When Does It Happen ?

From an adoptee – Sometimes I wonder if there is something wrong with me because I stopped loving my adoptive father. I don’t understand (this isn’t me judging anyone that feels differently) how adults can forgive and still love their abusive parents. I don’t love my father. I used to. Then I was sad. Now indifferent.

I stopped loving him when my daughter arrived because I finally understood how easy it is to love your child.

I don’t know if this is because I’m adopted or because he was abusive. Or maybe combo of the both. I stopped loving him. I know this because when he died, I didn’t care. I had used all my tears up by then. I felt indifferent.

Can you relate?

This person did – my father was abusive. I don’t think I ever loved him. I used to look up to him before I realized how bad the abuse was. When my son started to look more like me than his dad I broke down in tears wondering how he could decide to hurt me. I didn’t cry when he died until several years after, then I cried for the lack of the father I deserved in my childhood. It’s hard for me to love someone whose only job was to love me but completely failed.

blogger’s note – I am winding down how much I post here. Soon, I will be making a long distance move and really won’t have the time but there is a lot here that I think can be helpful and some that another person may want to push back against – it happens – and I am grateful for the reality checks. Wishing all a good holiday season and a better new year (or at least as good of one as life can hand you).

Hard Things

It has taken me longer than I expected but I’m still trying to get myself back on track with what I want to do going forward. This post (not my own story) inspired me to do something in that direction today.

I am the parent of a preschooler adopted from foster care who has been with our family since birth. We are in contact with some biological family members. There are some really painful things in kiddo’s history and birth family, including for example NAS (Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome – withdrawal secondary to intrauterine drug exposure) and FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder – exposed to alcohol before birth) diagnoses and a birth parent incarcerated for what I would consider one of the worst crimes to commit. I have taken on board the wisdom of making sure kiddo has all the information I have about birth family by pre-teen / early teen years. No way should their first encounter with these hard things be through a search engine. I can imagine some ways I might verbalize these hard things. But I would really appreciate example scripts, models, and personal stories. How have others introduced hard pieces of kids’ stories? How have you worded these things? How did you age- appropriately build in all the pieces? What kinds of questions have your kids asked in response, and how did you answer them? Getting input from others would be useful.

First response – Age appropriate language and honesty is the only way. No opinions, no hearsay, only what you know to be true and can verify through records. The earlier they can begin to process the hard stuff at an appropriate level, the better the long-term outcomes for their mental health.

Second response – Be sure to frame it as choice, illness, circumstances, etc (whichever it may be) vs the person themselves being “bad”. This can help your child understand that they themselves are not inherently “bad” just because a family member lost rights, was incarcerated, etc.

From personal experience – My incredibly humble two cents….because of some “garbage” as I term it that has happened to me, I have been forced to learn a lot about trauma and the impact of intergenerational trauma and mental health. I would suggest that any family background you can learn *might* be useful for giving your child a full story.

From another parent – I’m in this boat too. Very similar story and a lot of medical implications for my son consequently. I’m trying to explain adoption and all the history in an age appropriate way to a child who also has impairment. It is HARD. He can’t ask questions in a normal way so you never know how much to tell without flooding him but still wanting to build a foundation of honesty.

This suggestion – Look into creating a Life Book for them as a tool for discussion. Maybe you can work on it together? It will help you put things in context and use it as talking points. Be sure to remove all aspects of judgment about a situation or action, use simple plain language terms. Something else to think about it “truth” as we know it today changes over time. New revelations may come out over the years that alter what you think you know now. (It happened with one of my kiddos.) Listening to adult adoptees talking about how they were told their stories made me realize how important it is to frame information as “we were told this…” and not to make a statement that implied we KNEW the whole truth about something. It can be a bit tricky.

Unfortunate experiences along the way – What occurred with my kids, re: the life and death of their one parent and the crime their stepparent committed was horrible. Students in my 7, 8, and 12 year old classes bullied my kids because their parents found information about my kids parents on the web. Some kids told my 7 year old, that their parent who died was in hell, because all drug dealers belong in hell. My 12 year old never had friends, because parents didn’t want their kids around a kid whose parent’s crime was so horrific. I have talked with compassion to my kids, about the parent who died. I’ve talked in small pieces about other people who have committed the crime of the other parent. I have not been specific to anything that is not information found on the web. I’m letting their therapist address this, but the kids are now 12 and 13 and have told me I need to be honest with them, so I do answer specific questions they ask me. I let them be in control of what they want to know. I wish I had words of wisdom to share, but I don’t. Your family is in my thoughts.

Unexpected Regrets

Even in the reality of so much, unexpected regrets can hit due to grief and no good way to have made it all come out better. Today’s story – a kinship adoptee writes “my biological mother was always in and out of my life. My WHOLE life she struggled with addiction. I always took her in, always took care of her, always tried to help her stay sober. July of last year my biological brother un-alived himself and that same day my biological mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

I took my mom in to try to fight her battle with cancer but she kept testing positive for drug use, so they wouldn’t do her chemo. That lead me having to deny her staying with me because I couldn’t risk someone in active addiction in my house with my children. The last time she left the nursing home (because at this point the cancer was getting bad) to go be with her dealer, after me begging her to just stay clean and be my mom and a grandma, I had to cut off contact.

About a week and a half before she passed, she sent me a video telling me she was dying and she only had a few months left. She had signed a DNR and was going into hospice. I honestly didn’t really believe her as she was a compulsive liar and did things like this in the past for attention. However, I opened back up contact, just in case. She kept telling me her dying wish was to come be with me. live with me and my children, until she passed. I had just bought my first home a week before. I didn’t want the trauma connected to her passing in my home.

By the time I went to see her at the hospital, a few days later, she was delusional – thought I was a caseworker and my kids were actually her kids. She became so violent I had to take the kids home but did come back. She couldn’t have a real conversation but would randomly say my name or tell me she loved me. A few days later, she died two minutes before I got off work. This happened in April. My mother, who had a treatable cancer, died in less than a year due to not being strong enough to fight her addiction.

No matter how bad or crappy of a mother my mom was – I still want my mom to this day. The loss of her has destroyed me inside. On top of ALL of this because I WAS ADOPTED AND SHE WASNT ON MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE, I NO LONGER WAS THE NEXT OF KIN!!!!!’ This part KILLED me. I was the next of kin until someone told them “you know she was adopted and she isn’t her legal mom anymore”. This took any chance I had to grieve in the way I wanted. They had her cremated immediately.

I get shamed because I didn’t take her in during her dying days. I get shamed for missing her now because I wouldn’t let her live with me, when she was alive but addicted. Sometimes I feel guilty for not doing more.

Alone With No One There

A woman writes – Sitting in some unpleasant, sad, gross feelings lately. Both my mothers, biological and a non-bio/fictive kinship guardian, are deceased. Neither family is…there. I have one elderly family member from my biological mom’s side that I am -not- blood related to, due to my biological mom being adopted herself. The fictive kin family cut contact with me immediately after that second mom passed away (no explanation, nothing). I feel like I am drifting in a void, and untethered. I feel isolated from my peers and I can’t relate. Christmases, birthdays, going through hardships, even celebrating the big, joyous things, the milestones! It all feels quite lonely. And I don’t have it in me to find more eloquent words to describe how sad this makes me feel, but I can only hope someone out here gets it and we can sit in this together. Thanks for reading me.

One shared her own approach – I formed a family with my pets & then also with my best friend.

One person notes – It’s hard being alone with no connections.

Someone says – I wish I could hug you right now and be there for all your good moments to celebrate and moments like this, so you don’t feel alone.

An adoptee shares – I was there too. I’ve taken the last 24 years and built a new family for myself full of non-blood people who care deeply about me and I about them.

From another adoptee – orphaned at 10, I very much relate & sit in it every day, and so I am with you now in these feelings.

When It Is Too Little Too Late

An adoptee wrote – For the first time today, at the age of 34, I was able to connect with my first biological relative. Unfortunately, she shared with me that my biological mother passed away a few years ago… To say I am devastated is an understatement. I don’t even know how to feel, I am grieving so many things that I can’t even put my finger one. I will never be able to talk to her. I will never get to ask her why she made the decisions she did… I am sad for reason I can’t even understand.

Blogger’s note – In the 1990s, my adoptee mother appealed to the state of Tennessee to release her adoption file to her. She was denied and still fought back but to no effect. All the state did tell her was that her mother had died some time ago and that the status of her father (who was much older than her mother) was unknown. They told her that he had two daughters who were “not” related to her ? though they had the same father. It’s a pity because the youngest sister was still alive until 2017 and had always hoped my mom (who she knew about) would turn up, so they could chat. My mom felt much the same as the woman who’s story I share today.

Another adoptee noted – Adoption means loss, loss, and more loss. It’s completely understandable (at least to those of us who were adopted) why you are grieving. You won’t be able to meet your mother this side of heaven. There is nothing much worse than that.

Yet another confirms – Your feelings are totally valid. I had met my biological mom once before she passed but we never had any real conversation or connection and her loss hit me hard because I knew that opportunity was gone.

An adoptee notes – That is so sad. I am so sorry. Everyone wants to know “their story” …. how they came to be and why they were adopted.

Another note from your blogger – I do have my mom’s adoption file now and it is heartbreaking because she would have learned so much, if it had been given to her when she asked for it. Her mother was a victim of Georgia Tann and was exploited in the midst of a 1930s devastating flood on the Mississippi River and so, as she was separated from her husband, who she was legally married to. He was in Arkansas helping with the flood efforts through his employment with the WPA, when my grandmother arrived in Memphis with my infant mom. My grandmother fought to keep my mom but Tann was too well connected to stop it.

What Is Stopping You ?

A natural mother who had two children placed for adoption, asks these questions of adoptive parents – have you actually done the work to work to reunify your child with their biological family and relinquish *your* rights to them ? Have you asked their birth family, if they are now in a place to have their children returned, if they wanted their child back ? For those of you who have open adoption, support visits, talk about how the biological families are doing well and raising other children since placing… What is stopping you from working to repair that family ? Adoption is trauma (even when the child is adopted from birth). So what is stopping you from releasing your hold on that child, and putting them back with their biological family members, if they are in a better place or more able now to raise their child ?

Response by an adoptee – The person who matters the most in this situation is now the child. Both adults have made the choice to adopt and “give up”. If the kids want to be with their REAL family, they should be allowed to do as they please. And each case is so very different. But if the child doesn’t want to be with the natural mother because they are used to the family they are living with, then I think the child gets to make that decision as well. This SHOULD be the child(ren)’s choice to make and no one’s else’s. They are the most affected by it. And this is what both the adopted parents and biological parents should consider – when adopting or giving up for adoption.

An adoptive parent shares – the youngest child in our house is 8; we are guardians. Recently, his mother’s situation has improved. She has said on more than one occasion “I could not handle him” (he has fetal alcohol spectrum disorders – and it creates stress responses and impulse control considerations that are really hard). We listened to that – and know there is more going on for her than just the behaviors – there is grief of her loss(es), there is guilt for the fetal alcohol exposure and other history. He is at a developmental stage where he is processing the loss in his history – and at this moment in time, doesn’t want contact with her. But that is just now, and he is just 8 and it could change. We hold all the needs of all involved loosely, and center him. It’s hard and complex. I appreciate very much your perspective to center him. That can get lost in “adult” conversation.

The one who asked the questions clarifies – have any adoptive parents ASKED the child if they would want to go back to their biological parents or families… Not just hand them over with no communication. I see adoptive parents all the time saying how they know adoption is wrong… But I wonder about those with infants and toddler- if they’ve even tried to see about positively reunifying the family… or older children who have contact, have they asked that question. I think it all looks good on “paper” to say adoption is wrong… but I’m more so curious if there are any wo have actually done the work or made an effort to reverse the situation.

Another adoptee shares her perspective – what is the child’s choice ? What do they want ? Being adopted from birth, if I was randomly given back to my birth family – it’d be adding trauma to trauma. I’d be losing my parents, my siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins etc AGAIN but this time, they are the only ones I’ve ever known and to once again go and live with strangers ? This shouldn’t be about what’s owed to the birth parents or the adoptive parents but the child’s choice. Being re-abandoned after abandonment doesn’t feel like the healthiest option, once adoption is already done. Maybe it’d be different if I weren’t adopted from birth. I can’t speak for those who were adopted at an older age. I’d say having a truly open adoption would be helpful in this situation and if the child ever decides to go no contact with either party or wants to live with the other, that should be allowed. The ball should be in the adoptee’s court.

Another adoptee admitted – This post rubbed me the wrong way because it centers the desires of the biological family and not the actual child. I would not have wanted to be “given back” and would have been murderously angry at any and all adults in my life, if they tried to facilitate this without my input (and my input would have been: absolutely not) once I was old enough to know what was going on. Adoption itself is trauma but the trauma can never be undone, even with reunification. (Of course if the child is actively asking to go back to their biological family, that’s a different story.)

One shares a personal story – My eldest sister escaped the system because her dad took her. Myself and our two other youngest sisters were adopted with me from foster care. I was 12 at that time. My sister got her eldest two half siblings back post adoption after their adopted mom passed away. Her husband was not able to parent alone. Two of the teens had trauma from loss already, then added loss. It was not something anyone prepared him for. My oldest niece suffers from borderline personality disorder (imo from the broken attachments and abandonment issues). No legal ties were changed. They are adults now, but the third who actually went to their school has no contact because her adopters won’t allow it. Unbelievable, the kids got in trouble at school for conversing ! That is Insane !

Some Lives Are Difficult

Not the Girl in this story

Today’s story comes out of a foster parent help and support group. It concerns a 4 yr old girl who was placed with them when she was only 2 years old. Her biological mom passed away 3 mos after she had been placed with a foster family. Her biological dad has been in prison the entire time. She calls her foster parents mom and dad and has no recollection of her original parents.

She is now going to be transitioned to an adoptive home. The foster parents have tried to explain to her that they are not her parents and that she’s going to have new parents. To their credit, they are concerned about the trauma this may cause her.

They don’t want her to feel abandoned but their agency is not giving them any guidance about how to handle this situation. The agency is giving the foster parents 2 months to prepare the little girl and she will have a lot of visits with her new parents during that time period.

One adoptee stated – You should adopt her if she is fully integrated into your family and calling you Mom and Dad. You have no other option. If you don’t want to adopt her, then how has this gone on for 2 years?

Another blamed the agency – The agency failed the child too. They never should have let this go on, and should have been facilitating at least phone calls with dad in jail. To which the original commenter (who is not the foster parent in question) replied – I am not downplaying how the agency has messed up. I just do not understand how you can have a child living in your home and not advocate and be honest with them. It sickens me.

Then came a reality check from someone who experienced foster care – that depends what he’s in prison for. If he’s been in prison the entire time, then his parental rights were terminated before the child had conscious and accessible memories. If he’s serving time for any restricted offenses, then the state does not allow any contact with that incarcerated relative. My biological dad was incarcerated and not allowed to have contact with me because one of his charges was child endangerment and the others were drug related offenses within school zones. Therefore, there was no mandate or legal channel for visiting or communication with him, while I was in active foster care, even as a teen, and especially not with my foster parent facilitating it.

Hard Truths

It’s easy to be righteous about “life” and extreme in your anti-abortion views – perhaps you should open your heart to read this story in today’s Huffington Post LINK>A Letter To My 1-Year-Old Son About His Abortion. The truth is, for many women (myself included) an abortion is just a waypoint on the way to having other children.

The article is full of the REAL reasons some women must resort to an abortion. Near the end, the father says – We won’t tell you about the joy Dub Dub (grandma) felt knowing you were on your way, or how hard Pop Pop (grandpa) tried to live long enough to meet you, only to pass away on the last Sunday in January, exactly three weeks before you were born. We won’t explain how heartbreaking it is to become a parent just as you’ve lost your own.

We will wait until you are ready . . . We will wait to explain Roe vs. Wade, and make sure you know how to raise your voice when the moment demands it, because women shouldn’t have to face this fight on their own. We will wait to explain how dark our world was during that time, but never miss a chance to tell you that you were the one ray of light.

We will wait until you are older to tell you the bad parts, and how they outnumbered the good. We will wait until you are grown to tell you how fortunate we were to live where we did, because if we hadn’t, we might not have had you.

Missing My Moms

My mom in 2014

My husband wished me a Happy Mother’s Day, when he woke today. Not long ago, I told him I miss BOTH of our moms. His mom died in 2009 and my mom in 2015.

My mother-in-law with her cat.

My mother-in-law was a gem. She always treated me like the daughter she never had (she was mother to 3 boys). She was more a mom to me, for over the 20 years I had with her, than my own mom lived many miles away. If I was lucky, I saw her once a year and sometimes, not even that much. Mostly we communicated by phone or email.

My mom yearned to connect with her birth mother but the state of Tennessee refused her persistent requests until she gave up. Less than a decade later, the state came to the conclusion that victims of the Georgia Tann scandal should be allowed to have their adoption files but no one ever told my mom. In 2017, as her descendent, I was allowed to receive it and saw a picture of my genetic maternal grandmother for the first time.

The Reality Is Nuanced

Rachel on her 5th birthday

Rachel found my old blog LINK>Adoptee Birthdays (written in 2022) and left a link to hers in a comment there. She is a transracial, inter-country adoptee and adult third culture kid.

Rachel offers her own insights and compassion at LINK>New Beginnings Psychotherapy in Moreton Bay Australia. She is a LGBTQ+ woman of color. She wrote a blog on the topic of Adoptee’s Birthdays that was posted today (her own birthday was last week).

She was relinquished through abandonment and grew up with no information about her first, or biological, family. (blogger’s note – I can relate. I grew up with no original family information about my adoptee parents, they both were, genetic families. I was able to uncover those stories after both of my parents died 4 mos apart after more than 50 years of marriage to one another.)

She notes that “Many consider adoption a ‘cut and paste’ exercise into making a family; a beautiful opportunity to ‘save a child’ from poor or difficult circumstances. A happy ending, not to be spoken about further.”

She explains that speaking out about an adoptee’s struggle leads to being ostracized or shamed. However, the reality of adoption is that it is nuanced, complex, lifelong, and always has loss at its core. For a new family to be created, there is always a loss of an original one.

Please do read her blog which was posted today.