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.

Whatever Happened To The Village ?

Modern life can be very isolating. In adoption circles, it is recognized that the reason many parents, and especially single mothers, lose custody of their child is a lack of support – financial, familial and mental health.

It is more difficult for some parents to tap into support than others. Parents who may be new to a particular community; parents who are raising a child with some sort of mental health or behavioral challenge or health concern; parents who are barely scrapping by from pay check to pay check and who may not have the financial resources to sign their kids up for extra-curricular activities that might otherwise bring them into the orbit of other families; parents who are working unpredictable schedules that make it hard to make plans. All those factors can make it extra challenging to find – let alone connect with – your “village.”

If you’re a parent who is finding it hard to find support in your community, start out by looking for that support online. Online social networking has been a godsend for me because we live a rural wilderness isolated existence. Therefore, my mom’s group (formed 17 years ago) keeps me in contact with other mothers sharing some unique and similar impacts of daily living. Our children are all turning 16 this year and our group started as email exchange threads and eventually migrated to Facebook. Another useful group for me as I discover the effects that rampant adoption has had on my family is a group that is made up of mothers who lost custody, adoptees, former foster care youth and adoptive parents. This group is especially helpful for unwed mothers considering the surrender of their baby to adoption after birth.

Once you’ve tapped into online support, you may also find groups focused in your own town, city, county or state that bring with them opportunities to create in person relationships in your community. Maybe you can find an online group for parents and kids in your local vicinity – this offers the best of both worlds. There you may find instantly accessible online support when you’re looking for that. And advice in the midst of a really bad day (or even longer night!) which every parent faces at times. You may find in person events, get-togethers that provide opportunities to meet online acquaintances face-to-face.

For many people, that village of yesteryear simply no longer exists. Happily for many of us, we have discovered that modern technology is allowing us to find a new way. Even in dire financial emergencies, there are now online methods of fund raising. In smaller communities, such as the one I live in there are often jars set up near the cash registers of sympathetic businesses to help some local cause. In community Facebook pages, one can even inquire about jobs or temporary needs for furniture, appliances, clothing etc after an unfortunate event in a family’s life.

All this to say – it is still out there – support for families in need. It just looks different now.

Shocking Statistics

Private adoption is illegal in other countries. America has made the buying and selling of children a business; a multi billion dollar industry. Children are the commodity.

A woman writes – “I spent the first 16 years of my adoption experience as a ‘birth’ mother in complete isolation. It was preceded by the nearly 10 months of family-conducted isolation during my pregnancy. Such is the life of a shamed pregnant teenager. I had personally never known either an adopted person or a natural mother. ”

Clearly isolation isn’t simply for a time of a global pandemic. Young women have been isolated for decades in order to relieve them of their baby when it is born.

She goes on to acknowledge – “If I could relive that day (when she gave birth) again, I would run from that hospital with her in my arms and never look back. I would take my chances with being homeless and the foster care system.”

The truth is that “better” life for your child is nothing more than a different life.

Over time, she came to see – that an adoption agent and her very own mother reduced her to a bodily function for total strangers. It has landed her in trauma therapy. She didn’t receive counseling before or after the adoption by the agency. She had secretly held herself together somehow all these years only to discover she had been suffering with PTSD stemming directly from the adoption itself.

There is a world full of adoptees and natural moms in Adoptionland who have found each other in virtual space and are a kind of sisterhood that understands each other’s pain. I belong to a group like that. I have learned so much from reading about the direct experiences and points of view. So much so that I no longer support the commercial practice of adoption.

What Is Wrong About Adoption ?

As a society, we don’t really take care of one another. Lately, it may seem to people hoping to adopt that the whole possibility has been hijacked and beaten up. Adoptees and their original family feel they were sold out and ripped to shreds by those who’s financial interests took their parents or children away from each other.

The methods by which adoption has been practiced in this country are a shackle upon the most vulnerable members of the triad. Sealed adoption records, hidden indentities, have kept people genetically related apart and have treated adoptees like second-class citizens who are denied the same basic civil rights so many people without adoption in their family history take for granted.

The rainbows and unicorns IDEAL of the adoptive experience is scarred now by battles waged by those who the practice has hurt the most. Families formed by adoption are only seen through the smoke of lies and deception. But that is changing and in no small part because of adult adoptees who are speaking out about the damage and about their rights to a genuine and authentic identity, even if it is a sorrowful and tragic beginning to their own life.

Back in the late 1980s, the origins of an adoption story may have started this way – An 18 year old girl becomes pregnant from an affair with her employer. She denies she is pregnant until it is too evident to conceal. Maybe she looked in the Yellow Pages, where she found what looked like help for her situation. She moves to a large city and lives with a “host family” (strangers who she’ll lose contact with once her baby is born). At birth, her child is handed over to a couple she knows only as a photograph.

By moving this young woman to a different state, she was isolated away from family and friends – those who cared about her and may have allowed her a different outcome. Though she knew who her baby’s father was, the agency may have advised her not to tell him about his child. She was encouraged to surrender her child by being told how deficit she was to raise that child. This kind of practice went on for many decades, certainly in the 1930s when my parents were surrendered to adoption and as recently as the late 1980s, when Roe v Wade and the emergence of single mothers as an accepted aspect of society reduced the number of babies available for adoption.

So if you have begun to sense that there is simmering an anti-adoption movement you are not mis-interpreting the noise. One could even call this the next frontier for reproductive justice.

Love Is Staying Home

This blog is really NOT as frivolous as it may appear. It really is a matter of life and death. I will admit that this is easier for my family than it is for most people living in this modern world. We live in rural isolation and have always worked from home and our children have been educated at home. In this scary new reality we have been thrust into globally, I see the blessing of what has always been our reality.

True, there have been some changes for us too. My yoga class has been cancelled indefinitely. Some non-essential medical appointments must be cancelled as they come up and re-scheduled though those future dates may have to be yet again postponed and re-scheduled. New rules at the grocery store that limit the number of customers allowed inside at any given time will make the weekly trip to replenish supplies take longer. And of course, there is the mask, googles and gloves needed to protect not only me but the other people I will have some INDIRECT contact with who could become infected if I am asymptomatic.

There are families unlike my own that are not used to so much togetherness time. This is a worry. Stressed parents could become abusive towards their children or married couples separate because they discover they had less in common than they believed when they first married. There are financial difficulties with the sudden cessation of business activities. There is a need to prepare one’s meals at home and some people have lost that skill.

The common good. It may be that this virus has come to unite us. We had become so polarized and divided and terribly tribal. Not that being threatened with death is going to change all of that quickly. Even so, we will come to see that overcoming the current circumstances will require a new perspective going forward. This won’t happen quickly but there are some of us who are beginning the process of holding a vision of a better and brighter tomorrow in our heart’s minds for a trajectory going forward to guide us all.

So Much To Worry About

We are ALL being forced to live through perhaps one of the most extraordinary times in our collective generations history. It will certainly be long remembered and remarked upon. We can not see clearly where all of this disruption will leave our country and the world, much less our families and our selves.

It is crucial that we learn to manage the anxiety. I had to recently make a point to my own husband that his anxiety was not healthy for me. That if I had a heart attack I could end up in the place where I really don’t want to be at this time (though truth be told, I never want to end up there for that reason).

It is a moral and social responsibility incumbent upon each of us to do our best to minimize our own role in and help to curtail the spread of this contagion. We are all having to make adjustments and modifications to the way we would prefer to be living. We are having to give up those things we like to do best in favor of not doing much of anything that we can’t do in our very own homes.

This can be a challenge for anyone with children in their home. It is best to be truthful in an age appropriate manner. I heard a young child at the grocery store yesterday ask their mother, “why can’t I touch things ?” It is definitely a teaching moment and where day care is necessary for those who must continue to work – good hygiene and distancing can even be taught to young children.

So, I want to say to you today – It’s OK to be worried. It’s normal and it isn’t an overreaction. If that is how you feel, it’s your feelings. Feelings can’t be wrong.

It has helped in our family to have a plan. I am the most likely to become infected because I am the supply officer for my family. We are fortunate that we have always lived this way (though there are a few more inconveniences and necessary actions that weren’t necessary before). We have a home-based business and our children have always been educated at home. We have less to adapt to and we also live in sparsely populated rural wilderness. Not always an advantage but at the moment, one we are grateful for.

Adding Insult To Injury

We are living through uncertain times. Many people feel un-moored from their usual sources of confidence that all will be well. Children who have been adopted or are in foster care find their worlds upended. Lacking consistency, routine, and an overall feeling of stability and security as their personal worlds are being shaken up again by the Coronavirus and the efforts to contain the spread of that infection.

Schools have closed and public community events through which diverse people usually bond are cancelled. Instead of joining together in common experience we are forced to isolate ourselves from one another. At least we have modern technology to keep us connected while maintaining a safe distance from one another but life is not routine or what we would conventionally expect as we wake up each day.

For those parents who still have jobs to go to while their children are alone at home, the struggle can be significant.

One of the responsibilities that foster parents face is transporting the children in their home to visitations with their birth parents and biological family members. Often times, visitations take place at child welfare offices, while other times, visitations may occur at public places, such as parks, restaurants, churches, and other public venues. Visitations are important as they help to maintain the relationship between both child and adult. Along with this, many foster parents have very strong relationships with the birth parents and during visitations, trust is built and children can grow and develop in a healthy fashion, as a result.

Yet, those public spaces are now closed to most of us in most locations throughout the United States. And coming out of the usual wintertime season of colds and flu can complicate things because many of us have all had one thing or another since Thanksgiving and our immunity is generally low. Essential services such as therapy sessions, drug counseling, and even court appearances have also been affected by Covid 19.

All families face difficulty at this time in our collective history and families with the additional challenges of trauma and regulations face an additional burden on top of the difficulties they face every day. All families are concerned, and confused, looking for answers and receiving little guidance. There is no school, foster care related visits are being cancelled, church services are cancelled, and generally all children are now isolated from the friends they depend upon in their everyday lives. The challenge in an era of social distancing is physical, and tangible, but can’t be solved by throwing dollars at it.

Stay safe, be well. Come together – though at a distance. Keep the efforts to slow the spread of this virus going until the assurance that it is once again safe to have greater contact with our fellow human beings becomes more certain. Patience is necessary and flexibility too.

The Scourge Of Poverty

Many children end up in foster care or adopted for no more reason than poverty. A recent suggestion was if stipends that go to foster care could be redirected to parents working hard to keep their children.

Definitely, a single mom can feel stuck in a never-ending cycle of poverty, constantly worried that one financial emergency will send everything tumbling down.

In 2014 there were 46 million poor people in the U.S., and millions more hovering right above the poverty line. A single mom may live in a cozy two-bedroom apartment and have food, furniture and toys for her child and still be very much at risk. That apartment may not be located in a very safe place to live. Yet subsidized housing may be all she can afford.

I was such a single mom at one time in my life. Most of my paycheck went to rent, food, child care costs so I could work, gas and pediatrician bills. What drove me to leave my daughter with her paternal grandmother was – so I could try and earn a higher standard of living. I didn’t have a lot of hope for the future, if I stayed in the situation I was in.

If you’re poor, it may be in every aspect: emotionally, support-wise and family-wise. And even when there is family support ? As in grandparents raising several grandchildren as their own of which I do know more than a few. Heck I turned to a grandparent myself in my own dire time of need.

And the strain on children of living with adults who are overwhelmed by life or who don’t have the skills they need to raise their children because they themselves came from troubled homes only compounds the core problem of poverty.

Poor families today are more isolated from neighbors, work, family – all of the social networks that help people through life. There has to be a better way than the business as usual way we have now.

Doing More Harm Than Good

It is recommended for those persons seeking separation related therapy that they seek out adoption competent practitioners. Otherwise, an effort to address the wounds created by relinquishment – whether into an adoptive family or foster care – may cause more harm than do any good.

Many conventional therapists accept the “adoption is amazing” mentality and have not researched or studied the deep unconscious wounds that such persons have suffered. One adoptee describes her personal experience this way – “I saw a therapist who shut down (and shut me down) any time I mentioned the trauma I had experienced in relation to adoption — both my own and that of my children. I wound up leaving therapy and haven’t gone back since.”

This is a personality based outcome – the therapist’s personality. Another describes her good experience this way – her therapist was “absolutely amazing and had no experience in adoption at all, but she chose to research and learn. I can’t thank her enough for helping me through some horrendous PTSD adoption memories. It honestly all depends on the therapist and which ones are more likely to open to the reality or not.”

Those adopted in infancy are likely to experience pre-verbal trauma. This is trauma that happened before the adoptee could speak/comprehend language. This is trauma held in the body but the sufferer is not able to verbalize the memories / put this into words – even as an adult – because their brain was not developed enough at the time the trauma occurred to make sense of the related emotions.

Some adoptees are diagnosed as ADD when they are actually PTSD and medicated as children. This solution merely puts a band aid on the problem.

One horror story conveyed by an adoptee went this way – “I had a psychiatrist who locked me in a room, in the child psych ward with no interaction with anyone in order to ‘break’ me and force me to talk to him. Didn’t work. Further isolation of someone who already feels isolated.”

So one suggestion is to look for a therapist trained in trauma. The truth is there isn’t one universal “type” of adoptee trauma. If you wish to seek therapy, look for someone you connect with, that you feel heard by. Someone who is open-minded will be more effective than someone who shares your view of adoption. A good therapist will not allow their previous biases/perceptions to impact giving you solid therapy.

What Makes You Crazy

The thing that makes you crazy isn’t that your mother died,

or that you lost custody of your child,

it is that you can’t talk about it.

~ Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman

It is incomprehensible that BOTH of my grandmothers lived such similar circumstances – both lost their own mothers at a young age and both lost custody of their firstborn child to adoption.

There probably was no time to really grieve for her mother in my mom’s mother’s life – there were 4 younger siblings to be cared for and the enormous labor required of any woman without servants living in the early 1900s. There were likely no words for my dad’s mother since she was an infant of only 3 months old and pre-verbal.

But what of the deeper wound ? The loss of their firstborn children ?

Who could they talk to about it ? Who wanted to hear anything about what happened at the end of their pregnancies ? Most simply wanted to pretend that none of that had happened and just move on with Life.

Yet, it is unlikely that the wound ever healed or that my grandmothers didn’t think about their lost child every single day of whatever life remained for each of them.