Not Uncommon At All

Today’s adoptee story –

I reconnected with my biological mom, confirmed a LOT I was told by some mysterious people and as a treat I called my “dad” (adoptive dad) and confronted him about all the lies he and my “mom” told me. He vehemently denied it of course but then, he was like “it’s water under the bridge anyway.” SO YOU ADMIT IT…

For context: my adoptive parents told me ever since I was little that my bio mom wanted an abortion but they tried to get her to be a parent for 2 years.

The TRUTH is that my biological mom was just 16 and scared. She was told it would be an open adoption (blogger’s note – commonly used to get cooperation but never enforceable) where she would still have visitation rights. But my adoptive parents tricked her and had her sign a closed adoption agreement. My biological mom was too trusting of my adoptive parents and they held it over her for years, until my adoptive mom finally cut her off when I was 10. She went so far as to even intercept mail and calls, making it where I couldn’t easily find my biological mom for years, even into my adulthood. I finally found her 3 months ago but she was in jail for a DUI. Her life has been pretty bad since she had a falling out with my half brother. My biological mom isn’t perfect but in the few hours we talked, she was kinder and more honest than my adoptive parents ever were.

One response was – Stories like this are why I am all for the complete and utter abolishing of adoption. The system is never going to get better.

Sadly, Too Common

Today’s story –

In March, my daughter’s adoptive parents messaged me, to let me know that I can no longer have visits with my daughter. It was made pretty clear that she is already being manipulated in some way and she is only four year’s old. They expressed that she did not want to see us and wanted to know why we didn’t want her. We were supposed to see her 6 times a year – at least – but it got cut down to once a year in 2020.

My daughter turns 5 in August and I have been struggling a lot. I really wish I knew then, what I know now, but since it’s impossible to go back, I am looking to find ways that I can support my daughter from afar, so that when she is older I can show her how truly loved she is and how much we wanted to be in her life. I would love input from adoptees on what you would have liked to know from your birth parents and what type of things would have helped in the healing?

(blogger’s note – when my daughter was 3 years old, I became an absentee mom. I never intended to remain out of her life for her entire childhood but that is what came to pass. What I did ? I did try to stay in touch. To avoid conflicts in her home with her dad and step-mother, I gave her a prepaid calling card, so that when it was not disruptive for her to call me, she could. It was very difficult at times, to go for long periods of time, not hearing from her. Even so, today as an adult, she understands better why things turned out the way they did and we do remain close. I feel lucky she did not cancel me out of her life entirely.)

I also tried to ask her adoptive parents if they would meet up with my fiancé (her natural father) and I without her there, just so that we could talk through some of our tension & start to rebuild our very awkward and one-sided relationship. They ignored that message. At this point I am tired of walking on eggshells. They have already cut off visits, so at this point I don’t feel I have much to lose. I would like to share the truth about the trauma adoptees face with them and the importance of keeping the relationship with the birth family accessible. I feel like it’s a disservice to my daughter, if I don’t do everything in my power to try to keep a relationship with her, but I really am at a loss for what to do.

One adoptee responded – so typical. Every adoptive parent is pro “open adoption”, until they’re not. I hope you are able to maintain some semblance of a relationship with your daughter. If you are unable to – please please please – keep a journal with your thoughts and feelings about her, any birthday cards/ gifts/Christmas cards etc. Keep them all – year after year. It’s so important to us that we are not forgotten, erased, and just discarded without a second thought. You can gift it to your daughter later on.

An adoptive parent writes – Proud of you for understanding how your daughter may feel. I find it extremely hard to believe that at the age of 4, she said she doesn’t want visits with you. I applaud you for trying to meet – just the four parents. I would encourage you to continue to request that meeting. Maybe you can word the request that you are wanting to help clarify why you placed your daughter. Again – not sure at 4 that she’s really asking “why ?” yet… Every child is different – and develops/processes adoption at different ages/stages.

My adopted children are from foster care and we are fictive kinship in that we are close friends with some of their extended first family. We truly requested to meet up with their mom, adults only, to get to know her. She never accepted. When my one child asked to see her, she was open and against our wishes of getting to know her first – we met and the visit went well.

I’d guess your daughter had behaviors after past visits and they are reading into the behaviors as her not wanting visits. When instead, she just needs them to just be present and supportive, as she walks through the confusing feelings. And then, they just may not understand that a child can love two sets of parents.

If nothing else – I encourage you to write letters to your daughter – be sure to date them. She will appreciate that when she’s older, to have the whole story.

Another adoptee suggests – I just wanted to say I’m so sorry this is happening! I would start a journal with dates for your daughter – where you write about your life, that you’re thinking about her, that you wish she was there for the holiday you’re celebrating, put photos in there, etc. Document that you tried reaching out to the adoptive parents. Then, when you do hopefully reconnect with her – make sure to focus on her, ask about her life experiences, etc. When I reconnected with my biological family, they weren’t interested at all in what my life had been like and it felt very selfish and one-sided. There were also some discrepancies in their story and I think having a journal to read through, would have put my mind at ease and felt very affirming!

Another adoptee added – Her adoptive parents sound insecure and awful. Stories like this enrage me. Those people did not deserve your child. For me, there’s not much my first parents could’ve said to undo the pain. They could’ve said how much they loved and wanted me…. But walking away spoke louder than any words they could say. All forms of adoption are hard – open, semi open, closed. Like it all sucks. All you can do is stay close, keep communication open and wait until your daughter is older and more independent. I hope her adoptive parents get their heads screwed on right and start putting the child first. Not their insecure wounds. Ugh….

A mother who surrendered her child to adoption but has been in reunion for 20 years writes – I suggest you copy the section in your paperwork that spells out what THEY agreed to at the time of relinquishment. Ask for a meeting to have a dialog about the promises. Ask for what you were promised. It’s clear they are likely getting hard questions from “their” daughter and are scared. That is on them. I’d request that your agreement with them be honored, that you will work with them to find a solution that works for all of you. Be firm. A four year old is no where near mature enough to have to deal with such a complex issue. It is on them to keep the agreement in place for the benefit of your daughter going forward. Keep copies of all correspondence with them, record phone conversations, record meet ups, and reassure them that your intentions are about the truth of the entire adoption experience. Period. Will they balk? Maybe – but you do not. Continue to request what you were promised – and document every exchange.

PS these adoptive parents are full of shit!!!

Another reunited adoptee who was in a closed adoption has good advice – At this point, you need to do everything possible to have whatever contact with your daughter you’re allowed. This is not the time to express anything negative about adoption to the adoptive parents, including adoptee trauma. If your daughter experiences mental health challenges in the future you can reevaluate this. Otherwise, the only adoptee you should be worrying about is your daughter.

Start keeping a journal for your daughter. This should not be confused with a personal journal for yourself. Use it to write letters to your daughter that you can give to her later. Focus on all the things you want to tell her and your love for her. Don’t use it to vent about your frustrations with adoption, her adoptive parents, or to process your grief. Use a personal journal for that. You have no idea where your daughter will be emotionally when she gets a chance to read it. Prepare for the possibility that by that point she may have experienced a lifetime of parental alienation and may be heavily “in the fog”. Consider telling her about events going on with you and your extended family, even if they aren’t solely about her. If next year your uncle Bob dies of cancer at the same age as his father, include things like that. Give her the oral family history most people have but adoptees, even reunited ones, usually don’t.

Another adoptee added – It’s not the job of the adopted child to deal with whatever feelings their natural parents have about the adoption itself. I know for myself personally I couldn’t really care less how sad my natural mother is about a choice she actively made – I am the one who had no choice or say in any of it and have now spent 35 years paying the price of everyone’s choices but my own.

A journal of factual information, especially those family histories, would’ve been welcomed. Especially since my natural father died some years ago and I don’t even know his name. I’ve had to try to piece together some of the family medical history which has been so stressful – especially after finding out I’m a carrier for cystic fibrosis.

We deserve the truth, not just about our parents but as much as we can get about our family.

A birth father who was also a former foster care youth noted – I got a postcard from the adoptive parents telling me they were severing all communication with me, a month after they left the state. I did nothing to warrant it. The adoption agency told me if I wrote her a letter. they would put it in her file. They wouldn’t give me or her mom their address.

One woman added – I would bet that they are also really uncomfortable with the idea that both of your child’s natural parents are still together and are getting married. That you would have a whole family that is biologically related to your daughter one day and the adoptive parents are just trying to cut ties before your child realizes that. There has been movement from some judges on the idea that natural mothers or fathers that were too young to have made the decisions they did and were being coerced can get a judge to step in and demand visitation. It’s worth a shot. I would pretend to play nice to adoptive parents and work behind the scenes, to see if you can’t get the contract honored in a more official way.

Another adoptive parent notes – Of all the truly messed up parts of adoption, this one for me is just the hardest to stomach. It’s what makes adoption feel like trafficking to me. The fact that we don’t have laws that protect these contracts and force adoptive parents to go to court to modify them, like we do in post-divorce parenting agreements, is criminal to me. And it’s a reminder that my own bubble of reality ain’t it – there are so many absolutely ignorant adoptive parents. My only suggestion is to offer group therapy with an adoption competent therapist who can be the educator. I just do not think you’ll ever be heard by them. They need a third party they respect, one who is some sort of authority in their eyes, to explain what is happening, how normal it is, how to navigate this relationship and the damage of severing ties.

An adoptee notes – This is why open adoptions are a coercive practice and the agencies know this and tell this to hopeful adoptive parents. Most open adoptions close within 1 to 3 years and it’s almost always on the end of the adoptive parents. They can’t handle sharing a child they bought and paid for to satisfy their selfish needs

Discarded in the Aftermath

Borrowed from the Source in the graphic –

I’m fascinated by beautifully wrapped gifts, the time some people take to cultivate the external appeal encasing the internal mystery. Wrapping so inviting you may feel a tinge of guilt for ripping it open, possibly carefully tugging at taped edges, delicately unfolding corners, trying to keep the pretty paper in tact, maybe even so you can reuse it for another gift. Each time the packaging gets used though, the wear shows. Whether a torn section or tape pulling up some of the print of the paper when opened, ultimately, the paper winds up in the garbage after a party or burned in a fireplace for holiday kindling. If we’re being honest, most people don’t care what kind of package a gift comes in because what matters is the gift. The packaging is very easily discarded when the focus is the present within.

I am struck by the sobering realization that adoptees are often called gifts. In my early hazes, I even said I “gifted” my children to their adoptive parents. The problem with this thinking is it reduced me to packaging. The carrier of the gift, the vessel. The thing that can be easily discarded in the aftermath of possession of the present. A majority of birth mothers face this around 5+ years post placement because many promises for open adoptions end up broken and closed, not being legally enforceable or financially impossible for a mother to fight to keep open. What this says is: If adoptees are gifts, birth mothers are the wrapping paper, and we typically end up considered trash and discarded after the present is received.

I want to remind everyone this mom season that birth moms are still mothers, even though we may not be parents or raising our children, we are not simply packaging. We are humans who experienced traumas long before our lives led us to these impossible decisions, with lifetimes of healing to pursue in the wake of relinquishment. Acknowledge us as more than the garbage most of society views us as. Even if we are hard to love and support, we still deserve to be, especially when we are the pieces of the children so many claim to want to love and support. That should include us too.

I Try To Stay Humble

Before I began to know who my original grandparents were (both of my parents were adopted) – adoption was the most natural thing in the world. How could it not be ? It was so natural both of my sisters gave up a baby to adoption. So, in only the last 3+ years, my perspective has changed a lot. I see the impacts of adoption has passed down my family line, ultimately robbing all three of my parents daughter’s of the ability to parent. Though I did not give my daughter up for adoption, finding myself unable to support myself and her financially, I allowed her father and step-mother to raise her without intrusion from me. To be honest, I didn’t think I was important as a mother. I thought that a child only needed one or the other parent to be properly cared for. Sadly, decades later, I learned that situation was not as perfect as I had believed. My sister closest to me in age actually lost custody of her first born son to her former in-laws when she divorced their son. He has suffered the most damage of all of our children and is currently estranged from his mother’s family, viewing us all as the source of his ongoing emotional and mental pain. I love him dearly and wish it wasn’t so but it is not in my control nor my sisters.

I realize that not every adoptee has the same experience. We are all individuals with individual life circumstances. Right and Wrong, Better and Worse – such exactness doesn’t exist. Everyone heals in different ways. We all begin where we begin. I began where I was when I started learning some of the hard truths and realities about the adoption industry as it operates for profit in this country. I also know that the adoption practices of the 1930s when my parents were adopted are not the same overall in 2021. There are only a few truly closed adoptions now and many “open” adoptions. I put the “open” into quotation marks because all too often, the woman who gives birth and surrenders her baby for adoption because she doesn’t feel capable of parenting, just as I didn’t feel capable in my early 20s, discovers that the “open” part is unenforceable and the adoptive parents renege on that promise.

Those of us, myself included, have become activists for reforms going forward. Society has not caught up with us yet. Certainly, there are situations where the best interest of the child is to place them in a safe family structure where they can be sufficiently provided for. No one, no matter how ardently they wish for reform, would say otherwise. The best interests of the child NEVER includes robbing them of their identity or knowledge of their origins. In the best of circumstances, I believe, adoptive parents are placeholders for the original parents and extended biological family until their adoptive child reaches maturity. Ideally, that child grows up with a full awareness and exposure to the personalities of their original parents.

Any parent, eventually reaches a point in the maturing of their child, when it is time to allow that child to be totally independent in their life choices, even if they continue to live with their parents and be financially supported by them. It is a gradual process for most of us and some of us are never 100% separated from our parents until they die. Then, regardless, we must be able to stand on our own two feet, live from our own values and make of the life that our parents – whether it was one set with a mother and a father or two sets of mothers and fathers (whether by adoption or due to divorce) – made possible for us as human beings. I do try not to judge but I do try to remain authentic in my own perspectives, values and beliefs. Those I share as honestly as I can in this blog with as much humility as I have the growth and self-development to embody.

Good Intentions, Broken Promises

I can’t even begin to count all of the sad stories I have read about open adoptions that don’t stay open. So many original mothers, who surrendered their baby for one reason or another, with expectations of continued contact, at the least photos and updates, who discover too late that they’ve been dismissed by the adoptive parents.

Here’s today’s story –

Her son is 4 and a half. She gave him up for adoption at birth to what she believed were the perfect adoptive parents. They promised her they’d keep her updated with pictures, texts, phone calls, etc. She just wanted to remain a part of her son’s life at a distance. She didn’t want to steal their thunder. She just wanted to know something about her son as he grows up but always intended to respect the adoptive parent’s relationship. The adoptive parents agreed to that expectation of the original mother.

They knew her situation, which was that she was single mom with 3 children to support. She had zero family to help her. She simply couldn’t afford another baby. Her son’s father (she also has a daughter by him) is from India. She knew he’d never be a part of his son’s life, as he isn’t even involved with his daughter.

Within a month of giving them her son, they stopped all communication. They won’t respond to any of her texts.

She is beside herself and doesn’t know what to do. She signed 50 pages of documents at the hospital, in a tiny room with 15 other people present as witnessed. They rushed her to sign the papers without giving her any time to read what she was signing first. They even had a taxi waiting outside for her and told her she needed to hurry up. She doesn’t have no clue what she signed.

She is at a loss as to what she can do now. Her son will be 5 in May. He has black hair, black eyes and beautiful golden skin. He doesn’t look anything like his adoptive parents, so it is likely he’s going to ask questions. She doesn’t want to step on any toes or ruin anyone’s relationship.

She just wants them to keep up their end of the deal. She admits that giving him up was the hardest decision she ever made. She only wants to be able to see his pictures. See how he’s doing in pre-Kindergarten. She just wants to know her son is alright.

She adds – “I don’t do drugs. I don’t drink. I don’t party. I’m a trauma bay RN and at the time, single mom struggling to feed my 3 kids and keep a home for them. I refused an abortion. I wanted my son to live a good life and accomplish something. I’m now engaged to a wonderful man that knows my struggle.”

This is a cautionary tale for any woman who is pregnant and contemplating giving her baby up for adoption because she has a set of prospective adoptive parents promising they will keep her updated. I’ve seen too many of these stories of the adoptive parents then closing communication. This woman ends her story with “How I wish I could go back in time and change my decision.”