Break The Cycle

Early on in my education regarding all things adoption (which includes foster care), I became aware of a lot of valid evidence that trauma is passed down through families. I could see how this happened in my own family.

Take my parents (both adopted) original mothers. My dad’s mother lost her own mother only 3 months after her birth and went on to endure a truly wicked step-mother. My mom’s mother lost her own mother at the age of 11. Being the oldest, she inherited younger siblings to care for, the youngest not yet one year old. Her father never remarried, which might be just as well, but I have heard now what I suspected – he was a hard man, who without his wife, didn’t know how to love. There is trauma, particularly for a daughter who loses her mother.

There are my parents who were both torn from their mothers and surrendered to adoption. My mom’s mother was exploited in her financial duress by Georgia Tann in the 1930s when social safety nets didn’t exist. After months of resisting their pressure, my dad’s mother gave in to The Salvation Army and surrendered her son to them, which eventually led to his own adoption. I’m entirely convinced that had my grandmothers had sufficient support and encouragement, they would have raised their children. It is entirely possible that had their mothers been alive, they would not have relinquished.

My parents found each other in high school. Though they both shared the backhole void of origin information as adoptees, they were not of the same perspective regarding their adoptions. My mom confided this to me because she couldn’t talk about her yearning to locate her original mother to my dad who warned her against opening a can of worms. They were good enough parents. We knew we were loved but they were strangely detached as parents. I only know this as an adult observing how other parents generally feel a long-term involvement in their children’s lives.

With me, I knew they expected me to leave as soon as I graduated from high school and so, I married and a year later had a daughter (for which I am eternally grateful). The marriage was flawed by the time I was pregnant with her and by the time she was 3 years old, I was no longer married but also unable to support us as my ex-husband refused to pay any child support (since it was my decision to leave him). Eventually, he ended up raising her. She ended up with a stay at home stepmother and for the most part, it seems to have worked out for the best – for her – but never for me. I still struggle with coming to terms with having been an absentee mother over 60 years later.

Both of my sisters gave up a child to adoption. One, considering it quite normal (and now the truth be known there was an extremely complicating factor – the father was a good friend of our dad’s), always intended to relinquish. Shocking to me was that our own mom, who struggled with having been adopted herself, pressured and guided my other sister to give up her baby for adoption – and she tried to get the support of the social safety net that existed in the late 70s, early 80s but was refused because she was sheltering with our parents while pregnant and their financial strength was used against my sister’s request for assistance. That sister also lost her first born in an ugly custody case brought by her in-laws when she divorced that child’s father.

Mostly, these children of ours are breaking the cycle and are wonderful parents. One has struggled with failed marriages but has remained solid with his own son. I hope these recent successes continue on down our family line.

In Order By What’s Best

I grew up with this televised image of the “perfect” family. Though it never did represent what most families actually are.

My original grandmothers BOTH lost their moms at a young age. My maternal grandmother at age 11 and my paternal grandmother at 3 mos. They were both raised by their fathers in the early 1900s. In the 1930s, each of them conceived children by men who were at least 20 years older than them. Each of them lost their child to adoption.

My mom’s adoptive family looked the most like the one above. My adoptive grandmother bought her Jack and Jill from Georgia Tann. My dad’s adoptive family was mostly the influence of my Granny, who adopted two sons from the Salvation Army and then divorced her husband, who was an alcoholic and abusive – not only towards her but towards her sons. My dad was re-adopted at the age of 8 by the next husband, who I knew as my grandfather.

Those adopted children were my parents, who met in high school. We had 3 girls in our family. I was the oldest. My first marriage ended in divorce. Eventually, my ex-husband and his second wife were raising my daughter because financially – I was unable to support us and he was unwilling to pay me child support.

In our modern times, we recognize many diverse family units. Because the roles for fathers were changing when I had my daughter, I believed that mothers and fathers were interchangeable if divorce was the reality for the family unit. I no longer believe mothers are dispensable.

And though I grew up with adoption as simply a fact of life and had no opinion about it other than acceptance – that it was just the way things were – I now see things differently. I have educated myself by exposure to current day adult adoptees and the sadness and regret of original mothers who gave up their child for adoption.

An intact family unit is what I believe is the best environment for a child. Two parents allow for one parent to buffer or moderate the other. The next best is a single parent – mother preferred, father the next best.

For TRUE orphans who’s parents are dead, never should they have their identity, name at birth or original birth certificate changed to make it appear that other parents gave birth to them. Society should also more fully support family preservation.

This is how I roll now. I doubt it will change but I am certain I won’t go back to what I believed – before I knew “better”.

Bottled Up Grief

Ever since I learned about my maternal grandmother, my heart has broken for the grief her life gave her. She died at an age decades younger than her 2 sisters and 2 brothers. They did not have her heartbreak. They were all much younger than my grandmother when their mother died. My grandmother was 11 years old.

Grief doesn’t vanish when we try to lock it up in a sealed drawer, yet I am relatively certain that is how my grandmother coped. She didn’t talk about the pain but it didn’t go away.

The thing that makes you crazy isn’t that your mother died, or that you lost custody of your child – both of which happened to both of my grandmothers actually. It is that you can’t talk about it.

You just want to run away, but you don’t know where you can run to. There isn’t any where to go.

The Loss of a Mother is Tragic

My Paternal Grandmother, Dolores, As A Baby

We don’t know who this woman was because my grandmother didn’t note it on the back of the photo. What we do know is that her mother died when my grandmother was only 3 months old, so the woman in this photo is not her mother but is likely some relation.

Her parents marriage appears to have been a fairy tale worthy romance. They both came from old line families that started in Connecticut and migrated to Long Island New York.

It feels to me that the family’s fortunes changed with the death of the oldest daughter (run over by a teenage driver at age 3) and then the mother. The Great Depression didn’t help things.

There is a difference between a motherless daughter whose mother died and a child growing up without their natural mother due to adoption. With death, we know the mother will never come back to us and she lives on as a kind of myth or legend – often larger than life would have had her otherwise.

With adoption, there is the knowledge that the natural mother is “out there” somewhere, even when the child doesn’t know her name or where she is. There is always that possibility that a reunion with her will take place and that causes a degree of yearning.