One Way The System Is Broken

I read a heartbreaking story today and I want to share it because not only does it illustrate something that is really not just but also that love is real and true and people can and do change.

So this woman was adopted at age 5. Her mother’s rights were terminated voluntarily because she had failed to complete her “plan”. The woman was placed into foster care – twice.

At the time, her father was incarcerated on assault charges. Other than the fact that he had lost his temper and gotten violent, she doesn’t know anything more about the circumstances. What she does know is that he did not get violent with her mother or any of his children. I too understand inheriting a temper, I got my father’s much to my own surprise when I discovered that well into my 50s.

Back to my story. The father did NOT want to give up his rights. He wanted to parent the child himself, when he was released. He wasn’t serving a particularly long sentence. However, his rights were forcefully terminated because he was in jail. Sadly, he was released a few months after she was adopted.

At some point, the father spoke to a caseworker. He learned there was a prospective couple planning to adopt his child. It is said he made threats to harm the couple planning on adopting his child. He threatened to forcefully take his child back if he had to.

So it is said that for this reason, the adoptive parents chose a closed adoption.

Sadly, her dad maintains to this day that she was “kidnapped”. This is an understandable perspective.

Turns out, her dad lived close by her entire childhood even though she did not know him. He remarried a few years after his release. He went on to have 4 more children who he successfully parented. A portrait of her hung in their bedroom all the years of her childhood. They even had a small cake to celebrate her existence on her birthday each year.

This just feels so very sad . . .

Birth COVID19 And Visitors

You probably already know this but the rules have decidedly changed. For expectant mothers, giving birth at this time can be fraught with more than the usual anxiety. For an expectant mother considering adoption for her newborn, all the more so. And yet, it may also be a silver lining that hospitals are limiting visitors due to the COVID19 virus.

Adoptees have long suggested to these kinds of expectant mothers not to allow the hopeful adoptive parents to be present during labor and delivery nor for some days after birth. The adoptive parents will have a lifetime to bond with your baby. If you are truly determined to go through with relinquishing your baby, at least take this time to spend with the delicious reality of new life – especially during a time when death is dominating the news.

The hospital staff has the ability to support you through your birthing experience. They have been through this many many times and in such a time as this, when extra precautions will keep both you and your baby safe from contracting the virus, it is all for the good.

It has long been felt, especially if you are not 100% convinced that giving your baby up for adoption is the right thing to do, that the presence of the hopeful adoptive parents at such a time is coercive. Surrender is a permanent solution to a temporary situation. None of us know what the future will look like after the threat of this virus passes.

Many of the mothers who gave up an infant regret their decision the rest of their lives. It is a lifelong sorrow no matter how necessary it may seem at the moment. If you are considering relinquishment and have access to an original mother who made that choice many years ago, do listen to her. And be grateful the hospital is limiting visitors at this time – it is for the good on so many levels.

How Grief Passes Down the Family Line

A dear friend pointed out that I don’t seem to believe I have the right to be a mother. The circumstances of my life have done this to me. The tears come. She was quite perceptive.

She noted that on a photo of my daughter and her family (children and husband) I wrote – that I could take no credit for the wonderful person she is because I didn’t raise her after the age of 3. My friend noted – When men take your children away they really do a number on women.

This is sadly true and it has happened to me with ALL of my children in one way or another. So, my ex-husband ended up raising my daughter when my own desperation to financially support us led me to try driving an 18-wheel truck to make some decent money because he simply refused to pay any child support and I wasn’t going to spend my life in court fighting against him.

Truth be told, I never intended for him to raise her. I left her with her paternal grandmother for temporary care that I had no idea how long that would be needed. The grandmother could be forgiven for viewing that as my having abandoned her. That was never my perspective but I can see how it may have looked that way as the days turned into weeks and then months.

That her father could give her a family life with siblings had everything to do with my not even attempting to interrupt that blessing (which is how I saw it though I have learned recently that “blessed” was not exactly how it was experienced by her and more’s the sorrow in this mother’s heart). She rightly views her step-mother as her mother and who am I to argue with that perception.

Then there are my sons who are donor conceived. Therefore, I do see them as more rightfully my husband’s than my own. Again, robbed of my own children by the circumstances of my life which I do not claim that I am a victim of but the one who made every choice to bring these circumstances about.

So I wonder about the grief that is passed down the generations. Both of my parents were adopted. Therefore, BOTH of my own grandmothers suffered the same kind of grief I experience and my sisters experience (both of my sisters also lost either by surrendering to adoption or the courts) an opportunity to raise their own children.

The only good thing I can say about it all at this point is that our children have survived and are managing to raise their own children, even a nephew who in a sense is fulfilling my friend’s insight as he has custody of his own son after a divorce. You just can’t make this stuff up.

From Foster To Adopt

So you are a foster parent but you really hope to adopt ? You say you support family reunification but you are actually hoping it doesn’t happen for your own charges ?

You can not have the main goal be reunification AND have the main goal be adoption.
You cannot foster and be willing to adopt while yet wanting/hoping/planning to adopt/grow your family that way.

I have read that in Florida they have 2 different tracks. You choose to foster with a goal of reunification. Or if you want to adopt, you can still be licensed to foster. The only children placed with you would be those whose parent’s had their rights permanently terminated by the courts. And I also read that is the same process in Oregon.

One described their experience thus – The first time I really thought they were two separate main priorities (reunify, if at all possible for those kids) but in general, I realize that I was personally seeking adoption in my life eventually. It was emotionally brutal for me and that isn’t fair to the kids. Those two goals inevitably conflict with each other and I really struggled with the cognitive and emotional dissonance. I think you should only do that if you’re willing to become the permanent home for kids in your care, but only if all else fails.

It is honestly a very weird paradigm – you want the kids to go home but also want to be the family who adopts them, if they need that.

The key to balancing the two contrasting goals is awareness. A foster parent needs the awareness that they may be facing grief and mourning in the future. There is also the awareness that if they don’t adopt, someone else may. Most importantly, how little it will feel good either way.

Our First Union

We seek love, because of that very first union we had with another person – our mother. Of course, at birth, it was necessary for us to separate physically from her, in order to grow and develop further. Even after birth, and more importantly still, if we are totally separated from her – taken away from her and given to a complete stranger (as in adoption) to raise us – very deep within us, we know her still.

In the womb, we heard her voice, experienced her emotions, tasted the foods she preferred flavoring the amniotic fluid that cushioned us from the blows of a harsh world. We were ever intimately connected to all the interior sounds, her heartbeat and other organs functioning. They say a pregnant woman is a totally different gender from the typical male/female divide.

Though we celebrate our mother’s love in May, the month of February is full of constant reminders of the importance of love. We send Valentine’s to other people, even children do this as they celebrate the day in school and church. We remember to tell people we love them.

Yesterday was my own mother’s birthday. I lost her to death in 2015. The years fly by so quickly. Most years on her birthday, I called her up on the telephone and we would talk for a very long time. During a difficult time in my life, I remember going into the darkened kitchen to cry alone in my deep despair. Suddenly, she was there. Her maternal sense knew I needed comforting.

My mom was taken away from her mother after a brief visit. Her desperate mother was struggling to find a way to support the two of them. The father (she was married) inexplicably did not answer when her cry of distress through the Juvenile Court in Memphis was issued. I like to believe he didn’t get the message in time to prevent my mom from being taken from her own mother by exploitation and unbearable pressure (surrender your child or be declared unfit by my good friend the Juvenile Court judge said Georgia Tann, the master baby thief, to my grandmother).

Separating a child from their original mother causes deep wounds. I grieve that our country cruelly does this to migrant children. It is an abomination. Truly.

Alone And Aging Out

I don’t often address issues related to foster care because I really don’t have any direct experience with that system – thankfully.

Even so, homelessness is an issue close to my heart since my own youngest sister was homeless for 4 years and somehow survived that and even managed to extricate herself from that about 10 years ago. Her situation remains precarious and my heart hopes she doesn’t end up in those dire straits again but there is no certainty.

I have learned that when children in foster care reach a certain age, they are put out without much in the way of resources. Some even run away from foster care before they reach that age. These are children who lack any kind of supportive family to love and care for them. Their parents may be in prison or addicted to drugs and self-absorbed. Or their parents may have even died.

There is a non-profit known as Pivot in Oklahoma that is trying to do something substantial to help youth who would be homeless otherwise. They are building a community of tiny homes to primarily serve the needs of 16 to 19 year old youth. These are located right outside of the organization’s headquarter. In addition to providing a bed, small kitchen and bathroom (a roof over their heads), the organization provides services.

They help the teen get a job. They teach them life skills. And they provide therapeutic attention to help these youth heal from a less visible internal hurt. So regardless of the reason their parents are absent, a youth is understandably upset that the person who was supposed to take care of them, is not there for them.

All children still do love their parents at that level of attachment from birth. There is a grieving process that needs to be addressed – what should have been, could have been – wasn’t. This healing is necessary if a person is truly to move forward with their lives in a productive manner.

The Broken Birth Mom

This sculpture speaks so strongly to my own heart. I empathize with my grandmothers who gave up my parents to adoption. In a sense, though less permanently, I am one myself. Each of my sisters truly are. There are no words for how this haunts a person. No mother should have to live without her child, even though I do understand that sometimes the safety issues are so strong because that mother is so broken as a person, the child isn’t safe with her. I get it.

Adoption isn’t just a one-time event and it’s over. It is never over, it can’t be and it isn’t. It is something that follows an adoptee and their original parents throughout their lives.

I have obsessed in my guilt for not raising my daughter. Just like my maternal grandmother, I never intended to leave her daily life permanently. In my effort, just as it was in my grandmother’s effort, to work things out financially, circumstances changed and it was no longer the best outcome for her to take her back. Both my maternal grandmother and myself would have, if it had been possible or truly made sense to step back in.

There were no role models for absentee mothers in the early 1970s though one read a lot of stories about absentee fathers. I realize I caused the situation for myself. My grandmother stepped into a serious trap without realizing it when she turned to Porter-Leath Orphanage in Memphis TN for temporary care of my mom.

The superintendent there betrayed my grandmother and my mom to a master baby thief. Miss Georgia Tann was backed up by her good friend, the Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley, in her pressure campaign to exploit my grandmother and wrest my mom out of her possession so that she could sell her to my adoptive grandmother.

Being a birth mom who permanently surrenders her child is not a club you should want to join. It is a grief that lasts a lifetime. The pain of that wound will change over time but it will never go away. It will always be there. I have spent years trying to resolve my own. I know the reasons and the causes but there is no recovering lost time and those precious memories of your child growing up.

If you are an expectant mother, especially a single and financially challenged young woman, seek out the help that will make it possible for you to keep your baby. You will be glad you did. Here’s one place – https://savingoursistersadoption.org/

You Can Start Over

There is not much a child can do about the circumstances of having been adopted. When a adoptee matures into adulthood, there is a chance to reframe the experience, to find ways to make the unique experiences that an adoptee goes through – a strength.

There is not a universal agreement that adoption harms the self-esteem of adoptees. Studies seem to indicate it does not but adoptees will often highlight the ways that it did harm their own self-esteem. I trust the adoptee’s perception over that of a researcher.

Without a doubt, an adoptee suffers the loss of their natural family connection. This impacts the development of their identity. Often, as an adoptee matures they have an understandable interest in their true genetic information.

Compared to a true orphan who cannot regain the physical presence of their original parents, an adoptee will have a sense that out there somewhere are the people who are related to them genetically. It is like missing a limb that one knows should be there. There will always be an uncertainty and often a level of grief or anger over a situation the adoptee did not create. There is often a fear that if the adoptee does not live up to the expectations of the adoptive parents they could be rejected, abandoned or sent back to some place that is not a home.

In every person’s life there are emotionally charged milestones – marriage, the birth of a child, or the death of a parent – when the unique issues of having been adopted are more keenly felt. In fact, it is often in giving birth to their own children, that an adoptee begins to really want to seek their origin information and if possible, experience a reunion with the people they were taken away from.

It is not possible to undo a life that has always been informed by having been an adopted person. It is possible to seek a perspective that empowers rather than victimizes the adoptee. An adoptee can seek to take control over their life and it’s further direction, something most of them lacked (control) in their childhoods.

The Role of Midwives

I became interested in midwifery when I became pregnant with my oldest son. In the early 2000s, it was still illegal to practice midwifery in Missouri. After I had both of my sons by caeserean to avoid passing on a hepC virus to them, I lost touch with the movement. It was disappointing with the older boy to accept not birthing him at home using the Bradley method which my husband and I diligently studied.

I do believe that for simple common healthy births, a midwife is a wonderful addition to a family’s experiences. I did become convinced that midwifes are exceptional people.

In some cases, midwives become involved in births with a mother who is planning to relinquish her baby for adoption. A midwife may be more compassionate about the grief that separating a baby from its mother will undoubtedly cause.

Unresolved grief will have an impact on the life of any woman who relinquishes her baby. It appears that mothers involved in an ‘open adoption’ will not suffer as extremely the many adverse effects that mothers who have been involved in closed adoptions do.

A midwife needs to identify and develop the skills needed when caring for a mother planning to relinquish her baby. These include adopting a non-judgmental approach, being an effective listener, offering choices about every aspect of care and offering interventions known to help a bereaved mother.

A midwife should also see to it that prospective adoptive parents are not allowed to be with the mother as she is birthing her child. They should support a period of time for the mother and baby to bond after birth. Some women given a private amount of time to be with their baby will decide not to relinquish the baby. Women should never be coerced into doing so by agreements they made before birth.

These are some of the reforms that could be initiated to lessen the wounds suffered by both mother and child due to adoption.

Mothers Suffer

I have said this before but it bears saying this again. Giving up one’s child to adoption is not a walk away and all is well process. Most natural mothers who’s child has been removed from them – whether by choice or coercion – will spend the remainder of their lives regretting the loss.

We are so deeply attached at a genetic and spiritual level to those persons who gave us the gift of life, that there is no true sundering of that bond. To pretend otherwise, diminishes the pain and suffering that both natural parents and adoptees will carry with them their entire lives. The relationships that should have been but never will be cannot be recovered down the road. One can only begin where they find themselves if a reunion occurs and develop whatever relationships they can going forward.

For an adoptee, it can be said that the woman who raises them is their mom. The woman who created them, is the one who made their life possible. It is possible and indeed the reality for many people, that there are two true mothers in their life.

Even so, it is not true – that in giving up her child, it was like she took out the trash and never gave it a second thought. As though that were even possible for any mom to feel that way. I do not believe it. Many women who surrendered a child were very young when they did that. They felt they had no choice in the matter.

Today, there are adoptee groups reaching out to unwed pregnant mothers to encourage them to go slow, before giving up their child, and seek a way to work through the circumstances without causing a separation. I’m on their side in this perspective.