Sharing Your Child’s Story

Reading this post on Adoptive Families Facebook page is the reason I’m talking about this again. Maybe I’ll be able to change some hearts and minds and, maybe no one has explained well enough so it makes sense. What likeminded people in adoption are trying to do is to get you to take the time to see and set a line on what’s okay to share and what’s private (not secret, just private) of your families adoption story, especially your child’s story.

 

2018 – What the first mom study said to me

In June 2018 I did a post on a recent first mom study of mothers who’d relinquished their parental rights within the last 25 years. I talked about what I took out of it, I also copied the recommendations from the study, who knows if any adoption service providers read the study or considered those recommendations. If any agency did, I’d love to hear about it, if they’d already practiced that way, I’d love to hear that too.

 

Note to Adoptive Parents

This post is wandering into a place that makes me uncomfortable and maybe it will be for naught as those who need to hear it, will likely not hear or understand the reason why I’m going there. Do understand #NotAll applies without me needing to say it each time.

It’s a fact that infertility plays an oversize reason why people turn to adoption, and specifically, to domestic infant adoption (DIA). It’s also a fact that many of those have suffered through multiple losses first, and for that, I’m sorry.

 

From 2014: Question I’ve been asked.

Lightly edited.

This post is going to focus on the opposite of what people have asked adoptees like myself who are vocal, that really ignorant question that means; “what did your parents do wrong so we won’t make those same mistakes your parents did”. How’s that for a slap in the face to your parents and to you all at the same time…

 

From 2014: Good grief, this gets so tiring…

[2014] Earlier this week the Today Show included a segment on a daughter meeting her mother for the first time.  A daughter that resorted to using Facebook to try to find her by putting her personal information out on the internet (risky), but it paid off, and a reunion happened.  So what happens in the comments on the Today Facebook page after the segment aired?  (Be warned that I am using adoptive parents repeatedly throughout because that is what was used.)

 

Adoption Stories…

Today, I want to talk about the latest adoption viral story to hit the internet and TV shows. It did the rounds on facebook pages and hit the adoption groups on Facebook, instantly. Pretty much, most of the adoptive parents were all aflutter loving it, the adoptees, not so much, with some loving it, some thought it wasn’t bad, some didn’t like it at all. And of course, there were those adoptive parents who knew an adoptee (or three) who all loved it, but, I don’t think any adoptee weighing in thought the destruction of that little boy’s privacy was right, or good. And it’s not good because you don’t know the future on any of his feelings; but the feel good need so many had, removed any consideration of protecting his story and that it should be sacred for just his family and close friends.

 

Adoption Awareness Month – Pop Quiz

We all know that having an updated and robust Family Health History is invaluable, that the older we get, the more important it becomes. Long-time readers of this blog know that I was that adoptee who was too busy living my best life to focus on adoption and being an adoptee, until I wasn’t. Until the lack of any family health history changed my life, completely, a life I never could get back.

 

Adoption Awareness Month – The Good and the Hard

I’ve never been someone who is comfortable sharing my deepest feelings about adoption; being adopted, or of any of the more personal experiences and feelings I’ve gone through over the years. I also know that deep reserve didn’t help me be open with mom and dad about my feelings growing up; that it was also complicated by the sibling troubles and not wanting to cause them more worries. That resulted in who I am now, someone with deep unspoken stories and feelings about everything that has happened to me throughout my life.

 

National Adoption Awareness – You must be grateful you were adopted

I can’t begin to tell you how many times throughout a typical day that I find myself thankful for some small act by another; whatever that act was or who benefited. Whatever good is done makes my heart happy.

Funny thing though – I never use the words grateful or gratitude.

 

Adoption Awareness Month – Family History

As adoptees we have two different families; the family that adopted us, the family that we were born into. Both families shape who we are, what our family histories tell us also comes into play for many of us.

 

So, you want your child to be a positive adoptee…

Get out of your predominant adoptive parent only groups. Gingerly step into many different spaces with non-adoptive parent voices, sit on your hands instead of talking.  Instead, just listen for a while, really listen when you’re the most uncomfortable, after a while you’ll start to hear what the underlying message is saying, some easier to hear than others. And when you go into spaces that make you uncomfortable, stop yourself each time you want to contradict in your mind (or in words) what you are hearing with protestations about how beautiful adoption is.

 

Adoptees – what say you?

Every time I read an adoptive mother speak/write about her “adoptee” or “adoptees” I cringe. When you refer to your adopted child as merely an adoptee, you aren’t being cool, really, you aren’t. It’s more like you are denying they are your child/ren because you don’t want  to acknowledge they are your adopted child/ren, or something along those lines. Call them your child you adopted when you need to, or call them your adopted child when it’s relevant, just stay in your lane, it’s up to the one adopted as to whether they refer to themselves as adopted or simply use adoptee to identify their role.