When Dad Is A ?

My dad never knew his genetic father which is a shame because they would have been great fishing buddies. There is an adoptee who’s writings I follow, Tony Corsentino. He wrote a piece for this day. He titled his LINK>D.N.A. You can read the entire piece there. I’ll just excerpt it a bit here.

He mentions that he had received a copy of his original birth certificate two months before he received an email from his birth mother. He learned his biological father’s name in that email. On his original birth certificate nothing appears in the blank labeled “father.” blogger’s note – my father’s birth certificate had no name for a father either.

Yet, Tony had a name. He found his father’s Facebook page. He didn’t do anything else with the information for 8 years. He had built relationships with his birth mother and her siblings. He feared upending his new and (what he feared was a) fragile relationship with his birth mother. She and his father had ended contact when she discovered she was pregnant.

Yet, he did want to learn more about his father and so he went the Ancestry route. blogger’s note – It certainly proved very useful in my own roots journey quest. His father had not submitted a DNA sample, although he had joined the site and created a rudimentary tree. At Ancestry, Tony was able to reconstruct an extensive family tree. He messaged a few DNA matches on his father’s side. It took 4 months before he got a reply from any of them. One of them was not kind.

Yet, he knew that to send that message out was to signal to his biological relatives that he was not going to hide who he is from anyone: not his biological relationships from his adoptive family, and not one half of his biological tree from the other half.

His father’s first cousin, (his second cousin once removed) conferred with her sister. They welcomed him as family. They were in contact with his father and agreed to serve as intermediaries for an eventual contact. He notes that a few weeks later, he spoke with his father for the first time. Here is how it went –

“He was most eager to share family history and lore—about his uncles who had perished in World War II, about his career, about his two sons, my half-brothers. And with evident discomfort he explained that his wife, who had known that he had possibly fathered a child, was opposed to my making contact with people in her family. He said he was “working on” this. That was the last I’ve heard about it. In the months since we have exchanged a handful of text messages on holidays and birthdays. His two cousins are Facebook friends. I am planning to meet them this summer. It might be the only branch of my father’s family—my family—that will accept me.”

This Father’s Day, he has questions – “Does it make sense to wish my biological father a happy Father’s Day? Did he feel my absence from his life in anything like the way my birth mother did, who carried me and gave birth and watched as they took me out of the room on the understanding that the absence would be forever? . . . Father’s Day gives me nothing to say to him. Not, anyway, as long as my existence remains a problem—a threat just outside the walls of the family stockade.”

blogger’s note – I like his ending – “Let this be a note pinned to the stockade door. Dad, you know where to find me.”

Being Understood

When faced with complex feelings related to complicated situations, people with no experience with that reality will try to throw in a feel good positive but that does not indicate that they really understood how this experience has affected you.

A woman in my all things adoption group received this response from a friend and she acknowledges – My friend means well but they really don’t grasp how adoption IS trauma. This is my main support person. The only person who is there when no one else is and to have such a huge disconnect cuts deep. They are very accepting that everything is just the way it is and not allowing trauma to define your life. Which at times is super helpful – yet right now I’m hurting and on this subject it doesn’t actually work.

She goes on to explain – Saying that it “Wasn’t that bad” or complimenting me by saying “as amazing as you are” does not help. Was adoption not that bad because it shaped me into who I am ? Or is it that who I am is that resilient that I make being adopted seem like adoption isn’t that bad ? See I can’t have one thing without the other. I’m not allowed my identity without adoption being brought into it. I can’t be truly separated from my trauma, so that it wouldn’t define my life, which in turn makes me feel like a living breathing trauma in a skin suit. I’m like 2 people in one body that feels one story 2 different ways.

A birth mother can struggle in similar ways. One said – I am not an adoptee, but a birth mother and I relate so much to this situation. My dad and I are very close and any time I try to talk to him about my feelings regarding my birth daughter, he says things like “it could be so much worse than it is”. It would be so nice to have friends that genuinely understood.

One of my own reasons for writing this blog every day and sharing a diversity of situations and experiences is so that people without any adoption or foster care in their personal experience might understand these situations better and find a greater degree of empathy for an adoptee or birth mother, than these people usually encounter in their own everyday life.

No Communication ? Then Terminate

I did not know this was possible. So, there is this case of a child in foster care. The Dept of Children and Families is recommending that the child continue on in their care and flippantly adds in that the parents can lose their rights based on their level of communication with one another. That’s the DCFs basis for “terminating parental rights.”

Therefore, a grandparent is seeking a kinship adoption with plans to allow the parent who has been stable and involved in the child’s life from day one to raise that child. It gets complicated.

Certainly, offering the child a stable, safe, loving home is preferable to the instability of foster care. A kinship adoption keeps the child with their natural family. In this case, an original birth certificate can be obtained so that when the child is older, it will be accessible to them. Advocates suggest asking that the birth certificate not to be amended. The official world may think you are insane because changing an adoptee’s name is the more common approach.

For the grandparent that is willing, always it is better for a child, long term, to be somewhere stable and away from the family court system. However, as a family member, be very careful if your plan is to adopt “on paper” but give the children to a parent who’s rights are terminated. In court, you will have to commit to raising them. If you do otherwise, and it becomes known, you could lose custody as well.

It is also true that with kinship placement adoptions, the courts will be more lenient on contact with a terminated parent, than they would be in another type of adoption. After all, it is unrealistic to expect family members not to have contact with one another and the purpose of a kinship adoption is to keep the child in contact with their natural family. This is simply a different kind of adoption compared to the child going to strangers.

In complicated situations such as this example, it is best to obtain an attorney. If they are willing, have the parents sign guardianship or voluntary termination so you as the grandparent can take custody of your grandchild. It isn’t uncommon for foster families to fight the change, when adoption is so close. They will cite the child’s attachment to them. Also DCF will challenge you as to why you didn’t ask for the placement of your grandchild, at the time the child was removed from their parent(s).

By establishing that you would be willing to take guardianship or even adopt, if needed – the social worker can change the plan for this child to “adoption or concurrent work towards a reunification with adoption possible if necessary, before an actual termination occurs.

Bottom line – all children need to stay with family whenever possible.