Normal Late Teen Behavior

The girl in the image is NOT the one being referred to by this foster mother but I believe the uncertainty is not unusual in this age group, even though the girl’s reasons are valid. Today’s story –

I am the foster parent to a 17 yr old, who is about to turn 18 in a few months. She wants to change her last name, to make it harder for anyone from her past life to locate her. She had been adopted as a baby and the adoptive parents, who she got along with, are dead.

She wants nothing to do with her biological family ever again. They also want nothing to do with her. But, one older sibling she does not like, who was abusive towards her, might try to find her.

She wants to be adopted again. But, I do not plan to adopt her after she ages out of foster care because she would lose too many benefits that would help her in going to the private college of her choice. She plans to get scholarships for that based on need.

I will remain a support; and of course let her stay for the rest of high school, and during breaks from college, once she moves to the dorm. I will help her financially, as needed.

She says she wants to be adopted, once she’s in grad school, which she plans to go on to after college. I am not sure it’s a good idea but once we get to that time, it’s possible I would – if she still wanted that, as she’d be 23 years old.

Should I encourage her to choose a made up name that’s different from mine? I don’t care if she takes my last name but I don’t know if that would be better or worse for her than a made up one. She’s on the spectrum as well, although recently diagnosed and does not present that way, so most people don’t realize it. She does ask my advice a lot but I don’t know what the answer to changing her name is. She does not want the birth name she had before she was adopted. She’s already changed her first name, though not yet legally, as she hates her entire name. She is already in therapy.

Some thoughtful replies –

One woman who was adopted from India and raised in the US – it sounds like she has good reason to change her last name, and honestly I don’t see a major issue, minus financially it can be pricy. She added – it’s state by state with costs, I know for my sister it was $300 in Missouri, when we looked at it. She prefers her nickname to her legal name and my parents didn’t care, but she didn’t want to pay the cost. Several added examples – in California, there is a fee waiver form and it sounds like she might qualify for something similar. From another – in Washington state I paid ~$260 for the name change, I think ~$15 each for extra copies (which came in handy) and ~$50 for a new license. Also this one – I’m in Pennsylvania and my name change cost about $500.

There was someone who shared – Changed my name many times to get away from abusive family/and because I’m trans. If she wants not to be found, it depends on if the people looking for her know your last name. If they do, probably best to go with a different name. Still, help her find something that holds meaning to her. I’m in Virginia and it was an easy $41 ordeal.

Another shared – My husband and I both changed our last name to something unrelated to either of our families. It cost $600, had to be posted in the newspaper for 2 weeks, followed by a hearing where we just confirmed we were doing it because we wanted to. When she is 18, just allow her to do as she wishes.

From an adoptive parent – do you know her reasoning for wanting to be adopted ? It sounds to me that she may just want to belong, feel accepted, have a stable family, etc but it may be a good idea to ask and better understand her thoughts and desires around adoption.

One adoptive parent asked – Are you sure she’ll lose her benefits, if you finalize adoption ? We adopted our now 18 year old, when she was 17 but she gets all her benefits until she’s 21 (which includes scholarships and her tuition). Is there any way you can check with her social worker ? As far as her name goes, it’s her decision. When our adoption was finalized, our daughter initially kept her last name but she recently asked to change it to ours. She now has her mom’s last name as a second middle name.

Another shares her perspectives – based on what you’ve said here – I’d encourage her to wait. If she’s in danger – actual danger- that’s different. I agree with you about not adopting her; families look all sorts of ways and she can choose her own, right? Because she’s so uncertain about what she wants to call herself and why, it just seems prudent to wait until she’s an adult. She can have nicknames and that sort of thing, but changing your name is a whole big thing and complicated. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I really like that you’re asking for other perspectives and listening to her. Just give her time and space to figure things out – especially because she’s on the spectrum. Keep helping her and supporting her like you’re doing.

Denigrating An Important Woman

This term “birth giver” was a new one to me. I feel squeamish just seeing this. I have seen some adoptees call their biological father their sperm donor, that troubles me too. Separating families cause a lot of issues for the children thus impacted.

Language matters. There has been a lot written about the term – birth mother. Some prefer first mother or natural mother. There may be others that have been suggested. It is often said that the woman who carries and gives birth to a child is that child’s mother – period. I will often be more precise in identifying those in my own familial situation as biological, genetic parents or adoptive grandparents including adoptive relatives, due to both of my parents having been adopted as babies.

When I was growing up, it was considered somewhat disrespectful to call your mother your “old lady” (even if she was – old). Same was sometimes said of a father – my old man. The meaning of certain words does change with time and cultural impacts. Sometimes, the meaning of phrases becomes convoluted. That certainly happened during my youth. As words appear and disappear, it can be difficult to establish definitive explanations. Vocabulary speaks of values, customs and ideals but the words are constantly changing and it can be difficult to keep up with what is intended by a word.

It is true that a newborn certainly has no connection to whatever name their biological parent wrote down (if they even had a chance before adoptive parents swooped in to take the baby). A name is not truly part of one’s heritage, though it can be indicative, or more accurately their DNA. Many adoptees DO care about whatever their genetic, biological parent wanted to name them. Often, that is not something that they may ever discover because the adoptive parents almost always change the name of the child they are adopting.

Young Adult Decisions

A woman writes in my all things adoption group – I work in child advocacy. Full transparency, I’m hoping for support but definitely open to hearing the hard things.

I’m so conflicted after being in this group. Some young adults I advocated for in their youth (today they are 21 and 23) have asked to be adopted by me and my husband and we’ve agreed. It was completely their idea and I’ve shared the complicated reality of what it would look like (changing their birth certificates etc). Should I try to get them to further discuss in therapy, or should I accept that this is truly what they want? Both aged out of foster care after 4-6 years in/out of the system. Though they continue to have contact with their biological parents, they have largely felt abandoned and say that they just want to feel “claimed.” Should I trust that they are adults and going into this eyes wide open? It feels wrong to celebrate, but they are honestly bouncing off the walls with excitement about it. They have requested to change their names and everything. I hate to diminish their joy, even though I have reservations. Maybe adult adoption really is that different and I’m worried over nothing.

If I do go through with it, I will have to start identifying myself as adoptive mother in this group and that feels icky to me after all I’ve learned from you. Yes, I know it’s not the same as infant adoption, but I still feel conflicted.

The response from an adoptee – If they are adults and are making this request on their own without any prompting from you, then I see nothing wrong with it. They are old enough, and seem to understand what it is they’re asking for.

Fear of Abandonment

Very short on time today but I came across the image above and went looking for more from Dr Heidi Green. Not that I found much. But I do get the concept that it isn’t just the bad stuff. It is the good stuff that could have been but couldn’t be because of having been adopted and raised by strangers instead of the family you were born into.

What I did find from Dr Green gave me the title for today’s blog –

Where does fear of abandonment come from? For most people, it comes from trauma related to early childhood relationships, especially with our primary caregivers. If you couldn’t depend on your parents to be there for you and meet all your needs (physical and emotional) as a kid, you might very well be an adult who also thinks you can’t depend on people to be there for you. This creates the anxiety-driven behaviors of codependency, people-pleasing and self-abandonment in an effort to do whatever it takes to keep others from abandoning you.

Both of my parents ended up adopted. Back in the 1930s, the child might be older than newborn. At least that was the case for my parents. My mom was probably 6 months old. My dad was 8 months old. Both of them had some period of time to be in a relationship with their original genetic mothers. I can only imagine what their baby brains interpreted when mom disappeared and a stranger took her place.

I think more so for my mom, than my dad, there was no small amount of people pleasing and I have acquired a lot of my own behavior in that regard from being my mom’s daughter. However, back to Dr Green’s point – neither of my parents could totally depend on the people raising them to be there for them. My dad even experienced more than one adoptive father and was adopted a second time and his name changed yet another time when he was much older and his adoptive mother remarried, after throwing an abusive husband out of the house.

Got to run now but I hope I can spend more time on this blog tomorrow.

Difficult Father Issues

Today’s story – my 13 year old’s biological father wants to terminate his parental rights and the only way the state will allow that to happen is if my husband adopts my child. This is not something I ever wanted to happen and I tried very hard to avoid things getting to this point.

In the past under joint custody, he has refused to consent to therapy, refused to allow the children to take their medication, changed their class placements against their will, withdrawn them from extracurriculars, cancelled doctors appointments, picked up their glasses from the eye doctor and then, refused to give them back to us, etc… it’s just been a lot. At this point, he also hasn’t seen our child for the last four years, by his own choice. My husband is already raising my child and has been for most of their life. They already live here 100% of the time. So, logistically, this would not change anything.

If we do the adoption, I will be able to get my child back in therapy, to help them begin to work through all of this. Also with the adoption, comes the option for them to change their last name. They have their biological father’s last name. They are ADAMANT that they want to get rid of his last name and take mine. I did not change my name, when I got married. So it isn’t my husband’s last name. My last name is pretty important to me. I never knew my biological father or anything about him, and my mother did not raise me (I was a kinship adoptee). My last name has always felt like a connection myself, if that makes sense. It’s one of the very few things I can trace through generations and say ”this is where I came from.” My child knows this and I think wants to have a part of that as well.

All of that said, I feel weird about changing their name. So, I wonder if I should encourage them to keep his last name. There is a lot of trauma and hurt associated with that name for them. My hesitation is – do I feel they are old enough to have the final say in this. I really never wanted this for them and I am feeling horribly guilty about all of it.

Someone shared their personal experience – My husband adopted my child (this was an adult adoption), we asked their input and what they wanted. We made it clear it was 100% their choice and in no way did we want to influence such a big decision either way but we discussed scenarios and options in length and made them wait a while to make sure they still wanted it changed and it wasn’t out of spite or anger or a split second decision.

This is a different scenario than an adoption of a young child who cannot consent (this was really hard for me to accept but necessary to understand). Your child is consenting and wants their name changed. Names are very triggering, even for my adult child, when they hear their original name it always makes them lose their breath. It is ok to change their name, it’s ok!

Another person confirmed – in my state the court will not terminate the parental rights of a father, if there is a step-parent who could adopt. A father can’t terminate his rights without adoption because legally, it leaves the child fatherless. It’s something that, if allowed, could lead to parents requesting termination to avoid being required to support their children.

Competition and/or Comparison

It is inevitable for an adoptee to feel some tension or conflict regarding their reunion with biological family and a perceived threat by adoptive family to the relationship they have long possessed with that adoptee. These are difficult waters to navigate.

Some good advice I read today suggested –

Try to disentangle yourself and the decisions you make from any/all of your parents. You have every right to have a relationship with anyone – if you are blood-related to them or not. You also have the right to step away from any relationship. I encourage you to go for it. Enjoy getting to know your father and sisters. This will not take away from your relationship with your adoptive parents or your mother.

Think of it this way: When you married, did your adoptive parents throw a fit? Were they shocked that you were (possibly) changing your surname? Did they demand that you not have a relationship with your husband’s parents? If you have children, did they declare that only THEY were the grandparents, the *real* grandparents, and these others were imposters? The same could be said about birth parents. That they are not “real.” Where everything is a competition and/or comparison. Thing is, you don’t have to play. All four of these people are your parents one way or another. That was the hand you were dealt. You deserve to develop a relationship with any person you choose, including DNA relatives. The feelings may ebb and flow with time and circumstances and that’s okay, too.

The person this was suggested to answered – it’s funny cuz my adoptive mom was upset when I changed my maiden name and she is jealous of the relationship I have with my mother-in-law too! But she’s better at hiding it these days. There just isn’t pleasing her and there never has been. I have decided not to tell her or my adoptive dad, at least not for a long time until I’ve sorted through all this myself.

What started this is – she has found her biological dad. He didn’t have a clue she existed. So far he has been nothing but kind and welcoming. She has also discovered that she has two baby half-sisters. She is nervous because when she was 18, she was finally allowed information about her adoption. Only her birth mother’s name was available, and she quickly found her on Facebook. She adoptive mother expressed feelings of betrayal. She felt the adoptee was replacing her. Eventually, she did allow the adoptee to have her biological mother attend her wedding. Then, her biological mom basically ghosted her and now she very rarely hears from her after years of what she thought was a great friendship. Her biological aunt, with whom she is close, tells her this is just normal behavior for her biological mom – she cuts people off and prefers to be alone. Ok, fine. After years of counselling and medication, the woman has gotten over this (for the most part). She is simply terrified it’s going to happen all over again with her biological dad.

Double Whammy

An adoptee writes – “My birthday was a few days ago, and with Mother’s Day this weekend, there are a lot of complicated emotions flying around.”

Some background from the adoptee – I was adopted at birth by my aunt (my genetic mom’s sister) and uncle, and moved several states away. I was given a new name, new Birth Certificate, the whole works. My adoptive parents had been trying for a baby, and since my original mom didn’t have the resources (job, place of her own) they asked to adopt me. A month after I was born, my adoptive parents ended up pregnant with my brother. My sister followed a year later. I do not look like anyone in my adoptive family and I never felt like I fit in or belonged. I was treated way differently than my siblings. My adoptive mother passed away when I was 19. Since then, I’ve had a mediocre relationship with my adoptive dad, barely there communication with my brother, and my sister won’t acknowledge my existence.

I was a rebellious, angry teen, and my issues carried over into adulthood. I caused my family a lot of pain, but had no idea that any of my issues were likely caused by trauma. That said, I take responsibility for my decisions, own up to them, and have repaired relationships where possible. Still, I have lived most of my life filled with shame and thinking I am defective and a bad person regarding some of the choices I’ve made.

After years of therapy for depression and anxiety, a wonderful therapist suggested that my lifelong issues could be a result of adoption trauma. I brushed her off, saying “My adoption happened a long time ago. I’ve dealt with it. I’m fine.” And she gently replied, “No, I don’t think you are.” And so it was, that I started coming out of the fog five years ago, right around the time I turned 40.

I have always known who my mother was, but never got to know her and have only met her three times. The first was when I was 3. She visited with her new husband so that she could come clean about her “past.” The second was when I was 15. I was in the throes of angsty adolescence and started having issues around my identity. The whole purpose of my visit was to talk to her openly about my adoption, but…although her husband knew I was her daughter, she would not acknowledge that I was his sister to my half brother, who was 10 years old at the time. I had to tiptoe around for a week while he called me “cousin.” More shame. The last time I saw her was at my adoptive mother’s funeral, almost 26 years ago. We talk here and there, mostly on Facebook, but I literally don’t feel anything for her. She still talks of giving me up as being “the best thing” for me, without acknowledging the harm. I realize she was in an impossible situation, but just to have her see me, acknowledge the hurt I experienced and continue to deal with, would mean so much.

Feeling Rooted In Ireland

This St Patrick’s Day, I am happily feeling my roots. It is something I was denied by both of my parents being adopted, until I was able to discover them thanks to my own efforts, when I was already well into my own 6th decade. The “advice from a flower” in the graphic above certainly suits the experiences of some adoptees necessitating that they grow through adversity.

My dad’s name was changed from his birth name, Arthur Martin, to Patrick (plus more than one adoptive father’s name for his middle, as his adoptive mother divorced an abusive alcoholic and later married a WWII veteran, who adopted my dad for the second time in his life at the age of 8). Turns out that my dad’s grandmother was full blooded Irish. My dad’s adoptive parents were poor and I remember stories of him almost starving to death as a youth in New Mexico while they staked a prospector’s claim near Magdalena New Mexico hoping to strike it rich – they did fail.

St Patrick’s Day always reminded me that my dad’s birthday would be on the following day. He also liked to drink beer but not the green kind LOL. Lately, I listen to the calm, relaxing music of Tim Janis while do my 6 blood pressure checks. If I can totally quiet my mind (not always possible but good practice), I can get my blood pressure down. Today I chose his Celtic Country offering with images from Ireland and flute music. I managed to get my blood pressure down 14 points over the 6 readings.

We used to go to a neighbor’s house for Corned Beef and Cabbage on St Patrick’s Day. She made the best and her parents came from County Cork so it was in her genes. She was a tiny elf like lady but often drank too much (maybe a cultural tendency) and was not patient with the arrival of our oldest son as he became a toddler, so we quit attending. After her husband ended up in a nursing home, we hiked up to their house. It was located up the perennial creek that flows by our own home and so we arrived to visit her, staunchly holding down their home base next to a lake.

We don’t eat beef anymore and potatoes are strictly a no-no given my blood sugar issues. Sigh. We won’t really be doing anything to celebrate “the” day this year (though quietly in my own way, I am). Even so, as I listened to Tim Janis’ music, I was able to feel deep into my Irish roots. What a wonderful feeling it is to know I have very old and deep roots. It will always be wrong in my own heart’s understandings that adoptees are robbed of this knowledge. There can be no good excuse and many adoptees are working to change that issue.

Not A “New” Life

This comment came up in a discussion about how adoptive parents change the name of their adoptee when the adoption is finalized. One woman commented – “Nothing wrong with that, we started using his new name too to get him used to it. New life, new name.” She was quickly corrected – “I need you to fucking not. Adoption isn’t a “new life”, it’s a continuation of the life they are already living. This comment is insensitive at best.” This one had started new childcare job. She is a domestic infant adoptee. One child in her class is in the process of being adopted and that X is their legal name and Y is the name the adoptive parents have chosen to change it to. This child isn’t an infant, so the childcare workers are basically having to train the child to respond to a new name.

I will admit, I did a little sleuthing into the one who made the insensitive comment but could find nothing definite except that she is relatively new in the all things adoption group. There are some interesting photos but nothing certain as to her status in adoptionland but her comment seems to indicate an adoption there.

Lacking that, I looked for some context and found this recent (Oct 2022) article in The Atlantic LINK>Adoption Is Not a Fairy-Tale Ending, with the subtitle – It’s a complicated beginning. While maybe not perfectly what I was looking for, I did see how it begins – In America, popular narratives about adoption tend to focus on happy endings. Poor mothers who were predestined to give their children away for a “better life”; unwanted kids turned into chosen ones; made-for-television reunions years later. Since childhood, these story lines about the industry of infant adoptions had gradually seeped into my subconscious from movies, books, and the news.

The author, Erika Hayasaki, notes – researching a book on identical twins raised in radically different circumstances, the reality of adoption is far more complicated than some might think—and, as many adoptees and scholars have argued, deserving of a more clear-eyed appraisal across American culture. Her book, Somewhere Sisters, chronicles identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam in 1998, and their mother struggled to care for them. Isabella (born Loan) was adopted by a wealthy, white American family that gave her a new name and raised her in the suburbs of Chicago. Hà was adopted by a biological aunt and her partner, and grew up in a rural village in Vietnam with sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons.

Twins have always fascinated me. I was born a Gemini and have always wondered what happened to my twin. When I was a child, my 13 month younger sister and I were often dressed alike and sometimes people thought we were twins. When my daughter was preschool age, she used to claim we were twins. I suppose I’ve had at least two surrogate twins in my life. I digress.

The author discovered that when reunions with birth families do happen, they aren’t always happy; they can be painful, confusing, or traumatic. Adoptees who are parents, lawyers, educators, or activists are challenging the rosy image of adoption that stubbornly persists in our culture. Children are not offered up for adoption in a vacuum. Many of them “are available because of certain, very strategic political policies.” Often the reasons for removing children from their parents comes under the heading of “neglect.” Throughout adoption history, this broad category has encompassed homelessness, poor hygiene, absent parents, and drug abuse in some instances, or simply leaving a child with caregivers outside the nuclear family.

A happily ever story after adoption often comes at the cost of forsaking everything that came before. The process, known in the adoptee community as coming out of the fog, refers to when an adoptee starts to see beyond the narrative about fate and question their true feelings about the adoption system, and how it has impacted their relationships, personalities, and identity formation. As the child of two adoptees, I also had my moment of coming out of the fog because adoption had seemed like the most natural thing to me until I was over 50, both of my parents had died and I began to discover my families true origins.

For me, coming out of the fog was, and continues to be, a process that involves simultaneously holding my adoptive grandparent’s love and good intentions in my heart’s memories alongside all the ways that adoption robbed me of what, for most people, is almost an unconsidered common reality. There are all of these contradictory realities within one’s experience of belonging to a family created by adoptions. The duality of that space can be hard for those without such a background to reasonably understand.

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe’s mother went into a mental hospital and left her to orphanages and foster care. In My Story, Monroe wrote that she recalled seeing her mother “screaming and laughing” as she was forcibly taken to a State Hospital.

At age 11, Norma Jeane was declared a ward of the state. She lived in a total of 11 foster homes throughout her youth; when there was no foster home available, she sometimes ended up at the Hollygrove Orphanage in Los Angeles. As if moving from one foster home to another wasn’t difficult enough, Norma Jeane recalled being treated harshly in several of them. Even worse, she was abused including sexually in at least three of her foster care placements.

Here is one story from the Daily Mail, “The magic red sweater that turned ‘Norma Jeane, string bean’ into Marilyn Monroe” –

She told of being whipped by one foster mother for having touched ‘the bad part’ of her body. Another more serious incident occurred when she was eight. One evening a lodger she called Mr. Kimmel (Marilyn said later that this was not his real name) asked her to come into his room and locked the door behind her. He put his arms around her. She kicked and struggled. He did what he wanted, telling her to be a good girl. (In a later interview Marilyn stated that the abuse involved fondling). When he let her out, he handed her a coin and told her to buy herself an ice cream. She threw the coin in his face and ran to tell her foster mother what happened, but the woman wouldn’t listen.

“Shame on you,” her foster mother said. “Mr. Kimmel’s my star boarder.” Norma Jeane went to her room and cried all night. Marilyn said she felt dirty and took baths for days after it happened to feel clean. Such repeated attempts to feel clean through showers or baths are typical behavior for victims of assault. Marilyn also said she began to stutter after the incident and reverted to it at times of stress. When she told one interviewer about the abuse, she began stuttering. The evidence points to the fact that she was an abused child whose early sexualization led to her inappropriate behavior as an adult.

One of the reasons she chose to marry at 16 was simply to escape her foster care takers. She never knew who her father was. After getting married at 16, she later divorced and became a new persona. She went from Norma Jeane Baker to Marilyn Monroe in order to fit in, be accepted, and wanted…what she never wanted was to become a sex object.

Not many seem to have recognized that she was dealing with abandonment trauma her entire life. She overdosed at the age of 36. According to an article at a site called Vigilant Citizen, behind Monroe’s photogenic smile was a fragile individual who was exploited and subjected to mind control by powerful handlers. Through trauma and psychological programming, Monroe a became high-level puppet of society’s elite, even becoming JFK’s paramour.

One “conspiracy theory” asserts – “Some children live in foster homes, or with adopted parents, or in orphanages, or with caretakers and guardians. Because these children are at the mercy of the non-related adults, these types of children frequently are sold to become mind-controlled slaves of the intelligence agencies.” ~ Fritz Springmeier, The Illuminati Formula to Create a Mind Control Slave. Not saying that I believe conspiracy theories but often there are some facts that are foundational to them.

Industry insiders convinced Norma Jeane to undergo aesthetic surgery, to change her name to Marilyn Monroe and to change her hair color to platinum blonde. Monroe’s sensual, “dumb blond” persona allowed her to land roles in several movies, which began a clear culture shift in Hollywood.