A Connection With Mom

From an adoptee – this is exactly how I’ve felt my whole life. Then, when I did get pregnant, this is what it felt like in the opposite way with my son inside me. He’s the first person I’ve ever met related to me and it’s such an awesome feeling. Biology matters!

A trans-racial adoptee affirms – this speaks so much. We are tied to our birth mother, even when we are given up at birth.

Another adoptee writes – It definitely resonates with me. Whether in reunion or not, we are always tied to our mothers.

A mother who relinquished due to coercion writes – Very much connected and bonded to my kiddo before he was born. Which is why the coercion comes into play. They want to sever that connection as long and as much as possible by messing with your brain so you sign those papers.

One adoptee shared the image above, saying – this highlights the depth of loss from the child’s perspective. If you can’t get them to care about the mother, maybe they’ll at least care about the impact separation has on the child.

One adoptee shared – My mom quoted a poem she read in an Ann Landers Column “I didn’t grow you under my heart but in it”. Blogger’s note – In trying to check this out, I found it was actually by LINK>Fleur Conkling Heyliger and relates to having adopted a child. The “mom” was likely her adoptive mother, not her birth mother. I suppose either Ann Landers was a more well-known name or that she actually did share this in a column but I couldn’t prove that. Another adoptee pushed back – except we grew in our Mother’s womb, just like everyone else. That poem is for an adoptive parents benefit.

Another adoptee regarding the drawing at the top of this blog wrote – The deep, lasting connection to our mothers wordlessly and clearly expressed. I like it a lot.

A mother of loss shares – This is why, when I first talked to my son at 30 years old, he said talking to me was so easy, it’s like he had known me forever. It’s a string that should never be broken.

One person shared her first reaction to the drawing at the top of this blog – when I first saw this, I immediately thought it was pro life propaganda. An adoptee admitted – I did too, but only for a flash – the heartbeat thing. Then my adoptee kicked in and I saw something else.

Another adoptee goes full in with a long comment – I think that no matter what – a child is always connected to their mother. They grew inside them, they are the one that gave them life. Their mother felt them grow and move inside their body and that connection is unmatched to any other sort of connection.

The drawing was shared because it relates to a specific situation and so, she elaborates on that – A minor being forced or pressured to give their child up for adoption would be such a devastating loss, especially if this is how the mom feels about her baby. The worst loss anyone can feel is the loss of a child and then, next the loss of a parent. Imagine trying to grieve that loss but knowing they are still alive.

You know you are still connected by that red string of fate but it was cut by adults who felt like they knew more or better than you did. I couldn’t imagine that feeling of emptiness or loneliness. I would anticipate the mother going into an emotional spiral if that was to happen.

I’m not sure exactly the situation with this young mom but Child Protective Services can and will support this young mom with this child. She DOES NOT need to give her child up for adoption. She needs a voice and an advocate to support her, to help her have a voice and be heard in a system that won’t hear her wants. She needs one person. One strong person to support her and advocate for her and support her in this journey and let her know that she can keep her baby with the help of a village. It won’t be easy, it’s going to be extremely hard. But it’s clear she wants to parent. She sees a future with her child and she should be given an opportunity to do that.

Reckoning With The Primal Wound

I’ve read the book, hope to catch this documentary soon.

More Info at Reckoning With The Primal Wound.

Adoptee Rebecca Autumn Sansom made a film titled a film titled Reckoning with The Primal Wound that captures the complexities, forsaken years, and mirror smashing pain of adoption better than any other I’ve seen. She says at her Twitter – “bunnies are my spirit animal.”

I am a fan already. Those who know me will understand why. We have a house rabbit named Walnut.

Here’s an article, My Biology Matters, in Severance magazine by Kristen Steinhilber – an excerpt from which, the paragraph mentioning Rebecca Autumn and italicized line below were taken. She says, “My story is not any other adoptee’s story. But the gist of it is not uncommon. These themes of diabolical dishonesty, betrayal, unbearable rejection, and hopelessness run through countless adoptees’ stories, and are begging not to be ignored.” Also, my favorite part is the “Adoptee Army” featured in the credits. There’s a massive number of names listed, all those of adoptees who stand in solidarity for adoption reform. After a lifetime of feeling utterly alone, I was moved to tears seeing my name included with all of the rest.

We are the adoptee army, and our biology matters. It did all along.

DNA Matters

My apologies for not writing blogs recently. I’ve been out of it with an illness for 5 days (that’s how long since I last shared a blog).

Over the course of my becoming informed, one aspect I had not considered the importance of is genetic mirroring. Really, I should have known sooner. When my niece found us (she was given up for adoption by my sister shortly after birth), she was troubled the most by body image issues. In that situation, she and my mom discovered they had something in common. Our family’s natural genetic inheritance came from stocky, big boned women. Both my mom and my niece were adopted by thin, stylish women. It is only natural, they were never going to look like their adoptive mothers.

Today, I read this –

Something that makes me so mad as an adoptee is when people say “biology doesn’t matter” or “DNA doesn’t make a family” or any other version of that statement. Yes, to an extent we create our own family, and we can choose who to have in our life. But do you know how f***ing PRIVILEGED you (general you) sound when you say “DNA doesn’t matter?” It doesn’t matter to you because you have the choice whether or not to have your biological family in your life. But for adoptees, former foster youth, and donor conceived persons, we don’t have a choice. DNA and biology mean so much more to us BECAUSE we were robbed of it as children, when we had no say in the matter.

It’s also really easy for you to say “biology/DNA doesn’t matter” when you have never had to worry that the pain in your breast could be breast cancer in your early 30s, because you know nothing about your family medical history; or when you have never had to worry about what hereditary diseases you may be passing on to your own children; or when you’ve never had to put “adopted, history unknown” on an intake form for a doctor’s appointment. It’s easy to say “it doesn’t matter” when you’ve never had your children ask why none of their cousins look anything like them. It’s easy to say “it doesn’t matter” when you aren’t having to explain for the thousandth time how your siblings could be so much older than you. It’s easy to say “it doesn’t matter” when you don’t have people asking if you’re actually your mother’s grandchild when you’re standing up at her funeral, because you’re so much younger than all her other children. It’s easy to say “it doesn’t matter” when you’ve never felt like a stranger in your own family.

So please, next time you find yourself about to say “DNA doesn’t matter,” think about how that sounds to people like us, who didn’t get to choose whether we grew up with biological connections. It f***ing hurts when people are telling us that the one thing we can’t have, and the one thing we want more than anything else, “doesn’t matter.” Trust me: DNA MATTERS. And if you didn’t have access to your own genetic mirrors, you would realize that.

It helped my niece when she understood that her body was exactly as her genes intended it to be. Among the many ways adoptees are expected to be something they are not, it is to fulfill some idea the adoptive mother has that she can remake the child’s physical presentation into what she wants it to be. Clearly not a realistic expectation but you would be surprised at how common it is.

When I saw the photo of my maternal grandmother holding my mom for the last time at surrender, I understood that her Scottish farm girl body was the whole reason we were built like we were. Learning who my original grandparents were (both of my parents were adopted) has brought me so much peace with my appearance. Too bad my parents never had that opportunity. Seeing people who look like you, because they share many of the same genes makes such a difference in a person’s life. Seeing how much my paternal aunt looks like my dad or how much my dad not only looks remarkably like his father but they even shared the same interests in life, somehow – these all make everything make so much natural sense.

My sons are donor conceived. At the time we chose that path to parenthood, inexpensive DNA testing was not a reality. Fortunately, being as ignorant as we were about issues I’m so much more informed about now, somehow we still made all the best choices given our circumstances. Our egg donor is known to us – not intimately but well enough. Of course, the boys have had their father as an important male genetic mirror. However, from the beginning, I could see the donor in my sons faces and especially similarities with her biological children. It always made me smile as a reminder of the gift she gave us. Fortunately for the boys, they are 100% genetically related.

Recently, the oldest half-sibling got married and the youngest was the best man. Though my sons are fully informed about their origins and the reason they were conceived in the manner they were, I literally forced them to look at photos of these half-brothers and current photos of the egg donor. One seems more interested than the other but I made them look anyway. True we have been in the donor’s presence more than once but not of her children. But time passes. I want them to know what these people look like – at least. They have direct access to her and the one that recently married through 23 and Me without my involvement – if they want to communicate privately. So far, they don’t seem to need or want that but its there if they did.

I know families in my personal donor conceived circle (we’ve been collected together as a mutual support group of 20 families for 18 years now) who made other choices not to be honest with their conceived children. I won’t judge their own choices but I have been forever grateful we have handled our own choices the way that we have – with total transparency and honesty. It was so much more important than we ever imagined at the time we were doing what felt ethical and correct to us at the time.