Curiosity Is Natural

I found this situation interesting. A 16 yr old in a kinship adoption (by grandparents) wants to go back to her biological mother. She recently came out as pan (Pantheism is the philosophical religious belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical to divinity and a supreme being or entity) and she wants to study witchcraft and her grandparents are strongly Catholic, therefore this goes against their beliefs. Personally, I can relate. I remember having a curiosity about Wicca when I was a teenager and looked into such alternative spiritualities more deeply when I was much older.

A reasonable response was this – living with people that do not support her beliefs can do a lot more harm in two years (when she would be 18). She may not be here in 2 years, if she has to endure not being able to be her true self. Forcing her to stay there could end her life. She needs supportive people around her, while she freely explores her own spiritual possibilities.

This young woman is the niece of the husband of the woman who is seeking to be supportive of her, She adds – she’s not studying it to fully commit, she just wants to be able to read about it and he grandparents totally flipped out. She was only curious about it and she likes to read and learn about different things.

Someone else noted (which I also already understood) – witchcraft is an actual religion called Wicca. Surely 16 is old enough for religious freedom.

A foster parent of teens writes – if she leaves and goes back to mom, there’s basically nothing the state can do to intervene. The brilliant and frustrating thing about teenagers is that NO ONE can force them to do anything, which is both a strength and a weakness. As long as she communicates where she is and doesn’t cross state lines (which could open up charges of kidnapping), it’s unlikely anything will happen. The adoptive grandparents can report her as a runaway and call for a wellness check, but as long as the teen and mom are found to be okay, they won’t remove her. The more complicated aspect would be getting her identifying documents from her adoptive grandparents. Sometimes these documents are “held hostage” in order to manipulate the situation. Then, there are all the times she will need a parent-guardian signature until she is 18. Ideally, the grandparents would acquiesce in order to save their relationship with their granddaughter and be willing to set up a legal guardianship for her mom.

I did look into the state in question, Florida – and found this legal information at Law for Families LINK re: Florida Laws About Moving Out of Your Parents’ Home – Florida minors who want to move out of their parents’ home will find very limited options. Emancipation guidelines stipulate that the minor must be at least 16 years old, able to display a clear need to be emancipated and also have both parents or guardian’s permission. Even if a minor meets all those requirements, a judge makes the final ruling. The only other option for a child to legally move out of a parents’ home in Florida is turning 18, at which point that child is a legal adult.

Another noted the honest truth – Millions of foster youth and adoptees “vanish” and they never ever look for us. She’s just another number in that figure except she would actually be home. Is it legally bad advice? Yes. But lots of us do it and then just move on to the next part of our life. My cousins were kin adopted from foster care but one left at 16 even though she was still involved with the system and still nothing. The other waited until enlistment age and moved out that way. Adoptees don’t usually have active and ongoing supervision like foster youth and can slip under radars easier in that age bracket.

Not The First Time

Adoption is a state by state issue. Therefore, the consent and revocation time frames vary. A mom in Georgia revoked 2 days after signing. But the hopeful adoptive parents already have possession and refuse to give the baby back. Law enforcement refuses to get involved. So this new mother now needs a court order from a judge ordering the return of HER child, before law enforcement will get involved. Her attorney wants a $2,500 retainer to do this. This is not the first case I am aware of where the hopeful adoptive parents refuse to allow the mother’s revocation. It is always expensive and messy.

So mama’s don’t let your babies be adopted (borrowing from an old song about cowboys). As adoption reform efforts continue, more and more expectant mothers, who might have given their children up for adoption, are now changing their minds, even if they previously agreed to let their babies be adopted. A website for LINK>Adoption Birth Mothers has a chart for the adoption laws by state.

Important Points to know and consider –

Adoption Consent forms should NEVER be signed before birth. At that point, the pregnancy is still not real and a mother cannot consent to relinquish an idea or concept.

Consent to relinquish should NEVER be signed while the mother is still in the hospital. She is still recovering form the birth and is also frequently on pain medications.

It is ILLEGAL to force or coerce a mother to sign away the rights to her child by threatening to make her “pay back” medical bills or expenses, but these tactics DO happen every day in the USA with very little recourse. Often mothers will lose their children to adoption after being threatened.

No matter how much an agency or adoptive parents have supported an expectant mother before her baby is born; SHE HAS THE RIGHT TO CHANGE HER MIND and NOT agree to an Adoption.

The Revocation Time Frame represents the amount of time a parent who has already signed the consent form has to go back to the agency and revoke their consent to adoption. The adoption industry prefers states like Florida, where once a mother consents to adoption, she has NO TIME to change her mind. It’s really quite insane that you can go back to the store and return a purchase, or even return a car or cancel airline reservations or pull a bid for a house, but you can sign away your motherhood with no recourse. PLEASE NOTE – that even if a mother has the legal right to revoke consent and does so during the allowed time frame, there is NO guaranteeing that she will get her baby back.

As the lyrics in the Bad Company song Gone, Gone, Gone say –

It ain’t the first time baby
Baby it won’t be the last

Kinship Obstacles

Painting by Jen Norton

Today’s Story –

I am dealing with the state of Florida and a foster home who has my two young sisters 12/14. I’m 30 and my husband is 33. I live in Illinois and have only had communication with the foster home guardians, case worker & Guardian Ad Litem for my sisters. I have been run through the mill of excuses since January as to why I cannot speak to my sisters, that they have been placed in a foster home, and despite me telling them immediately upon contact in January that I wanted to adopt them (after finding out Termination of Parental Rights had happened, adoption is the only option)… in the meantime, they let this foster family put in an adoption application.

So only a few weeks ago, they FINALLY let me and my husband put in an application, at the very least to pause their current applicant. And now they won’t answer my messages or update me on the ICPC (Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children) process at all. When we have spoken, they guilt trip me about ruining my sisters current adoption journey with this family, that they need me as a “sister and not a mom”, and a laundry list of other things.

I have been trying to find an attorney to help me but they either ghost me or cannot help me because my biological mom & their father lost parental rights, plus she passed away this year. It has to be an attorney in Florida. I do not intend on EVER having them refer to us as “mom & dad”, but I told them I am capable of being a parent to them, despite being their sister. Also, keeping their legal names is also in the cards, as well as retaining their current birth certificates. If I could take guardianship I would, but the only option presented to me is adoption.

I have spoken with my sister recently (she contacted me on Facebook through my other sister) and they do want to be with me. This potential adoptive family was “matched” to them only in late November. They didn’t move in with them until February. They can’t adopt them until they live with them for 6 months.

Someone recommended Mrs Debra Salisbury in Florida. “She is a bulldog with a bone. Won’t turn loose. Very much someone you want on your side.” Another said, “She is the best lawyer money can buy. She is the ONLY ONE you will want beside you to fight if you find yourself needing a family law attorney. I wouldn’t have won my case if it wasn’t for her and her amazing team. Her knowledge and determination for her clients success shows. I have my family back together thanks to her and I am grateful for all her hard work!” Other recommendations were Rachel Medlin, Jeanne Tate, Juliana Gaita Monjaraz, all in Florida. And there were others with similar information passing it on via private messages. Always reach out if you have a sticky situation problem.

I hope this recommendation helps her or that another one equally good comes along. Always kinship, an immediate family member is the best for such children.

Adoption Halloween Theme

I just knew there had to be something somewhere that tied an adoption to the Halloween holiday. Sure enough. From LINK> Good Morning America dated Nov 2 2021.

Day care owner, Angie Sheppard (already the mother of 5) first met Shyla when she was 6. Two years later, on her Oct 29th birthday and dressed as a bailiff, she banged the judge’s gavel at the end of each of 15 adoptions finalized that day. The adoption ceremony was called “Home for Halloween.” All the kids were dressed in costumes for the event.

According to Jenn Petion, president and CEO of Family Support Services of North Florida, ceremonies like “Home for Halloween” are not just fun celebrations but important tools to help kids who are newly-adopted move forward, especially around the holidays. “The holidays can be a particular particularly challenging time as they remember the family that they didn’t have and the pain of of not being able to be in a safe and loving home,” she said. “So to have a finalization event that’s tied to a holiday really starts to change those memories and allows them to symbolize the start of forever, the start of something new, and that they really can have that wonderful happy ending.”

Seeing some of the kids dressed up as superheroes was especially memorable for Petion. “I always think of our foster kids as superheroes, because they really have been through some of the most unimaginable things in their young lives. They are always superheroes in disguise.”

Angie Sheppard said she never expected to find herself in a courtroom adopting a daughter. “She is the life of the house now. Everybody just fell head over heels in love with her.” Shyla had actually asked Angie to be her mom.

National Adoption Awareness Month is recognized annually in November and is intended to bring attention to the more than 400,000 children are in the foster care system.

Putting A GenZ Adoptee in Congress

Maxwell was adopted as an infant by a special education teacher, who migrated to the United States in the Freedom Flights, and a musician. The Freedom Flights were the largest airborne refugee operation in American history and operated between 1965 and 1973 from Cuba to Miami, twice daily, 5 days per week.

He was born in Orlando, Florida. His original mother was caught in a cycle of drugs, crime, and violence – while pregnant. She didn’t have healthcare and wasn’t able to see a doctor. She put him up for adoption because she would not be able to raise him. He reconnected with his birth mother in June 2021.

He said, “What changed everything for me was connecting with my biological mother, learning about her story, learning about the things she had been through.” He learned he has multiple siblings (and she wasn’t able to raise another child).

His grandmother, Yeya, came to the USA in the 60s with only a few clothes and without any money. His grandmother had to work 70 hours per week under harsh conditions. He was close to her and only a few days ago, the family buried her.

Frost says to have a better democracy, there should be more poor and working-class candidates in the political system. He became politically active early in his life organizing with March for Our Lives and not surprisingly better gun control regulations are among his most heartfelt issues. He also cares about climate change and voting issues. He notes that “The biggest generational divide isn’t the issues – it’s the urgency.”

CODE PINK

I once read a book titled The Foundling. It is the true story of a man who discovered that he had been kidnapped as a baby. Yet, his quest to find out who he really is shook up the genealogy industry, his own family and set in motion the second longest cold case in US history. It started in 1964, when a woman pretending to be a nurse kidnapped an infant boy named Paul Fronczak from a Chicago hospital.

Two years later, police found a boy abandoned outside a variety store in New Jersey. The FBI tracked down Dora Fronczak, the kidnapped infant’s mother, and she identified the abandoned boy as her son. The family spent the next fifty years believing they were whole again. Paul had long suspected however that he was not that infant.

So, not too long ago, Paul took a DNA test after the birth of his first child, Emma Faith. The test revealed that he definitely was not Paul Fronczak. From that moment on, Paul wanted to find the man whose life he had been living, as well as discover who abandoned him and why.

Now in 2022, hospitals take the situation very seriously and have drills and procedures known as Code Pink.

Recently Jesenea Miron, who is 23 years old, walked into the Riverside University Health System – Medical Center in California. She was allegedly posing as a newly-hired nurse. Miron was able to gain access to a medical unit where newborn infants were present. She then entered a patient’s room and identified herself as a nurse. The Code Pink procedures worked and she is now in custody.

There was a case in 1998, when Gloria Williams walked into a Florida hospital dressed as a nurse. She walked out with a newborn named was Kamiyah Mobley. Williams raised Mobley for 18 years as her own daughter in South Carolina after renaming her Alexis Kelli Manigo.

In the event of a suspected or actual abduction, “Code Pink” is announced loudly over the hospital system if the infant is less than 12 months of age. As more information is developed, up-dated announcements are made. When an infant is suspected or confirmed to be missing, the employee who made the discovery notifies the hospital’s Security Control Center by calling 911.

Out of 325 cases of infant abduction over the past five decades, nearly all of the cases involve a female abductor. In analyzing those abductions, not only do many abductors use similar tactics to steal babies, like dressing as a nurse. Nearly all abductors fit a similar profile. Many women who steal babies do so in a desperate attempt to keep a boyfriend or husband they fear may leave them, if they don’t have a child to bind them together. They are usually of child-bearing age and some may already have children at home. They may pretend to be pregnant, they may have recently lost a baby due to a miscarriage or they suffer from infertility which prevents them from becoming pregnant themselves.

It’s Complicated And Confusing

Mention of a television program called Switched at Birth led me to today’s real life story and it fits with the Missing Mom theme of my blog and so I share. The 1991 American miniseries, directed by Waris Hussein, is based on the true story of Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg. The two babies were switched soon after birth in a Florida hospital in 1978. Today the relationships between Kim Mays and her two living mother figures remains strained. “I don’t really feel like I’ve had a mother growing up. That’s where the confusion comes from,” Kimberly has said.

It does appear that the switch was intentional. In November 1993, Patsy Webb, a nurse’s aide from the hospital where the babies had been switched, came forward, claiming that Dr. Ernest Palmer had told her to switch the ID bracelets. She refused to do it, she claimed, but told the doctor she would keep quiet, fearing that she would lose her job and health insurance if she spoke up. She said she saw the next day that the babies had been switched.

Webb decided to come forward because she was dying and she wanted to clear her conscience before she died. There were two or three people involved in the switch she has said. The one baby was very sick. While Webb didn’t make the decision, she went along with it and that made her feel like a guilty party to it.

Yet for Kim Mays, the shocking and incredibly emotional twists and turns of her childhood, have not served her life well. “I had a rough childhood,” Kim Mays said. “I lost a parent.” When her first mother died, her father remarried. Until she was 6 years old, she thought her stepmother was her mother. After 7 years of marriage, he divorced that woman and remarried again. Kim Mays now says the man who raised her, Bob Mays, was very controlling and she ran away from home several times.

When she was 15, she ended up at a YMCA shelter and then asked to live with the Twiggs (her actual genetic family and who she had “divorced” just a few months earlier through the courts). “I was going through a lot of emotion. So I ran away, and I went to the Twiggs’ house. I stayed there a year and a half to two years almost,” she said. Mays left the Twiggs two weeks before she turned 18. She got married to her first husband and they had a son together.

“Losing my mom at two, to (Bob Mays) getting remarried right away, to him divorcing her, then finding another relationship to jump into, then (learning about) the switch, and then, other stuff that occurred,” she said. “It’s a lot to process as a child. I just didn’t handle it very well at the time, unfortunately.” Nor did she handle it well after that. She and her first husband divorced and their son, now an adult, was raised by her ex-husband and his family. That is an aspect of her story that I can relate to as my own biological, genetic daughter ended up being raised by her dad and step-mother. She has had six children by four different fathers.

“I feel bad for both sides, (the) Twiggs and everyone involved,” Kim Mays said. “(Arlena – the baby she was switched with) passed away (at 9 years old) and then they poured everything into finding me, so they went through a lot.”

You can read the complete story here – Kim Mays, Switched at Birth. The entire original 20/20 series is also available at YouTube.

Prayers Please

This is a TRUE and ONGOING situation and typical of many, many of these kinds of circumstances.

There is a mom who gave birth yesterday to a baby girl at a hospital in Florida. How messed up is this? Mom can’t (now couldn’t) have visitors due to COVID restrictions. She was allowed ONE support person during delivery and guess who it was? Yup, hopeful adoptive mom.

Due to their policy, the person there during delivery is the ONLY person allowed in. Baby was moved to a room with the wannabe mom AND wannabe DAD. (Ya know, they consider the wannabe mom’s desire for a “support person” and so they allowed dad.)

The adoption agency involved in Florida is a major player in the state. The new mom has now told the social worker (employed by hospital) last night that she has decided to parent her child. Of course, the hopeful adoptive parents and adoption agency employee refused to leave the hospital – until the hospital social worker and nursing staff told them they had to.

As they were leaving, the adoption agency employee told the hopeful adoptive parents to “get some sleep and we will regroup tomorrow.”

Happily, the hospital will now allow the new mom’s mom to come and support this morning. The mom has been prepared by members of an all things adoption support group for the antics common in domestic infant adoptions that occur when agencies and hopeful adoptive parents don’t get their way. They often will call Child Protective Services just for spite.

Please keep this new mom and her baby girl in your prayers for continued good outcomes. Thank you.

And just to know – This is STANDARD behavior in the world of domestic infant adoptions. Coercion, manipulation, isolation, preying on vulnerable women at a vulnerable time. If you are a hopeful adoptive mother who signs up to adopt via a domestic infant adoption, you are supporting these kinds of practices.

It doesn’t matter IF the expectant mom was going to allow you to adopt HER child. If she changes her mind after seeing her precious baby – NO means NO. Every new mom has every right to change her mind. In today’s story – these hopeful adoptive parents are not going to get her baby but it is almost certain that eventually they will get someone else’s baby. They always do.

It is never an unwed, expectant mother’s responsibility to provide an infertile couple with a child. And they always speak glowingly of the sacrifice such mothers make to allow them to take her child away from family.

The Era Of Sealed Records Continues

It is not some long ago issue. For many adoptees, their personal history, their adoption file and their original birth certificates are withheld from them even today in maybe half these United States. It is true that there has been progress made in some states. I believe New York was the most recent.

So today, I read the heartbreaking account below of yet another adoptee struggling with this, just as my mom did (however, she was denied because her mom was dead and her father’s status could not be determined – thankfully, I received her full file in 2017 from the state of Tennessee – if only she could have had the peace of mind her file would have brought her but she was also dead by the time I was able to obtain it on her behalf as her descendent).

Here’s that other adoptees’ sad tale –

I had to friend request my biological mother again. We were friends before when we first connected, but I unfriended her after writing her a long message unleashing my pent-up anger and hurt over my adoption. Anyway, the state of Florida says that if I want a copy of my original birth certificate, I need this woman to write a note permitting the courts to unseal my records. So, I have to expose myself to more trauma and talk to someone I don’t want to talk to, so I can have the factual account of my birth. I am so tired of laws that hurt adoptees and protect biological parents. It’s bullshit.

One response was this – It’s a human rights violation, considering these people signed away any legal rights they had to us, so they are legal strangers to us. They have as much to do with us as a neighbor, a store clerk or a real estate agent. Yet we are still beholden to them, when laws that separated us, make us ask their permission in the ultimate of hypocrisy.

Another adoptee shares –

I was born in the “blackout” period for Massachusetts adoptees. I think it was from 1974 through 2008. If you were born in that time frame, you need to convince a judge there is a “good reason” to give you your original vital records information. I don’t know what that is but I really don’t want my adoptive parents finding out I’m even poking yet, I’d rather have them on my side first.

And yet another from my own home state – I was adopted in Missouri. I had to have written permission from one of my adoptive parents to get my information. My adoptive dad wrote the letter for me. If he had died before the letter was written, I would not have been able to get any information.

And I agree with this adoptive parent – I have always felt that the Amended Birth Certificate was a lie and an awful thing to do to a child who has every right to that document. Blog writer’s note – For both of my parents, their birth certificates were total fabrications. How can it be a good thing to grow a life upon a lie ?

No adult should have to get any other adult’s permission to obtain their own records.

Someone else writes – I’m confused about how this protects natural parents. It seems like it’s just a difficult-to-impossible side quest to make it less likely that any adoptee will find their natural family, all to benefit adopters who fear reunion, in the guise of “protecting the birth mother’s privacy”.

Exactly !! The stated reason for the secrecy has always been to protect the privacy of the original parents but that rings hollow and it has been abundantly proven that the reason is to protect the adoptive parents from dealing with adoptee/original parent intrusions.

Attacked Once Again

This always feels personal to me because my sons have ALWAYS been educated at home. Mostly we have tried to fly under the radar so that we can continue to do what we believe is best for our own family. It came to pass that my daughter became frustrated with the school options for my granddaughter in Florida and chose to avail herself of their virtual school offer. She has since acknowledged that she understands the appeal of control and flexibility that homeschooling offers. I would be the first to acknowledge that it is not for everyone. If the parents have to go to work outside their home (we have a home-based business), then it is going to be a real challenge to implement.

One of the more disturbing aspects of educating my children at home has been when a case of child abuse becomes linked to the fact that the parents hid behind homeschooling in order to hide their abuse. This often brings calls from those who’s attachment is to public schooling for more oversight and regulation of those of us who have made a personal choice. I am fortunate that the state of Missouri has good supports for homeschooling choice due to a large population of conservative Christians. I am grateful to them though we are not homeschooling for the same reasons they do.

So today, I read yet again an allegation that everyone dislikes homeschooling because it is a front for abuse as the Coronavirus has forced schools to close and children to stay at home.

Can it really be true that abusers have to wait for an official sanction of homeschooling to cover their abuse of their children ? Or that many people homeschool simply so that they can abuse their children ?

More than once, I have encountered arguments for the advantages of school as required for the socialization of children. It is not the blind leading the blind (children of a single age group influencing their peers to bad behavior) for my sons. They have been socialized to the entire spectrum of humanity – from babies to the elderly. We have often been complimented about how well behaved they are in places where some parents’ children are running around like wild heathens.

In this time of Coronavirus, maybe it isn’t so much about socializing as it is that parents are stressed from being home all day cooped up with their children. We have always valued every single minute of time that we spend with our sons.

One could ask whether schools in the US just “holding cells” for the dependents of people who have to work or so that they can have their days off free to do as they please, until their children are released to come home from school ?

As long as society is so “intertwined” with our government that people become upset that those who chose to do so can school their own children or judge those that do as doing so to hide abuse or that well intentioned people must protect other people’s children from being schooled at home, nothing will ever change for the better in a society of free people.