Never Feeling Safe

An adult adoptee expresses how she feels –

Here it is in a nutshell. All I ever really wanted was to feel clean on the inside and I tried a lot of things to make that happen.

And it all boils down to not being able to untwist the core lie my whole existence on this planet this time around is based in and on.

Confusion is not a safe feeling. If you don’t feel safe your thinking processes are affected. You do things you wouldn’t do or not do things you would if you felt safe. The worst part is that you never knew why you never felt safe. It wasn’t a thought you could think through because the consequence of my honesty may mean abandonment.

I was stuck in a web of lies. Caught up in someone’s fantasy. A brain pickled in cortisol and oxytocin deprived. Being told this is gods will and how much I was loved yet no one would answer my questions.

And here we are today. After the truth set me free by opening the door to the demons I knew were lurking there. These were some hard core demons and then there were the encouragers and then there were none.

And here I am standing here loving me. I will be 72 in September, and I have learned to love me because I can love others better that way.

Now WTF do I need to do to get this adhd under control.

Her Biggest Mistake

From an all things adoption group I belong to – Everyday I hear natural mothers share how giving up their child was the biggest mistake they ever made. I see them share their heartache and pain that sometimes is spanning decades. Sometimes I just don’t understand how hopeful adoptive parents can continue going through the process of adopting, if they are listening to these women. I mean what do they tell themselves to make it ok to take someone’s child, knowing the pain it could cause. The hopeful adoptive parents in groups seeing this, do you feel guilt ? How do you reconcile another’s pain for your gain ?

Some random comments –

From someone adopted as an infant – What’s interesting is as an adopted child I was almost raised to believe it was my “responsibility” to also adopt. In reality, I longed for genetic mirroring and went on to have 2 wonderful children of my own (who luckily got to meet my genetic, biological mom, uncle, and half sister 3 weeks ago, for a weeklong visit of beautiful reunion)! I had my first child at 31, second at 33, and did not really start to come out of the fog until after they were born. I wonder if I had been unable to have children, if I would have still felt adoption was an option, or my “responsibility”, or if my nature would have known otherwise.

From a mother who “lost” her child to adoption – Family friends adopted my son, knowing that I longed to parent. They watched me receive pressure and coercion from my own family, offered me no practical help (although were very “kind” to me), and then told themselves that I made my own decision and that my son’s adoption was God’s will. They even kept the adoption open. So they saw my pain very openly until eventually I pulled all the pain inside. Obviously no one around me cared. Even IF no adoptee had ever expressed trauma, wouldn’t our own lifelong suffering be enough reason to end this practice? And then in fact, on top of our tremendous pain, sits the pain of our children. Wtf is wrong with our culture, that we would rather throw away the struggling than to help them?

From another mother of loss – I know that my daughter, who just turned 35 and is still very very much in the fog, was told that she couldn’t have any contact with me “for safety reasons”, which of course was a complete lie (It was a private adoption, not a Child Protective Services case or anything like that) and I think that idea that I was “dangerous”, even without saying specifically that I was, was incredibly scary, damaging and alienating to her.

The sister of an adoptee shares – a woman who had adopted a newborn was saying the baby’s actual mother was texting, saying she regretted giving her baby up for adoption. The adoptive mother was getting advice like “block and move on”, which is insanely cruel. I advised the adoptive parent to “do the right thing and return the baby to it’s mother who clearly misses her baby”. I was then dog piled on for even suggesting that because the actual mom had already signed away her rights, so the actual mom didn’t have a leg to stand on. The selfishness of many adoptive parents just drives me up a wall. I probably should have not been so blunt in my reply as I was blocked and didn’t get to see what happened but I couldn’t stand by without advocating for the reunification of this family. An adoptee replied – “I can’t imagine having someone else’s baby and not immediately taking steps to return the baby after receiving those texts. Do these people have hearts?” Even a foster/adoptive mother notes – “I don’t see how you can acknowledge someone’s deep suffering and when it is well within your ability to assuage that suffering… withhold the remedy. Even if it comes as a great cost to you… that’s what we are all here for. To love one another. Serve one another. I just can’t wrap my mind around that.”

The Story of an Open Adoption

Short on time, as is usual on Tuesdays. So I am just sharing a birth mother’s story.

Initially, I had the most open adoption experience with my son’s adoptive family. Saw him the day after we left the hospital, at least weekly for the first three years of his life and so often since. He’s nearly 21 and is close with me and my family. For years I would have called his adoptive mother one of my best friends. But we have no relationship now and I’ve been angry for a long time.

It started when I started listening to adoptees, began to understand the trauma, and told her I regret not parenting. We continued our relationship but I felt things change that day. Then, I left our previously shared faith. She was not able to continue after that and asked for a “step back” in our friendship. I didn’t know what that looks like. She crushed me when she said “we’re not family”. I literally felt broken.

But after that, I began to be able to see old things more clearly. I could look back on my pregnancy and see how coerced and unsupported I was. I kept a journal from that time, so even though memories are tricky, I have evidence of some of this. I wrote how badly I wanted to parent. I wrote about the time she (the adoptive mother) asked how she could pray for me and I said “pray that God will let me keep my baby”.

The adoptive parents were family friends, so I already knew them but they never offered me any support other beyond taking my child. She knew childcare was my biggest obstacle. She was a stay at home mom. She had already given the gift of childcare to another young single mom previously. She had the ability to help me with my biggest obstacle and supposedly prayed for me and supported my choice – but she never considered helping me.

The thing is back then I believed the rainbows and unicorns narrative of adoption. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I didn’t go looking. Obviously, I understand now that we should always listen to the people most impacted in order to learn about a thing. (To learn about homelessness, we need to listen to unhoused people). And I have no excuse for not knowing that back then. But I didn’t. And she didn’t know about family preservation either (although she knew a little about the trauma he would experience).

My sister also offered me childcare and then rescinded her offer because she believed it was “God’s will” that I choose adoption and she didn’t want to encourage me to go against God’s will. We have since talked through a lot of this. My sister is willing to listen, has remorse and regret and has asked me to forgive her.

Even though my family was coercive and unsupportive, I continue to have a relationship with them but I want nothing to do with my boy’s adoptive mother. She continues to give me Christmas gifts every year (sends them through him) but I give her the cold shoulder, since she asked for a change in relationship.

But bitter and angry isn’t who I want to be, so I was thinking last night about what a reconciling with her might look like. And I know what it would take. I would need her to say “I didn’t know what family preservation was back then. I thought we did what was best when you decided to relinquish. I’m sorry I didn’t support you in parenting like I could have. Imagine what a beautiful thing we could have done together – our family supporting yours.” I don’t think that will ever happen and obviously those words can’t take away the loss and the pain – ALL the missing times. But those words could allow us to form a new relationship I think.

I’m NOT talking about my son here. He and I talk openly but he isn’t sure how he feels yet, isn’t ready to acknowledge or talk openly about trauma. I’m not ignoring his feelings but I won’t put the words in his mouth. I just want you to know that I’m not forgetting about him. He’s the most important piece – but this is about my relationship with her.

Socially Acceptable Sin ?

It seems that it is socially acceptable to covet in this situation . . . You can’t have children and so you’re looking to take someone else’s child and make them your “own”. That is the definition of adoption.

Not only coveting, but working to thwart God’s will ? If God made you infertile…that is like saying “no babies for you”. However, among prospective adoptive parents one often sees them interpreting their circumstances to read “God led us to adopt”.

If you believe in the Bible as the absolute definitive source of God’s perspective, then there are so many things so very wrong and not biblical about that perspective of yours.

How about this one ? “The sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons.”

You cannot “adopt away” God’s curses or vengeance. Your infertility is a direct result of God’s will, and is a result of sin from way back in your blood line. Blood lines matter. Adopting is thwarting God’s will.

NOT that I personally believe in all that but you can’t have it YOUR way, if you are going to hold to religion as your excuse for everything.

Does your intention to convert this child to your religion make it all right with God ? I couldn’t say. I doubt it though.

Unfortunately, the history of humanity proves to me that religion is often an excuse to do whatever nasty deed one wants to do and know they have “God’s blessing” because you know, they got saved and are right with God now.

So let me guess and take this to it’s logical (or illogical actually) conclusion –

God causes fertile women have messed up lives so that they will chose to surrender their baby to adoption. The sole reason is so these “special chosen few” can take that baby for themselves because they are more favored by God ?

Just a reality check today on our lesson about coveting something that is someone else’s because you know, it was God’s will that they conceive and give birth to that child. God does not make mistakes about who he gives children to. Just saying – you can’t have it anyway you want it or can you ? Maybe so.

Buying A Human Being

Every single adoptee that is some part of the family I was born into was adopted because the mother was financially desperate (not for the money itself but for the ability to provide for her child). People with financial resources have been buying these kinds of babies for a very long time (in my family’s case – 90 years now).

Exchanging money for a human being is morally objectionable or it should be (though the unicorns and rainbows pro-adoption community does not find it so). There is an objectionable word for it – “human trafficking”.

There is a deliberate blindness in some prospective adoptive parents that cloak the practice of adoption as some kind of altruism. A human being is not an object or someone’s property. Human beings NOT possessions to be bought, sold, gifted or traded.

There are those who dress adoption up in religion as somehow God’s will to take a child from the womb of the woman God put it into and give it to complete strangers because God made some kind of mistake in doing that ? I don’t think so.

Like God wants families ripped apart?

It is all trafficking – adopting, placing, fostering, being a social worker, gal, casa, family court personnel etc. Where a mom loses her child to Child Protective Services. Or a woman never really had a choice. No matter how you try to dress it up – it is still paying money to buy a baby.