supremacy is a threat, slavery still exists only now the plantations have been replaced by prisons.
I was in foster care from the age of 5 until 9. I was adopted at 9. But I moved back in with my biological family and mom when I was about 10 or 11. Then, I was back in foster care from age 16 to18. Even if I had only been in foster care that once from 5-9, I would consider myself to be a former foster care youth. I remember my social worker clearly. I remember being moved from house to house because my older siblings fought to keep us all together, even though my brothers were “trouble makers”.
I remember one home making us shower outside with the water house instead of using the bathrooms inside to shower. Then, eventually being separated from my brothers, while my older sister and I stayed together, until they found another placement that would take all of us.
All of that happened to me in the first year of foster care.
Then, when they found the placement that would eventually adopt me. But one of my brothers was molested by a grown up, the family had adopted as a child. That led me to want to move back in with my biological family – after the adoption was finalized.
I don’t think it takes aging out to be considered a former foster care youth. I get how being adopted as an infant doesn’t really give you the voice to speak as a former foster care youth, mainly because while it involves trauma, these aren’t experiences you can describe first hand because you don’t actually remember them.
I’m not going to tell someone how to identify themselves. If foster care was some part of your own story, it’s just a part of it. I’m not going to say you are wrong for identifying however you identify.
Adoption is traumatic. I don’t care who you are or where you came from. In 99% of cases, these kids would choose a shit life at home with their real parents vs their adoptive parents.
The “got ya” attitude reeks of a savior complex. Why do you need to celebrate?
Their parents failed for some reason. They lost their parents that day. It is not the time to wear tacky shirts for BS likes from all your church friends. It’s tacky. It’s trashy and only serves you.
If you wear those god awful shirts you’re serving yourself and further traumatizing your new child with all the photos you’ll take to commemorate this.
Those signs for kids out of foster care are also clueless and without true feelings because kids in foster care don’t think like that. Those X amount of days since they were in foster care is the remembrance of the day their trauma started. Don’t memorialize it !!
Even adoptees who were adopted as early as 7 days after birth, hate their birthdays because that was the day they were abandoned.
Just don’t do it. In either case, these are not a day of celebration for the child at the center of the reason.
Two Forms (Divided Circle) 1969 by Dame Barbara Hepworth
At the bottom of this blog, I’ll link the Adoption & Addiction, Remembered Not Recalled video by Paul Sunderland but first, for those who don’t want to watch for almost an hour, I share a few snippets.
The issue of adoption is all about divided attention, it’s all about 2 sets of families. It’s all about the conflicting feelings of wanting to belong, yet fearing belonging. (As the child of two adoptees, I’m certain this has filtered down into my own soul. I have never felt that I added up to be as much as the golden people I surround myself with – whether in social online networking communities or in my writer’s guild up in St Louis – those are just two examples but it probably goes back into my childhood as well.)
Adoption is a pretty weird word because it’s about the only condition that doesn’t really describe what has happened. Talking about adoption is a denial of relinquishment. The relinquishment wounds can be seen as a developmental post-traumatic stress disorder.
The word adoption is a cover-up. When we think about the adoption triangle, we think about the 3 parties in adoption. The adopted child, there are the birth or natural parents and there is the adoptive parent(s). Sunderland’s focus in his lecture is mostly about the adopted child. And as the title of his lecture suggests, his lecture is also about the apparent addition of addiction to that adopted child.
(And I do believe it is in struggling with an abandonment that one is lead into addiction. As an aside, we watched the 2008 Will Smith movie Hancock last night. He is an alcoholic and it seems to me that his alcoholism is due to similar issues of not knowing who one is at the core and feeling abandoned but not knowing by who.)
Back to the Sunderland lecture, he says that when he encounters birth parents in a treatment setting they usually say, “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about what happened.”
Adoptees are massively over-represented in treatment. And that leads to a question, Why is that ?
He has met quite a few adoptive parents, particularly as cross-cultural adoptions have been so popular. It is clear that many are feeling like, this is just not what we signed up to do.
Sunderland’s perspective is that there are NO adoptions without trauma. What he is talking about in his lecture is an enormous grief. A baby who has been waiting 9 months to meet somebody that they are not going to meet. It is about a mother who cannot live with having her child because society has told her that she cannot do it. Relinquishment goes against her biology.
And very often, the adoptive parents come into adoption carrying their own enormous grief due to having been unable to have a child of their own, naturally. One of the problems that Sunderland has with the word adoption is that it covers up the adoptive parents own grief.
So often, an adoptee will be told that they were chosen but the reality is that child has entered into a family that does not genetically fit them and given an impossible job description. They are forced to be someone that they can never actually be to fix the wound that the adoptive parents have. Infertility is an enormous disappointment for a couple and adoption tries to cover that up.
For an adoptee, the issue of abandonment is life threatening. There is nothing worse than to be separated from the one person (your mother) who you needed most at the beginning of your life. This is preverbal – it can’t be recalled – however, it IS remembered.
The word adoption tries to suggest that it is going to be a happily ever after situation. The human brain begins working before it is entirely built and experience is what programs the brain. If the beginning is a trauma and separation, then this is the experience that is wiring the neurons in the brain of the infant. For an adoptee there is a constant desire to attach accompanied by the conflicting sense that it isn’t safe to do so. There is no pre-trauma personality in an adoptee because there is no normal to compare this experience to as there would be for other traumatic events (war, car accidents, etc).
Being born prematurely and placed into an incubator is another kind of relinquishment when the infant leaves that containing environment. If a child is placed into foster care, that is also a relinquishment. Each change of foster family is yet another in a series of relinquishments. And second chance adoptions, where an adopted child is given back, is another relinquishment. In some cross-cultural adoptive situations, the child is born into such poverty, they are separated from the mother into an orphanage.
The bonding of an infant with their human mother actually begins 2 months before birth, while in utero, as proven by multiple experiments. Adoptees will often share that they have heard stories that they cried and cried. And I think of the mention of that in my mom’s adoption file via a letter from her adoptive mother to the Tennessee Children’s Home about the train trip upsetting my mom but that the doctor had her settled down now (and I always think – they drugged her, though it is not said directly). And I can understand now that my mom was relinquished twice because her mother took her to Porter Leath Orphanage in desperation for TEMPORARY care while she tried to get on her feet because her lawfully married husband had abandoned her and did not respond to a letter that the Juvenile Court in Memphis had written to him about his obligations.
Sunderland speaks about the stability of a child being dependent on a mother being able to know herself (which certainly was a black hole, actually for both of my parents, that I had until I was well over 60 years old and began to discover my own adoptee parents origin stories). People who are adopted and end up in treatment, often present themselves as fairly well put together.
Sunderland speaks of “love addiction” as needing to have the positive regard of a significant other. Addiction is genetically proposed and environmentally disposed. The hormonal aspects of having been relinquished are similar to living one’s life on red alert. In an adoption, there is a slow loss of self. A belief that they cannot be them self and get along with the people with whom they have been placed. The hormonal aspects affect sleep and stomach issues (and certainly my mom had her share of gastrointestinal issues throughout her entire life). Real difficulties managing moods (I think of my dad’s underlying seething anger that occasionally popped out).
If you think about serotonin, it is a soothing hormone. Addiction is usually an effort to self soothe. Eating sugar is one such effort to self soothe. Both of my parents were seriously diabetic and myself to some extent (though I am trying to manage my own sugar issues without ending up on insulin). Serotonin also manages shame and let’s you know you are okay but if your levels are low, the answer is “I’m not okay.”
Some people are not given up at birth and that was certainly true with both of my parents who spent 6-8 months with their original mothers before being adopted. People who diet and then give up on themselves, often multiple times. The chemicals in the brains of adoptees who have early psychological wounds are very different from other people without this personal background.
Adoptees have a tendency towards catastrophic thinking, always expecting the worst. The original wound of being separated from their mother was a life-threatening one. Shame is an unacknowledged aspect that is the understanding that I am not good enough, the bad baby (I’m unworthy, unlovable, there is something flawed in me) because if I was given up by my mother, I don’t have value. People pleasing arises from this feeling. How do I need to be to be accepted ?
Being extremely self-reliant (if you want something done, do it yourself) is also an outcome. It is interesting to note that both of my parents’ mothers had early abandonment or separation wounds from their own mothers caused by the deaths of their mothers. My dad’s mother had the worst one as her mother died when she was only 3 mos old. When she discovered that she was pregnant by a married man that she was not married to, she simply handled it herself and he never knew. With my mom’s mother, she was in her pre-teens and had to become “mom” to her 4 siblings.
Shame and anxiety are at the root of all addictions. There is an attempt to manage anxiety by managing the externals out there. Addictions are attempts to put anxieties elsewhere and explain the inexplicable. And there is the belief that somehow it is your own fault. Up until about the age of 10, infants and children believe that everything that happens to them, happened because of them.
In life, it’s not so much what happens to you as how secure you were with your early attachments. Roots, the secure base. Without these, one is less resilient. Adaption is a better word for what is done, not adoption. Adoptees end up with two minds. Real difficulties making decisions. The limbic system – fight, flight or freeze – is what kicks in with the catastrophic thinking. It is the part of the brain that developed before the frontal cortex. If you have an attachment wound, you never learned how to become a separate person. Any successful relationship exists in separateness, not in trying to adapt yourself to be accepted by that other person. The erotic exists in the space between the two. The real challenge for an adopted person is to actually BE their own self.
Missing Mom 