Sometimes The Pain Is Great

Black History Month

Trauma is stored in the DNA that is passed down through generations to descendants. One of the worst traumas that our country of the United States is guilty of is how long slavery lasted and how it was followed by Jim Crow laws. We still have a long way to go.

Today a Black mother who was coerced (and she is quick to note that coercion is not consent) but who believed lies about having an open adoption that would allow her ample contact with her son, who is being raised by white adoptive parents, was ranting. Her pain is palpable. My heart breaks as I read her words.

One hears echoes of that ancestral trauma in her first thoughts – Adoptees are bought and sold. You can change their name, their entire birth certificate & identity. They are then tasked with fulfilling the role you paid for them to fill.

She notes that due to this being a transracial adoption – it does not allowing the child’s body to give and receive all of the genetic input they would get with the biological parents, when they live & grow together. Instead the adoptive parents are fine with that and not because “the lifelong trauma of adoption + no genetic mirrors + maternal separation + finding out he was stolen and his parents wanted him back + unseasoned cultural trauma + possible religious trauma + the trauma of being transracially adopted & mean kids shit on him for it all throughout his life ” but believe he is better off than “2-3 years of trauma + therapy + reunification”.

What she seeks is that they give the child back to its biological family, noting that is not abandonment, it’s reunification. Also that a child will still seek out their true parents, even when raised by genetic strangers.

Adoptee Birthdays

How one adoptee has described her feelings about these.

I do not celebrate my birthday.

So for every one of my friends I said no thank you, blew off, or straight up just ignored when they asked to take me for a drink on my birthday, sorry.

For everyone that I didn’t text back, no hard feelings.

I do appreciate you being happy that I’m around, and staying around for another year. It was nice to hear from you. Even if I didn’t answer you.

Birthdays are hard on us adopted kids/orphans/foster kids. Adoption is the only type of loss where the victim is expected to feel happy, grateful and indebted to someone about it. To be thankful for it. For adoptees our birthday is a day that we were separated from our entire biological family. It’s the anniversary of an abandonment. It’s the marker of the altering of our birth certificate and totally erasure of all of our family medical history.

It’s not great. Especially for those of us adopted through the INCREDIBLY UNETHICAL private infant adoption industry in the United States.

Many private infant adoptees who are my generation and the one below me are the age where we are coming out of the “adoptee fog” and realizing that the pretty stories and ideas we have been sold our whole lives about adoption are not true. I guess we knew it the whole time, but it’s very hard to pinpoint those feelings, and we are REALLY afraid to express them. Because many of us (myself included) have had really great adoptive families.

I love my family. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t lose my family.

It’s hard for us to express our real feelings about our own stories, and continually be met with opinions how wholly beautiful adoption is, how they just know that our lives would have been hard and terrible if we stayed with our birth families, ignoring and denying the trauma and loss associated with our birth stories and telling us that we should be so thankful.

Because if adoption is always so beautiful…

Why do people lie about it and hide it?

Why doesn’t everyone just give up a baby to a queer couple, or an infertile couple?

Why are records kept from the very people they pertain to?

Why do white babies cost more than black babies?

Why don’t you want to talk about this side of it?

I know that some of the things we feel, and some of the truths about private infant adoption is hard for people to hear. But if you/they actually cared about kids…. Then they’d want to hear it… and fix it.

I am not anti adoption. There will always be truly necessary adoption. But what adoption has become in this country, a multibillion dollar business, needs to be fixed. We can’t continue to treat these kids like a commodity, doing things like trying to re-home them on Facebook like a puppy you can’t potty train. What would happen if you tried to do that with a biological child? Would it be the same? Does it ever happen? These children should have rights. I turned 36 on Friday and I don’t have access to my own birth certificate. The government has it. But I can’t get it. Doesn’t that seem weird? Or wrong?

There’s a reason you can hear your mother’s voice and heartbeat when she is pregnant with you. It’s so when you’re born, you know who mom is. So when you hear it for 9 months and then never hear it again….It hurts your heart and it changes your brain. No matter how good the rest of your life turns out to be. And it can make your birthday a hard day.

When To Test

I read about a situation today where the genetic parents of a toddler who has been adopted want the adoptive parents to have the child’s DNA tested so that family connections are available for that child. This is within a diverse adoption community and the responses were diverse as well. It is true that in getting our DNA tested we have no idea how that identifying information may be used in the future. Many of those commenting thought it should wait until the child was old enough to consent. Many suggested the genetic parents do the tests so that it is out there if or when the child wants it. Some believed it would have been helpful to them to have this information while they were yet a child.

I’ve had some experiences with adoption or donor conceived and DNA testing experiences.

Both of my parents were adoptees. I’ve done both Ancestry (my mom also did this one but it didn’t help her and yet, has been invaluable to me for learning ancestral relationships and my genetic family’s movements over time) and 23 and Me. Both have helped me be accepted by genetic relatives who might have doubted me otherwise. I’ve been able to make a few “good” connections and have a better sense of some of my family thanks to stories and photos shared. As to developing relationships with people I lost over 6 decades getting to know ? It is slow going though everyone has been nice to me.

Now on another front . . . both of my sons are donor egg conceived. We’ve never hidden this aspect of their conception from them and they have met the donor on several occasions. Fortunately she has an amazingly good perspective on it all. I waited until the oldest was 18 to gift him with 23 and Me. I knew the donor had done that one and before I gifted my son, I gifted my husband. After the older one received his results, I gifted the 15 yr old as well. He is mature and there was no reason to exclude him. It is uncomfortable but the GENETIC reality that the donor is listed as their Mother. They grew in my womb, nursed at my breast for a full year and have known no one else as “mom”. They seem to have processed it well as far as I can tell. Thankfully.

The adoptive mom of my nephew did Ancestry using only initials to identify him. It turned out (and she helped him in discovering this), my sister lied about who the father was on my nephew’s birth certificate. The Ancestry DNA test was their first suspicion. The effort though came at the nephew’s desire to know. He has since met his genetic father several times. They look remarkably alike and now my nephew has certainty.

My niece (child of a different sister) was also adopted and is going through some frustrations over her DNA results though her mother has given her the name of the genetic father. It can be a complicated and confusing experience.

There is one other nephew who was raised by his paternal grandparents. My sister lost custody in court when the paternal grandparents sued to possess him. This child is of mixed heritage – both white and Hispanic. He was raised in a very Hispanic family. His DNA shows a beautiful diversity.

No solutions, simply thoughts and examples.

Hmmmm, Cutting Through The Noise

What is so great about children being surrendered and raised without their identity ? Did I get your attention ?

I can’t imagine losing my mom – can you ? Both of my parents did.

You don’t have to take my word for it (just listen to enough adult adoptees and you will become a believer) – adoption is trauma. Bringing a child into a stable, loving home does NOT erase their trauma.

Why would you glorify abandonment ?

You know, you’re basically waiting for a woman and her baby to have the worst day of their lives so that you can have the best day of yours….

Adoptive parents literally act like the stork delivers these children.

One person’s intense joy is a result of another person’s desperate sorrow. I certainly saw the truth of this as I read my mom’s adoption file from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

Tell people who are not familiar with conventional adoption about the fake birth certificates your parents were given. That is one some people have trouble believing (yes, it is done all the time). Then tell them your parents’ REAL names were taken away from them and that they were both given a name that the adoptive couple preferred.

Imagine creating your family tree and having to list two names for each of your parents and then show their spouse with the adopted name so that someone might with difficulty sort it all out. Yes, my parents were not allowed to use the names they were born with. Are you incredulous yet ? Most people have no idea that adoptees are forced to live fake identities. My dad’s name was changed TWICE when his adoptive mother remarried. He was already 8 years old at that time.

If that baby had lost his mother to cancer, you would be mourning with him right now.

If adoption is so wonderful, which one of your children would you give up to someone else for a “better life” ? Note – it should be the child you love the most that you give up, since you would obviously want that child to have the best life. Crazy, huh ?

Ask an adoptee what it means to be adopted – adoption means you’re never going home. Let that sink in.

Most adoptees would get an abortion before they would give up their own child for adoption.

As the child of two adoptees, I try to be balanced (after all, I would not exist but for) and not be too harsh. Many people are well-intentioned but ill-informed about the realities surrounding adoption. I want my readers to walk away having learned something real, maybe opening up further conversation on the topic. Adoption is more complicated than you might imagine.

Many people believe that every adoptee was unwanted or they view the original mom as less than human because they can’t relate to someone who has given up a child. Both perceptions are quite likely UNTRUE.