A bit of a rant

I just saw this article about Catholic Bishops in New Jersey. It states:

"Every year, the NJ Catholic Conference of Bishops lobbies to defeat an adoption reform bill that would allow adoptees, as adults, to secure their original birth certificates (OBCs).  This opposition is based on unfounded fears and misinformation.  The bishops do have money, however, and they are significant players in New Jersey’s political arena."

This hits close to home for me as an adoptee from New Jersey who was raised as a Catholic. My OBC is held hostage in that state. It doesn't even matter that I'm a step-parent adoptee raised by the woman who gave birth to me. I still can't have my original birth certificate. There is no issue with the supposed "secrecy" or "promised confidentiality" that they claim to be so concerned about and my natural father is dead. There is no reason on this earth that I should not be able to have in my possession my own personal birth records.

As the author says, the Bishops feel as though their religious freedoms are threatened. They claim there's a war against religion because of a birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The mandate simply requires insurance companies to include contraceptives in the policies for the people who CHOOSE to use it. There's a lot of talk about Christians being persecuted and religious freedom under fire. Hogwash. How about motherhood under fire? How about a war against single motherhood? How about a war against truth? How about a war against adopted people and their civil rights?

It's no secret to the people close to me that I have a problem or two with the Catholic church. The list is long and too much to get into here but for today the issue is adoption. They not only want to keep my and my daughter's OBCs locked up, they were a major player in taking my daughter from me 32 years ago through Catholic Social Services. They were the ones who somehow convinced me to sign a consent to adoption form when I was only 6 months pregnant. We had left NJ and were living in Florida. I checked the FL statutes. At that time it was illegal to sign an adoption consent before the birth of the child yet that didn't stop CSS from getting me to sign. It's still illegal.

I had just arrived in Lakeland the month before. I was sent to live with a woman 2 hours away from my home because I was a disgrace to the family. I couldn't be seen in that condition. CSS arranged for my housing. They arranged the adoption. They made it very clear that the best way to handle my "situation" was for me hide, give birth, and then not see my baby at all - it would be "easier on me" that way. I could go home, start my life over, move on. Sure.

So, I rang in 1980 living with a stranger in a strange town and CSS gave me a form to sign giving THEM custody of my child at birth. They didn't have me sign this form when I was still living at home with my parents, they waited until I was alone. It was the first week of the new year and my daughter wasn't born until mid-April. I have a copy of the form now. It only took 31 years for me to get it. In fact, I was shocked when I saw the form. I have no memory of signing it. I don't know what that means. Did I block that memory? Why would they have me sign something like that except to ensure that they got their hands on my baby. They knew that if I didn't sign it, and I had access to my child, I could have fought to keep my baby. The form was their way of making sure that I didn't see my baby after she was born. It was their excuse for the BFA signs.

After my daughter was born, the final papers signed and I was back home, it was like I stopped existing. For CSS it was over, they had my child. There was no contact from them. There was no interest in how I was dealing with the grief. There was no concern for me whatsoever. So Bishops..... tell me again how concerned you are for mothers and their well being. Tell me again how you feel for the mothers who were "promised confidentiality" so as a result their children should not have access to their own personal records. Is all of this obstruction and lobbying against open records for my benefit or yours? Could there be some reason you don't want people to know about their own histories? The truth maybe?

Adoption Lies

Now that I've gotten my hate list about adoption out of my system maybe this post will sound more reasonable to the folks who think that I'm just ranting because I was hurt. Do I have a biased outlook on adoption? Of course I do. I don't see how anyone can have their entire lives affected by something this huge and not have a view that's tilted in a certain direction. My hate list is mainly aimed at the infant adoption industry and it's exploitation of mothers and children.

Should I not talk about adoption then if my view is biased? Should what I have to say be discounted because of my particular experience? When I hear the words... "just because you had a bad experience", my jaw clenches, my back stiffens and my blood pressure rises. Yes, I had a bad experience. Does that mean that everything else I say about adoption should be ignored and dismissed as the ramblings of someone who is just bitter and angry?

Everything I experienced as a mother of adoption loss and as an adoptee colors my vision of adoption but I also have the sense to learn, read, study and listen to other mothers and adoptees. I don't speak for the entire world of adoption, I speak for myself and of my own experience. It's interesting though that my experience is remarkably similar to many thousands of others and their experiences. That in itself speaks volumes about why the dark side of adoption has to be exposed. Why else would there be so many groups and communities of people getting together online to share these life events with each other. We need each other's support. There's comfort in being understood and realizing that we're not alone, especially when the majority of people in our communities don't have a clue what life inside our side of adoption is really like.

I had a discussion one day with a dear friend who also happens to be an adoptive mother. I was saying that I didn't believe adoption was necessary, even in the case of children already available for adoption who are in the system and waiting. I told her I thought permanent legal guardianship was a viable alternative. Up until that day we had had many discussions about both of our histories with adoption and she has agreed with the work I do and my views on the subject. This one area seemed to be a sticking point though. She felt that the children needed something more than legal guardianship - they needed adoption to feel as though they were truly a permanent part of the family. I totally agree with her that we need to make a system where children have permanence and consistency within a loving family but I didn't see any reason a child couldn't have that within legal guardianship.

The word "adoption". This is where the trouble lies. Once we both got clear on what we meant by the word adoption then we realized that we really did agree. It was just that word that was getting in the way. In general when people think of adoption they think of a child joining a family, being loved, protected and cared for for the rest of their lives. Ideally, that's what would happen. But.... in our system the way it is, along with that possible scenario is the erasure of the child's entire history - family name, genetics, medical information etc... In too many cases, a child's name is changed without consideration for his natural family heritage. His legal documents are changed to become lies and the child is the one who is expected to "adopt" and adapt to a new family history. When broken down into it's most fundamental elements, adoption is nothing more than a lie. This is what I object to, not the idea of a child having a loving home.

A child can have the exact same thing - a loving, permanent home - without the lie of adoption. I don't believe the child will feel less safe or less loved if he's allowed to keep a connection with his original family. If he can't keep that connection physically then he should in the least be able to keep a family name if he chooses, be able to have all of his TRUE birth documents, be able to have a family history of his own in any form that's available to him. Encouraging him to stay connected to where he came from should always be part of that loving home he's placed in.

We have to get people to understand exactly what the word adoption means and what it does in order to change it. Adoption as it is today is nothing other than ownership. Dogs and cats should be adopted, not people.

No Promises

The discussion regarding opening the records of adoptees and giving them the same rights as every other citizen continues. I recently listened to a radio show on this topic and I planned on doing a post about it from the natural mothers perspective but today I saw a post by Amanda at The Declassified Adoptee that was so spot on and eloquent that there really wasn't much I could add. Amanda - you're amazing! If you want to listen to the show I'm referencing, Amanda linked to it in her post.

The only other thing I could add is that from my point of view, listening to others speak for natural mothers grates on me the same way it grates on adoptees to have others speak for them. In my case I'm both so it's doubly irritating. In this instance one of the guests on the show felt that there was some danger in adoptees having access to information regarding their birth because of the risk of outing a mother who had surrendered a child. She was perpetuating the myth of mothers being promised anonymity. Once again as mothers we have to step up and say we were promised NOTHING! We were the ones told not to go looking for our children. We were essentially told to disappear into the woodwork, crawl under a rock, go away, pretend it never happened, go have other babies, leave this one alone or you'll damage the child, stay away, don't ask for anything or you're considered selfish, don't interfere, and so on and so on.

I'm here to say once again, I didn't want to be a secret from my own daughter. I didn't want anonymity. I wanted to be able to tell anyone who would listen that I had a daughter. I didn't want to hide away in a maternity home. I wanted her. I wanted her back from the moment I lost her. I spent every day for 22 years looking for her. If she had found me first I would have been shouting it from the rooftops. So to the people who have not walked in my shoes yet they think they can speak for me, to be perfectly blunt - SHUT THE HELL UP! No one has the right to tell adults who they can and can't associate with. No one has the right to keep an adult's personal information a secret from them.

In my opinion, as a mother of adoption loss and as an adoptee, the adoptee's right to know who they are and where they come from trumps anyone else's desire to keep secrets. As a child the adoptee had no say in the matter about a contract affecting them. As an adult an adoptee should have everything to say about that contract.

Missing Pieces

I've heard people say recently that they didn't understand why adoptees have a need to find their original family. "They have a family, why do they need to know about the other one?" I don't understand what they don't understand about that.

I look a lot like my mother - and I mean a lot. I've had total strangers come up to me and ask if I'm related to Jo because I'm wearing her face. There was never any question where I got my curly hair from. My youngest daughter knows she has my eyes and my grandmother's nose. My son has my eyes and his father's mouth. These are things we take for granted. There's other beings in the world who when we look at them we see a piece of ourselves looking back.

When I talked to my oldest daughter - the one I found - about this issue she said that she always felt like she had a family, she loves them and they love her too but she felt she wasn't really them. There was always a piece of her missing. This is what the rest of the world, the people who don't live in that skin, don't get. Although I haven't lived her experience I can certainly understand the part about the missing piece. There's absolutely nothing unusual about her experience from what I've read. Adoptees all over the world feel the same way no matter how loving a home they ended up in. They're not only missing a piece of themselves but if they never find their natural family then they never know the true nature of who they are. Physical appearance characteristics aren't the only thing that gets passed down through generations. Seeing my oldest child with her siblings for the first time was proof enough of that. Watching the 2 girls using the same gestures, sitting in matching positions, using their voices the same way, seeing the connection between all of them that was practically instantaneous told me that the biology of family is huge.

And, of course, you have the medical issues. Every time an adoptee goes to the doctor and has to fill out a form for medical history - what do they write down? My daughter didn't know that her grandmother had breast cancer. If I hadn't found her she wouldn't have known that I had endometrial cancer or that there's a history of heart problems in the family. Everyone else has this knowledge to help them and their doctors figure out how to heal them or just keep them healthy. Everyone else knows if there's a genetic predisposition to certain diseases and from there can decide whether or not to have children of their own. They know what they might have a chance of passing down to their offspring. Why can't adoptees have this information too? Even the basic paperwork of who they are in the eyes of the state they live in is hidden from adoptees. No original birth certificates for them - only the fake ones. It's just too much. It's too much that they're missing. It's not fair to them.

From my place in the picture I saw what I was missing and it was agony. It was the only thing I could focus on because the pain was so big. Since it's been almost 9 years since finding my daughter I've been able to learn more about what she's been missing by listening to her and reading what other adoptees have written. As mothers we want what's best for our children. If adoption is going to be about the children (notice I said "going to be" since it's really about $ at this point and I can hope can't I?) then I think natural mothers owe it to their children to meet them, give them not only the medical history they need but also the answers they need no matter what the questions are. I don't care who searches for who, the adoptees deserve answers. Our kids didn't sign up for this.

When I was ready to start on the next painting in the series I remembered that I had some of my daughter's pictures from her childhood. The photo I used for a reference really struck me because of the large empty space behind her and that's when it hit me to leave her face an empty space also. For our kids there's too many missing pieces.