What Is Enough ?

My mother doubted her worth as a human and as a mother. She never believed she was good enough. Adoption did that to her. She felt broken and torn.

My mom tried very hard to know her roots. She appealed to the state of Tennessee for her adoption file. Though her father was twenty years older than her mother and her mother had already died, she was denied because the state didn’t really try too hard to determine her father’s status. He had been dead for 30 years, when she made her attempt.

She did an Ancestry DNA test and had a profile, hoping against hope to learn some truth. At least, she had some idea of her ethnicity from that effort. She tried to complete family trees but since they were based on persons who adopted her and adopted my dad, she quit and said to me, “It just didn’t feel real.” Of course it didn’t. From a genealogy perspective – it wasn’t the truth.

I now have the complete story for both – my mom and my dad. I wrote everything up in a limited edition book given to family, so that what I worked so hard to learn would not be lost with me, if I died.

There is no risk-free exposure for the children of adopted parents. I know. The wounds and damage passed down my family line and other children ended up adopted too.

You Should Be Grateful

Of all the unreasonable expectations people tend to put upon an adoptee, the demand that they be grateful for having been adopted is perhaps one of the most painful.

Do you realize ?

The adoptee lost their complete family in one foul swoop. They lost their mother, perhaps as soon as the day they were born. They also lost their identity, background information, heritage, genealogy, birth certificate, familiarities, equal rights, similarities, health information and a knowledge of where their inherited traits came from.

Adoption is the only trauma for which the traumatized are told by society that they should be grateful for it’s occurrence. Compassion that it happened to a person is a better expectation.

Ancestors – I Didn’t Have Any

I once wrote an essay with that title. That was before I discovered my ancestors. I lived for over 60 years not knowing because both of my parents were adopted.

It may be that you don’t know who your ancestors were because you simply aren’t interested in it. That’s fine. You are NOT prevented from finding out about them if you want to. An adoptee often is. My parents were.

I envied the long line of ancestors that we had found when we studied my husband’s genealogy.

Turns out, I had an ancestor who’s home in New London Connecticut is on the National Register and is a museum. His diary which is still in print, written between September 1711 and November 1758, is considered one of the best glimpses into Colonial life. His name was Joshua Hempstead and my paternal grandmother descended from him.

On my maternal grandmother’s side were the Scotch ancestors that were honored with the surname Stark, which means strong, for having saved King James from a raging bull. They came to the United States by way of Virginia early enough to fight in the Revolutionary War.

I didn’t know that my dad’s father was a new immigrant to this country from Denmark. That he loved the sea, fishing and boats, just like my dad did. My dad died without ever knowing he came by that preference naturally.

I love history. My husband and I started our marriage sharing a love of history. I grew up not knowing these true tales of my ancestors. Sadly, my parents died knowing nothing about them either. At least, I have that knowledge now and have shared it with my immediate family.

The old black and white, sometimes blurry, photos that have come my way are my people and knowing my true family tree is like a shiny new treasure. Every glimpse into some new detail is an exciting thrill. Even when I don’t know much more than a name, it is valuable to me simply because it really is mine.

Adoption does not negate nor does it create genetic relatedness. Adoption does not make the family of origins cease to exist. Adopted individuals ALL came from real, actual people, who came from real, actual ancestors, ad infinitum. I didn’t have that continuum that so many people not touched by adoption do not realize even matters.

No human being deserves to have their family history annihilated simply because people outside that family cared for and raised them.

There Are Worse Things Than Adoption

Warning – this is not an easy story to contemplate.

38 years after the event, a combination of DNA and genetic genealogy located the woman who in some confused and frightened state, gave birth to a baby in her apartment, and then dumped the living baby with the placenta still attached into a ditch in freezing weather in Sioux Falls SD when she was 19 years old.

The baby was found about 24 hrs later by a man test driving a car. The coroner ruled that the boy lived for about two hours before freezing and bleeding to death.

The woman did go on to marry the baby’s father who seems to have been unaware of either her pregnancy or the birth. She and her husband have two living adult children.

Haunted by this story, I did think “there are worse things than having been adopted.” This man would have been 38 years old. What kind of life might he have had? Would the outcome have been different if this young, single mother had had the encouragement and support that would have made her willing to keep and raise the boy?