Shout Out To Fathers

It’s Father’s Day and so I should acknowledge that other gender in humanity and what they give to kids when they want to be a father. All too often, fatherhood comes upon a male of our species unplanned and unasked for. That can have a tragic outcome for the child who’s mother is also unprepared to parent. Many times these children end up adopted with all the complications and trauma that entails. Sometimes, the mother tries but the children end up in foster care – either adopted eventually or again out of the system.

In my own case, the three children I have birthed were all planned. I am grateful for that. Both fathers have been good fathers to their children. My own dad, gone now for almost a decade, did the “right thing” by my teenage mom and me when she turned up pregnant, still in high school, and after he had only started at a university. He gave up his own dreams of higher education to go to work in a refinery – often very long, double shift hours – to support his family which eventually included 2 younger sisters for me as well.

My own daughter ended up being raised by her dad and step-mother when I proved unable to financially provide for the two of us as a single mom. Though that left me feeling like a failure as a mom, when I remarried later in life, my husband surprised me by telling me after a couple of Margaritas that he had been thinking he wanted to be a dad after all (he had been grateful I had already done that and that there was no pressure on him). He has been an awesome, dedicated father willing to drop whatever else he was doing if called up by his sons. I was healed of some of my earlier motherhood issues by discovering I could actually be a decent mom.

Many times, in my all things adoption related group, men have stepped up and actually fought the legal system to regain a child that was given up for adoption by their single mom. I have a huge admiration for such men and they do an awesome job of parenting. Happy Father’s Day to all men who have found themselves, one way or other, parenting a child – especially those who had to do so without the mom’s involvement, for whatever reason. You are true heroes !!

Can Scapegoats Recover ?

Painting by Bea Jones

The short answer is yes. So often I read about adoptees who have been psychologically abused, usually by a narcissistic adoptive mother but it could just as easily be a narcissistic adoptive father.

There is so much to learn about scapegoating, when one goes looking. I read that the concept of a scapegoat has a very long history, some of it religious. It has even been an animal, a literal goat, upon which a community would place the blame for all of it’s sins. Then the goat was sent away.

One male adoptee wrote an essay for Severance magazine – LINK>I Am More Than My Fathers by David Sanchez Brown. He notes “I was not the dream son my adoptive parents envisioned I’d be. I was a clumsy, overweight kid with Coke-bottle thick glasses and learning disabilities who couldn’t seem to do anything right . . .” He later writes “I never connected my feelings about myself with having been adopted. I thought I was a failure and unworthy of unconditional love.” He also notes the common plight of many adoptees – “I didn’t look or act like anyone else in the family. I stuck out like a sore thumb and I became the family scapegoat.”

My interest in looking at this concept was triggered when I read this from a Facebook acquaintance – “I was a scapegoat. I knew I got blamed for things and then I learned it’s called scapegoating. And, I knew I had been scapegoated.” Then she notes – “I am now a recovering scapegoat.” Yet, owns this – “I’m just saying I find claiming what I can change empowering. I’m a scapegoat who is a massive people pleaser.” And many adoptees do become people pleasers in an effort to find acceptance.

Dr Elvira Aletta has some suggestions in her LINK>”10 Tips to Survive Being the Scapegoat at Home.” She ends this piece with “If you’re just beginning to understand how scapegoated you are, take it easy. Once your eyes are opened you might begin to see it everywhere.” Yes, it does seem to be rather common, sadly.

I end this blog today with some thoughts from the Daily Guide in the Science of Mind magazine – “You ae whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness you may not even know about. You are never alone. and you already belong. You belong to life. You belong to this moment, this breath.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

And this one might apply especially to adoptees – “All human endeavor is an attempt to get back to first principles, to find such an inward wholeness that all sense of fear, doubt and uncertainty vanishes.” ~ Ernest Holmes, The Art of Life pg 9

The truth for every human being is that we are neither bad nor broken. We have the absolute ability to become clear, confident, aware and certain. We can chose wholeness over limitation. We can understand that there have been no mistakes but only opportunities for us to learn about ourselves and our world. We grow in wholeness as we learn to be vigilant, not assigning fault or blame to ourselves – or to others. Better to see everything that has happened or that happens, even the things we do not like, as a piece that fits in the fabric of what is our actual lived experience. It is ours to define.

Little Orphan Cassidy

I am somewhat a fan of the program Saturday Night Live though I never watch the whole program and rarely the sketches. Usually on Sunday morning, it is a guilty pleasure, to look up the cold open and weekend update segments. I started doing this in 2016 after our former president was elected. Therefore, I missed this sketch until I learned about this in my all things adoption group.

The video, LINK>YouTube, for this indicates that an orphan (Chloe Troast) sings to the moon (Timothée Chalamet) about not getting adopted in a Saturday Night Live sketch – Little Orphan Cassidy. I noticed the old building has a sign over the door – Ms Pippinstuffs’ Home for Unwanted Girls.

So, I just watched the sketch (link above, if you want to watch it your self). Certainly, the feeling expressed at the beginning won’t be totally alien to people who were adopted later in childhood but not as infants. However, if she is really 26 years old, she should have aged out of the system 8 years earlier. Actually, then she admits that she is already 27 years old. It goes downhill from there. No wonder some adoptees found it troubling, however, SNL sometimes does go a bit too far attempting humor.

Here is what some adoptees said about this sketch –

First, the adoptee who shared a link to the video wrote – I saw this SNL skit and feel a lot of emotions about it but don’t know exactly how to express them. I’m curious what everyone else thinks about it

Adoptee – not cool or funny. Two things really irk me. [1] I do not enjoy having my trauma being the gag. How many other traumatized people have theirs twisted like this? [2] The theme is there is something wrong with you to not get adopted. Like it’s a life goal.

From someone in foster care as a youth – I also saw this and not sure what to think. I love Timothée Chalamet and SNL, but they do offensive things all the time and that’s their thing. For me, I think the most important voices are former Foster Care teens or adults who have lived through group homes.

No Contact

It is not uncommon now to see adoptees who have gone “no contact” – either with adoptive families or with their original genetic families. I will admit that I had to go no contact with my youngest sister, so I get why sometimes this is the best decision.

For example, this adoptee –

I’m no contact with all of my adopted family and most of my biological family. They’ve hurt me repeatedly by gaslighting, emotional manipulation and abuse, silence, lies (not to mention the outright physical abuse I experienced in childhood)….. and I’m done. Even my biological brother, whom I thought I’d always be close to, has joined in.

When I say I’m cutting toxicity out of my life, I MEAN IT. Friends, family, coworkers, jobs, personal behaviors and mentality – Wherever toxicity might be found, I won’t be. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to please others and fit in because then MAYBE they won’t leave me.

I no longer care.

I’m tired of going out of my way for “family” just to have them talk about me behind my back. I’ve dropped everything to help people who wouldn’t even lend me a smile.

No. More.

Goodbye and good riddance to them all. Best of luck on their future endeavors, but count me out. And though I know it’s the right choice, I’m really needing some emotional support and validation.

And the emotional support comes . . . from an adoptive parent. Removing toxic people from your life may be hard but so worthwhile. Rebuild your relationships with a family of choice. Good friends, partners, can go a long way in supporting you. Congratulations on the beginning of a life away from guilt and toxicity.

And this from another adoptee – Hugs! I went no contact with my adoptive parents years ago, no regrets. I had one brief unavoidable blip, which reinforced what a good choice I made. My younger sister, who was only 1 when she was adopted/went into foster care (I was 10 at the time) has minimal engagement with them. They will ask about me but she puts up the boundary. She’s not comfortable giving them updates about my life, since I have no relationship with them.

Irony is – she used to gatekeep me from my sisters, after I was forced from their home at 17 (just one of many previous times) and my biological family before that, so I find it validating that my families don’t get what they want now (at one time, my adoptive mother liked to brag about how I’m doing well because of their sacrifice and the hard decisions they made to help me help myself). When she told me about the reason why my adoptive mother thinks she was cut off (ie not invited to another family event with their biological son) I laughed because it just goes to show how clueless she really is and how little she actually DID listen to me, before I cut her off.

I have little to no contact with my biological family, least of all with their own monkeys and circus. The contact I do have is mostly initiated on my part (zero effort on the sibling’s part to connect with me, minimum from my mother and other relatives) and I’ve gone full no contact at times with my dad, depending on where he’s at in his addiction cycle.

I have no regrets. Only a slight regret for not putting up boundaries earlier because I felt I had to have some contact with some family because you know, I have no family otherwise (my in-laws are not super fans of me either, they are judgmental and don’t understand CPTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) or why my husband is with someone as ‘broken’ as I am (they see us minimally – maybe a handful of times per year now.) I now no longer give a f**** about what I do or do not say, that may or may not upset them. It used to tear me up and I’d think OMG was I too loud ?, too this or too that, and feel like a big POS and not worthy of their love, until I realized their lack of acceptance had to do with THEIR stuff and NOT mine. Mine was just easier to focus on because I was so transparent about everything, which is not how they roll.

Why It Happens

Birthmom here – I am looking for a little encouragement from anyone who has experienced open adoption and that had a good experience. I unfortunately did not join any groups like this one where adoptee voices are prioritized while pregnant and did move forward with the adoption, and I grieve every single day.

I had a small handful of friends encourage me to keep my baby with me, but the majority of friends and family told me that they thought adoption was the right thing to do and that I was making a good choice. It sounded nice, but it was so hurtful to feel like I wasn’t good enough for my baby. And I love him so much, I didn’t want to make a “selfish” choice and keep him with me when there was another family that would be better for him.

Now that I read all of these posts from mature adoptees and I’m heartbroken that I didn’t believe in myself and that I gave him away. When I was pregnant and in financial hardship, feeling alone and emotional – I only wanted to do the right thing. And I felt so little confidence in myself, and hearing those other voices saying that “adoption is love” and “adoption is selfless”, made me feel like I’d be selfish for wanting to keep my baby because I’d put him into a life of struggle and financial insecurity.

So I broke my own heart and put myself last. I live with a deep pain and a regret that will last the rest of my days. I love my mom, and I’ve told her how hurtful it was when I was pregnant to hear her tell me that she thought I did the right thing by choosing adoption. She says she would have supported me either way – but I know that if I kept my baby with me, it would have been with minimal support to prove her point – that I am not enough and to punish me for getting pregnant when I couldn’t support myself and my 17 year old son.

My 17 year old (who was 15 during the time I was pregnant) encouraged me to go through with adoption because he said that life was hard with it being just the 2 of us. And that the baby deserved more and deserved to have both a mom and a dad. Having my son tell me these things was also hurtful because I feel like I’m a great mom to him, but if he thinks these things, then he added on to those feelings like I wasn’t good enough.

My baby is now 10 months old and we have an open adoption. I’m hoping that he grows up feeling loved and secure. I have a great relationship with his adoptive parents and I really love who and how they are, but I do miss him everyday. I can’t change the past or the decision I made, though I wish I could. My true wish is that he was still with me. I wish I stumbled across a group like this one before I made that permanent decision. But I didn’t. The only thing I can do now is move forward with life as it is and hope that everything will turn out ok.

Not The Same

Raising adoptees is not the same as raising biological kids. An adoptees reactions are not the same. Their emotions are not the same. Their needs are not the same. They SEE and FEEL things differently. They process interactions with others differently and often in a way that is negative towards their own selves. Adoptive parents NEED to know this and recognize this.

You need to weigh your words and actions before you do them and think about what you are saying and talk through in your own head how your words and actions might be received by the adoptee in your life….and adjust accordingly.

Just because your child seems happy and outgoing or in control on the outside does not mean she/he isn’t struggling on the inside. Adoption creates trauma and from what I learned from many adoptee accounts is that trauma usually creates a person that struggles a lot with self esteem, fear of rejection and control. Those seem to be pretty consistent.

Here’s one first person account of how it feels –

My adoptive mom was running errands and so was late to pick me up from an after school activity. Everyone was gone and it was just the teacher and me. First I was super uncomfortable and embarrassed to be the only one still there. As each minute passed, I was petrified she was not coming. I had pretty instantly started writing this script in my head..”she’s not coming, the teacher is going to have to call the principal, what if something terrible happened to her, I am sure my dad will not let me stay with them, where would I go”….and in and on it went. It didn’t end when my adoptive mom finally showed up. Those feelings that invoked, turned into a week of crying, and others in my family thought there was no reason for my behavior. That is was just random crying at literally everything. It would come out of nowhere.

She ends her sharing with this appeal –

Don’t let your kids be me. I don’t wish that on anyone. The emotional toll is immense. It changed my life in ways I wish it didn’t. Learn all you can about the trauma response and help meet them where they need you to be, not where they tell you or where you or anyone else thinks they should be. If you are listening, you will eventually get it and your actions and reactions with your child will come naturally to you in beneficial and supportive ways.