No Such Thing As Normal

An adoptee shares –

My adoptive mom would always have me getting diagnosed with nearly everything in the DSM growing up all the time. I’ve since come to the conclusion there is no such thing as normal. The point is, my voice was never heard as a child and I was on a million different meds and diagnosed with a million different things. I wasn’t ever diagnosed with autism specifically, but my adoptive mom suggested it many times to my doctors, as she did everything else because something clearly must be “wrong” with me (yeah normal adoption trauma, but we can’t talk about Bruno).

All I’m saying is be careful how you paint that picture. I was always pissed that my adoptive mom kept saying there was something wrong with me. All I ever wanted was to be normal. As I’ve grown older, I definitely notice I’m more intelligent than a lot of people and I’m quirky, sure. But to be diagnosed with ADD, bipolar, depression, BPD, and everything else? If I can get diagnosed with 15 things and no doctors can agree what is “wrong” with me, then isn’t it all just BS anyway?

(blogger’s comment) I loved my mom dearly (she in now deceased). My dad said she was a hypochondriac. She also did tend to think things were wrong with us too. Each of us as her daughters had experiences directly caused by that. All I can say is I’m glad we survived them. There may be some truth that much of it had to do with her being adopted (that pesky primal wound), though I can’t know that for certain.

Learn to live with how you are. Give your child the tools to do that. That’s it. That’s life. I think very few people truly require medication. Everything else is just learning who you are and having the coping skills to handle it.

The responses shared above (except my own blogger’s comments) were offered due to a post about a “child diagnosed as autistic at the age of 2, who has made huge strides (cognitively, developmentally, emotionally, socially, etc), however does not know/understand her autism diagnosis.”

(another blogger’s comment) Though it may be that all of the males in my family are somewhat Asperger’s, we never wanted them to be permanently labeled with a diagnosis. The closest we came was having the boys professionally evaluated after being homeschooled for many years, to make certain we had not failed to give them a good foundation (we had not failed). The psychologist said, I wish more parents with children like yours had your attitude about it. We have encouraged their interests, given them support regarding those but allowed them to create their own paths. Now at 18 and almost 22, they are awesome human beings with definite strengths and a strong sense of their individual character. We have no regrets about the choices we made during their childhoods.

Concerned United Birthparents

A woman in my all things adoption group wrote – None of my family understands and it’s eating me up, I need to talk to someone. First thing, is there anyone in here that choose adoption, found an amazing family, went the whole pregnancy talking to them, growing a relationship, became friends but then changed your mind once you held your baby?

This actually happens more often than you might think.

One response was this – I did change my mind but I was so scared to hurt them. I ended up being talked out of keeping my son by my caseworker. PLEASE keep your baby if you have any regrets on adoption. You’ll never get over the loss of your own child but they can adopt and love ANY baby in the world.

Another adoptee also said – Please keep your baby. That feeling you feel is what you are supposed to feel. Adoptive parents are not entitled to your baby. That’s your baby. The bond you will build cannot be replicated. They will be sad but that is not your problem. Their sadness is not worth a lifetime of trauma for your baby.

One birth mother suggested – Birth Moms Support Groups. She notes that a few women who made the choice to parent have stayed in for the continued support. She says, “I wish I could have had a full scope on adoption before placement, instead of all the “happy successful birth mother” stories I was sent by the agency.”

So I went looking and found this organization – Concerned United Birthparents – that titles, and is the graphic, for this blog. Concerned United Birthparents (CUB) provides support for all family members separated by adoption; resources to help prevent unnecessary family separations; education about the life-long impact on all who are affected by adoption; and advocates for fair and ethical adoption laws, policies, and practices. They are the only national organization focused on birthparents – their experiences, healing and wisdom. They list support groups – both online and in various cities. They do charge $45 for an annual membership. They note that they are an all-volunteer organization that operates almost entirely at cost through our membership dues.

Inclusive Adoption Narrative ?

Short on time today, I googled Christmas Adoptions and found this LINK>5 Holiday and Christmas Movies About Adoption at Adoptions with Love. No personal comments or perspectives today – again no time. Just bringing in the website description.

#2 – The Family Stone

Everett Stone – one of five adult children – brings his girlfriend, Meredith, home to meet the family for Christmas. Nervous and desperate to make a good first impression, Meredith fails to make a positive mark on the family.

One night, around the family table, the uncomfortable vibe in the room comes to a head, when Meredith asks Everett’s brother, Thad, about his forthcoming adoption with boyfriend, Patrick. She asks whether they believe in “nature vs. nurture” in regard to raising a child in a gay household. Questioning herself, Meredith suggests theories that homosexuality may be influenced by one’s home environment. The family works to lighten the conversation and joke that the matriarch, Sybil, had hoped that all three of her sons would grow up to be gay. Meredith questions this statement, suggesting that no parent would really “want that” for their child. Her comments offend Thad and Patrick, and enrage Sybil and family patriarch, Kelly. Sybil and Kelly shout at Meredith, and she runs off from the table feeling awful.

There are many important lessons within this scene. Once Meredith leaves the room, Sybil reminds her son, Thad, how deeply and completely she loves him. Sybil and Kelly are proud of their son. They support his same-sex relationship and are happy to see their child moving toward parenthood and toward the loving choice of adoption.

Meredith did not mean to offend or hurt anyone in the family. She was simply uneducated. She did not understand why her comments were hurtful and how off-base she was in sharing them. This is an important lesson in “listen and learn” when it comes to supporting LGBTQ+ families.

Before the film ends, Thad and Patrick return to Kelly’s house with their adopted child in tow. At the uncomfortable dinner scene, Thad and Patrick are asked whether they have a preference of the race of the child – since they are an interracial couple. They simply answer that they do not care one way or the other. They will love the child no matter the skin color. When the couple arrives with their baby, we see that he is black. This is a great example of a happy and loving transracial adoptive family.

Ancestral Reverence

It is the final Dia de los Muertos and my thoughts are on my ancestors. The image comes from LINK> Christiane Pelmas site for Women’s Ancestral Reverence Group – Weaving Our Radical Roots In These Darkening Times. It is an Autumnal Equinox Kiva. I have scattered roots of American, Mexican and Native experiences in my life having been born in Las Cruces New Mexico and growing up in El Paso Texas. My family often vacationed on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation campgrounds in Ruidoso New Mexico. Once my sons, husband and I spent Christmas Eve at the Acoma Sky City Pueblo.

My ancestors include my deceased parents, their original parents and their adoptive parents. Therefore, I have 8 grandparents instead of the usual 4. The original grandparents are people I never knew but that I now know had lives – information that was kept from me until after my parents deaths. I like Christiane’s site because when adoption is part of one’s core self there is trauma. It can’t be helped but it can be healed. I believe much of what I have been doing since I set off on my genetic roots journey in the Autumn of 2017 has been to heal the broken threads.

So for today, I will share some excerpts from Christiane’s site. I would add that I am aware that many people have uncomfortable relationships with one or more of the members of their family. She writes – “Nearly all human cultures (with the exception of western industrial, capitalist culture) practice complex rituals designed to foster on-going intimacy with, and healing of, their ancestral lineages (deceased relations of our blood lines). In western industrialized culture (and increasingly around the world, as Patriarchy colonizes more, and more, of the globe) we suffer from a devastating orphaning.”

Christiane writes of 3 intentions for practicing Ancestral Healing –

[1] to make connections with people of our blood and bone; those ancestral relatives who are vibrantly well and eager to provide us with their support, love and guidance as we journey through our lives. And in the case of my adoptive grandparents, I will add the people of my heart.

[2] to heal the significant trauma burdens woven deeply into most human lineages today; trauma burdens caused by endless war, poverty, social and economic injustice, environmental devastation and the diaspora it causes, racism, sexism and all forms of intolerance and violence toward the multiplicity and diversity of Life’s expressions. So much pain. In this healing process, the brilliance and medicine of each lineage is excavated and brought forward into its present-day expression, which is my very life, the life of my daughter and the lives of my grandchildren. We all live because they lived.

[3] to do the intimate ancestral healing work necessary – so that we are capable of turning our attention to the tremendous harm we continue to cause the ability of the Earth to sustain us all. I remember within my online social networking community there was developed what was called the Gaia Minute. A daily communion with the Earth (I often did mine in the darkness at night under the stars). From that practice I came to see the Earth as my deepest core mother. Not to leave the Sun out, I acknowledge the father energy that sparks all life with existence.

In my Science of Mind magazine Daily Guide for today written by the Rev Dr Dennis Merritt Jones, he shares this affirmation – “Everywhere I go, I see only the sacred presence of the Beloved One clothing itself in a multitude of divine disguises.” He also writes that Ernest Holmes dined with a vase of weeds on his table. A reminder that the only difference between a weed and a rose was the value we place on one over the other. Through a long reckoning in my own heart, I am balancing my genetic grandparents with those who adopted my parents.

Feeling Like Damaged Goods

It’s a problem I feel compassion for – from a woman who aged out of foster care . . .

I never was adopted. I almost was and then, my dad got custody. Then, I went back into foster care from the age of 13 until I turned 18. When you’re a teen in foster care, everyone knows no one wants you because you’re too old. It sucks. Like you’re just damaged goods.

Advice to hopeful adoptive parents – Maybe use your desire to reach out and get to know and/or adopt a teen.

I will say from personal experience, it’s not easy. Because for me – I was damaged goods. But I still deserved to know I had worth and was loved. Teenagers also can make choices regarding adoption and name change vs younger kids who can’t. So if you’re wanting to adopt to “be the change”, and not just because you want a baby to cuddle, then actually make real contribution to change. Help someone in foster care who is likely to turn 18 while still in the state’s care. When they look at their future, there seems to be no one there who cares.

Poor Choice in Men

I found this movie uncomfortable but sadly, it is all too true of many modern American women. I’ve written before about the value of grandmothers in the raising of children and this movie was partly about that. However, what was sad and depressing was the poor choice in men that the main character, Deb, consistently made.

First, it was an affair with a married man. I wish I could say that this was an uncommon situation but I remember more than one in my early 20s after I was first divorced from the father of my oldest child, my precious daughter. This woman also has a precious daughter, unfortunately, she goes missing without a trace after leaving her 1 year old son in her mother’s care to go out for the night. I never felt at fault for the man’s behavior. He was going to do, what he was going to do, regardless of who he did it with.

So at the beginning of this movie, Deb is having an affair with a married man. Later on, she has a live in partner who dominates and then, physically abuses her. After he leaves and she spends a significant amount of time focused on getting some advanced education and a better paying job and receives a great deal of respect for what she accomplishes for her workers in her management role there. Then, she seems to have found happiness with yet another man who appears to be of a higher quality than all of the others before him. She eventually catches him cheating on her, just as the first man she was with cheated on his own wife.

Sigh. I give her endurance and persistence to improve to be a credit of having a supportive family – her mother and sister, who is in a stable marriage, live right across the street from her in a middle class suburban neighborhood. They are the stabilizing factor in both this woman’s and her maturing grandson’s lives. Yet, if they had not been there, it is likely the boy would have ended up in foster care. His good outcome can be seen as a direct outcome of that family support, rather than if he had been permanently severed from the family he was born into, even though in this story his mother never returns into any of their lives (though I hoped until the very end of this movie that she would).

My dad used to say all of his daughters always brought home sick puppies. I can see, if my own life had not taken a better turn when I met my husband – with whom I will celebrate 34 years of marriage this month, my life may not have been happier single on the path I was on before meeting him. The only redeeming factor for me was discovering the value of applying metaphysics to my basic needs and discovering how much personal influence I actually have over the outcomes of my own life. We all can exercise personal empowerment over the circumstances and situations of our own lives.

Youth Villages

My husband called my attention to an article at NPR.org – “18 can mean an abrupt exit from foster care. For some, it’s no longer a solo journey.” I already knew somewhat about aging out of foster care and the effects of that.

What attracted my attention was this – Helping young people see that they can have a stable future is the goal of the LifeSet program. Developed in 1999 by the Memphis nonprofit Youth Villages, it is being used today in 18 states and Washington, DC. I appreciate this from their Mission and Values statements – “When at all possible, children belong with their families. We help families provide the support and structure that all children need.”

Also this – We develop innovative programs that serve children and families facing the most challenging circumstances. Our entrepreneurial spirit leads us to test the limits of existing services and create new opportunities. We provide care and treatment for children in an open, safe environment. We ensure that young people are physically and emotionally safe. We help children and families develop skills to live successfully by focusing on areas that have a long-term impact on the family.

LifeSet puts transition-age youth in the driver’s seat of their lives with a trained specialist by their side to help them identify and achieve goals. It is is an individualized, evidence-informed community-based program that is highly intensive. LifeSet specialists meet with participants face to face at least once each week. They text, email and call young people regularly throughout the week, when needed. Specialists stabilize even the toughest situations and help young people build healthy relationships, obtain safe housing, education and employment. LifeSet is one of the nation’s first — and now one of the largest — evidence-informed programs helping young people who age out of foster care. More than 20,000 young people have helped through LifeSet across the country since the program began in 1999.

Ukrainian War Orphans

It was already on my mind. Wondering if the adoption agencies are gearing up for a bunch of white orphans from Ukraine. Well, it isn’t happening at this early stage but already I found a troubling article in The Guardian by Katy Fallon. As has happened with Mexican children at the US border, desperate parents are sending children alone to meet relatives across the border in Poland but they are not being met by anyone.

Children are going missing and cases of human trafficking are being reported by aid groups and volunteers along Ukraine’s borders amid the chaos of the refugee crisis triggered by the Russian invasion. Charities and rights groups working in neighboring countries to receive refugees said they had seen cases of trafficking, missing children, extortion and exploitation as more than 2.5 million people crossed into neighboring countries to escape the escalating violence.

“This is obviously extremely distressing for a child and can lead to them wandering around the station alone, disoriented and in the worst-case scenario, disappearing altogether. This, unfortunately, is not a hypothetical case – it has happened already,” Karolina Wierzbińska a coordinator for Homo Faber said. “We are also already getting reports of cases of human trafficking and women being offered work in Poland only to find the workplace is illegitimate, the employer is mistreating them, refusing to pay their salary on time. There are cases of extortion of personal documents or money.”

Homo Faber, a human rights organization based in Lublin, Poland, has been working at all four border crossing points to mitigate the risks and has set up a 24-hour helpline, operated by Ukrainian speaking volunteers trained to support women and children crossing the border. At nearly every train station near border crossings, crowds of people, often men, hold cardboard signs offering refugees lifts to destinations across Europe. Wierzbińska said it was impossible to vet every person offering to drive refugees to friends or family before they picked people up. Polish border guards have been helping to distribute the organization’s leaflets, which detail how to keep personal documents safe, how to prepare for travelling through busy train stations with children and what to do if someone offers you a ride but changes the destination during the journey.

“We feel strongly that information should reach women before they cross into Poland,” Wierzbińska said. “These are people dealing with serious trauma. The amount of conflicting information, decisions to be made – the sheer volume of stimuli can lead to a cognitive overload. The sooner they are made aware of the situation awaiting them in Poland, the more time they have to process it.”

Monika Molnárová, from Caritas Slovakia’s stop human trafficking team, said Slovakia’s national unit for combatting human trafficking was working at the border and had intervened to protect women and children in suspected cases. “The risk of trafficking is considerable, as the refugees, exhausted and deprived of any basic comfort, are, with every new day on the road, more and more vulnerable. We believe traffickers and recruiters are most probably targeting both women travelling alone and women travelling with children,” she said.

At a temporary camp for refugees near the border, run by Slovakian authorities, camp manager Sergej Savin said that they did not allow ad hoc transportation of people from the site. He added that there had been people who had turned up offering rides. “In some cases, it was not good. For example, there was a man, he wanted only one woman and four children. I told him to go. We cannot do this like that,” he said.

Usually the UN would register refugees at the border and identify vulnerable people such as unaccompanied children. “Now, obviously, because of the sheer scale of the numbers who are coming over, and the fact that the borders are effectively just open, this isn’t happening, which makes it incredibly difficult to identify children who are unaccompanied and separated,” said Joe English, a UNICEF spokesperson. He said that the agency was setting up a system of ‘blue dot’ safe spaces for children in seven countries receiving refugees.

Feeling Broken

An adoptee writes – Do any other adoptees struggle with feeling like they will never fully fit in anywhere – not at work, not with a friend group, etc? I even feel like an outsider in many adoptee support groups being a “transracial” adoptee – being black and adopted into a white family seems to be outside of the norm even for adoptee. I’m wondering if I will ever find a group where I really feel “included.” a lot of this comes down to race, at least for me. Being raised in a white suburban family I struggle to fit in with other black people, and obviously I will never fully fit in with non black people. My mom was especially “racially abusive”. Culturally black things, like how to care for my natural hair texture, were never taught to me. I’m 28 years old and still learning how to care for and style my own hair, it’s depressing especially because I can’t really relate to other black women because of this lack in how I was raised.

She finds lots of support from other adoptees who feel that too, even without the racial complications, and many who have the same racial complications show up too.

Yep. Always felt this way! I didn’t find out my full adoption story until a few weeks ago. It all makes sense now. You know how when friends are walking in a group, there’s always that one person that awkwardly lags behind, while the group makes no effort to make room for them? That’s me.

I certainly have no true understanding of being a trans-racial adoptee but simply as an adoptee, I sooo related to your feelings of not fitting in anywhere. It was and still is huge with my brother (he too was adopted and we are like oil and water), with my cousins and friends etc. Actually everyone. The difference is I am a white adoptee, adopted by white parents and probably much older than you. I will be 70 in May. All my life, in all situations, I have and still do to a point feel this way. So I can only imagine how much more challenging it is for you. I am so sorry you feel like I do. Stinks that is for sure.

Hi, I am also a trans-racial adoptee too. Definitely have felt not Asian enough and not American enough plenty of times. I’m currently at an age where idgaf as much as I used to. It also helps to be living in an area where there were more people from the Korean Asian Diaspora around who are also navigating life not ever feeling like they fit in.

Take a look at Hannah Jackson Matthews. She is an adult Black trans-racial adoptee. Hannah Matthews is a writer and educator, who employs her personal experiences and formal education to make the journeys of fellow trans-racial adoptees to self-acceptance and identity reclamation less isolating and injurious. There appear to be plenty of other Black trans-racial adoptees following her social media.

Also suggested is a Facebook group – Transracial Adoption – Community of Learning and Support. Though a word of warning from someone else – “I feel like that group has the most disrespectful and toxic adoptive parents that I have ever witnessed in a mixed group.” There are other groups with “Only” in their name that seem better. Two examples – Support Group For Transracial Adoptees Only OR Transracial Adoptees: POC transracial adoptees.

Trans-racial adoptee, too. I spend a lot of time in the ambiguous in-between, too. Some days it bothers me, other days not as much, but it’s ever present. The only place I’ve ever felt like I truly belonged is in the family I’ve created myself. Big TRA-y hug to you.

I’m not a TRA, so I definitely won’t speak on that as it’s not my lane. But the rest of it? 100% I’ve always had trouble feeling like I fit in. I try too hard, and I feel like I’m constantly being judged.

Yes, I have my entire life, including with my families – all of them. I’m sorry you have been invalidated as a TRA – you guys definitely get an extra helping of crap to deal with that I (infant domestic) do not.

I’m an adoptee, I am white adopted into a white family, but they always made me feel less than. I know that’s different than what you’ve experienced, but if you ever need to talk or vent, I will listen and empathize. I’m so very sorry you feel like an outsider.

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about feeling like I never fit in and how lonely it is. I always assumed it was from being bullied in Middle and High School.

Yep. The way I relate to people is broken and I try every time to fix it but I am just broken.

Yes I always feel this way. I’ve tried to go to therapy for it but it’s just permanent.

Yes! I was a transracial adoption, so I grew up in an all white community, schools, family etc. I’m of a lighter skin tone and I get colorism comments from my black community about how I can pass, etc and that really hurts to hear when your entire life even though your race and culture were erased from you. I didn’t fit in with the white kids growing up due to the fact I was black, adopted, not Mormon, and having parents who smoked. Even though I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood, I had a mother who lived to punish me by buying her clothes at the mall and mine at Kmart. We moved when I was 17 to a more diversified community. I still didn’t fit in. I struggled so hard being around black people because I wasn’t raised around them. I fit in with what now feels like other “outcasted races” Native Americans and Hispanics. And also because of my complexion, I’m now often confused for Hispanic and when I say I don’t speak Spanish when spoken to in Spanish, I feel as though they think I’m “too good for my race.”

I’ve never been in the popular group at schools, even growing up in the same neighborhood as most of the popular kids, and I’ve never been way popular at jobs either. Went to a multi-cultural church for 6 years, was in charge of helping plan and execute Vacation Bible School and I was only seen as “Becky with the good hair” that can bake and craft. Always being told to be grateful and how blessed you are, yet I think how ?

Who did this arrangement bless ? My adoptive mom got her “heart’s desire” by getting her “peanut butter skinned brown baby girl.” #becauseadoption

It Isn’t Fair

It could happen to anyone . . . today’s tragic story.

I am being forced to sign an adoption agreement tomorrow. With it comes a gag order. I won’t be able to speak to my experiences as much after that. My kids were in foster care because of my ex. I’ve been ruled fit however the children have been bad mouthed so much by the fosters that they are unwilling to return home. It’s this or I have to go to trial and lose any hope of contact with them. I am only doing this at their request and at the last possible minute. I always wanted my children. I always loved and supported and kept them safe. It’s not my fault I’m poor and the system is abusive. I fought hard for almost 10 years and it was never going to be good enough for the department. I’m beyond destroyed.

I submitted yesterday. I had to go in open court today and sign and consent. The judge was patronizing. The kids refusing to come home would mean I would just by default lose in court. I asked for therapy and assessments but because the kids’ therapists said that it wouldn’t be in the kids best interest, the social worker refused and the judge refused to allow it. Anyway, an assessment would have come out against reunification. They argued that however it happened, they were damaged now so we just have to make the best of it.

As the blog author, I relate to this comment – I cannot imagine the anguish you are experiencing. I am so sorry that this is happening, has happened and unfortunately, will happen again- to someone else.

In fact, I believe that my mom ended up adopted because Georgia Tann threatened to have her declared unfit because she wasn’t able to find a way to provide financially for her self and her baby quickly enough. Tann’s good friend, Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley, was certain to have done it if she was requested to.