Credible About Foster Care

I’ve read a book about a woman’s experiences in foster care and in my all things adoption group I’ve seen many stories about really horrific foster care placements – of course, not all foster parents are that bad – but sadly, some are. They don’t have the love of a genetic, biological parent. LINK>Antwone Fisher suffered twelve years of abuse in his foster care home placement.

Born to a teenage mother in prison only a couple of months after his father was shot to death at a mistress’ apartment, the movie Antwone Fisher with Derek Luke and Denzel Washington depicts the horrific childhood he survived while in foster care. In the movie, homeless and on the street in Cleveland, he reconnects with a childhood friend and witnesses the shooting of that friend in a robbery attempt. At the age of 14, the real Antwone Fisher spent time in a penal institution for teenaged boys in western Pennsylvania, leaving at the age of 17.

Antwone entered the United States Navy, where he served his country for eleven years; nine years at sea, two ashore, four deployments and one forward deployment duty, stationed aboard the USS St. Louis LKA 116. Denzel Washington is the naval psychiatrist in the movie who assists him in the emotional journey to confront his painful past. Ultimately with his psychiatrist’s prodding, he finally finds his first family and experiences the kind of fraught reception that some experience when confronting their first mother for answers about their abandonment. There is also a wonderful reunion with the extended family of Antwone’s deceased father.

He wrote a poem –

Who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own?

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps.

Who will cry for the little boy?
He walked the burning sand
Who will cry for the little boy?
The boy inside the man.

Who will cry for the little boy?
Who knows well hurt and pain
Who will cry for the little boy?
He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be
Who will cry for the little boy?
Who cries inside of me

After his discharge from the navy, Antwone took a job with Sony Pictures Studios, working as a Security Officer for eight months, before he began writing the screenplay for his own story. On April 23, 2013. Antwone testified before the Senate Finance Committee for a hearing titled: The Antwone Fisher Story as a Case Study for Child Welfare.

Antwone has worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter for more than thirty years with an impressive fifteen film writing projects, script doctoring or script consultant assignments with the major studios. Antwone’s present screenwriting project is with Columbia Pictures. He is the screenwriter of his own story for the movie my family watched last night. I highly recommend it.

Heredity Or Environment

I had not heard of this poem before but read about it today. A lot of adoptees are familiar with it and many hate it (so a word of advice to adoptive parents – just don’t). One notes that for an adopted child – culture, facial features, accents – all of it is so important. Blogger’s note – for the child of 2 adoptees, all of that mattered to me as well. As to the question – heredity or environment ? – I would quickly say that I am the product of both. My ancestors’ genes and the Mexican border region where I grew up.

One adoptee notes that – for some reason A LOT of adoptive parents seem to not really like their children… (Not all of them but MORE THEN I could have imagined). Blogger’s note – I would say that my adoptee mom often felt like she disappointed her adoptive mother. Now that I have the whole adoption file from the state of Tennessee, I can see letters in my adoptive grandmother’s easily recognizable handwriting about how over the moon happy she was initially with my baby mom. But children grow up – always.

One adoptee actually re-wrote the poem – (Blogger’s note, the sentiments match so much I’ve read over the last few years)

Legacy Of An Adopted Child
The Rewrite

Once there were two women,
who never knew each other

One you learned how not to remember,
the other you learned to call mother

Two different lives,
shaped to make you a pretend one

One became your deep black hole,
The other your imploding sun

The first one gave you life,
yet chose to give you away

The second taught you to live it,
in all but fake way

The first gave you a need for love,
that soon would be denied,

The second there to give it,
if only you learn to comply

One gave you a nationality,
that they chose you to not live,

The other changed your name,
your own mother chose to give

One gave you emotions,
that you would soon learn to squash,

The other fed your fears,
that they themselves had taught

One saw your first sweet smile,
still chose to hand you off,

The other dried your tears,
forgetting your deep loss

One made an adoption plan,
which sounds so politically correct,

The other prayed for a child,
and thinks God let her collect.

And now you ask me through your tears,
which of these you’re a product of,
One, my darling, one

Adopters can be so smug

~ Joy Belle, 2018

A transracial adoptee also wrote one and said “I’ve always hated that poem”.

The Fallacy of the Transracially Adopted Child

Once there were two women who never knew each other
One you don’t remember, one paid to be your mother

Two women’s lives forever changed to shape your little one,
Leaving you with trauma that could never be undone.

One gave you ethnicity, and one erased your name,
and then was called your rescuer for “saving” you from pain.

One gave you emotions that you struggle to suppress
with performative gratitude to mask your deep duress.

One coerced to give you up, told it was best for you,
But if she’d had that 30k, she could have raised you too.

One prayed for her own white babe, but met with sticker-shock,
And then she saw your bargain price on the modern auction block.

That same one finally took you home, her consolation prize
with curly hair, and plump full lips, brown skin and deep brown eyes

The other one left wondering if she made the right decision,
Or if her heart will ever heal from the pain of your excision.

And so you wonder through countless years
Of expectations and hidden fears

Was your arrival preordained by a hand from heaven above,
Or did your 2nd mom purchase you to fill her need for love?

~ Renata Hornik, 2021

Blogger’s note – The originaI version is author unknown. I do hope the poets don’t object since I do not have express permission to share these, though they are signed with a copyright date. These are true unfettered adoptee voices and I honor them today by sharing their feelings with my readers.

The Trauma Isn’t The Same

An adoptee was troubled by her birth mother’s awkward attempts to communicate and find some kind of common ground. As a mother who didn’t raise my own daughter after the age of 3 after a divorce, I understand how difficult it can be for an absent mother. I remember really have trouble finding a commercial birthday card that reflected my relationship with my daughter. Now, I just make my own with a software program.

So this original mother made a really poor choice by sharing a poem that really didn’t reflect the adoptee’s or this mother’s life experience and the adoptee felt angry and I can honestly understand why.

The fate of a mother is to wait for her children. You wait for them when you’re pregnant.
You wait on them when they get out of school. You wait on for them to get home after a night out.

You wait on them when they start their own lives.
You wait for them when they get home from work to come home to a nice dinner.
You wait for them with love, with anxiety and sometimes with anger that passes immediately when you see them and you can hug them.

Make sure your old mom doesn’t have to wait any longer.
Visit her, love her, hug the one who loved you like no one else ever will.
Don’t make her wait, she’s expecting this from you.
Because the membranes get old but the heart of a mother never gets old.
Love her as you can.
No person will love you like your mother will.

I think it was a cry for love and more connection but it fails given the circumstances.

Someone tried to translate this – Some people express themselves wrong as well, because they don’t know how. This poem says “I’m struggling to say this but I waited and waited for years to have a relationship, I’ve always loved you and I want to be able to have that relationship” the part at the end doesn’t strike me as the message. Again, this is how I see it.

I can easily understand that many women who surrender a child to adoption do wait a long time for the child to grow up so that they can have some hope of resuming a relationship. Sometimes it doesn’t happen in time – as it was with my mom, who’s own original mother was dead before she could connect. Now that I have the adoption file and have visited my grandmother’s grave, I believe she was always waiting. The name on the grave is the more childish name “Lizzie Lou” that was on my mom’s original birth certificate, rather than the more mature name “Elizabeth” I saw on a letter after the surrender and on the divorce papers when my mom’s original father legally ended his relationship with that wife.

An adoptee says it clearly – I disagree that first moms (unless they were adoptees also) suffer “just as much” trauma as adoptees. Most first moms don’t start life with sheer torture and live life in fight or flight mode. They don’t spend their childhoods lost in a fog of confusion getting gaslighted and tricked by their families. I have very much sympathy for first moms and the terrible trauma they endure but I would never equate that to what adoptees suffer as infants and children. Adoption shapes our entire lives. First mom trauma happens later in life. They are different.

Infants experience pre-cognitive trauma. Babies have no previous identity or knowledge of their self before the trauma. The memory is stored in the hippocampus without narrative as pure emotion, which is terror and powerlessness. This can get triggered and manifest as emotional flashbacks. And those might plague a person for a long time, if not adequately addressed in therapy.

Infants grow 75% of their brain mass between age zero to age 3. Trauma during rapid brain growth can be more impactful. Trauma “in the first two years followed by ten years of bliss is more damaging than ten years of adversity after 2 years of baby bliss” ~ Dr Bruce Perry, who co-authored a book with Oprah Winfrey – What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing.

Oprah writes – although I experienced abuse and trauma as a child, my brain found ways to adapt. This is where hope lives for all of us—in the unique adaptability of our miraculous brains. I hope that with our book #WhatHappenedToYou, you begin to find the tools to build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate your responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships.

Birth Mom Saturday

Never heard of this until this morning. Apparently an effort by adoptive and prospective adoptive couples to make moms feel better about giving up their baby but it may be more like rubbing salt into a very tender wound that a conveyance of gratitude.

My understanding is that this is “officially” designated for the Saturday before Mother’s Day which is already painful for any mother separated from her child for whatever reason. It is un-natural for any mother.

It could be a really beautiful thing if it was run by first mothers and for first mothers. But also, the fact that it’s separate from Mother’s Day feels WRONG because they are mothers. Also it’s definitely NOT OK to treat first mothers as incubators which those memes and posts feel like.

One adoptive mother wrote on Instagram – “I know my babies mamas have had a hard life of fighting demons and feeling unloved and a million other nightmares. But they both chose life for my forever humans (my note – what ?) and that’s so very significant. They chose to bring these kids into the world and I’m overflowing with gratitude because of that. First mamas are part of our kid’s stories. And today I honor that chapter and their role.”

It is said that this day of recognition was originally started by a birth mother to show support for other birth mothers. I don’t know the original name or the year started. It appears that the concept has been “taken over” by the pro-adoption crowd to promote more babies being surrendered to increase the supply of babies for them. It is being misrepresented and used for a different motive now, than it’s original and intended meaning.

One woman contributed this insight – “As a First Mother, I’ve never cared for it. We don’t have an Adoptive Mothers’ Day. Why the need to preface and differentiate? (I can only answer that from my own perspective) Being a part of Birth/First/Natural Mother Support Groups, I’ve found that those who are relatively new to adoption or do not have contact with their children tend to find solace and comfort in having a day that is specifically for them.”

According to the linked YouTube, Birthmother Day was supposed to be about the forgotten mothers being remembered. Breaking the Silence is a poem by Mary Jean Wolch-Marsh. Very heartrending to listen to this spoken. https://youtu.be/zUg6ap8H2Tk

There is much more to the stories of adoption than it appears in the happy stories of elated couples building families with someone else’s children.