Fragility is often called out in regard to adoptive parents. Today’s blog was inspired by a mother who lost her child to adoption. This mother admits – I am also fragile. It’s often pointed out in response to an adoptive parent’s fragility. I am working on this. What is helping is getting all the adoption conditioning out of my body, heart, mind and soul. It’s deep and intense yet this work is helping.
My image above came from a Facebook page called LINK>The Open Adoption Project which focuses on improving adoptee experiences by encouraging open communication. Regarding this situation, they say “Sometimes, tragedy turns to triumph.” They note, Stevoni, the mom that Aymee is referring to, was struggling with drug addiction when her kids were removed from her care and placed with her ex-husband’s wife, Aymee. Stevoni’s parental rights were eventually terminated. Aymee adopted the kids. There were years of struggle and heartache with Stevoni going in and out of prison. Stevoni and Aymee eventually laid aside their differences for the kids. The Open Adoption Project says the two have formed one of the most admirable open adoptions we’ve seen. Stevoni now helps incarcerated individuals recover from their own addictions and is an active part of her kids’ lives.
So back to the original comment – Adoptive parents often get called out regarding their fragility. She says, I rarely see them change. Then, goes on to share her theory (while hoping she’s wrong).
Emotional manipulation of your adopted child/adult (withholding important information from them in relation to their biological family, guilt trips, passive aggressive behavior, savorism, jealousy, ownership, etc) is not because you are blind to your mind games, these behaviors are intentional.
Why? Perhaps because it is dynamic and this behavior has been in place from Day 1. The adopted child is groomed to feel responsible for your feelings. You like this dynamic because it makes you feel better.
Here’s the thing. Mind games are not Love. So if you are fragile and choosing to not deal with it, this is not love. It’s dysfunctional and extremely harmful. If you truly love your adopted kids, work on this. It’s not that hard but it does take work.
I spent a week in Oregon at Jean Houston’s house and she talked about that John Lennon song, Mind Games. The lyrics reflected John’s interest in a book with that title by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. The book stressed tapping into our mental potential to effect global change. So, just because, here is the song.
I would have rather that they named the movie Children of Women but that’s just me. Children of Men is a 2006 dystopian action thriller film. It is not a world that any of us would want to live in.
It was co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The screenplay is based on PD James’ 1992 novel The Children of Men. The film is set in 2027, after two decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse.
A single woman, Kee, mysteriously becomes pregnant and must be protected and assisted in escaping the chaos. After her baby is born, everyone is awed to see it. She finally arrives for sanctuary with The Human Project, a secretive scientific group dedicated to curing humanity’s infertility.
The effects on the environment of degradation had produced not only eighteen years of total human infertility, but also war and global depression. Director Alfonso Cuarón notes – “The fact that this child will be the child of an African woman has to do with the fact that humanity started in Africa. We’re putting the future of humanity in the hands of the dispossessed and creating a new humanity to spring out of that.”
It is definitely a cautionary tale for our ongoing extreme climate events today. I remember that my aquarium once became overpopulated with snails. I did not take any action but eventually, the snails quite reproducing and ultimately died out. I believe our Earth has the ability to balance Itself – and maybe COVID was some part of that. Who knows ?
Born George Alexander Aberle in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish father, George Philip Aberle, and an English mother Margaret Annie (Mason) Aberle. He spent his early years in the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York. He then traveled in an LINK>Orphan Train and was adopted, in 1917, by a family in Chanute, Kansas, and raised under the name George McGrew.
In 1941, he arrived in Los Angeles and began playing piano in the Eutropheon, a small health food store and raw food restaurant on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The cafe was owned by John and Vera Richter, who followed a Naturmensch and Lebensreform philosophy influenced by the LINK>Wandervogel movement in Germany. (A protest against industrialization expressed by hiking and communing with nature in the woods.) He was a vegetarian. He recalled once telling a policeman: “I look crazy but I’m not. And the funny thing is that other people don’t look crazy but they are.”
Their followers were known as “Nature Boys.” The concept brought him quiet fame when Nat King Cole recorded his song LINK>Nature Boy (also a favorite of my own). They wore long hair and beards and ate only raw fruits and vegetables. During this period, he adopted the name “eden ahbez”, choosing to spell his name with lower-case letters, claiming that only the words God and Infinity were worthy of capitalization.
Some time in 1947, he married Anna Jacobson, only a month after they met. The couple had a son, Tatha Om Ahbez. His wife died August 9, 1963 at the age of 47 from the complications of Leukemia. His son, who went by “Zoma,” drowned in 1971 at the age of 22.
Ahbez was discovered living under the Hollywood Sign and became the focus of a media frenzy when Nat King Cole’s version of “Nature Boy” shot to #1 on the Billboard charts and remained there for eight consecutive weeks during the summer of 1948. In early 1948, RKO Radio Pictures paid ahbez $10,000 for the rights to “Nature Boy” to use as the theme song for their film LINK>The Boy with Green Hair. He received credit as the song’s composer. Interestingly, the movie is about an orphan who wakes up with green hair and seeks solace in a nearby forest. He finds other orphans in the woods and they encourage him to spread news about the injustices of war.
When he was asked about racism, Ahbe replied, “Some white people hate black people, and some white people love black people, some black people hate white people, and some black people love white people. So you see it’s not an issue of black and white, it’s an issue of Lovers and Haters.” It was that theme of love that he continued to talk about, what was missing in the world, and what would be needed in the future if we are to survive. Some of his lyrics on Nature Boy include – “This he said to me…The greatest thing you’ll ever learn…Is just to love and be loved in return.”
Ahbez died on March 4, 1995, of injuries sustained in a car crash, at the age of 86.
The story tells of an intense desperation to hide a pregnancy. You can read the full piece at this LINK>After Receiving a 20-Year-Old Letter, Woman Discovers the Truth About Her Birth Parents. Due to China’s one-child policy, a couple pregnant with their second child hide by moving from place to place, eventually living on a boat at the end of the mother’s pregnancy. Out of fear, they deliver their own child on the boat with the father using a pair of sterilized scissors to cut the umbilical cord himself. Next, they left the baby in the market with a note attached –
“Our daughter, Jingzhi, was born at 10am on the 24th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, 1995. We have been forced by poverty and affairs of the world to abandon her. Oh, pity the hearts of fathers and mothers far and near! Thank you for saving our little daughter and taking her into your care. If the heavens have feelings, if we are brought together by fate, then let us meet again on the Broken Bridge in Hangzhou on the morning of the Qixi Festival in 10 or 20 years from now.”
The Qixi Festival is a Chinese festival celebrating the annual meeting of Zhinü and Niulang (the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl) who are characters found in Chinese mythology. They appear in a Chinese folk tale about the romance between them. The festival is celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh lunisolar month on the Chinese lunisolar calendar. This story became a BBC documentary titled Meet Me on the Bridge.
I encourage you to watch the YouTube. It gives the perspectives of the birth parents, adoptive parents and the adoptee. I read that Katie returned to China to learn more about the country she was born in and is teaching English. I don’t know whether she is still there or not.
My mom was full of sayings, actually my dad too. “Honesty is the best policy” was one. I guess it was a deep one for me, for I’ve always tried to be what I refer to as a “straight” shooter. I have a friend who says somewhere deep down inside, she always knew, even if what she deeply knew could not be fully articulated. Eventually, the truth came out. It usually does.
So, maybe I also knew that secrets never keep very well. As ignorant as we were, we never kept the truth of how they were conceived from our sons. Following advice I had seen offered, we told them abbreviated origin stories when they were yet very young, even if these were stories they were too young to fully grasp. After I learned our egg donor had done a 23 and Me test, I bought one for my husband and then test kits for both boys. They were older now and we could honestly discuss the whole situation with them and they could comprehend it fully. 23 and Me gives them a private channel of communication with their egg donor (genetic mother), if they chose. They have also spent time with her and her youngest son, when they were yet very young, though they’ve only seen photos of the other two. Distance and financial constraints negate our having very much contact.
Since learning my adoptee parents’ origin stories (they both were adopted), I’ve also learned a lot about all things adoption and that extends into donor conceived persons’ stories, as well as what is referred to as a non-parent event – meaning that someone discovers that at least one (or sometimes both) of the parents they thought were theirs – were not. This can be painful and difficult for one to wrap their mind around, especially if this knowledge comes late in life. That is what happened to Jon Baime when he was 54 years old.
His subsequent documentary is available at LINK>video on demand. This can be rented from the Microsoft Store, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play Movies, YouTube, or Spectrum On Demand.
Baime shares his journey in the interview with LINK>Severance Magazine. It is this interview where I got the title of today’s blog. It begins with this background – Imagine yourself in this scenario. You tell your 92-year-old father that you want to take a DNA test to learn more about your heritage. Your father says, “I don’t want you to take that test until after I’m dead!” You ask why, and he can’t or won’t tell you. What do you do? Naturally, you take the test, and your father says, “Fine, piss on my wish,” and you spend weeks waiting for the results and wondering what’s the big mystery.
That’s what happened to Jon Baime when he was 54-years old. You might think he shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the man he believed to be his father wasn’t related in any way, that he was in fact donor conceived, that his parents had been keeping a secret from him, about him. But even if you were raised in a family that keeps secrets, as he was, where children were often told that certain matters were none of their business—and even if you’ve always known that something in your family wasn’t quite adding up—it’s always a shock to find out your identity is not what you’ve always believed it to be, that your relationships changed in the moment you received your test results, that your whole world flipped upside down and there’s suddenly so much you don’t know that your head spins.
During the four years after his DNA surprise, he used his professional skills as an Atlanta-based producer of non-fiction projects, to unravel the family’s secrets and lies -researching and scrambling through a trove of family history in the form of photos and home movies, and traveling the country to interview his older brothers (also donor conceived with mixed reactions) and his new siblings (who had appeared as DNA matches). One sees why genetic mirroring can be important to a person in the photo below.
An adoptee writes – I just want to know: when does it stop? The pain? The crying for no apparent reason when my boyfriend leaves my townhome after a night together? The deep, abiding loneliness? I think that is what it is, anyway. It is so hard. I’ve been in therapy since the divorce over five years ago. Hell, I’ve been in therapy off and on my whole life. I thought there was something “wrong” with me until VERY recently when I heard the adoption trauma lecture on YouTube and after listening to the audiobook “What Happened to You?” by Oprah Winfrey.
This had me looking for the book. I found a review by by LINK>Sarah O’Connor on WordPress. She writes – What Happened To You? is an incredibly detailed book. The book looks at what happened to a person to cause certain behaviors, reactions, and lifestyles instead of assuming something is wrong with a person based on how they act. She thought it was a very accessible way of writing a book on trauma.
I also learned there is something called the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma which is a project of Columbia Journalism School. They have YouTube where their executive director Bruce Shapiro had a conversation with Oprah Winfrey and psychiatrist Bruce Perry MD.
So, good to know about this book. Back to the adoptee’s thoughts. One replies – I am trying to find words. Because mostly, this resonates. I think something people forget that us domestic infant adoptees are built on trauma. Like our first out of the womb experience is LOSS. How can we be “normal”? And just when I think I have dealt with a part of it, a new part of the pain and loss pops up and says hello. Just know you are not alone. (And I am very close in age to you.) The first woman responds – You’ve described it well: just a sense of deep loss… For as long ago as I can remember.
Another writes – I thought something was wrong with me until I hit 40 and learned about adoption trauma. I’m deconstructing too, so I can relate to the added layer of complexity and questions of belonging and identity. I also have complex post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve been doing intense therapy for several years, which helps. I try to take a lot of time for self care. Sometimes that looks like a cry and a nap. Other times it’s something more creative so I don’t fall into a funk. I don’t know if I will ever feel “normal.”
One writes – I was adopted as a small child internationally. I am now a mom of 4. Amidst the daily tasks and just life, I carry with me a deep sadness that can’t be pinpointed. It’s just there. The absence of my first parents and being far from my siblings is really soul fracturing. It feels like a brokenness in me I will live with forever.
Yet one more adoptee writes – I think I’ve realized it will never stop and I just have to learn to live with it in a way that doesn’t destroy me, which certainly isn’t an easy feat.
My adoptive parents were getting monthly subsidy or stipends or whatever it’s called for me since the adoption. I’m now 18, moving to college, and never looking back. Well, they can’t continue to get payments unless there’s proof of enrollment. They told me they needed proof of enrollment so they could help me with loans, which was a lie. I am so dumb. I gave it to them thinking they would actually help me but thank GOODNESS it wasn’t enough for them to get continued checks.
I found out they lied because they left the decline notice out in the open and I snooped. They want to extend getting checks until I’m 21 because our state allows it.
I am paying for my own education because they won’t help and I don’t even get financial aid help because THEY make too much money, even though THEY aren’t helping me. I paid for all my college applications, I paid for my own cap and gown, I am working so I can have some money saved. I’m so upset that I’m working so hard and they want to get more money to continue to not help me.
My issue is how do I block them from getting the money?? I don’t even care if it goes to me to help me pay for college. I’m not greedy. I don’t need the money to splurge. I need it because I want a good education. So I can afford school supplies. College is my only way out. I’m going to nursing school. I’ve worked so hard to get here on my own. It’s not fair.
I just don’t want them being compensated for me when they aren’t helping me. I contacted my old foster parents and they’re cool. They’re helping me where they can.
One suggestion was this – Was there a number on the decline notice for them to call of they had questions ? Call that number. Or call the county they live in and talk to someone in family services.
The woman responded – Do you think the number on the paper would tell my adoptive parents that I called ? I don’t want to ruin anything for myself before nursing school. I just need to hang on until August 20th, when I get to move into my dorm. I don’t want to be put out. I almost have all the money I need to get my stuff for school.
The one who made the suggestion agreed – I would wait until then. They were declined, so they aren’t getting money between now and when you go to school.
From her own website LINK>The Adopted Life – “Your parents are so amazing for adopting you. You should be grateful!”
Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily. Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees through sharing deeply personal stories, well-researched history and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption giving way to a fuller story that includes the impacts of racism, classism, family, love and belonging.
The search for her biological family was documented in the 2013 film “Closure.”
From the LINK>Seattle Times – Her new book from Beacon Press, “You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption,” explores Tucker’s life experience, her work with transracial adopted youth and the history of adoption in America. It’s both a powerful manifesto and a hopeful text that calls for reshaping how we talk and think about adoption.
The book uses terms from John Koenig’s “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.” Angela uses terms like “ghost kingdom” and “postnatal culture shock.” Angela says, “in the same way John Koenig feels there aren’t enough words to adequately describe all of our emotions, I feel that way about transracial adoption. We’re kind of boxed into things like, for kids, you’re an Oreo: Black on the outside, white on the inside. That morphs in adulthood, and what I hear adoptees I mentor talk about is [being a] racial imposter. I think it’s important we find new words that can articulate the complexity of our layers and also honor the truth of it.”
“It’s a beautiful thing to grow up having parents who understand at the root that an adoption is a sad thing, that we wish an adoption didn’t have to happen. I had parents who acknowledged that pain for all of us. I know so many adoptees for whom that part is not allowed any space. Even for those adopted for reasons that are legitimate, there’s still a loss. And bypassing that and going straight to, ‘You’re here now, look at this great life,’ many adoptees now can articulate it feeling like gaslighting. ‘Maybe I am crazy to wish for and to long for being connected to my kin. I have my own room, I have three square meals a day, I get to do all these extracurriculars. I must be crazy for not being more thankful for it.’ That gaslighting is, in this sense, synonymous with confusion.”
We watched The Woman King last night. Afterwards, my husband said, there’s your mom’s blog for tomorrow and I thought, yes, it fits and is appropriate. Nawi was conceived in rape. When her mother, Nanisca, escapes she finds herself with child. However, due to her life’s career as an Agojie warrior, she cannot raise her baby. In deep grief for having to let her go, she cuts her babies arm to insert a keepsake into it, a shark’s tooth, with no real intended outcome except to “mark” her baby in some manner.
The child is given to missionaries to raise but is adopted out. Her adoptive father attempts to sell her to an older man as one of his wives but the girl rejects him because in their initial meeting, he is already beating her. So her father takes her to the king’s palace to leave her for whatever his use of her will be. She also becomes a Agojie warrior. Eventually, her mother realizes, almost to her horror, that this is her own daughter returned to her. After a rocky reunion, the two women reunite as mother and daughter. The movie is a strong statement about the bonds of fierce sisterhood and female empowerment.
Maria Bello conceived the movie after visiting Benin. It was inspired by the true story of the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the 17th to 19th centuries. The Smithsonian magazine has an article on LINK>The Real Warriors Behind ‘The Woman King’ and an image of them. The Agojie became known to Europeans, who called them Amazons, seeing in them similarities to the warrior women of Greek mythology. The Woman King is therefore based on a true story but with extensive dramatic license. Though the broad strokes of the film are historically accurate, the majority of its characters are fictional. Nanisca and Nawi share names with documented members of the Agojie but are not exact mirrors of these women. King Ghezo reigned 1818 to 1858 and his son Glele reigned from 1858 to 1889. Together they presided over what’s seen as the golden age of Dahomean history. An era of economic prosperity and political strength.
The real Ghezo did successfully free Dahomey from its tributary status in 1823. But the kingdom’s involvement in the slave trade does not end (as it does in the movie) according the historical record. Dahomey was a key player in the trafficking of West Africans between the 1680s and early 1700s by selling their captives to European traders. The presence of Europeans and their demand for slaves was also one of the reasons for the monumental scale of Dahomey’s warfare.
In truth, Ghezo only agreed to end Dahomey’s participation in the slave trade in 1852, after years of pressure by the British government, which had abolished slavery (for not wholly altruistic reasons) in its own colonies in 1833. Though Ghezo did at one point explore palm oil production as an alternative source of revenue, it proved far less lucrative, and the king soon resumed Dahomey’s participation in the slave trade.
Portraying the Agojie, through Nanisca’s actions, as critics of the slave trade makes for a nice story. It probably is not historically accurate. Though these women were symbols of strength and power. They were complicit in a problematic system. They were under the patriarchy of the king and therefore participants in the slave trade. We also recently watched Black Panther, the all-woman Dora Milaje regiment is based on the Dahomey warriors.
The first recorded mention of the Agojie dates to 1729. The unit was possibly formed earlier, toward the beginning of Dahomey’s existence at the time of King Huegbadja who reigned from 1645 to 1685. He created a corps of woman elephant hunters. Queen Hangbe ruled briefly as regent following the death of her brother in the early 18th century. Some believe she may have introduced the women warriors as part of her palace guard. The Agojie reached their peak in the 19th century under Ghezo. Due to the kingdom’s ongoing wars, Dahomey’s male population had dropped significantly. This created an opportunity for women to replace men on the battlefield. The Agojie included volunteers and forced conscripts. Regiments were recruited from slaves, some of them captured as early as 10 years old. They also included the poor and girls who were rebellious like Nawi.
All of Dahomey’s women warriors lived in the royal palace alongside the king and his other wives, inhabiting a largely woman-dominated space. Aside from eunuchs and the king himself, no men were allowed in the palace after sunset. The Agojie they were restricted from having sex with men. To become an Agojie, recruits underwent intensive training, including exercises designed to harden them to bloodshed. In 1889, a French naval officer, Jean Bayol, witnessed Nanisca while still a teenager undergo a test (her person inspired the general in The Woman King). She had not yet killed anyone but easily passed the test by walking up to a condemned prisoner, swinging her sword three times with both hands. Then she calmly cut the last flesh that attached the head to the trunk and squeezed the blood off her weapon to swallow it.
Dahomey’s women warriors upset the French men’s understanding of gender roles and what women were supposed to do in a civilized society. The women’s flaunting of ferocity, physical power and fearlessness was manipulated or corrupted as Europeans started to interpret it for their own goals. The existence of the Agojie were simply more reasons for the French to conduct their civilizing mission, seeking to impose European ideals on African countries.
After facing defeat at the Battle of Atchoupa on April 20 1890, Dahomey agreed to a peace treaty assenting to French control but the peace lasted less than two years. Over the course of seven weeks in fall 1892, Dahomey’s army fought valiantly to repel the French. The Agojie participated in 23 separate engagements during that short time span, earning the enemy’s respect for their valor and dedication to the cause. One battle brought a moment of clarity for Dahomey’s king. He now realized the inevitability of their kingdom’s destruction. The last day of fighting was one of the most murderous of the entire war, beginning with the dramatic entrance of the last Amazons as well as the elephant hunters whose special assignment was to direct their fire at the officers. The French seized the Dahomey capital of Abomey on November 17 1892. After the war, some of the surviving Agojie followed their king, Béhanzin, into exile in Martinique.
French colonization proved detrimental to women’s rights in Dahomey. The colonizers barred women from political leadership and educational opportunities. Nawi, the last known surviving Agojie with battlefield experience, died in 1979 at an age well over 100 years old.
Sharing some thoughts from an article in The Guardian – LINK>Not being able to have a baby was devastating – then I found people who embraced a childfree life by Helen Pidd. Adoptees in my all things adoption community often suggest that couples struggling with infertility accept remaining childless rather than adopting someone else’s baby and inflicting trauma on that child.
The author writes that her three rounds of IVF produced 24 eggs and six decent embryos, none of which resulted in a baby. Therefore, they decided to stop trying. Not everyone seemed to respect their decision. Imagining they were being helpful, they would share stories about their friends who had succeeded on the seventh try or had gone down the egg-donation route.
She tells the story of Mia and Laura, who are married but had decided early on not to have children – they just didn’t feel that children were the key to a meaningful and worthwhile existence and didn’t fancy the day-to-day drudgery of parenting. There’s a freedom that comes from opting out of motherhood before you hit your 30s. She notes – “Having children is a good way of not having to think about what you really want from your life. Without children, you are responsible for your own destiny.”
She describes why she started to seek out others without children. For one, she preferred the optimism of the childfree-by-choice community over the grief of those suffering from their infertility. Sometimes, there is a distinction defined, between the childfree and people coping with infertility, referring to them to as “childless”. Adding “less” to most words makes them negative: hopeless, meaningless, useless. She came to understand that she personally preferred “childfree”, because she did not want to be defined by what she didn’t have.
There is actually a community for such people – LINK>”We Are Childfree.” They are a community-supported storytelling project that celebrates childfree people, explores their experiences, and dispels the myths the world holds about childfree people. They offer a global community for anyone embracing a childfree life, whether by choice, by circumstance, or for those who are just curious. Through their efforts, they are committed to fighting stereotypes and strict gender roles; creating a world in which everyone enjoys equality, bodily autonomy, and is empowered to make their own choices, to live authentically. We Are Childfree began in 2017 as a photographic project to celebrate women who had chosen not to be mothers.
It is really medicine for the soul to know it’s OK. To accept that one’s life is supposed to go this different way. They celebrate with the first names of four childfree legends: “Jen & Betty & Dolly & Oprah” – Jennifer Aniston, Betty White, Dolly Parton and Oprah Winfrey. It is true that only those who have tried IVF and still failed to have children can honestly understand how those who have feel or think.
Even so, all the evidence suggests that as women become better educated and financially independent, they choose to have fewer children. What feels new is that women are now talking about this decision and refusing to apologize or be pitied for it. One comedian famously is very deliberate. Chelsea Handler rejects the idea that if you don’t have children you have to use all of your extra free time productively.
Ruby Warrington, author of Women Without Kids, wonders, “What if more women having more time, energy and other resources at our disposal means more women leaders in business, politics, and the arts?” It could potentially lead to a more restorative, collaborative way of running the world. On this Earth Day, 2023, it is worth considering.
Missing Mom 