Knowing One Is Adopted

I believe, from the time they were old enough to even understand the concept, both of my parents knew they were adopted. Therefore, as their children, we also grew up always knowing our parents had both been adopted, even though we had no idea of what that really meant. I thought my parents were orphans until rather late in life when I learned that my mom’s adoption had been part of the Georgia Tann scandal and that my mom believed she had actually been stolen from her original parents. It is a fact, she died still believing that.

Adoption is not something that should be a secret or something that anyone should be ashamed of. It is how an adoptee came to be in the family they grew up in. If you always know, then it just IS. It is better to know that no one ever kept something really important from your knowledge.

Growing up, adoption seemed very normal to me. It has always been a core circumstance of my family’s life. Therefore, both of my sisters also gave up children for adoption. They never thought it was harmful or wrong because to think that would have been to judge how we ended up with the parents that we were born to.

My family’s experiences are not unique, there are many many families that have been impacted by the process of adoption. It is important to me. I am grateful that my mom shared with me how she felt about her own adoption. I believe I am the only person she shared those feelings with.

The main reason most adoptees don’t talk about their struggles is generally the same. When they are young, they lack the ability to identify how they should or do feel about their origins. They are not able to articulate their feelings. As an adoptee gets older, if no one is talking about adoption, they get the sense that their feelings won’t be understood or validated.

What Was And Never Should Be

~ 1997 ~

Growing up, I had something my parents didn’t, my real genetically related mom and dad. I don’t know at what age I first learned that both of my parents were adopted. It was just a fact of life and one that I never judged to be good or bad for my entire childhood. Their adoptive parents were my grandparents and aunts, uncles and cousins I acquired in that manner were just that.

Adoption was so accepted in my family that both of my sisters ended up giving up a child to adoption. Parenting was seen as something any adult human being with good intentions could do. So my nephew ended being raised by his paternal grandparents and my daughter ended up being raised by her dad when he remarried a woman with a daughter and they had a daughter together, thus creating a family for her that I could not give.

Though I felt a piece was missing in my life – my cultural heritage that had been passed down by those unknown people who gave my parents life – it wasn’t until my mom started investigating her own adoption – after learning in the early 1990s, the story of the scandal that surrounded Georgia Tann’s work – that I became aware that all was not as it should be in adoptionland.

By the grace of a loving energy, I have been able to discover who all 4 of my original grandparents were since my parents died. It saddens me that they didn’t have the opportunity to know about these people themselves. I now know of cousin and aunts that I am genetically related to. I still cherish the family adoption brought to me as well.

What I never expected was the education I would receive along with learning my genetic roots about the damage done in the name of a profit-motivated industry taking babies from their mothers and giving them to the people who had money and could not have their own children for whatever reason.

What once was accepted and “natural” in my understanding – adoption – is now seen for the travesty it has been but thankfully, even that is changing in this world that continuously does.

It’s Better To Know

Searching for where an adoptee came from requires a special kind of courage. It might be opening up a “can of worms” has my dad always believed. There could be disappointment. The relatives one finds are real people with real flaws and also a kind of beauty because they are a connection. It is better to know who you are rather than live in a mystery.

For an adoptee, the connection to one’s ancestors has been broken. That matters. When adoption is in one’s family history, those impacted only want answers and the truth. There isn’t a desire to disrupt anyone’s life. If relatives want to meet – wonderful – those I have met have been very helpful in filling in the understandable gaps in my ancestry. Sharing the stories we weren’t there for can help us to heal.

Loss of the most sacred bond in life, that of a mother and child, is one of the most severe traumas and this loss will require long-term, if not lifelong, therapy. If not therapy, then answers and a knowledge of something that is real and not falsified.

Finding one’s roots does not deny the love and value that one gives to the people who were there in life thanks to adoption. The aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents in my own life are treasured and held precious even if there is no true genetic bond with these.

A life can be symbolized by a circle – birth, maturity, old age and death – completion, rebirth or heaven. Coming to know my roots has also been a kind of completion, a bringing the arc of my life full circle.

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.

Adoption – Open or Closed – What’s Best ?

Today, in modern adoption, there are more open adoptions than there were in the past.

In an open adoption, a young adoptee may grow up alongside the parents who conceived them and gave birth, though these parents are not part of the family household the adoptee grows up within. Even so, there is sharing time together, visiting and writing to one another. In an open adoption, you see and get to know your original parents but you don’t have them as your parents.

Up until recently, most adoptions were closed and so, in order to know the people an adoptee was born to, they had to seek a reunion after they became an adult; or at the least, a much older child, as in a teenager.

If it were actually possible for any adoptee to compare the outcomes they would have experienced with each method, what would they choose in full awareness ? Would they want to know their original parents throughout their whole lives ? Do they think that knowing them would make their lives better or worse ?

Of course, there is no such choice for adoptees. Open adoption seeks to make the adoption experience better by taking away the secrecy and shame.

Are the issues the same for an adoptee whether it was an open or closed adoption ? Or does an open adoption simply create a whole new set of issues that didn’t exist within
the close adoption system ?

In a good reunion process, the adoptee is able to explain to the original parent(s) – their feelings of hurt, abandonment and/or anger – which were all caused by the decision of their original parents to surrender their child for adoption.

Can any child go through something as traumatic as being given up and still process it all at the same time – are they able to talk to the original parent about the feelings common among all adoptees at the same time as they are being experienced ? This is not an answerable question as the two kinds of adoption experience do not allow such comparisons.

It can be quite painful for an adoptee to hear about a birth mother who is satisfied with having relinquished her child for adoption. Yet, many such mothers were absolutely convinced at the time they made that choice that they were doing the best thing for their child.

Years later, many birth mothers wish they had kept their child, and that is why there are groups of adoptees actively working to encourage young unwed or troubled expectant mothers to make an effort to parent first before making a decision to relinquish their child to adoption.

The fact is – adoption exists – and it will likely always exist because there is a need and/or desire for that in some circumstances. The hard truth is that not all parents to be actually want to devote themselves to raising a child.

In seeking to reform the practice of adoption, the more we are able to ask piercing questions, explore with those involved the reason for their decisions and just plain understand at a very deep level all aspects of the experience, the better we will be able to shape the future of adoption into better outcomes for all concerned.

I Don’t Really Know

Even though both of my parents are adoptees and even though I have one niece and one nephew who were given up for adoption, I was quickly put in my place in a FB group that is intended to be a safe place for adoptees to tell their truth. Just stop, I was told. Stop thinking you know how adoptees feel.

To be honest with you – growing up I knew my parents were adopted and it mattered to me only in the sense that I didn’t know my heritage – what country did my genes originate in ? After I became an adult, my mom shared with me both that she was searching to learn who her parents were and said “as a mother, I would want to know what became of my child” and was devastated when she was told her mother had died a few years before. End of my mom’s reunion dreams. As a practical person, she had learned her father was much older than her mother and figured that even though Tennessee couldn’t determine whether he was alive or not, he was probably dead. She gave up.

Recently I bought a book by Amanda H L Transue-Woolston titled The Declassified Adoptee – Essays of an Adoption Activist. I’ve only read two essays so far. In her second essay, she writes about adoptees who never talk about being adopted. That would be how my dad was. I never heard him say anything about it. My mom once told me that when she was searching he warned her that she might be “opening up a can of worms”. That speaks volumes to me. I believe he was afraid to know what the truth might be.

Adoption was just a fact of life in my family. Accepted. The way things were. Not a bad thing and not unusual, though I didn’t have any friends growing up whose parents were both adopted.

It is interesting to note – I have been reading A LOT – from all sides of the issue now. I want to understand it all – how my original grandparents may have felt, how being adopted may have impacted my parents and my sister’s children and how my adoptive grandparents may have felt.

It may be true that because I am the child of adoptees and because I am the aunt of adoptees that I am absolutely impacted by the adoption experience. I just wanted to make clear today that I also realize I will never truly know how it feels to be one.

In in the words of Transue-Woolston – “There is no one cookie cutter mold that defines what being adopted is or that can be used to exclude other adoptee narratives from ‘counting’.”

Looking In The Dark Place

My adoptee father said to my adoptee mother when she wanted to find her original family that she shouldn’t go there because she might be opening up a can of worms. Now that I have gone there, I find it very sad. His own half-sister was living 90 miles away from him when he died. She could have told him so much about his original mother.

I read this morning in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird these passages –

We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer’s job is to see what’s behind it.

You can’t if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. If the truth were known, they would be seen as good people. Truth seems to want expression.

I opened the closet door and let what was inside out – liberation and even joy rushed through. It’s wonderful to finally open that forbidden door. What gets exposed is people’s humanity. Turns out that the truth, or reality, is our home.

What I learned was that I was where I was supposed to be. As much as I have already revealed for my own self, I hope there is more yet to come. I will bravely go into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses because it has been utterly satisfying to have gone in and looked around – to finally know the truth of my family’s origins.

What Is Lost

I think about it sometimes. I read in the book Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman that one of the things a daughter misses out on when a mother dies while she is yet young is a lot of little things that are transferred in person.

In this case, it is a smidgen of milk added to an egg to help the white break up as it is stirred for a scrambled egg. My youngest son wants to eat one almost every day at the moment and I don’t cook it the same way my mom did, we use a microwave. And it is a bit complex to get it just right – several little cookings and stirrings until it is no longer wet.

My mom made certain we knew how to do all kinds of wifely things because I grew up in a era when the differences between little boys and little girls were clearly drawn, though feminism was beginning to soften the lines. Though we were a family of all girls and there were no boys, causing me to become somewhat of a tomboy growing up close to my dad.

Mothers could, and probably should, teach their sons some of the things that my mom taught us. There is no guarantee there will be a compliant servant wife to do them for my sons. At the same time, childhood is so brief. I understand that so clearly now. My mom’s mother didn’t teach her much in the way of wifely things. She said she was quite ignorant about how to do even the simplest thing at first but she muddled through and became quite proficient.

The world is changing so quickly. Who knows what life will be like when my sons become independent ? Somehow, I just believe, they will figure out what they need to figure out for themselves. We all do.