#NotMyNAAM

It was almost two years ago now, that the door opened for me on my parents adoptions. I had already lived 6 decades of my life and both of my adoptee parents had passed away. In this brief amount of time, I have been able to become “whole” as regards my parents original parents – ie I now know who my grandparents were and something about each of their individual stories but thanks to adoption, I’ll never know them.

As I began to educate myself about all of the aspects related to adoption, I also truly began to understand there was something rotten in adoptionland. I have also begun to learn about better alternatives for seeing to the well being of children and hopefully to the healing and repair of their original families. Society has a long way to go. I digress and not really.

The paradox for my own self comes when I consider the reality of my own existence. Two major aspects of that have become crystal clear for me in the last two years. [1] I would not exist but for adoption – my parents would have never met. [2] It is a miracle that I was not given up for adoption as well. Conceived by an unwed teenage mother in the deepest part of the Baby Scoop Era, I believe it was my dad’s adoptive parents who insisted that he quit the university he had only started to study at and do the “right” thing, marry my mom and go to work.

So becoming aware of ALL of the problems with adoption presents quite a quandary for me personally. Even so, I am a #NeverAdoption convert now. November is National Adoption Awareness Month. It is NOT a time to celebrate the ripping apart of families to support a profit-driven and often ignorant practice but a month to begin to educate yourself if you believe adoption is all unicorns and rainbows, ie happy endings always.

#NotMyNAAM

Let’s Get Real

I know what I am going to write about here, will seem like shocking hyperbole to the average non-adoptee, to anyone who hasn’t spent time listening to the stories of adult adoptees, who has seen adoption only through this beautiful adopter lens, and the seemingly happy adoptees in their own community.

Adoption is not heroism. It does not fight poverty, disease nor the root causes of inequality.

Adoption doesn’t even raise awareness about the real causes of poverty, inequality, parent-child separations, disease or social immobility. Instead it creates an idolatry of those who seek to adoption to counter a world that stigmatizes infertility, disease, poverty and poor access to education.

Adoption publicity silences the voice of adoptees, trapping them in a pernicious web where they are expected to show only gratitude.

The outcome of showcasing a false savior-ism in adoption is to make adoption fashionable and highly desirable to the upper and middle classes and wannabe saviors.

Anonymising family history is at the center of the process. This creates a commercial market for baby farms, coercion and kidnapping and provides a kind of diplomatic immunity and witness protection for all agencies and families under the magic umbrella of adoption.

The false story about adoption, that adopters are saving children, disguises the reality of parenting adopted children. Children who’ve experienced the trauma of separation from their natural family cannot replace the missing biological children of infertile couples.

The failure to address this grief by all parties and to instead speed towards wishing for the separation of babies from families, helps no one. Instead, the process leaves everyone having to repress forbidden feelings. That never ends well for anyone.

In the context of adoption, people frequently confuse being pre-verbal with being pre-feeling and pre-memory. It is the myth of the blank slate. In truth a baby comprehends without words. In children raised by their natural parents, there is a sense of safety and connection that lays a foundation for the forming of strong attachments, robust relationships and resilient immune systems.

It is time for a good change in how society handles these situations.

They Were Real People

Growing up, I didn’t know these people existed. I accepted my adoptive grandparents as though they had come into my life naturally. I thought my parents were orphans and that their original parents had died because I did know they had both been adopted.

It may be that I know about as much about them now, as many people know about their extended family, as many families do not live in easy proximity of each other and even sometimes issues and resentments keep them separated.

Learning about the people who were my parents original parents has made them real to me now. In fact, even though I had no lifelong history with them, they are who I think of first. I still love that the people who grandparented me loved me as well. Cousins from those relationships are still cousins to me but happily I now have some new cousins who I know share the blood that runs in my veins. I like to say I am whole + now.

The natural mother should be given some say
about who parents her baby.
For the baby’s sake, she should be encouraged
to maintain some post-adoption contact,
even if painful for her.
If her physical presence isn’t possible,
letters, cards, photographs and up-dated history
would be some continuing connection.
It is important for the child’s development
that it’s birth parents are real,
that the genetic history is available
and the relationship is as free of confusion as possible.
~ The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier