Every Adoptee Is Unique

We are all unique and so are our adoption stories. There is no one size fits all as to the experiences of any individual adoptee.

We should play close attention to our adoptions stories. Because being adopted is still relatively rare among the people of society, our stories matter as a window on a practice that takes the children of one mother and places them with a mother with whom they have no genetic connection.

As writers, we must polish the imagery with which we tell our stories so that they can receive the attention they are due.

In my own family’s numerous adoption stories, I seek to find their positive rather than their negative aspects, while not denying nor hiding from that. It is a reality and so, acceptance is an important part of healing any wounds that have occurred.

I search for the ways in which we have experienced life differently from those who without thought live the inherited version. As I discover the truths within my own family’s stories, I edit the plot accordingly because the truth has become even more important to me as a result of it’s having been hidden for so long.

I also keep my eye on the philosophical implications of the changes to the experience of having been adopted that reformers and activists seek to make.

Real

Me in 1997 with Mom and Dad

For most of my life, this is as far back as I was able to know about my origins and my parents knew next to nothing because they were both adopted in the 1930s. I know that my own mom thought about her original mother. I’m certain she wondered what the woman looked like – I know now.

I don’t know about my grandmother’s interests or personality. I once talked to a nephew of hers who said she was kind and referred to her as Aunt Lou. I suspect my grandmother did think about her daughter from time to time. I can’t believe she didn’t and she kept that name active that was on my mom’s birth certificate, even having it put on her gravestone. That tells my own heart a lot.

I believe my grandmother would have fantasized about my mom finding her, as much as my mom fantasized about finding my grandmother. The state of Tennessee would have sought permission from my mom’s original parents when she was seeking them, had they still been alive. That is a tragic aspect to my own family’s story.

I wonder if my mom ever considered “searching” when she became pregnant with me. She never said anything about it until the scandal of Georgia Tann re-emerged into the national consciousness in the 1990s. That is what motivated my mom to try – stories on television and in magazines about successful adoptee reunions.

I wonder if, in the 5 decades that passed between her adoption and her actual effort, those feelings of wanting to know were stuffed deep down into some kind of guarded place of forbidden knowledge ? Was she paralyzed to some extent by a fear of rejection, disruption and disloyalty to the adoptive parents ? I believe my dad was. He wouldn’t even consider “going there” and encouraged my mom not to open that “can of worms” hidden behind the sealed adoption records.

When my mom’s adoption file arrived, I knew it’s precious nature, wanted no risk to its contents. I read each page with hungry eyes. My mom only knew from her attempt that her parent’s names were Mr & Mrs J C Moore. At least, she knew she wasn’t illegitimate !! With the arrival of my mom’s adoption file – I had full names – Jay Clinton (actually an error, Church was his actual middle name) Moore and Lizzie Lou Stark (her maiden name and youthful nickname to her birth name Elizabeth).

In my mom’s file were black and white negatives – my grandmother holding my mom for the last time – and my grandmother’s handwriting. I knew she had siblings and that her mother had died when she was young. I understood why, even though my mom was born in Virginia, she was adopted in Memphis, TN – my grandmother’s family lived there. Why Virginia ? I have theories. What I do know is the Stark family immigrated in from Scotland at Virginia.

It is hard to explain the impact of having so much information after 60+ years of living for my own self and the sorrow that my mom was denied such a comforting perspective on the events that caused her to become adopted. From there, it has been a whirlwind for me. In less than a year from receiving that file – I knew who all 4 of my original grandparents were. I was whole and it was an unmistakable feeling to know that I was – finally.

The pieces fell into place in an almost magical way. It was as though one door opening, unlocked all of the other doors. Not exactly but even so – the dominoes kept tumbling.

The first genetic relative I found was the daughter of my mom’s half-sibling, a sister who I barely missed seeing alive by only a couple of months – sadly. This cousin was able to give me so much information and share so many photos with me that I almost felt like I had experienced it all firsthand.

In reading between the lines of my mom’s adoption file as regards my grandmother, I am certain in my heart that losing my mom was heartbreaking and life changing. After all, it’s clear that she couldn’t face my mom’s father with the news. Finally, after 3 years of separation, he filed for a divorce and she did not contest it but re-married a short time later. A bit later, he re-married. At least they didn’t die alone – neither of them.

Every new piece of information I have received about my grandparents has contributed to my own self becoming more real and whole. That may sound strange if you have always known what I grew up not knowing. It has been life-changing for me.

Neither of my grandparents had any more children after my mom was lost to them. Her father already had 4 other living children (the fifth one had died before my mom was conceived). My grandmother only ever had one child – my mom.

Sometimes, I grieve on behalf of my parents and original grandparents. The severity of the loss for each and every one of them, even if it was normal for the Great Depression and the morals of that time, is something I really can’t do anything about. Yet sometimes the tears still come in my eyes – like now as I write this.

Sometimes, I am equally aware, that these genetic relatives I have been discovering are total strangers to me. I do work at getting to know each one of them better – it is a slow process that simply can’t make up for 6 decades of life.

I am genuinely happy for what has happened unexpectedly to me in my life since the doors began to open wide. I feel a completeness that I didn’t totally realize was a missing part as the child of adoptees who knew nothing about their origins.

When An Adoptee Becomes A Mom

It happens to a lot of adoptees who become parents, I was the first blood kin my mom had ever laid eyes on (for my dad too as they were both adoptees).

There is an intensity to being in the presence of someone connected to us on a cellular level. I remember feeling this when my own grandson was born. I knew on a level deeper than I ever imagined that he had come down my own lineage.

No doubt, giving birth to me gave my mom an overwhelming sensation of having someone “similar” to her. It may have even been intense and over-the-top emotionally for her when I was born.

Every non-adopted person does the same thing with a new baby – they immediately begin identifying characteristics that belong to the family. I remember when I saw my daughter for the very first time, she looked like every baby picture of my family I remembered ever seeing. She looked like us.

Only 13 months after I was born, my younger sister was born. Was our mom astounded all over again ? Maybe less so. She already had a toddler (me) to care for.

Growing up, the two of us were treated as though we were twins. We were dressed alike and certainly we looked like siblings. I’m not certain what drove that behavior towards us – maybe it really was the novelty of genetically related children that was so unique in our family.

I know from my mom’s stories that she knew absolutely nothing about keeping house or cooking – her adoptive mother was a perfectionist who had no patience with teaching my mom. As the younger sibling in her adopted family, she probably didn’t know much about caring for us either but somehow we survived it all.

I would hope that my mom would have felt a glow at how her children responded to her kind heart. Certainly, she adored us, I never doubted that. She has died and I can no longer ask her the new questions that have emerged for me as I have come to understand the issues of adoption so much more accurately.

I was aware of and felt the emotional toll my mom’s efforts to know about her original family took on her. How devastated she was to be denied and because I now have what she was not given, I know her “story” about being stolen was way more painful than the truth that her mother tried very hard to keep her and was bested by a master – Georgia Tann.

Nature and Nurture

Almost 20 years ago, as I lay in the hospital recovering from the cesarean section that delivered my oldest son, I had this book and was reading it. It was a realistic and eye-opening perspective on motherhood throughout the ages including child abandonment.

In her book, Hrdy strips away stereotypes and gender-biased myths to demonstrate that traditional views of maternal behavior are essentially wishful thinking codified as objective observation. As Hrdy argues, far from being “selfless,” successful primate mothers have always combined nurturing with ambition, mother love with sexual love, ambivalence with devotion. In fact all mothers, in the struggle to guarantee both their own survival and that of their offspring, deal nimbly with competing demands and conflicting strategies.

It is any parent’s job to nurture the child’s nature. While my two sons are mash-ups of the same genetics, they are each quite different from one another. As parents, it is our job to respect their individual differences. It is our job to provide the nurturing most appropriate for their innate personalities.

A genetic connection allows parental recognition that yields useful insights about how we handle certain situations. Our boys are their natures. That’s the essence of who they are. We hope they enter adulthood with a solid sense of self and identity.

The adoption system is not set up to help adoptees understand or connect to their own natures and true selves in any way. It’s an identity and sense-of-self guessing game.

The adoptive parents are unable to offer a genetic connection insight. Adoptive parents are required to nurture a nature that is unfamiliar and new to them.

There are unique needs to parenting an adoptee. If there are expectations that the adoptee is able to go against their essence, it can become a struggle.

Nature is with all of us from the moment we are conceived. Each of us is programmed by the genetics and the womb that we grew to independence through.

Raising an adopted child is not the same as raising a natural child.

The most successful adoptive parents find a way to step back and observe the child they are raising so that they can encourage the child’s nature to blossom.

It is NOT a competition. Nurture does not need to fight against nature in a battle of wills to win it’s perspective. A child’s nature only needs to be nurtured in a way that is respectful with an understanding of their life’s circumstances.

People Still Buy Babies

In this day and time so far away from the scandals of Georgia Tann stealing and selling babies, I never expected to see someone actually talking about “buying” a baby. It troubles my heart though realistically, one doesn’t come by a baby without cost, even when that child is gestated in their body.

The bit of advertisement above came from a FB group called “Mothers United Against Anti-Adoption”. I removed the more personal, identifying information.

I’m not joining and I am NOT “anti-adoption”. I have simply come to understand that being adopted is way more complicated than I understood growing up or for most of my life (both of my parents were adopted).

I agree that regardless of how you become a mother (or father), the common thread is love. And whether we are natural or adoptive parents, we all go through the same kinds of challenges of feeling like an utter failure. As one adoptive mom said in a Huffington Post article –

“Some days I get tired of it all and just want to be a family. Not the adoptive family … just a family.”

A young woman approached the adoptive parent (it is a transracial adoption and so it was rather obvious), “I was adopted as a baby and it has been a wonderful thing. We need more families like yours.” I stared at her, stunned.

“She didn’t think what I assumed everyone was thinking. She saw beauty and love and hope and family. She thought we were wonderful and it made her smile.”

There are children who need alternative parents for whatever reason. What is perceived as “anti-adoption” issues are really mainly related to two core issues –

[1] Identity and Genetics – let your adopted child keep their original name and don’t have their birth certificate altered.

[2] Family Preservation – whenever possible, the natural parents should be supported in locating the resources to parent their children and given every encouragement.

For those times when a child actually does need alternative parents, then adoption fills a need.

No More

No more lies, no more shame, no more hiding.
I’m done with that already.

When my parents died, our family history was full of stories that weren’t true.

My mom was stolen from her parents at the hospital where she was born in Virginia by a nurse in cahoots with the baby stealing and selling Georgia Tann.

Not true. It was the only way my mom could explain how she could have been born in Virginia but adopted as an infant at Memphis. The only fact she really had to go on was the scandal that was Georgia Tann at the head of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society branch at Memphis.

My dad was left on the doorstep of the Salvation Army in a basket in El Paso Texas by a Mexican woman because his father was Anglo and he was conceived out of wedlock.

Partially true. He was conceived out of wedlock and he was adopted from the Salvation Army in El Paso Texas. He wasn’t Mexican, he was half Danish and his father was dark complected. His mother was English/Irish not Mexican.

I was an Albino African.

Okay, so I really didn’t believe that one but I did say it on numerous occasions because I didn’t know what I was, so no one, not even myself could deny it.

Now I know the truth. To find out that you are not who you think you are is mind blowing. Your world tilts on its axis and nothing is ever the same again. Even the simple act of looking in the mirror changes. It brings a whole other element into the equation of my identity. I am grateful to finally be “whole” after 6 decades of uncertainty.

Adoption is a strange thing that does strange things to the people affected by it. It doesn’t matter what angle you are coming from – there’s shame and secrecy involved. That much proved to be true.

It Wasn’t Real To Me

My mom had her DNA tested at Ancestry because she hoped to find some of her original family. Since she had a membership, she started creating a family tree but all she could base it on were the adoptive families (both of my parents were adoptees).

Eventually, wanting to know my own heritage, I got my DNA tested. I didn’t even know at the time she had done hers. I think she was always a bit apologetic about wanting to know her origins because my dad was not supportive. He warned her she might be opening a can of worms if she learned anything.

My dad had this idea that once you are adopted, your original family ceases to exist and the adoptive family is all you should be concerned with. Sadly, he died with a half-sibling living only 90 miles away from him. She could have told him so much about his original mother.

When my mom and I compared notes about our Ancestry DNA results, she told me regarding the family tree, “I just had to quit, it wasn’t real to me.” I do understand.

I haven’t had time to get all of the work done but I did start new family trees for each of my parents and I am recording their bloodline information along with their names at birth and a recognition that they died under an assumed name given to them by their adoptive parents.

I loved my adoptive grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins through them. I’ve not lost anything, I gained a whole world based on truth. My family tree is an orchard, not so simple as the conventional ones are to complete.

In Memoriam

I am now reading a book titled – Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption From a Place of Empowerment and Peace. I read an essay yesterday by Susan Perry and felt such a connection with her that I was seeking to reach out to her and discovered sadly that she had died some years ago.

She is quoted as saying –

“Sealed record laws afford more rights to the dead than they do to the
living and they bind the adopted person to a lifetime restraining order.”
~ Susan Perry

Just like my paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather, she was the product of a married man and a woman not his wife. They were both of Danish ancestry, just as my paternal grandfather was. An immigrant, not yet a citizen, married to a woman 20+ years his senior.

Susan’s adoptive mother had no idea how often her interior thoughts had turned to her ancestors. Who were they, and what was her story ? My own mom had similar questions.

Mrs Perry did know that her adoptive parents truly loved her, and that love
and support helped to make her the person she was in life. I believe I can say the same about all of the adoptive parents in my own family’s lives.

Yet, our genes are some part of what makes us the person we each are as well.

It is only natural that any adoptee that reaches adulthood (if not sooner) will want to know who passed those genes down to them.

I have bumped up against sealed records in three states – Virginia, Arizona and California. I realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have uncovered ALL of my original grandparents. I have the DNA tests that no one saw the inexpensive cost and prevalence of even 20 years ago as well as the matching sites Ancestry.com and 23 and Me to thank for most of my own success.

So many adoptees are never that fortunate. Sealed records are unjust and damaging to so many people. They encourage unhealthy thinking, repression, and denial as the means for coping with life.

I wonder if, because of adoption, my own mom did not feel empowered to take charge of her own story, just as Susan wrote in her essay.

Even so, every adopted person’s journey is unique.

It is difficult for me, as the child of two adoptees, to understand why as a culture we continue to shackle adopted people to an institution that is governed by such archaic and repressive laws, when the data clearly shows that most original mothers are open to contact. Those who are not, can simply say “no”.

Once an adoptee becomes an adult – they do not need outside agents supervising their own, very personal business.

Repressive laws set the tone – either/or thinking. There is a belief that adoptees who search are expressing disloyalty to their adoptive parents, or that the adoptee should just “be grateful” and move on. Attitudes of this kind are hurtful and dismissive.

Here’s the TRUTH, adoptees have two sets of parents – and a unique mix of DNA and upbringing. It is belittling and unfair to tell adoptees that they are not entitled by law to access their own original birth certificates. Every other American citizen has no such restriction.

This is institutional discrimination and there is no really good reason it exists. Adoptee rights bills have accumulated plenty of evidence that they are beneficial for the majority of persons for whom adoption is some part of their personal story.

Always A Child

My Mom After Adoption

Children grow up into adults. That is their only real occupation through almost 20 years of life. Some children have to grow up early. My mom gave birth to me at the age of 16. I married at the age of 18 and had my first child at 19.

When I look at my 18 year old son, I can’t imagine him married with a child. He is intelligent and has an abundance of common sense but as his mother, he is still a bit of a child to me, though the maturing is obviously taking hold and he spends much of his daily waking life doing men’s work with his dad on our farm.

There is a subset of humanity that is never allowed to grow up – adoptees. Certainly, they pile on the years and mature, just like any other human being but society and governmental agencies treat them as though they were still a child.

Why do I say this ? Because they are denied rights that any other citizen takes for granted. When their adoption is decreed by a court of law, their identity is stolen away from them. Often, their name is changed and their original birth certificate is amended to make it appear that their adoptive parents actually gave birth to them. Sometimes, even the place where they were born is changed.

Then, when they become an adult at 18 or 21 years of age and because they know they were adopted (or for some who were never told the truth and take a DNA test and receive the unpleasant and sudden surprise that they do not derive their origins from the people they believed were the source), when they attempt to learn the truth of their identity, origins and heritage – they are denied the very normal and simple human right of knowing who they really are.

It is time for the LIES to end and for ALL states in this country (United States of America) to open their files to the adults who were once a child that was adopted by strangers to raise as their own.

Out From The Shadows

Later this week, I’ll be pitching my work in progress to literary agents at Gateway Con – a conference for writers and readers in St Louis Missouri taking place over this coming weekend.

It is a nonfiction, memoir style story of loss, conflict and the redemption of my roots.

How I had to quickly mature after both of my parents died only 4 months apart, in order to close their estate and cope with the legal challenges of a brilliant but delusional sister.

It is also a mystery. I share what I had to do in order to discover who my original grandparents were (both of my parents were adoptees).

There is a surprising realization for my own self at the end. Maybe it should have been obvious but it took learning the story of my parents adoptions to understand my own humble but fortunate reality.

I think I’m probably 3 to 6 months away from completing this story satisfactorily. Probably a couple of years away from publishing if I am so fortunate.