Tone Policing

Though the example uses feminism, adoptees also frequently experience similar criticisms. So, just a little PSA for anyone in an adoption or foster care related group or community – note, I have not had a problem of this sort in my efforts here.

First of all, what constitutes “tone policing” and second of all, why tone policing isn’t a healthy way to address marginalized people from the privileged position. Tone policing is telling a marginalized individual (like adoptees) that they should speak respectfully to their oppressors (for any reason).

A common form of tone policing is one person telling a justifiably angry (or even triggered) person that foster and adoptive (including hopeful) parents “learn best” when they are spoken to in a gentle tone. This is an example of foster and adoptive parents using their privilege to force submission from the marginalized person. You don’t think of it that way, but that is absolutely what you are doing.

Foster and adoptive parents become allies by learning boundaries from an adoptee or former foster care youth’s harsh tone. While it isn’t always easy, it is necessary to face the realities of these lived experiences without asking them to moderate their tone. These privileged people do not “learn best” from a gentle or more submissive tone.

Marginalized people (adoptees and former foster care youth) have spent their entire lives performing. By that, I mean they are forced to conform to the standards set by privileged people in order to appease them. If they do not, they are accused of being angry, bitter, and advised to seek professional help.

When you ask them to “code-switch” (changing aspects of conversation to fit in or gain acceptance) in order to make you, the privileged powerful person, more comfortable, you are forcing them to conform to your ideal of what the submissive, grateful adoptee or former foster youth is supposed to look like. You are forcing them to conform to your vision and version of who they are meant to be.

The best thing you can do is listen to their voices and understand that they are sharing their lived experience with you and often in spite of difficult emotions related to those experiences.

Is It Wonderful Or Painful ?

A trans-racial adoptee complained about the all things adoption group I belong to. She said – It seems this is a group about hating adoption. Not at all what I thought I was joining. Adoption is wonderful and painful. It’s not more one than the other. It isn’t only bad. If you choose to only see bad, you’re missing the true picture. So far no actual adoptees weighed in on the thread I was in, only those who cannot speak to what being adopted is like. That’s like white people trying to tell people what other races feel like. You can’t! Nothing I love more than people who haven’t been adopted telling me what it’s like.

Maybe I can unpack that a bit. First of all the group is NOT about hating adoption but a sincere desire for some reforms. Yes, it is a mixed up kind of experience. From what I know, wonderful perhaps . . . if there was real disfunction for the original genetic, biological parents. Yes, it definitely can be that sometimes a child is better off elsewhere. Most of the reforms that adoptees are seeking have to do with transparency and hiding their true origins from them one way or another – either adoptive parent lying and pretending like they gave birth to the child or simply the way the courts and adoption system insist on altering birth certificates and usually changing the child’s name. A trans-racial adoptee is someone who has been adopted by parents who come from a different culture. That’s usually a difficult situation for the adoptee, as I have read in the words of adoptee’s own voices many times. I don’t know what thread she was indicating but this particular post received 72 comments, so I doubt that it lacked genuine adoptee voices and perspectives. I do understand as a white person who did spend a significant amount of time during the Black Lives Matter protests educating myself, that no matter how much I learn, I have not lived as a Black person nor experienced the realities of their lives and would never try to claim I understood, only that I have tried to become more informed.

It’s true – I was not adopted (thankfully – I think in my case that was a close call – when my high school student, unwed mother conceived me). Both of my parents were adopted. I know somewhat more about how my mom felt about it than my dad. Because my dad was not sympathetic to my mother’s need for knowledge and seemed to simply accept his status, my mom confided in me. The loss was my father’s because his half-sibling was living only 90 miles away when he died and could have told him so much about his mother.

Both of my sisters gave up babies to adoption and both have made it back to my family in seeking their own roots. I think that for both, what they learned answered some of the questions they had before they met us. I love them both dearly and they seem to have in their own ways resolved their own issues.

Never would I say that adoption does not include some degree of trauma. For myself, after over 60 years of knowing nothing about my grandparents and my cultural genetics, it means the world to me to know a LOT of those details now – closed and sealed adoptions kept that information not only from my adoptee parents but from me as well.

Treatment Resistant – Really ?

An adoptee writes – It amazes me how ignorant most people are about how to speak kindly to an adopted person who is advocating for adoptee rights and adoption reform activists.

That’s because everyone doesn’t see the gaping wound inside us. If they could see it, they’d fall to their knees telling us how sorry they are for our loss and apologize for insisting we feel, think, and talk only the way the adoption industry’s propaganda would like us to. Along with having numerous mental health diagnosis and labels (and they were all a lie because ”they” made the wound about behavior) and then made an incorrect diagnosis and even that incorrectly and so, treated us for the wrong thing. Yeah, that is what happens.

We got labeled “treatment resistant”, like somehow this twisted up lie we had to buy into, with everything bottled up within us, was more important than our own feelings and thoughts about our very own life experiences. Like having very normal feelings related to a very abnormal situation made us bad, or sick, or troubled children and

Why?

Because, up until adult adopted people found their voice and started using it, to educate, and get laws changed, even the mental health professionals didn’t recognize the trauma of relinquishment. The focus was always on how the child was not adjusting and the treatment consisted mostly of behavior modification. In other words, we were being groomed to be compliant adoptees.

Some of us were just too stubborn. There was no way my adoptive mom was getting the space in my heart I’d given to my first mother or the smaller space reserved for my foster parents and brother. I loved her and all but I was determined to hold onto my lived experience.

In fairy tales and children’s stories – there was a pea, and the flying monkeys were never bad, just exploited by power, and the truth really is – movies about orphans are propaganda for the adoption industry. It’s time we stop expecting children to play house. We need to start caring for and loving them through the losses they have experienced, before they landed with you, their adoptive parents. It’s time we allow a child in need of care by strangers, to continue to keep their own factual birth certificate and for courts to issue permanent guardianship papers, instead of a fictitious birth certificate. Every attempt must be made to keep the child with the family they were born into, until that effort has been completely and truthfully exhausted. Expediency is not an excuse for running roughshod over families.

So much of an adoptee’s time is spent going round and round, trying to make sense of this huge lie they are being forced to live. Many simply have not yet recognized how to blame anyone else, which is ok to do during the sorting out phase, just don’t forget to go back and clean up your campsite, once you’ve gained some clarity.

The Life You Never Lived

Though not an adoptee myself, but as the child of two adoptees who never knew anything about their biological, genetic families, this applies to me as well. Even with my genetic relatives that I have met or gotten to know virtually, there are still those family lives I’ve never been a part of. There is no making up or compensating for that. There is only going forward from here.

And even though, I do know who my genetic relatives are now, I’ve banged my head against the sealed adoption records issue both in Virginia (where my mom was born) and California (where my dad was born). So even lacking both of those, thanks to inexpensive DNA testing and matching companies and then some fortuitous connections from there, I know as much as I can ever hope to now.

Googling on the life you never lived, I found this – Our Ghost Lives: Why We Obsess Over Lives We Could Have Lived at LINK>unpublishedzine.com. Even before I read this, I think – this could apply to many forks in our life’s path. What might it have been if we had done this or that. So, really lives we could have lived can apply to many people, not just adoptees. It’s only that adoptees have good reason to wonder “what might my life have been like if I had remained with my first parents?” All of the “what ifs…” that we daydream about. Woulda, shoulda, couldas are never reality. There is only what we have lived.

Excerpts from the linked article – Ghost lives earn their namesake because they haunt, they linger, and are the phantoms of what could have been. Wishing for our ghost lives to be a reality is common when our current lives are hard. Ghost lives should never detract from our regular lives because it becomes unhealthy.

Instead evaluate the choices you have made and how they have brought you happiness. This is a lot like what I heard the Rev Michael Bernard Beckwith suggest in his Sunday message at Agape – Do a testimonial trek through your awareness. Notice all of the places in your life where your own might and power did not get you out of trouble. Your back was against the wall. Through some kind of grace or expanded awareness, everything turned out okay. Curate the feeling of that grace or miracle.

It is a trust that goes beyond your personality construct, your human skills, beyond what you think you can do. You walk with a radical trust in life Itself by looking back over your life and seeing all of the places where you did not make something happen but something dawned upon your awareness, something pulled you to another level of experience – let that become a baseline of confidence and trust. You have confidence in yourself and you walk with that dynamic. Life has a tendency to support its continuance.

Back to the article – choosing real life over what could have been radiates a lot more positive energy, mindfulness, and an ability to be in the present. Being in the moment requires conscious effort. Appreciating the choices that we did make, shows us the good that is there, that we may sometimes fail to see. Be grateful that this big, messy, joyous real life isn’t a ghost life (which can only ever be an illusion) but your true lived experience.

Siblings Bill of Rights Act

Change may come slowly but it does come. In New Jersey there is now a Siblings Bill of Rights Act. This includes –

Have access to phone calls and virtual visits between face-to-face visits with their sibling;
Be placed in the closest proximity possible to other siblings who are not in out-of-home placement or if placement together is not possible, when it is in the best interests of the child;
Have the recommendations and wishes of the child and of each sibling who participates in the permanency planning decision documented in the DCF case record and provided to the court;
Know, or be made aware by DCF, of expectations for continued contact with the child’s siblings after an adoption or transfer of custody, subject to the approval of the adoptive parents or caregiver;
Be promptly informed about changes in sibling placements or permanency planning goals;
Be actively involved in the lives of the child’s siblings, e.g., birthdays, holidays, and other milestones;
Not be denied sibling visits as a result of behavioral consequences when residing in a resource family home or congregate care setting; and
Be provided updated contact information for all siblings at least annually, including a current telephone number, address, and email address, unless not in the best interests of one or more siblings.

Recently signed by Governor Phil Murphy, the law recognizes that children placed outside their home have several rights related to maintaining sibling relationships, including the right to remain actively involved in the lives of their siblings and to have their voice heard in the permanency planning process for their siblings. “In what could very well be the most difficult time of their young lives, it is our hope that this bill will allow siblings in the child welfare system to maintain some measure of stability and continuity,” Murphy said.

“One of this Administration’s goals has been to make sure the children and families in this state’s welfare systems are treated with compassion and empathy,” said Murphy. “I was deeply moved, as I’m sure my counterparts in the Legislature were, by the compelling recommendations of the Youth Council who shared their lived experiences of their time during the child welfare process.” The Council consisted of 24 members ages 14-23 who are or were previously involved with one of DCF’s programs such as Child Protection & Permanency or the Children’s System of Care. Youth Council members stressed that sibling relationships were crucial for maintaining stability and ensuring future success.

DCF Commissioner Christine Norbut Beyer said the new law “represents the power of shared leadership and the importance of having individuals with lived experiences in a meaningful role at the table.”

“Ensuring children can maintain relationships with their siblings, arguably the people who best understand what they are going through, we can provide them with more stability and the possibility of invaluable, life-long family connections.” Assemblywomen Gabriela Mosquera (D-Gloucester), Carol Murphy (D-Burlington), and Lisa Swain (D-Begen) said in a joint statement.

“New Jersey has taken a stance on sibling rights — that they matter, they exist, and this is now the law,” Jack Auzinger, a member of the DCF Youth Council, said.

~ story courtesy of Steve Lenox of Tap Into Patterson News – LINK

So Very Sad

Disclaimer – image is unrelated to today’s story.

Also not my personal story. It simply breaks my heart.

I’m a kinship care provider to my nephew and I’m really struggling right now. There is no possibility of him going back to his parents because they both died over this past summer. His mom was my sister. It was a murder/suicide perpetrated by his father and I feel like that’s really relevant to the situation. Which is sort of complex and multifaceted, but I’m just looking for some guidance or opinions. Also I am white, my husband is Puerto Rican, and my nephew is mixed black/white. He just turned 2 at the end of December.

This past week he’s started calling me mom and my husband dad, and we’re both very emotional about it and not sure how to respond. We think it’s started because his friends at daycare all call their parents mom and dad and he hears that all the time. When we show up other kids will also tell him that his mom or dad is here. The teacher always corrects them, but toddlers don’t really get the difference sometimes. Anyways we don’t want to make him feel like we’re rejecting him by correcting him every time, but we also don’t want to erase his parents. My sister and her partner had a very rough relationship with each other, but they were both wonderful parents who loved him with all their hearts. We show him pictures of them, and have them around the house. Whenever he asks about them in the pictures we refer to them as mom/dad. I just don’t know what to do.

The other issue that I’m starting to worry about is him feeling connected to his paternal family. Currently, there is a no contact order in place against one paternal aunt. When everything first happened they couldn’t believe their brother would do it and started threatening me and my husband as well as my mom. I understand the initial shock/trauma response, so I don’t want to hold it against her forever but I’m also not sure if contacting would be safe. I also would text a different paternal aunt at first but she cut contact after the stuff with her sister and no one from that family has reached out to ask about him since. I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable with my nephew staying there alone, at least at first, just because I know several of members of that family were abusive to their own children. I also know that this is a cross racial situation and I want him to feel connected to his culture. I do my best to stay educated, listen to voices of people of color, and be aware of the situations he will face in life, but I will never have the lived experience. As a white woman, I’ll never get how it feels to face racism every day. The closest thing I’ve experienced is the occasional racist mad about my blended family, but even then the color of my skin means I can seek protection much easier than my husband or nephew.

One adoptee confirmed – its totally fine for children to call their permanent caregivers mom and dad even if they aren’t. Let him. You are the acting parents in this situation, and kids (especially kids with a trauma background) need to feel a sense of normalcy in their life. Regarding paternal family connection is important but so is safety. Regarding cultural connection – some of the big ones are going to be immersion in black culture, mirrors in that kiddos life, and making sure that your neighborhood and school has a lot of other black children.

A Potential Egg Donor Asks

A woman asked for perspectives today in my all things adoption group (basically they are about 100% against and I understand why). Here is her story –

Since before I was an adult even I have felt so sure I wanted to donate eggs, the desire and resolve only grew stronger over about a decade but I wanted to have my own child first. Now I have and coincidentally found this group around the same time. It has made me completely rethink egg-donation. I had a kid and I don’t have much time left to decide due to age, so I have to decide. I know there are some donor-conceived people in this group as well and I’d so so much appreciate your thoughts on whether it’s even an ethically okay thing to do? Anyone that wants to can answer of course. Would I inevitable cause trauma to the resulting child by donating eggs?

Extra info in case it matters to anyone’s perspective: I live in a country where I won’t get paid for it except medical expenses covered, and the law says the children will get their donor’s identity if they want at 18. The family services and all related health and social carers (they are excellent here) will strongly encourage all recipients to tell their children of how they came to be from the very start.

Here is my own response –

I can only speak from experience. Back in 1998, after 20 years in a marriage where the understanding was that he was glad I had been there, done that (I have a grown daughter and 2 grandchildren from my first marriage), my husband sprang on me that he wanted to have children after all. We did ovulation predictors, were referred to a doctor who does assisted reproduction and got a booster shot when I saw my last egg. No pregnancy resulted. Then, he told us about another way – egg donation.

We did everything ourselves. Vetted potential donors by email. One said something that reminded my husband of something I would say. We chose her. She already had 3 children of her own. But she had promised another couple first. In the end, they treated her very badly and I thought she would change her mind about us but she did not.

We have always respected her and what she did for our family. After our first donor conceived son was born, my husband immediately wanted another. I had a cycle between our two boys where my womb failed to develop a good lining and had a D&C. Our donor moved from the location of the first doctor – who only did 4 procedures that year with only one success – ours. We followed her to the new location with a doctor who was one of the first in this country to do these procedures. We succeeded in having our second son. Donating was not physically easy for her. We did what we could to alleviate what we could post-extraction.

Our boys have met her more than once. I show them pictures of her or her children sometimes via Facebook because distance prohibits a closer relationship. She did 23 and Me, so I bought a kit for my husband, then for our oldest son and then for our youngest son. She is shown as their genetic mother there. 23 and Me provides a private messaging channel should they want to communicate with her. She has said she is open to that. I send her photos about once a year and updates when appropriate.

I’ve only known about issues related to donor conception since I went on my first roots discovery journey in 2017 after my parents died (they were BOTH adoptees). Fortunately, we have been honest with our sons about their conception since day 1. The 23 and Me results allowed us to fully discuss their conception now that they are much older and more mature. They understand they would not exist otherwise.

Knowing what I do know about in utero bonding, I am grateful they gestated in me, I breastfed them each for 1 year + and I have been in their lives pretty much 24/7. They are now 18 and 21 and seem well adjusted. Only twice have they indicated their perspectives to us – once my older son asked if he was supposed to be grateful to her – we said No, but we are. The younger one asked if she was his mother at a very young age. I explained that I am his mother but that without her, we would not have him.

I think the respect we have for her and she has for us has been an important factor. I think our willingness to be transparent with our sons was crucial. Back in 2000, some of the mom’s in my donor egg mothers group chose not to tell. With the advent of inexpensive DNA testing and matching, I wonder what their experiences have been and whether they have any regrets but we don’t communicate as frequently or openly as we once did.

Choosing To Take That Risk

An adoptee offers a word of warning – to any hopeful adoptive parent who now wants to adopt, even though they already have biological kids:

Biological and adopted kids *should not be mixed*. Period.

Even if *you* believe you can treat your biological and adopted child equally (which is pretty fu****g rare), you cannot control how your biological child will treat their adopted sibling.

As somebody who has been treated absolutely *horrifically* by my adoptive mom’s biological kids, this has actually been the worst trauma of all, when it comes to my adoption.

And if you’re about to say “that isn’t always the case,” just stop for a second and consider these 2 things:

1. I don’t need to hear your “not all” bs, when I’m discussing the outright abuse I have experienced at the hands of my siblings, acquired by having been adopted.

2. If there is even a *miniscule* chance that your adopted child could experience what I have, and you wanna go through with it anyways, then you are selfish and careless. Imagine knowing that there is a possibility that your biological child may abuse or mistreat your adopted child, and you still chose to take that risk with a child’s life ?

And just today, I learned this statistic – even among biological siblings, sibling abuse is 5 times more common than spousal or parental abuse – it is actually the most common form of domestic abuse. And yet, adoptees also have an added layer of mental/emotional trauma due to having been relinquished by their original parents. The obvious difference between having been actually born to and having been brought into a family from different parents and circumstances is real and should not be dismissed.

One of those biological kids admits – Even though I love love love my adopted siblings and dote on them as much as possible, it does not erase the resentment. I resent them for “taking” my parents away and they resent us for being born to the family. They will NEVER know I resent them and even my parents don’t, but mixing adopted kids with biological kids is brutal on both sides. Then, goes on to give some additional context – 1) my siblings are far too young to have any idea & 2) I don’t feel upset that I’m not adopted. I do have a completely normal jealousy, at times, that they take attention away from me, since they’re the center of attention for the whole family. And I recognize that there will be obvious friction between me and the younger siblings, though it is not there at this present moment. In the future? Absolutely. And tries to clarify this – the resentment is towards my parents, the jealousy is towards my adopted siblings. Very different feelings. I never said the suffering on both sides was equal. Mine is typical sibling jealousy. My adopted siblings have a deep rooted trauma and a robbing of their history. I am working through it. I was already 19, when my younger adopted siblings moved in. My work is understanding that my parents don’t love/care about them more. They are simply young and traumatized. They require more care than I do. I am learning to understand the truth that I don’t need my parents as much as I often feel I do. I have an anxious attachment style with rejection sensitivity, a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life, so I am learning how that affects the way I feel about my parents.

So, the honest truth is – a HUGE percentage of adoptive parents WILL show favoritism towards their biological child, over their adopted child, whether they mean to or not. And the extended family treats them differently as well.

This, from experience – I would go as far to say, even if the adoptive parents have grown biological children. I freely tell people that I was adopted from foster care. I don’t normally share that when my adoptive parents died, their will left me in the custody of their eldest son and his family. Truth is, none of their three adult children ever agreed their parents should adopt me. When they died, I was kicked out of their son’s house and was told “nice to know you, you’re on your own now.” Adoption has so many layers that no one thinks about. And every time a hopeful adoptive parent or adoptee still in “the fog” (believing in the feel good narratives about adoption) counters a trauma or negative experience with their own beliefs, it not only insults and minimizes the pain they are responding to, but also minimizes the INFINITE number of situations they couldn’t possibly know about. Please stop pushing back against people with the lived experience who are trying to prevent even more trauma, by sharing your own limited experiences.

A Sad Reality

Adoptees are 4 times more likely to commit suicide than non-adoptees are. Why is that ? Maybe because being adopted is not all unicorns and rainbows.

So today comes this sad story.

I work in animal rescue because I couldn’t handle working for the Department of Children and Families. It’s a corrupt system.

Today I took a phone call that really got to me and started a small debate between others in the office at the time.

The caller said a 26 year old adoptee had killed herself and left four cats behind. One cat was found dead with her. One cat a friend took and the other two the rescue I work in is taking. We learned these animals were without food for sometime. Meaning no one had checked up on her.

I was told the adoptive mom was a bad alcoholic, adoptive father is a prominent well known doctor. That the 26 year old suffered years of mental health issues. I told the caller we would take in the two two cats no questions asked and no surrender fee. When the caller asked me why… I responded that as an adoptee myself….

My heart breaks for any adoptee who was this upset and hurting to take her own life in front of pets who she saved and loved. I said most adoptees have trauma and pain and it seldom gets better even with the best therapy! She thanked me and I’ll meet the lady Friday with the two cats.

When I got off the phone the two other people in the office told me I cannot generalize adoptive people that way. That many adoptive people are happy! I’m like no… I’m an adoptee and while my life on the outside may look perfect and my own children are …. I cry daily and have struggled my entire life. In my teens, I wanted to die! So I told them unless they were an adoptee nothing that they could tell me would change my view!

The truth is that the lived experience of many adoptees makes those who have not experienced it, uncomfortable.

October 30th is Adoptee Remembrance Day.

Review – I Am Sam

I learned about this movie from my all things adoption group and I wrote an initial blog on July 19th titled I Am Sam. I promised to come back with a review and last night I actually watched the movie on dvd from Netflix. Sean Penn and Dakota Fanning are both remarkable in their performances for this movie.

It is easy to understand the attraction of this movie to the all things adoption and foster care group because the core story is the lived experience of many members of that group. Not so much having a mentally challenged (ie as the movie says explicitly more than once – retarded) parent but as in the Division of Family and Child Welfare taking a child or children from the parents. In fact, when my sons were young, I did worry that our parenting might be adversely challenged by so do-gooder. Thankfully, my sons are now almost grown (one is already 20 and the other one is 17) and beyond such concerns in our own family. It is also true to the lived experience of so many that foster parents often do eventually want to adopt a child placed in their care. However, the movie is enlightened to the trends now occurring in adoptionland that family reunification and in the case of this movie, an eventual recognition on the part of the parent that he is lacking something (a mother – the child’s mother abandoned the child to the father shortly after birth) brings into the resolution a kind of co-parenting solution that is satisfying to watch (I don’t think that saying this is a spoiler for this movie as the ending leaves as many questions as it answers).

The movie was very progressive for its time in the portrayal of people with a variety of cognitive disabilities. In fact, I recognized that I do know one woman who has effectively lost her children due to just such a challenge. The take-away message for me was how incredibly hard it is parent a child regardless of the circumstances. This is clearly portrayed in the contrasting and yet similar parenting challenges of the main character and his lawyer. Every parent needs support of some kind at some time or other.

In an LA Times review, the writer shares this story – “I’m smart enough to know when I need help, I ask for it,” a 46-year-old mother with a learning disability told me recently. She receives support from a parents-with-special-needs program. If she needs help with parenting skills of any kind, a parent counselor is just a call away. If she feels frustrated, she attends the program’s parents support group.

Also from that LA Times review, In one critical scene of the movie, Sam is questioned by state agency officials about why he thinks he has the ability to be a father. He responds, “It’s about constancy and it’s about patience. And it’s about listening and it’s about pretending to listen when you can’t listen any more, and it’s about love.” In the case of parents with special needs, we must provide the kind of support services that will offer practical help and an ear to listen. Parents with special needs benefit from help with tutoring, after-school activities, transportation, budgeting money and, like every parent in the universe, a little baby-sitting now and then.

The movie helps everyone who watches it to understand “that persons with disabilities have needs and desires just like everyone else,” as the parent with a disability mentioned above explained. “They need to take care of someone and love someone else.”