The Saddest Moment

One of the saddest things was a video of a brand new baby being presented to a woman, everyone in tears of happiness, excitedly saying, “the mother just signed away all rights!” I mean this is a video of the saddest moment of that baby’s life, and they truly don’t seem to have any awareness of that.

There sometimes seems to be a real disconnect. Adoptive parents in their ecstatic joy totally clueless about what is being done to the mother who just gave birth and what will be a lifelong sorrow not only for her but for that child as well.

It has become well-known that a fetus bonds with the woman carrying it in her womb during the 9 months of gestation. When it leaves the womb, this baby still knows its mother. A newborn infant is not a blank slate with no awareness or memories. That is what people thought for a long time and the well-meaning lie that was fed to prospective adoptive parents.

Georgia Tann who was involved in my own mother’s adoption in 1937 believed this and told her clients this was the reality but we now know that the baby knows differently. In desperation as she tried to work through the difficulties of obtaining financial resources as an abandoned mother (she was married, but her husband had left her, and her father refused to help her and my mom), my grandmother turned to the Porter-Leath Orphanage for TEMPORARY care of my mom. In doing this, she was being a responsible mother.

In doing this, she fell into a trap whereby she lost custody of my mother. After being pressured, exploited and coerced to give up her very valuable little white blond baby girl to the Tennessee Children’s Home, my grandmother was allowed one last visit with my mom who had not seen her own mother for some days/weeks.

The joy expressed in my little mother’s body at seeing her mother is something real to behold as she was only about 8 months old at that time. Throughout her life, my mom never stopped longing for the woman who gave birth to her. When she tried to make contact, she was told her mother had died some years before. My mom was devastated and heart-broken.

Income Inequality and the Pandemic

There are hopeful adoptive parents who are so self-absorbed that they view the economic hardships brought on by the shutdown of the country to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus as a silver lining potential blessing.

They are hoping that financially distressed single pregnant women may be more likely to chose to surrender their babies to adoption under the current circumstances. This is a sad truth of our often selfish times that such people would be thinking this way but apparently this is the truth.

Instead of feeling compassion for women in those situations, they are hoping and praying it leads to something they want. This is always the case with domestic infant adoption which is generally 100% selfish.

It’s not about finding a baby a home. These babies have families. 9 out of every 10 placements occur because of financial pressures. Hopeful/adoptive parents often like to believe every birth mom just didn’t want her kid. That’s rarely the case. It’s almost always as simple as a lack of money.

The truth is that these babies are highly in demand and sought after. That’s why it costs so much to adopt domestically, supply vs demand. It’s exactly why it often takes years for someone to adopt. There’s a shortage of these babies vs waiting hopeful adoptive parents.

During a global pandemic, hopeful adoptive parents are still begging for money via GoFundMe, YouCaring, and hitting their friends up to buy ridiculously overpriced t-shirts.

Domestic infant adoption is almost always a baby going from a poor family to a middle/upper class one. The foundation of adoption centers around privilege, and the lack of it. The haves vs the have nots.

These are facts. Hopeful adoptive parents and their WANTS drive the billion dollar a year adoption industry. It drives the manipulative and coercive tactics used in adoption. All for $$$. It’s all about money.

A Question of Ethics

A question arises among adoptees about the morality of putting a price on their lives. It is a fair question. Is it right to pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy a child ? The going price is often in the $30,000-$40,000 price range.

One adoptive parent answered that question rather honestly – “We were so clouded by desire that we really didn’t think about the cost.”

What would you think, if you knew, that an agency had tiered pricing on the babies they are selling ? White$$$, whomever $$, Black$. Is value related to the ethnicity of a person ?

An adoptive parent in an honest evaluation of how they are feeling might say, “The moment we drove away from the hospital it felt like we stole him. It was such a conflicting feeling.” Some won’t even give it a moment’s pause.

What would you think if you knew the legal system was being gamed ? “Our lawyer was a whole other bag of nuts as she moved our court date around because the judge that was assigned to our case hates adoption.” I wonder why ? Could it be that judge knows something about the realities ?

A very honest adoptive parent might admit to an adoptee that – “Yes we bought a kid, yes at the time we thought we were doing the right thing ‘if we didn’t take him…’ yes, I wish it was different for him that he wasn’t a secret. But I love him. I am totally geeked when he discovers something new. I make little videos and pictures to send to the one app that I know the natural mother checks, so she can see her son. I hope that she comes and builds a relationship with this amazing human. I also daily feel conflicted with the whole process. I caught myself in the market one day when asked if he was adopted – I replied ‘oh no we bought him.’ I struggle with not wanting him to feel like he was a purchase. Do you ever feel like you were not bought ?”

Money will always be a complicating factor. It is often said of corrupt practices “follow the money.” That makes sense. Who is gaining wealth at the expense of whom ? Just one of the reasons that the whole system of adoption is being looked at deeply and reforms to that practice are being discussed.

Somehow Adoption Continues

Catch me if you can. Has the effort to adopt hit a pause button given the current circumstances ? It seems it has not.

With the outbreak of COVID-19, our daily lives have all been affected in a way that none of us were anticipating just a few weeks ago. So you might think that now isn’t the ideal time to consider adoption. The for profit adoption industry does not think so.

One adoption blog seems to be saying “now is actually a great time to begin or reinvigorate your adoption plans. Difficult times bring a greater need for adoptive parents. Adoptions have increased in the past few weeks because women want more for their children and babies. They are turning to adoption during the coronavirus.”

Desperate times seem to increase desperation. Somehow we lose the sense that this is all temporary. The uncertainty causes us to question our ability to meet the challenge and survive.

This adoption agency wants to encourage more adoptions, even in the midst of this crisis, it appears that they have sensed this as a marketing opportunity. They note – “with the world in turmoil and with financial situations uncertain, we find that more women are contacting us, looking for a stable, loving family to adopt their baby. They love their child enough to do what is best for them. They know they need a family stable enough to weather the storm. A family that will be able to protect and care for their child no matter the circumstances.”

Well fear does this to people but the decision to surrender your child is a permanent solution. It actually reflects a lack of trust that the future will be better and that we will all get through this somehow. It causes a young woman to doubt herself as capable. This is a sad state of affairs.

It is true that people are generally stressed now. That should not make it a good time to take advantage of a woman in a state of hyped up fear. One expectant mother shared what she is going through right now –

“Some family friends of mine are giving their (unsolicited) opinion that I should seriously consider adoption since I am currently unemployed and it is not realistic for me to get a job amidst the virus, being pregnant and having had asthma as a kid. They seem to think I need to make the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ and give her ‘a good life’. If the only people who can give a child a good life are the few that can properly afford to adopt, then huge demographics of people are morally wrong for having children apparently. Including the people who said I should place her. I was so upset that I was crying yesterday, just for being told that.”

Let’s have more compassion people.

The Underground Marketplace

“Rehoming” is a term often used in situations where adoptive parents are trying to “get rid of” their adopted child. This can stem from behavioral and/or emotional issues from the adoptive child that the parents do not feel equipped to handle.

Most re-homing exchanges initially are made via the internet, through websites or forums. The majority of these rehoming exchanges are made by parents who adopted a child internationally. There is less follow-up/resources for these parents, so many of the parents have stated that they had nowhere to go or no one to reach out to for help regarding the issues they were having with their adopted child.

Although it seems like rehoming should be illegal, unfortunately, there aren’t many laws protecting children being given away to others. The problem with this is that many of the people who are taking these adopted children have criminal backgrounds or are psychologically unstable, putting the child at risk for emotional and sexual abuse, trafficking, or even death. Predators take advantage of adoptive parents who are emotionally burnt out, giving them an “out,” many times free of charge.

Kids can be put into real danger when adoptive parents are desperate enough to give in to this type of exchange. It is not illegal but there is usually no background check and the exchange can be made with nothing more than a signed notarized document. No legal authorities need be involved.

Most people are unaware of the horrible reality of rehoming. But it is a real issue. Awareness can prevent a tragedy. If you are an adoptive parent who is in a situation with a new adoptive child which seems unbearable, there are resources. Don’t choose a do it yourself solution.

Slightly Off Topic

This may seem off topic but please bear with me. This morning I realized that my tolerance for injustice has diminished. I believe that learning about how my maternal grandmother was trapped and exploited has done that to me.

My grandmother’s only deficiency was poverty. She went to Porter-Leath orphanage for temporary care of my mother while she attempted to get on her feet financially and they accepted my mom under a temporary condition. My grandmother tried to reach her husband, my grandfather, who didn’t respond to the Juvenile Court’s notification – I believe – because he was out with the WPA trying to help Arkansas deal with a Super Flood of the Mississippi River that began the month my mom was born.

Georgia Tann had a repeat, paying customer in my adoptive grandmother. She had previously adopted a son from the Tennessee Children’s Home and returned to them seeking a little sister for the family before my mom had even been born. Miss Tann had a network of enablers, movers and shakers in the Memphis elite that helped her acquire product to sell. Forgive my harsh judgment.

So my poor grandmother was pressured with a surrender or I’ll have you declared unfit by my good friend, the Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley. Even so, 4 days later my grandmother tried but failed to recover my mom. She never had any other children.

I have always paid my medical bills – even those I thought unfair – even if I made the creditor wait and sent them only the smallest amounts for the longest time. Having been uninsured for 30 years, I was grateful to finally qualify for Medicare. I thought might as well catch up the basics and so went to my local nurse practitioner for a pap smear.

Unknown to me, the coding recommended by the laboratory to the doctor’s office for women between the ages of 30 and 65 was to also do a hpv test on the same specimen. This was never discussed with me. Medicare paid $29.44 against a bill of $128.20 for the pap smear but refused to pay the $169.80 for the hpv test.

I have been fighting this bill for 8 months and find myself trapped and exploited by a greedy laboratory. I offered them $60 for the hpv test if they would write off the rest as they did for Medicare. I thought I was being more than reasonable.

They have refused my offer and so I will now refuse to give them even a penny. I no longer tolerate such exploitation. The doctor’s office should have advised me to wait a year for the pap smear and this would not have even occurred. I refuse to be a victim. I never gave my permission and I won’t give in now.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far. Do NOT allow LabCorp to do any tests for you. I won’t ever again allow them to do any tests for me and I will not use my local doctor’s office for my next Medicare approved pap smear in 3 years. They both lose. I am not worried about a small black mark on an otherwise excellent credit rating. I don’t intend to use credit anyway but I do have an Amazon Visa as long as I can pay in full with the first bill if I need that or just want to burnish my credit rating.

What’s In A Name ?

It may be true that a name is only that – a name – and not the person. Of all the suggestions for reform in the process of adoption, I can clearly see that changing a child’s name at the time of adoption is wrong. It is taking from the child their true identity.

Now, it does happen, as it did happen with my youngest sister’s son that the true father was not who was named on the birth certificate. I do know she was able to coerce the poor man, who had some financial means, to pay a great deal of the costs of her developing an adoption plan for her son. She gave him this man’s last name at birth and named that man on the birth certificate as his father.

It came to pass as this young man began to mature that he became interested in knowing more about his actual father. DNA testing seemed to indicate that who had been named could not possibly be who fathered him. A search for the true father began.

At first I believed that my sister simply did not know for certain who the father was and so chose the one most like to be financially supportive of her effort to provide for her baby. It turns out that with the revelation of the true father, my sister actually did know. Maybe, since this man was a colleague of our father’s and since my sister was devoted to our father, she simply did not want our father to know . . .

That is my kindest interpretation. What I do know is at about 6 months, although she had relinquished her son to an adoptive couple shortly after his birth, she sent a photo after birth and a letter to the real father informing him. So it cannot be said that she did not know. What’s really unforgivable is that the true father DID want to raise his son and his wife was supportive of bringing that baby into their lives. They planned to fight for custody of the child and so informed my sister.

Then the cruelest thing happened on Father’s Day, my sister called the true father to inform him that the baby and his adoptive parents had been killed in a car accident ending all attempts to seek custody.

This young man is a fine person and given what I know about my sister’s life after giving birth to him, I’m glad she didn’t raise him. The first adoptive father left the family due to having an affair. Eventually, the mother remarried and my nephew thought so much of the man, he had his surname changed yet again to match the new father.

Also, what amazes me is that in my own adoptee father’s life, his mother had to put her abusive alcoholic husband out. Therefore, when my dad was already 8 years old, he was adopted a second time by the new husband. My paternal adoptive grandfather was a good man and he stayed with my Granny until death did them part.

It Is NOT God’s Plan

Many Christian couples who struggle with infertility begin to believe somehow that this signals God’s desire that they adopt someone else’s newborn baby. This baby is not a blank slate. Newborn or infant adoption is not mostly trauma-free simply because this human being is pre-verbal.

I don’t believe for a minute that God is deliberately punishing you by causing you to become pregnant under difficult circumstances only to hand your baby over to complete strangers and then more or less throw you away (forget you ever existed or mattered).

What is actually selfish ? Saying that giving a child up for adoption is the most selfless thing someone can do is flawed logic. Does that mean biological mothers who keep their infants are selfish for keeping them ? It is selfish not to give your precious baby to the more privileged minority of people who have much better financial resources to parent with ? If that logic were true, then all biological parents would give their children to someone else to parent, since it is selfless towards the child to keep them when someone else has greater resources.

Using God to take away someone else’s baby is exploiting a vulnerable person and trying to use any belief in God they might have to coerce them to YOUR will. This is not God’s will, this is you trying to use God for your own purposes.

I will never be able to get behind the idea that God got the wombs mixed up when he gave a baby to their mother. God didn’t give a little baby to one mother for her and her baby to go through the rest of their lives with trauma simply to “heal the infertile wounds” of another couple.

It just doesn’t work that way but Christian couples are very prone to use their religion to justify taking a baby away from a vulnerable mother.

The Broken Birth Mom

This sculpture speaks so strongly to my own heart. I empathize with my grandmothers who gave up my parents to adoption. In a sense, though less permanently, I am one myself. Each of my sisters truly are. There are no words for how this haunts a person. No mother should have to live without her child, even though I do understand that sometimes the safety issues are so strong because that mother is so broken as a person, the child isn’t safe with her. I get it.

Adoption isn’t just a one-time event and it’s over. It is never over, it can’t be and it isn’t. It is something that follows an adoptee and their original parents throughout their lives.

I have obsessed in my guilt for not raising my daughter. Just like my maternal grandmother, I never intended to leave her daily life permanently. In my effort, just as it was in my grandmother’s effort, to work things out financially, circumstances changed and it was no longer the best outcome for her to take her back. Both my maternal grandmother and myself would have, if it had been possible or truly made sense to step back in.

There were no role models for absentee mothers in the early 1970s though one read a lot of stories about absentee fathers. I realize I caused the situation for myself. My grandmother stepped into a serious trap without realizing it when she turned to Porter-Leath Orphanage in Memphis TN for temporary care of my mom.

The superintendent there betrayed my grandmother and my mom to a master baby thief. Miss Georgia Tann was backed up by her good friend, the Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley, in her pressure campaign to exploit my grandmother and wrest my mom out of her possession so that she could sell her to my adoptive grandmother.

Being a birth mom who permanently surrenders her child is not a club you should want to join. It is a grief that lasts a lifetime. The pain of that wound will change over time but it will never go away. It will always be there. I have spent years trying to resolve my own. I know the reasons and the causes but there is no recovering lost time and those precious memories of your child growing up.

If you are an expectant mother, especially a single and financially challenged young woman, seek out the help that will make it possible for you to keep your baby. You will be glad you did. Here’s one place – https://savingoursistersadoption.org/

Stress Responses

Some adoptive parents mistake their adopted child’s compliance with the situation as a good outcome adjustment. What I have learned from adoptees that there is an even more intense reaction that is called fawning. Think of the kidnap victim that eventually identifies with their captors – like Patty Hearst did.

Every adoptee is an individual and each responds differently to the circumstances of their relinquishment and their placement in a new home.

Fawning is best understood as “people-pleasing.” Both of my parents were adoptees and I saw this kind of behavior in my mom and learned it from her. This kind of behavior can endear one to other people but it is not always healthy to be this way.

People with the fawn response are so accommodating of other people’s needs that they often find themselves in codependent relationships. Fortunately, when that has happened to me, I’ve found a way out – even if it took some time to get there.

Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries. It takes some maturity to take one’s power back.

Sadly, fawn types are more vulnerable to emotional abuse and exploitation. Abusers may suppress a survivor’s fight or flight responses by threatening punishment. The appease response, also known as ‘please’ or ‘fawn’, is a survival response which occurs [when] survivors read danger signals and aim to comply and minimize the confrontation in an attempt to protect themselves. I’ve been there, done that and I’ve seen my mom do likewise.

If you are an adoption survivor (adoption is definitely a form of trauma to a child), you are not alone in using this for safety. There is no shame in struggling with fawning. Fawning, like the other stress responses, is a self-protective armor. It has helped many adoption survivors live through being placed in a family that does not fit their nature naturally.