Not All

Today’s story illustrates this –

We adopted our almost 8 year old from birth. The relationship with birth mom and her other children has been sporadic at best (her choice). My daughter misses her siblings but they have recently been taken from the bio mom who became homeless and apparently was charged with neglect. Some are with their own bio dads and one is in foster care. My daughter does not know this yet, and we will work with her therapist to share this information in a way that hopefully lessens the trauma (for context, we don’t have a way to get ahold of bio mom anymore to offer help and she has moved across the country).

My daughter also has always wanted to meet and know her bio dad and his family. We have worked hard to find him and make that happen. I finally connected with his sister (so my daughter’s bio aunt) on Facebook and my husband and I are meeting her next week. We’re hoping she’ll be amenable to starting a relationship with our daughter. We’ll get more information at that time, but she alluded that her brother isn’t not open to that right now. How do we make sure this is not causing more trauma for our young daughter? I know that having this relationship could be great for her, but will it make it worse knowing that bio aunt is willing to meet her (and hopefully have a relationship with her) but her dad isn’t? We want to do what’s right for her. She craves to know this side of her family, but I’ve heard that discovering the bio parent can create more trauma.

A relevant response from an adoptee – If any of her bio family wants to meet her/have a relationship with her do all you can to make it happen. Yes, it may hurt and cause trauma that other bio family does not want to do that. However, that can you can work through. What will never be worked out is if she discovers she could have had something with bio family but you kept that from happening. Even worse is if she finds out you were anything but 100% truthful to her or them. Don’t hide behind we were trying to protect her. Unless there is some clear danger, such as the parent abused other children or threatened her or you in some way, the only people you are thinking about is yourselves. It is acceptable to give an age appropriate truth such as her siblings are being cared for by other adults because her bio mother is not able to provide shelter for them right now. Therefore, she probably will not be in contact with her for a while. If she wants to have contact with her other siblings, try to make it happen. If it is not to be, tell her that and why. Again in a truthful age appropriate way. That could be upsetting to her but again that can be worked through. What is important is that she knows she can trust you to always be honest with her. Break that trust and you will lose her forever.

Denigrating An Important Woman

This term “birth giver” was a new one to me. I feel squeamish just seeing this. I have seen some adoptees call their biological father their sperm donor, that troubles me too. Separating families cause a lot of issues for the children thus impacted.

Language matters. There has been a lot written about the term – birth mother. Some prefer first mother or natural mother. There may be others that have been suggested. It is often said that the woman who carries and gives birth to a child is that child’s mother – period. I will often be more precise in identifying those in my own familial situation as biological, genetic parents or adoptive grandparents including adoptive relatives, due to both of my parents having been adopted as babies.

When I was growing up, it was considered somewhat disrespectful to call your mother your “old lady” (even if she was – old). Same was sometimes said of a father – my old man. The meaning of certain words does change with time and cultural impacts. Sometimes, the meaning of phrases becomes convoluted. That certainly happened during my youth. As words appear and disappear, it can be difficult to establish definitive explanations. Vocabulary speaks of values, customs and ideals but the words are constantly changing and it can be difficult to keep up with what is intended by a word.

It is true that a newborn certainly has no connection to whatever name their biological parent wrote down (if they even had a chance before adoptive parents swooped in to take the baby). A name is not truly part of one’s heritage, though it can be indicative, or more accurately their DNA. Many adoptees DO care about whatever their genetic, biological parent wanted to name them. Often, that is not something that they may ever discover because the adoptive parents almost always change the name of the child they are adopting.

Not Judging Culture But . . .

Today’s blog is not about the people pictured above who simply represent a Pakistani couple with their baby . . . but it (the story) is interesting never-the-less. Not judging another country’s cultural practices either but I agree with the person who shared this. She ends on this thought – “Am I weird to think this is a terrible practice and likely adds another layer to the trauma done to adopted people and natural mothers/parents?”

So I’m Pakistani and I’ve heard of this practice taking place among *some* Pakistani families and it rubbed me the wrong way, based on what I know about adoption and surrogacy. Basically, let’s say there are two brothers. Brother A and his wife have no issue getting pregnant and having lots of kids while Brother B and his wife are struggling with infertility. The next time Brother A and his wife are expecting, Brother B and his wife, or other family members, will suggest that Brother A and his wife give up this baby to Brother B so he and his wife can finally have a baby. So Brother A’s wife becomes a surrogate of sorts.

I personally know a family that did this and have been asked myself if I’d do this for siblings, in laws, cousins, etc. I find this problematic because to me there is an assumption that the childless couple has some sort of claim or entitlement to another couples child. From what I know, a lot of women are basically volunteered, so consent is not fully present — family pressure is crazy in Pakistani families. “Your brother has no kids and you already have three, don’t be selfish!”

It seems men/fathers are generally much more amenable to this practice. There’s also some men who will marry additional wives purely for the sake of having kids/more kids. To me, surrogacy seems problematic for many of the same reasons as adoption.

Why Is It Different Here ?

How come infant adoption doesn’t exist in countries with social safety nets??

Because women don’t willingly give up babies without coercion and desperate circumstances.

The point above is that many countries outside the US have less than 200 adoptions annually…some only a handful. WHY?

Because they don’t allow it to be a multi billion dollar industry
It is NOT privatized
It is illegal to adopt on your own – no internet/friend matches
They have a social support system to help families stay together.

Some additional comments –

The social nets in the US need serious overhaul. I work in a hospital and some of the situations I’ve seen people in are heartbreaking, infuriating, sickening. It makes sense that countries with ACTUAL support see fewer broken families all around.

It was sad to see this one – I wish it was like this everywhere. I’m from Ukraine and it’s a sh*tshow – lots of kids abandoned, horrific dysfunction, zero support. It’s terrible.

Safety nets include but are not limited to: proper science based sex ed, access to birth control of the patients choice, access to medical care, plus abortion accessibility. Access to housing and therapy. I have found a lot of people assume support is $$$ and while that is true to a degree, it is not the whole picture. Building community is the best thing we can do. To which someone else noted – but realistically money solves a ton of issues.

From an adoptee – Safety nets and social resources are so important. It is deeply disturbing that we pay so much lip service to “children are our greatest resource” and pretending that we are all about “family values,” but when push comes to shove, it’s really about greed and selfishness. We need to elect politicians who are more interested in people than money and power.

A transracial adoptee notes – I hate it when they try to make it seem like there are soooo many abandoned babies. Even if there is an expectant mom who wants to give birth (which how many pregnant people are truly willing to give birth, especially in a country with a high mortality rate, to just relinquish the baby) but does not want to parent (as in they have the ability/support/the means to parent but truly do not want to & wouldn’t/couldn’t abort), then what about the father? And if he really absolutely does not want to parent, do they really not have a single family member or honestly even close family friend who would take in the baby? Like the leap to having absolute strangers adopt the baby is just too much for me honestly. I frankly find it a bit hard to believe that there are so many situations where there are 2 capable expectant parents who simply don’t want parent and for not a single family member be capable/willing to take care of the child.

Another explains – it’s the private adoption industry taking the foster care statistic of approximately 100,000 post-Termination of Parental Rights youth in this country, and just conveniently not mentioning that almost none of them are babies or toddlers. And then, if challenged, they will say ‘but this prevents them from ending up in foster care, aging out without a family,’ although I imagine that would not be relevant to the majority of parents who relinquish privately.

Which brought this recognition – I’ve actually found it incredibly bizarre how some very educated and intelligent people in my life, people who understand systems of oppression in regards to other demographics, a) don’t seem to get that no one gets pregnant to happily turn around and relinquish and b) refuse to understand that different age groups in the foster care system likely have different needs and require different approaches.

And this story from an expectant mother – I’m 42, expecting my 4th. My 1st, I was a single mother when her father left when she was 15 months old. I was a single mother for 10 years when I met my husband. But I thrived. I had a career, bought my own house, could afford a comfortable life. When I married, we had 2 boys over 8 years of marriage. My husband comes from a long line of mental illnesses, which he inherited. Both our boys are special needs, ASD among others. I’m in the middle of a long divorce as my husband is dragging it out and controlling it all as long as he can. I’m now a single mother for a second time. Eventually started casually seeing someone and got pregnant the second time we were together. He immediately jumped ship and was adamant he doesn’t want anything to do with it. Doesn’t want to be on the birth certificate. Nothing. This pregnancy will make me a single mother for essentially a 3rd time, at the age of 43. I am over being a single mother. I don’t want to do this for 40 years straight. I am older. I have no family that would take a baby. I had zero interest in abortion, I live in a state where it’s still legal, but that’s not something I agree with and I couldn’t live with myself. So, yes, I’m the mom that would carry to term just so I wasn’t killing the baby. I also couldn’t live with the what if’s with adoption. So I’m simply left with parenting. Do I want to? No. It’s simply the only option that doesn’t leave me with what ifs for the rest of my life. I fit everything you said is a far stretch. Father does not want, I would not abort, I have already been a single mother most of my entire adult life, so I know I CAN do it, but I don’t want to anymore. I’ve lived that phase of my life. I’m currently reliving that phase of my life with 2 challenging kiddos. And now, my awful luck has me starting all over again a 3rd time. And being in this position, I’ve come to realize there are lots of older women in my position for different reasons. Thought they went through menopause, Birth Control failed, whatever. Married, divorced, there are lots of us. So many people think this is a “young mom” issue, but there is an older crowd no one considers because we aren’t the norm.

Another agreed – the majority from the statistics I’ve seen who are getting abortions are married or divorced older women. I don’t see many choosing adoption at that age.

And a perspective from the United Kingdom – The UK has plenty of adoption, largely because our social services and safety net are so full of holes, struggling families don’t get help and their kids get taken away. What we don’t have is abandoned babies or people voluntarily giving up their infants. Because we have free, readily available abortion for people who really don’t want a kid, free healthcare (even if the government is currently running the service into the ground) and enough of a basic safety net (however fraying) that is usually sufficient that people who choose to give birth don’t feel they have to then give away their children due to poverty. I have a mountain of criticism for the ways our society is failing families, and letting them fall apart, but I still look at the United States in horror at how much worse it is.

Wondering and Asking Questions

Liann Ross

Today’s blog comes courtesy of LINK>Right To Know – who believe that “It is a fundamental human right to know your genetic identity.” I totally agree and that is what drove me to discover my own adoptee parents’ (both were adopted) origins.

She writes – “In 1998, my sister let it slip out that my parents were divorced for 3 years before I was born, thinking I already knew. I only started wondering and asking questions like…what were the circumstances of my conception ?” I remember when I was in middle school, I discovered that I had been conceived out-of-wedlock by counting the months between when my parents married and when I was born – 7, not 9.

She writes that in 2005, her Dad passed away. She says that was when she started wondering whether or not he was her biological father. Her mom was in the early stages of dementia due to Multiple Sclerosis. Her sister asked the question for her – “Is it possible that Dad is not Liann’s biological father”? Her mom immediately said, “I know he’s not”.

Liann does feel that she was lucky to be able to have a conversation with her mom and that her mom was even able to give her some answers. She was a product of an affair with a married Jewish man. So much like my own dad, who’s mother had an affair with a married man much older than her.

In 2017, she did the 23 and Me test. So much of what I know about my own origins is thanks to inexpensive commercial DNA testing. 23 and Me brought me much of what I now know about my dad’s mother through my own genetic cousins. In 2018, she did Ancestry’s DNA. I have also done both and really one should do both as what they can get from each is different. She discovered a half-brother but was asked to keep what she now knew about her genetic father a secret as he was still married and the couple had worked through years of his infidelities.

The problem for Liann was that the whole goal of her own journey was to no longer be “the secret”. So she did personal work on her own self-esteem so that she could get to a place in her own heart where she would be able to handle rejection, if that came her way again. She needed to be strong enough in who she knew herself to be, that she would know deeply that whatever her genetic relatives response to her was, it was not about her, who and how she is.

In September 2021, she sent her half-sister (who she had been asked to keep the secret from by her half-brother) a Facebook message explaining who she was, as delicately as possible given the circumstances of her own existence. Her half-sister did respond, though understandably shocked by the revelation and started asking questions. She notes that – while it was a very sensitive situation, the communication had a very different vibe than with the half-brother.

She was in therapy but her therapist ended up NOT being the right one for her. She says there is no way to understand and it is difficult trying to work through the depth of trauma this knowledge causes. She spent many years, sorting through memories and connecting the dots for her own self. She is exploring alternative modalities of healing (including inner child work/shadow work and ancestral trauma), support groups for those who experience a non-paternity event, learning self-love and connecting more deeply to her authentic self.

She admits – Finding out the man who raised me is not my biological father caused my foundation to crumble from underneath me. I had to put the puzzle pieces of my foundation back together without having the picture of what it should look like. She ends on this positive note – If there is one thing I realized through this journey, is how much of a hero my Dad actually was in my life. He raised me without question, and I know deep down he knew. That’s the kind of man he was. I feel him with me all the time and I see his name everywhere. I feel the connection we have now is even stronger than I could have imagined.

J.A.M.E.S. Inc

Today, I learned about J.A.M.E.S. Inc. The letters stand for Just About Mothers Excelling in School. They are a Tulsa-based nonprofit in Oklahoma.

Their mission is to lead expecting and parenting adolescents to self sufficiency. From the beginning, the agency has served male and female prospective young parents. 70 % of their clients are Black, while the others are white, Native American or Hispanic. The assistance J.A.M.E.S. Inc offers varies with their client’s need.

Three events in executive director Alisa Bell’s journey led to her starting and leading the organization. The first was a decision to embrace single motherhood. Bell welcomed her first child, daughter, Latoya, at 15. She was then a student at Tulsa’s Margaret Hudson School that provided education, counseling and healthcare of school-age mothers and child care for their infants. LINK>It was announced in 2017 that the school would close due to financial problems stemming from the loss of state and Tulsa Area United Way funding. For 50 years, they had helped teenage mothers stay in school and raise their kids.

In the course of juggling baby formula, diapers and classes at school, the shortcomings of her children’s father became more apparent to Alisa. “He was on drugs all the time,” Bell recalls. “And the mental health challenges and dysfunction of his family stunned me.” So, she fled their household. At 19, Bell was a single mom of two (her son, James Deandre King, had been born four years after her daughter).

“For pregnant and parenting teens without support, this means when school isn’t convenient or isn’t engaging, they quit. I did not want to be that person,” she said. When she was 23 and James was 5, Bell enrolled at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. The sentiment about young mothers was “if we can just get them through high school, that’s the best we can do,” she recalls. “So, I went to college and saw opportunities on the campus that nobody was telling people about.”

“My original thought was to develop a program to give scholarships to young mothers,” Bell said. In her first year of operation, she gave away one scholarship and focused on raising more money. But in the second year, there were no scholarship applicants. At that stage, she realized that giving grants was only part of the solution for young mothers. They also severely needed mentoring and education about the options available to them, and why they were worth pursuing.

In May 1998, to distance James from the challenges faced in high school, Bell sought the assistance of his paternal grandparents, where he lived briefly. While there, James and his cousin, Darell Steven King, who were both 14 years old, were involved in an altercation that escalated to a handgun being used. Darell fired several shots, one of which struck James in the head and he was now dead.

The following year, she entered graduate school. In a grant writing class, she had an assignment to come up with a plan for a nonprofit. “Out of nowhere, I wrote down the name of an organization: Just About Mothers Excelling in School. (J.A.M.E.S., Inc.),” Bell recalls. “From that day to this day, I have been trying to give James’ life.”

The organization was established in 2006 to encourage and support higher educational aspirations among expecting and parenting teens and adolescents (up to age 24). An early parent herself, Ms. Bell recognized that completion of secondary education alone was unlikely to be enough to provide young parents with the opportunities they desired for themselves and their children. That’s why J.A.M.E.S., Inc. does more. Mental health is a major factor for young parents and families. The focus of the organization expanded in 2014 to provide mental health services, including case management, to its client population. They also include a young parent advisory board.

You can read more about Alisa Bell’s life and efforts here >LINK.

It Is Dangerous To Be A Woman

Patricia Ann Tucker

In addition to helping adoptees discover their original parents and genetic background, DNA is providing a low level of justice for women who have been killed, with their bodies dumped in isolated places. I think all of my life I’ve known that to be a woman places one’s self in danger. At times, when I was younger, I was stupidly and naively willing to take risks that I recognize now were very dangerous and sometimes, I paid a minor price in receiving some sexual abuse (though not killed or seriously wounded) because of that. So often, when stories like today’s emerge, I think – “but for the grace of God,” or my guardian angels or whatever it has been that has “protected” me from my own miscalculations. That “whatever” has kept me safe and preserved this life.

Matthew Dale was 5 years old the last time he saw his mother (he was born in 1973, the same year that my daughter was born). He sat in the back seat of a stranger’s car that day of 1978. All his life he was missing his mom and didn’t know for certain what had happened to her. The last words his mother ever said to him before she disappeared were “. . . go across the street to the playground” (referring to a group home for juveniles) and “She said goodbye.” Tucker was shot in the temple, then dragged by the neck with a man’s belt. Some loggers found her under a stump on November 15, 1978. His father collected him the following day and raised him.

Matthew grew up dogged by the mystery of his mother’s disappearance. Rumors swirled among family members, including speculation that Tucker may have entered the federal Witness Protection Program. He has scant keepsakes from his mother: a single photo, baby books she created for him, a lock of his hair and a small tapestry she painted when he was small. When his father died in 2015, he felt somewhat adrift, although he is happily married and is a father. He has been a union electrician for most of his life.

He was in his 30s, when he accepted that his mother was dead. “Through the years,” Matthew says, “I’ve been told so many lies about it.” He later came to understand that his mother “fell in with the wrong crowd. She wasn’t a hiker, like some of the stories said.” Matthew filed his DNA in a database, in case his mother was ever identified. He sent state investigators his digital DNA profile after they found him through his uncle’s DNA. Now that his mother has been identified, he plans to arrange for a proper grave for her. For years, the grave had been marked only with a wooden cross. In 1998, Granby residents donated money to create a more dignified marker. He says, “It was an awful end. What I want to do is have a new gravestone made for her. She deserves to have her name on it.” Matthew admits “At least I have some answers. It’s a lot to process, but hopefully, the closure can begin now.”

Credit to LINKS>MASS Live and The Guardian for the details in today’s blog.

No Tummy Mummy Crap

One of the fastest ways to trigger adoptees as an adoptive parent is to refer to their first mother as a “tummy mommy” or some similar variation, as in the book cover image here. Today’s opening comment reads – “I have two children both adopted through foster care. My son is 4 1/2 and my daughter is 2. I’ve had conversations with my 4 1/2 yo about his tummy mommy and he’s seen pics of her.”

Not surprisingly the first comments were – “Please get rid of the phrase tummy mommy.” Followed by “Yes please leave off that crap. It’s so gross.” “It reduces his mother to nothing more than an incubator.” Or this, somewhat crude comparison but totally on point – “If you wouldn’t refer to your adopted children’s father as dong daddy, or penis papa, then don’t refer to their mother as a tummy mummy.” An adoptive mother answers the question – “What if the mother wants to be called tummy mommy?” with this – “I’d tell her that I want them to know that I see her as more than that and that I want her kids to as well.”

From the LINK>Lavender Luz Opinion Poll – Some don’t like the term – either because it is anatomically inaccurate or it is reductive of the first mom. Some like “first mother” because it honors the mothering that was done from conception until placement. I have personally struggled with “first mother” as opposed to “birth mother” but this explanation has won me over to “first mother” from now on.

Another person expressed her perspectives – I can’t think of a single woman who would appreciate being known as “tummy mummy”.

My objections are threefold:
1. It diminishes the woman’s motherhood. Like it or not, she is a mother, period, not just one in the tummy (see how ridiculous this sounds when you run with it).
2. It implies that the other woman carried the child for the adoptive parents. This is untrue unless it’s a surrogacy situation. Of course, pre-birth matching may encourage this view (witness people talking about “our birthmother”), but this only exposes the manipulation inherent in pre-birth matching. A woman’s child is her child, until she makes the decision to surrender – and even then, she is still a mother.
3. It could be potentially confusing to the adopted child’s understanding of his or her other family, heritage, siblings, and so forth. What is the important thing, that he grew in someone’s tummy or that he is genetically connected to the other family? How is this phrase actually used? “You grew in her tummy but we’re your parents”? Original family isn’t reflected in this phrase, which seems intent on removing all important connections and substituting them with a biological detail that isn’t even accurate. Who needs a phrase like this, anyway?

Heck, they used to claim that kids with two parents of the same sex would be totally confused as well, and it simply isn’t the case. Confusion tends to be tossed around when people don’t like the paradigm shift. In the phrase “tummy mummy” I can’t help but hear the adoptive parent hanging onto her status as real. No need to do that. Everyone is real, even when we’re absent or not perfect (which is all of us).

Grieving Many Times Over

Today, I share a piece by LINK>David B Bohl, who is an author, speaker and addiction & relinquishment consultant. It is titled On Grieving Many Times, And Many Times Over. I was attracted to this because yesterday was my deceased, adoptee mother’s birthday. I don’t suppose we ever get over the grief. I don’t think she ever got over the grief of never being able to communicate with her birth mother, who Tennessee told her in the early 1990s was already dead.

David writes his adoptive mother’s death was the fifth death of a parent he’d had to go through. He explains that he – hadn’t learned of the first two until much later after they’d occurred. The first one to go was my birth father, who died 32 years before I learned about it, the second one my birth mother whose death I did not learn of until 8 years after it happened (very similar to my own mom). Then there was my adoptive father 12 years ago, and now, Joan Audrey Bohl who died twice —first when the dementia robbed her of her mind and memory, subsequently rendering me a stranger when she would fail at times to remember who I was and why I was visiting. There she was another mom who had no idea I was her son. In those moments, in a most sinister coincidence, she was like my biological parents who relinquished me and existed in this world without any specific knowledge of me.

He wants us to understand “What all of this means to someone like me—a relinquishee and adoptee who now has two sets of deceased parents–is that I must face twice(?), five times(?) a yet-to-be determined amount(?) of grief and confusion. Add to that losing my adoptive mom to dementia, and there is plenty to process, a great deal of loss, and certainly much to grieve. I am, of course, not blaming any of my parents for dying or getting sick, and I’ve made peace with my biological parents for giving me up a 62 years ago. But it would be disingenuous to say that I am no longer affected by these losses and that my mother’s recent death doesn’t trigger some new layer of grief where all of those people who contributed to my existence must be acknowledged in how they shaped my life. And so, I think about mothers. The mother I knew and the mother I’ve never met. And then the mother I knew who no longer knew me. I think of fathers, the one who had never even met me, and the one who raised me and provided me with a life filled with opportunities. And I of course, as a father, I think about my children.”

When I try to talk about my own family, my youngest son says to me – you have a very complicated family. It is true. And it is true for adoptees as well. As I have learned who my original grandparents were and have made contact with that novel new experience of genetic relatives that never knew each other existed – it has actually given me a new sense of wholeness – while at the same time totally messing me up with the adoptive relatives and the feelings I have (and still have) and each of them. Very complicated indeed.

There is much more in his very worthwhile article – see the LINK.

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe’s mother went into a mental hospital and left her to orphanages and foster care. In My Story, Monroe wrote that she recalled seeing her mother “screaming and laughing” as she was forcibly taken to a State Hospital.

At age 11, Norma Jeane was declared a ward of the state. She lived in a total of 11 foster homes throughout her youth; when there was no foster home available, she sometimes ended up at the Hollygrove Orphanage in Los Angeles. As if moving from one foster home to another wasn’t difficult enough, Norma Jeane recalled being treated harshly in several of them. Even worse, she was abused including sexually in at least three of her foster care placements.

Here is one story from the Daily Mail, “The magic red sweater that turned ‘Norma Jeane, string bean’ into Marilyn Monroe” –

She told of being whipped by one foster mother for having touched ‘the bad part’ of her body. Another more serious incident occurred when she was eight. One evening a lodger she called Mr. Kimmel (Marilyn said later that this was not his real name) asked her to come into his room and locked the door behind her. He put his arms around her. She kicked and struggled. He did what he wanted, telling her to be a good girl. (In a later interview Marilyn stated that the abuse involved fondling). When he let her out, he handed her a coin and told her to buy herself an ice cream. She threw the coin in his face and ran to tell her foster mother what happened, but the woman wouldn’t listen.

“Shame on you,” her foster mother said. “Mr. Kimmel’s my star boarder.” Norma Jeane went to her room and cried all night. Marilyn said she felt dirty and took baths for days after it happened to feel clean. Such repeated attempts to feel clean through showers or baths are typical behavior for victims of assault. Marilyn also said she began to stutter after the incident and reverted to it at times of stress. When she told one interviewer about the abuse, she began stuttering. The evidence points to the fact that she was an abused child whose early sexualization led to her inappropriate behavior as an adult.

One of the reasons she chose to marry at 16 was simply to escape her foster care takers. She never knew who her father was. After getting married at 16, she later divorced and became a new persona. She went from Norma Jeane Baker to Marilyn Monroe in order to fit in, be accepted, and wanted…what she never wanted was to become a sex object.

Not many seem to have recognized that she was dealing with abandonment trauma her entire life. She overdosed at the age of 36. According to an article at a site called Vigilant Citizen, behind Monroe’s photogenic smile was a fragile individual who was exploited and subjected to mind control by powerful handlers. Through trauma and psychological programming, Monroe a became high-level puppet of society’s elite, even becoming JFK’s paramour.

One “conspiracy theory” asserts – “Some children live in foster homes, or with adopted parents, or in orphanages, or with caretakers and guardians. Because these children are at the mercy of the non-related adults, these types of children frequently are sold to become mind-controlled slaves of the intelligence agencies.” ~ Fritz Springmeier, The Illuminati Formula to Create a Mind Control Slave. Not saying that I believe conspiracy theories but often there are some facts that are foundational to them.

Industry insiders convinced Norma Jeane to undergo aesthetic surgery, to change her name to Marilyn Monroe and to change her hair color to platinum blonde. Monroe’s sensual, “dumb blond” persona allowed her to land roles in several movies, which began a clear culture shift in Hollywood.