The Gift That Keeps On Giving

I continue to unwrap the gift I have received late in life of knowledge about my natural grandparents, meeting my genetic relatives and understanding the impacts of adoption on my entire family. It is a gift that has not stopped giving to me more and more each day.

One year ago, I completed a family history as a gift to 9 of my relatives. Having recovered our unknown genetic history and having some additional family stories I felt were worth saving, I self published it economically in a spiral bound book. If something ended my life, I did not want the knowledge lost again.

Over the last year, I’ve been retelling the story of finding my original grandparents but soon realized I could not convey an accurate understanding of the final miracle in that journey without delving into something I did not cover at all in the family history. That is my journey as executor of my deceased parents estates and having to contend with a brilliant but delusional sister. It certainly adds an element of tension, uncertainty and conflict. Truth be told, two parts of my on-going story have only revealed themselves this last November.

Even so, I’ve decided I am now “complete” with a version that I hope will be commercially published and bring some modest amount of revenue into my family’s financial support while opening a door for me to publish whatever comes next (I have a couple of ideas in progress – one has waited 5 years for me to have the time to take the rough draft into a finished form).

May your own heart be warmed with the love of knowing family. No family is perfect and often they vex us and yet, they truly polish us into stars of shining light for others to be inspired by. May all your holidays be bright.

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.

Adoption – A Mother’s Sorrow

I can relate, though I didn’t give up a child to adoption, financially I lost the ability to raise my first born precious daughter. There are no words for the lifetime of regret and sense of loss that never ends. I remember looking through commercial greeting cards for something to send my daughter on her birthday and nothing related to the kind of relationship I have with her. Eventually, I simply started making them my self where I could modify the text to be more accurate.

At least I knew where she was and who was raising her. Not so for a mother who relinquishes her child to a closed adoption. Open adoptions are more frequent now but adoptive parents can and often do close the door to contact.

It is difficult to generalize about the feelings or experiences of all of the parents who surrender a child. Many may feel that their child will have a better life in an adoptive home and often that may be true if the mother is homeless or financially destitute. Money and love and biological connection are not one and the same. Even so, some parents who surrender a child do so believing that they are putting the child’s best interests ahead of their own, when they make the decision to place the child for adoption.

Grief and guilt are often the outcome for such a mother. I know, I suffered both and still do. Even though my daughter is now 46 years old and we have what I would consider to be a pretty good relationship with each other, I still struggle with the reality that I was not there for her growing up. There is no changing that no matter how I feel about it.

Shock and denial, sorrow and depression, anger, guilt, and acceptance are the various feelings that a parent who has surrendered their child may experience at any given time, very dependent on the overall circumstances.

When the loss of a parent’s child is viewed as a “choice” that parent voluntarily made, there may be little sympathy or compassion and indeed, a strong inclination to ignore the pain and encourage the parent to go on with their life. If only it were that simple . . .

Each Small Death

. . . is just a season where a part of us is shed to make way for a new one. ~ Jonas Ellison

This quote captured something in my heart. When I was already into my 60s, I lost first my mom and then 4 months later, my dad, to the normal processes of life that end in one’s death. When they died, none of us knew who their original parents were. They were both adopted and their adoptive parents were also dead.

Turns out my original grandparents were all dead as well.

But there is “new” life in me because I now know so much more about my authentic family history. I know there is a lot of Danish in me because of my paternal grandfather who was an immigrant. And there is a good deal of Scottish in me because of my maternal grandmother.

On my paternal grandmother’s side is a long history that includes an ancestor who wrote a journal that is still in print. It is considered to be one of the best records of early colonial life in New London Connecticut spanning a 47 year period from 1711 to 1758. Yes, before our Revolutionary War. His home is on the national register and a museum now.

That leaves my maternal grandfather. His own grandfather was 2nd Lieutenant in the Confederate Army from 1861 through 1864. He fought in the battles of Shiloh, Chattanooga and Spring Hill, as well as other less notable engagements. There are actually Confederate connections on my maternal grandmother’s side as well. Not that I take any real pride in that, it just is the honest truth.

All of this is “new” to me. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to know about these people but learning about them and meeting some living descendants has made me whole again. Even though it was too late for my parents, losing them opened up the path for me to know these things about my family history.

All that to say, if you are in a similar circumstance by all means push ahead. Inexpensive DNA testing and the matching sites that include 23 and Me as well as Ancestry are making it possible for many people who’s past was clouded by adoption to finally know who and from where their roots are grounded in reality.

Hard Questions

Adoption makes this true.

The questions carry a completely different weight than they did just months ago before we adopted. A place where my heart screams that he is mine forever but that same heart plummets into a deep ache knowing the gravity of loss he has already faced. The loss of the mother in whose womb he grew.

He will always know he’s adopted. I tell his story to him every night at bedtime. I ask all the normal questions.

I wonder about the day he will ask about his birth parents. Will there be a constant ringing in his ears to know them? Will he feel the guilt of reassuring us, as the adoptive parents, that the ringing has nothing to do with us?

Will I be able to honestly, deeply, and fully lock arms with him while he searches for answers?

I can wait for the hard questions but know when you start to ask, your worth is immense, your value is priceless, and I will always and forever, be right by your side.

A true story. One worth pondering if you are planning to adopt. Someday, that child will want to know where they come from and why they are not being raised by the people who conceived them.

A Lifetime Of Regret

Adoption narratives rarely focus on the original mother from whom the child was taken. I do believe both of my grandmothers experienced regret over giving up their babies.

I believe the one to suffer the most was my maternal grandmother. She was honestly victimized by a lot of different factors, the Great Depression, a charity fatigue caused by the response in Memphis to a SuperFlood that sent thousands of refugees, many from Arkansas, into the city as well as a husband with conflicted loyalties (to the children of his deceased wife and to a mother who he was always the favored son of) who was WPA and fighting that same flood and not responding to her dire calls for help.

In my mom’s adoption file it is clear how hard she fought, though she lost, to keep my mom. She suffered a secondary infertility which is not uncommon among women who give up a child to adoption. Her childish nickname for Elizabeth – Lizzie – was on my mom’s birth certificate and though for much of her life, she would sign her name Elizabeth and nieces and nephews called her Aunt Lou – on her gravestone is the exact same name that she gave birth under. I think it not a coincidence. Just as my mom yearned to know her original mother, I believe her mother never gave up hope that my mom would find her again.

It was left to me to find her grave near the small town area that my grandmother grew up within. So sad and tragic.

My dad’s mom also lost him though it seems to have been less damaging in some ways than the exploited pain of my maternal grandmother. It is believed that she did sorrow for her firstborn son but she went on to have 3 other children. It does not appear she was as devastated though certainly carrying regrets, I think especially so, as she raised other children and probably believed it should have been possible to raise my dad.

There is a shift in adoption thinking that it really isn’t a beneficial choice. A variety of reforms attempt to make the situation better. Family preservation is probably the best – where caring individuals seek to support and encourage an intact family.

Actually Not Related

This is the day my parents married in 1953 because my teenage mom was pregnant with me and my dad did right by her. They were both adoptees. As incredible as it may seem to the reader, it was only recently that I realized how miraculous it is that I did not end up given away and adopted.

Certainly, my mom’s adoptive parents could not have been happy about all their dashed hopes for my mom. No debutante ball, no marrying into the upper class. Instead her husband came from a humble and poor family. In spite of it all, they remained married for life, over 60 years, and died 4 months apart.

How to explain what it is like ? I chose to relocate myself to Missouri. Eventually, I would discover lots of connections to my chosen home state. Yet, they were not my own family connections, not really. There was the town in Missouri – Dittmer – founded by my mom’s adoptive father’s family. There was the town in Missouri – Eugene – founded by my mom’s adoptive mother’s family. There was the town in Illinois – Belleville – founded by my dad’s adoptive mother’s family. I could not claim any of these places had a real relationship to my family history. It is a weird black hole to spend one’s life within.

Now I really know what is important. Loss, betrayal and abandonment force us to let go of our attachments. When my parents died, I became an orphan. I also lost a close and loving relationship with my youngest sister, who’s mental illness that appears to be some kind of paranoid schizophrenia, caused her to distrust me as I attempted to close out our parent’s estate. I heard my mom’s voice in my head saying “finish the work.” That work was requesting the court to create a supportive situation for my sister since she could no longer depend upon our parents and was hostile towards me. A lifetime of being there for her was lost and abandoned by her. Sadly.

You Should Be Grateful

Of all the unreasonable expectations people tend to put upon an adoptee, the demand that they be grateful for having been adopted is perhaps one of the most painful.

Do you realize ?

The adoptee lost their complete family in one foul swoop. They lost their mother, perhaps as soon as the day they were born. They also lost their identity, background information, heritage, genealogy, birth certificate, familiarities, equal rights, similarities, health information and a knowledge of where their inherited traits came from.

Adoption is the only trauma for which the traumatized are told by society that they should be grateful for it’s occurrence. Compassion that it happened to a person is a better expectation.

It’s Not Easy Being Adopted

“It’s not as easy as everyone thinks, growing up and never knowing the truth about yourself.” And it isn’t easy for the child of two adoptees because the feeling is the same – there is an emptiness, a void, a gap in the family history story and it hurts somehow in some deep place that is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t felt this.

Once the adoptee had her mother’s name, finding her turned out to be remarkably easy. Her mother’s first words to her daughter were: “I always thought you’d find me.” I believe this is what my maternal grandmother thought. However, for my mom and her mother, it never came to pass.

Some adoptive mothers will feel threatened by the relationship an adoptee begins to develop with their natural mother. The best outcome is for the child to be able to have a relationship with both mothers. Knowledge means no longer being troubled by unanswered questions. Feeling whole, having a past, a new peaceful tranquility with who one is.

Generally speaking, adoptees and birth mothers both have to suppress, in polite society, the feelings that are ripping them up inside. A natural mother who has relinquished her child is supposed to hide her grief and act like nothing is wrong – and especially TELL NO ONE.

The secrecy is suffocating. It is time for that to end.

A Permanent Loss

Conflicted feelings when I first learned I was pregnant

I gave birth to my baby and once the infant was born,

I became that child’s mother.

A mere signature on a surrender paper and

the adoption that followed can never undo that.

I had a baby and I gave that baby away
but I am a mother.

~ A Hole in my Heart by Lorraine Dusky

It is a very sad story and worth reading.

A lifetime of regrets, of unintended consequences that are channeled in an activism, so that others do not have to go through the same experience.

I have learned so much about the impacts of adoption on ALL parties to it. Not one of the triad escapes some effect. Not the adoptee who never had a say in what happened to them. Not the original parents who will never be able to know their child in the intimate way most parents do. Not the adoptive couple who may receive more than they originally bargained for – wounds they can’t see nor understand because they are foreign to any concept of parenting they may have entered in with.