What do you think?

I have thought about the “choice” aspect of choosing adoption many times over the years, and wondered about how the current generation of adoptees will feel now or when they grow up.  Specifically, about the choice to make an adoption plan, choosing adoption over parenting.

Of course there will be many mothers who didn’t really have a choice.  Whether they were coerced by family, or the counselling, or both, or even just complete utter lack of resources.  I do believe the lack of resources for mothers in the US vs say Canada shows why mothers may feel they have no choice in the US.  In Canada, if you are employed you get a combination of a years maternity leave through unemployment insurance, and you have a job to go back to.  Plus many other benefits including a baby bonus (not sure of the correct term), and depending on the province, day-care subsidy.  You also have health insurance at little to no cost - depending on the province you live in.

But specifically, those who had choices and yet chose not to parent.  Those who could have tried and chose not too.  How is that decision going to affect the feelings of worthiness, rejection, abandonment that are real risk factors for adoptees.

I ask this because even though I knew realistically my mother did not have a choice – I still felt rejected, not good enough, that something was flawed in me others could see but I couldn’t.  Knowing my mother did not have a choice kept me from being angry at her, or blaming her, despite the feelings I had.

What do you think?

Will it be better or worse if the parents had a real choice to parent?

Will open adoption be enough to overcome that risk for feelings of low self-esteem, rejection, something wrong with me feelings?

If it will be enough, what happens if the adoption closes – either by the mother or father who made the choice, or by the parents who adopted?

*****

I did not write this post to make anyone feel bad – this is about how the adoptee may feel and something I think needs discussing…

 

Film Review of “Somewhere Between” on NPR

For Chinese-American Adoptees, Matters Of Identity

I was interested in reading about the film “Somewhere Between” and clicked on the link to a review and was deeply disappointed.  I left the link open, and continued on reading the news of the day and favorite blogs.  Having cleared my mind, I returned to re-read the review, hoping I had been wrong in the tone and content.  Sadly, the review read the same, and yet, I wanted to give the writer the benefit of the doubt so I went and read other film reviews she had written.  Listening to the tone and looking at her words in other reviews, I came away with the opinion that she could not leave her role in adoption out of this review.

The opening paragraph states statistics of adoptions from China to the US and the reasons.  The second paragraph has nothing whatsoever to do with the documentary.

Waiting for them at this end was the pent-up parental longing of thousands of infertile couples, single women (and a few single men) and gay and lesbian couples. I was one of those parents-in-waiting, and trust me, by the time I traveled with 11 other families to Guangzhou to pick up our babies, you could have put pet rocks in our laps and we’d have loved them to bits.

The writer goes on to describe in detail the type of parents each of the four girls had who were in the documentary, and reunion of Fang and her parents in China.  Then to me, her bias shows through even stronger.

That aside, all four girls are thoughtful, moving and imaginative on the subject of their split identities. Haley thinks of herself as a “banana,” yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Describing herself as “stuck between two countries,” Fang laments that she’s always trying to compensate for the fact that she was abandoned because she’s a girl.

Watching the tears roll down Fang’s otherwise cheerful face, I wondered whether she’d be this sad if she wasn’t facing a camera. On the plus side, Somewhere Between is refreshingly free of the cloying, one-size-fits-all dogma that sometimes bedevils the adoption community. (I parted company with my chosen adoption listserv when I got tired of hearing about “the holes in all our daughters’ hearts.”)

Finally, in my opinion, her bias is cinched by completing her review of this film by having the last four paragraphs of the review be about her and her daughter, and how her daughter has no issues.

I understand that she is a film critic and works for NPR and is the reason NPR had her do the review.  I think she should have recused herself.  Here are a few links to other film reviews she has written so you can see the difference I saw between them, (or not).

At Home With Warriors, And The Burdens They Carry

A Good Daughter, But A ‘Pariah’ Among Her Own

Edit: 8/25/2012 – Malinda at Adoption Talk also talks about this review that is worth reading.  Another Adoptive Parent Tells Adoptees How They Should Feel

 

Wish this phrase would just go away…

That the baby is “such a gift” a “birthmom” gives to the “adoptive couple”…

Brings back memories of Georgia Tann’s newspaper adoption advertisements (showing cute babies) telling the husband to get your wife a baby for Christmas…

Or a bunny for an Easter present…

Or a puppy dog or kitty for a Birthday or Christmas present…

Babies – should not be considered gifts to give away…why not change the message to becoming parents is a dream come true…see – no icky feeling…

 

Are you afraid of conflict?

I admit I don’t like conflict and prefer to not step out of my comfort zone.  Talking about the hard parts of adoption is tough.  I go over my words countless times before I hit publish, trying to ensure I don’t paint everyone within a group with the same brush, or come off totally angry.  And I am deeply angry at times and have failed more often than I have succeeded, but those successes – in getting people to think and step outside of their comfort zone means I have made a difference, even if it is only one or two people.  It means I have done what I set out to do.

I would like you to listen to this TED Talk by “Margaret Heffernan [as she] explores the all-too-human thought patterns — like conflict avoidance and selective blindness — that lead managers and organizations astray.”  It is a very short talk and starts off with a story about the doctor who figured out what was causing so many children to have cancer, she found the answer but it took 25 years of disagreeing with the mainstream medical community to make the change.

“A fantastic model of collaboration: thinking partners who aren’t echo chambers.” (Margaret Heffernan)

To me that is what happens in adoption today.  People jump on the bandwagon whether it is the current Christian dogma they listen too, or because of their journey of infertility that leads them to adoption, or other personal reasons.  They self-select to only hear those who believe the same thing.  They choose to believe the sound-bytes without researching to confirm the reality and truthfulness of the statements.  They choose to not hear those who say something isn’t right.

We all have to talk to those we disagree with, and keep talking and thinking critically, to make sure we do better.  The current and future generations deserve it.

I try to listen and think hard about what has been said, and search for more information to broaden my mind and understanding - do you?

Margaret Heffernan: Dare to disagree

 

Untitled

Warning that this post contains very sensitive topics that may be triggers for some, including rape and other horrific atrocities.

 

Why?

I hesitate to write this post because it gets more personal than I prefer, because at heart I am pretty private about my deepest emotions.  Yesterday, a tweet from the NCFA @adoptioncouncil triggered me.  The tweet was about the #Hopechallenge and linked to a video which I watched about the benefits of adoption for mothers and how they succeed with schooling and life.  This post is what I thought laying in bed last night not able to sleep and still with me this morning.

Most of you know I had/have really good parents and I can’t imagine any better.  I have so many wonderful warm memories of my life growing up but nothing they did, or could have done, could have prevented the following.

The memories of going to my secret place over and over again throughout my childhood and teen years.  I would sit there on the floor with my back against the wall, my knees up against my chest, and my head down, resting on my knees.  I would sit there sobbing silently, tears streaming, hurting, grieving, wanting my family, my mother.  To know why I wasn’t good enough to be with them.  To know why they didn’t care.  Those memories haunt me all these years later.

It didn’t matter that I understood why I had been surrendered and adopted.  Words would not have helped.  I never told mom or dad when I was sad, or that I had a secret place I would go to.  They had nothing to do with why I was sad, and they could not have made it better because they weren’t what I needed.  Mom and dad never saw me sad – I would return from my secret place and be the happy, shy, smart child they loved, and knew me to be.

Years later, after my son died, I felt the same deep wrenching grief.  Grief that no words can make a difference for.  Grief that you just have to live through.  Grief that a mother feels when she loses her child.  Something broke inside of me that day, and the years that followed hardly made a dent in my grief, but I continued on.  I put on the brave face to those around me and was the happy, yet shy, person everyone knew me to be, and expected me to be.

Losing my son was my awakening to the full reality of the loss I was for my mother.  Something broke inside of her that day that changed her according to those closest to her.  Like me, she continued on but never was the same as before.

The tweet that triggered me:

NCFA‏@AdoptionCouncil What if she could choose adoption?
http://bit.ly/O7QFmp
#adoption #hopechallenge

Why are they fundraising to create more birth mothers?  Why aren’t they fundraising to give hope for the future to those who are pregnant and scared and need a hand up?  Why aren’t they fundraising to give these new vulnerable mothers a chance to get an education and provide their child with a good life?

Why is adoption the solution?

Why aren’t they fundraising to keep families together?