What Are You Planning To Do ?

Teen Mom

I am the oldest child of a teenage mother. My mom discovered she was pregnant when she was 16 and still in high school. My dad a first year university student chose to quit advanced education and marry her, go to work in an oil refinery, often double 16 hour shifts in a noisy, stinky environment (I know because he brought those smells home with him). The miracle is, though both of my young parents were adoptees, I was not also given up for adoption. I will be forever grateful for that.

I had not considered what my mom may have endured as a teen mother. And in fact, she had my younger sister only 13 months later. Today, I saw an article in a Huffington Post “Personal” essay by Laura Good, a teen mom – LINK>I Had My Daughter At 16. I Was Shocked By These Things People Felt Comfortable Saying To Me. She adds – “While people regularly expected me to tell them how I would fix my ruined life… I can’t help but notice the questions I was not asked.”

She also admits that “My responses change depending on the tone of the comment. They vary from matter-of-fact to sarcastic and snide.” She notes that it’s common among pregnant people to have to navigate unsolicited opinions and advice from strangers. Being pregnant as a child also invites that behavior, but the overall tone takes a sharp turn toward shaming and judgment.

She remembers “I would get comments from people at the grocery store, people in waiting rooms, phlebotomists, hairstylists, friends, parents of friends, bullies, strange adults, and people from my school whom I’d never spoken to before. Mostly they felt entitled to know how old I was, who got me pregnant and what I was planning to do with my baby.” blogger’s note – That last one is code for are you going to give up your baby for adoption ?

She did not give up her daughter but chose to parent. She shares how she was able to manage that. “Things would have been much harder as a young mom if I hadn’t had the support of my own mother. Thanks to her, my daughter has so many treasured memories of time spent with her grandma growing up. I also had the support of one of my mother’s dear friends, who took me and my infant daughter in during a very dark time and included us in her family. We are still family to this day.”

“Between them and a few of my close friends, I raised my daughter surrounded by a beautiful circle of strong women. Even so, it wasn’t until my daughter was grown up that I began to chip away at the layers of shame that had been holding me together for close to 20 years of my life.”

She notes that “People routinely made major assumptions about me and my character that were never based in fact. Several of my daughter’s teachers underestimated my intelligence or assumed I was an irresponsible parent before speaking to me. One of her elementary school teachers told me that I was a bad parent because my child was tired at school one day.”

“Shame has a tangible impact on our brains and self-image, affecting our neurobiology and attachment style. When we are shamed by our community, we begin to feel like we are not worthy of love and belonging. It can become a part of our personalities. The shame I experienced in my life has profoundly shaped how I walk through the world. It has taken years of therapy and self-work to get over that, and that work is not done.”

She is also surprised by the questions no one ever asked her – Are you OK? Things like: Do you need support? Things like: Are you safe? She acknowledges the lack of gender equality in her situation and notes – “I raised a child while navigating severe PTSD, and I shouldered all of the blame.”

The good news that she shares is this – “My daughter and I grew up together, and we have a powerful bond and a wonderful relationship. I did my best to raise her with care and validation. She is almost 30 now, and I am so proud of the person she has become. I’m very intentional about the kinds of people I surround myself with now. I certainly couldn’t have done the parenting job I did without the help and support of my chosen community.”

She also shares – “I’m so passionate about advocacy and empowerment that I went back to school and earned a master’s degree in clinical social work, or MSW. My daughter joined me on stage for the hooding ceremony that is part of graduating with a master’s degree. Having her put that sash over my head and walking up there with me was an incredibly fulfilling moment. I recently started my first job as a mental health therapist. It’s truly a gift that I now get to support other people in healing from their shame and trauma.”

Sharing Some Thoughts

From Dear Adoption –

I complied choicelessly when you took me from my mother’s authorized 10 minute embrace the day after I was born, such was your generosity. I did not resist when you placed me into the hands of strangers who fostered me, and then did it again two months later when I met my adopters for the first time. Why did everyone smell and sound and feel so strange? You gave no reply.

You did not ask for my consent when you changed my name and falsified my birth records and hid my family from me. But I went along with your interventions, as a child must. Why, though, did you put me with a couple who would soon despise one another? Did you not see that coming? Oh, but I endured the divorce like a champ, buttoned my lip. Always your faithful servant. I must say, you almost broke me when my adoptive mother then decided she didn’t want me anymore and relinquished me when I was nine years old. But I endured. I always endure.

Being adopted a second time as an older child was pretty awful. Tough love from dear adoption. Tough it out. You changed my name and falsified my birth records again, and now two families were hidden from me by force of law. Wow, that was hard. I mean, the impressions I retain of my first family are strong and enduring but you did succeed in stealing their names and their identities from me. Did you really think, though, that I could forget the people I knew at nine years old? Well, I tried. God knows I tried.

Remember the time when my second adopters unknowingly took me to my old neighborhood, where I lived with my first adoptive mother who I am supposed to forget? You sure put me in some unique and challenging circumstances. Builds character, I guess. Is that what I should call you? Character builder? Anyway, we went into an ice cream shop. I was in my own world, really, trying to puzzle things out, or just leave the real world behind. I was fantasizing about having the superpower of being able to disappear, to make myself invisible, when some old friends from my old elementary school walked in. Talk about awkward! You said the first nine years of my life never really happened. What was I to do? They noticed me, called me by my old name. I froze. I was trying to be faithful to you! You told me to forget my past but you neglected to tell me that it might sneak up on me again like this. I had to wing it, which is a lot to ask of a child. Too much, really. So I just stood there, mute, numb. You really should have given me an instruction manual for such anomalies. My new adopters weren’t much help, either. They were as mute and numb on the car ride home as I was. Pretend nothing happened. Hey! That would make a great motto for you, don’t you think? Dear Adoption: Pretend Nothing Happened.

I do say, as compliant as I am, I have to question your judgment. How could you have put me with yet another couple who would come to despise one another? Was that on purpose? I guess you must have had some high expectations for building my character! Well, there was another divorce but I was used to that by then. Getting thrown out of my house…wait, was that my house? Well, whosever house that was, being forcibly made houseless at sixteen was a bit of a curveball but, hey, I’m made of tough stuff. You made sure of that!

I walked away from my adopters’ home for good with a large plastic garbage bag of clothes and other belongings slung over my back. It was the middle of the night. I had nowhere to go. You cut me to pieces and left me bereft of family, of friendship, of kindness. You shaped me to be so utterly alone. You placed an impossible burden of forgetting on my shoulders and forced me into roles and relationships that didn’t fit, that were disposable. And you disposed of me. I should call you mother! You broke me down and scrubbed me clean so that you could create me according to your own image. Surely, as I walked into that uncertain night, I had no mother but you. I slipped my hand into your cold, ghostly grip. Now it’s just the two of us, you whispered, as you wrapped me in privation and ushered me into the world.

Julian Washio-Collette leads a mostly quiet life with his wife, Lisa, in a cabin tucked away behind a monastery in the glorious coastal wilderness of Big Sur, California. He blogs occasionally.

Not In Touch With The Reality

The incoming stimulus checks are on a lot of people’s mind these days. Included in this contingent are hopeful adoptive parents who plan to increase their adoption fund with the check. At the same time, there will be a lot of struggling families including single moms who be putting their stimulus towards keeping their own children so that they aren’t taken away by social services due to poverty. And poverty issues are huge now as we begin to see some glimmers of hope at the end of the long dark COVID tunnel.

Saying things to hopeful adoptive parents like “if hopeful adopters got all their money back, when an unwed mother changed her mind, then we really WOULD be buying and selling babies…” must be repressed to avoid hot tempers.

My heart would love to say – “I would love to give beyond imagined generosity in support of vulnerable women in crisis.” Yeah, I wish that was in my own financial power. No one on social media would react to that one but in adoption focused groups, every comment about how amazing adoption is gets tons of love. BTW adoption is more honestly filled with trauma and wounds of abandonment and rejection but no hopeful adoptive parent wants to perceive that part.

Take a woman who could NEVER do foster care because her biological daughter would be traumatized if they had to send her “sibling” back to be reunified…and yet, that is precisely the official goal of foster care – to give parents some breathing space to address serious issues that interfere with their ability to parent well.

Just today, I learned about a man named Dave Ramsey – he has a blog post, How To Adopt Without Debt. Every other post in adoption related threads is about how he supports families but then, the members of such groups use that advice to encourage hopeful adoptive parents to spend money that will tear someone else’s family apart. Why are they so myopic? BTW, a caution that he does not have a very good reputation regarding his own behaviors, so be aware the advice might not be good advice.

Is it because hopeful adoptive parents simply don’t see their desire to adopt as tearing someone else’s family apart? Are they that blinded by their side of a desire to have a child? Is it that the narrative in adoption support communities is erroneously that these children are always unwanted? Are they judging unwed mothers, or mothers in poverty, from a superiority stance?

The only hope for reform is speaking plainly and honestly about all of these related issues.

Secrets

Even in this day and age, some prospective adoptive couples believe they can have a closed adoption and that their adoptee child will never know that truth. However, secrets have a way of outing themselves eventually. These adoptive parents could probably convince themselves that this child is 100% theirs and has no ties to other living human beings but that would be self-delusion.

A couple wrote, after 3 years of marriage it is clear that the husband is incapable of procreating a child of his own. This is the second marriage for the woman and she has a daughter that is 10 years old. It is said that it is this little girl that is motivating a quest to adopt a baby because she wants to be a big sister. Since it has become evident that the husband is incapable of causing a conception, they feel like a piece is missing from their family. They don’t want the adopted child to know that truth. Therefore, they want a closed adoption.

The 10 year old isn’t going to know this sibling is adopted and can keep the whole thing a secret ? I don’t think so. Yet, this couple is so deluded that they are advertising their search on the internet ? Like, don’t they know, stuff on the net is there eternally ? Do they really believe these circumstances can be kept private ?

An adoption on this basis is set up on lies.

One adoptive parent admits – How many of us embarked on this journey not knowing much and blossomed and opened our mind to new things after having mentors and people who really cared about helping us learn. In fact many of us yearned for an open adoption and then life had different plans that didn’t allow that to happen? I see a lot of people passing judgement. I do think this couple will have a rude awakening, no secret big or small remains that way for a lifetime, however I hope that they can find the right people to educate them on their journey.

An adoptee shares – It’s hard enough growing up when you know you were adopted! Closed adoption is never, ever the answer, and closed *secret* adoption should be effing illegal. Well, all of it should be illegal but let’s start somewhere!

If there is going to be an adoption at all, then I am all for open adoption and keeping the birth family involved. To me you are not just adopting a child, you are adopting a family. Whether you have a closed adoption or an open one, that child will always have another family. You simply cannot erase that reality and what about DNA testing that is so prevalent now ? That is how some adoptees that were lied to find out the truth.

Correcting that thought about “adopting a family” – that isn’t accurate and is impossible, even under the most charitable of situations. The reason those impacted are turning against adoption is that bottom line – it is taking a child away from the family they were born into.

Once again – can’t we just support families ? Financially, physically, emotionally and mentally. Whatever they need to stay intact ? Why is that so hard for society to come to terms with ?