From 2014: Every single day…

My mother was asked by someone fairly close to her, if she still thought about me after all this time.  The title was the immediate answer.  Stop and think about what that means to a mother.  To me, it means that not only did she think about me, she would have wondered if I was okay, healthy, happy, sad, even if I was alive. I can only begin to imagine the level of pain she lived with, because without knowledge, I doubt that she would think only good thoughts, not have any worries about the life I was living, rather, they would include if I was living, what my new family was like, was I loved, was I okay. I compare her words with the length of time I thought of my son every single day – before I had days, and then, weeks go by without thinking about my son after he passed. That transition happened long before the first decade had passed and having lived through that, I can’t imagine the pain that stretched decades, day in, day out, no relief, no forgetting. It’s incomprehensible, and makes tears roll down my face just thinking about it.

 

Happy for New York Adoptees

Adoptees from New York now have the right to their original birth certificates; in the first 48 hours 3600 online applications were made. There’s an estimated 650,000 adoptees from New York per this article: New York Adoptees Rush to Request Birth Certificates, After Years of Blocked Access. Adoptee Rights Law has details on how the new law works: Updated Info on New York’s New Law

Congratulations to everyone who has fought to change the law in the last 40 odd years and to all adoptees from New York. Now the challenge is to get the changes made to the NY Law known by adoptees from NY, seems easy but there are still adoptees from states who have changed the law regarding their original birth certificate, who have no idea they can order theirs.

 

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 Awareness Month – Quote and Thread

My friend Beth left this quote in a comment under my other AAM post with a quote. I loved it. Still love it. It has nothing, and yet, it has everything to do with how adoption discourse happens today between members in the adoption ‘triad’.

This morning’s twitter thread by WordyRamblings talks about this in the context of being the one adopted. And with that said, I’ll leave the discussion to her.

#NAAM day 24

Yesterday I threaded about the idea that people sometimes think adoptees are rude or insulting when they establish boundaries.

— Courtney (@WordyRamblings) November 24, 2019

 

Archives 2011: It’s natural to want to know where you came from…

“People will not look forward to posterity, who never looked backward to their ancestors” ~ Edmund Burke [1729-97]

 

Difference between open adoption and open records

I read a question to an adoptee who was just venturing outside of her own adoption about her view on open records, as if, every adoptee comes complete with unlimited knowledge about all things adoption. The adoptee responded by talking about their feelings and concerns on open adoption. I’m not sure why some adoptive parents still need to ask every adoptee they meet about how they feel about ‘open records’, and of course, they didn’t clear up the confusion the adoptee had between the subject asked and the subject of her answer given, hence this post.

 

It’s Time For Change!

By Shadow

I can, so, relate to this Twitter post and thread, make sure you read the comments. 

 

The Book: Being Adopted – The Lifelong Search for Self

(a post from 2011 I’ve rewritten).  I have so much praise for this book, the way it explains the different phases an adoptee may go through, and the triggers that can happen along the way.  How the cognitive developmental stages work with understanding adoption, to different stressors, losses, the different phases of life.

 

New Years Eve thoughts…

I woke this morning and the clock told me it was 4:36 am, about the time I usually get up.  While I was waiting for my coffee to be ready, I stood at the sink and looked out the kitchen window into the darkness filled with shadows that I know are the massive trees in my neighborhood, highlighted by the warm glow from the street lights.  It’s beautiful and peaceful and I don’t like sleeping in and missing this time of day, nor later watching as the day begins to dawn, and later still watching the fog roll in. 

 

Adoptee Rights?

When I first came online there was only a handful of sites where you could reach out and find information on how to search for your birth family.  There were members on those sites that would guide you to adoption registries, explain how to get your non-identifying information from the agency or state, or if you were lucky, you were born in one of the handful of states you could order your original birth certificate (OBC).  I knew nothing about the Adoptee Rights fight to get our rights back.  I didn’t even know I could get my non-id information, nor that I even had an original birth certificate somewhere.  I’ve learned a lot since then about clean vs. compromise Adoptee Rights legislation.  Lately, two things have become exceedingly clear to me:

 

Words and adoption

Platitudes, knee-jerk reactions followed by gas-lighting were topics on my Twitter-feed this morning, the latter two were words from MerriamWebster (follow them, they’re great).  All three happen to be part of the landscape of adoption-land that each person faces happening to them at some point.

 

More thoughts on screening for adoptees

Still mulling on, fuming on the audacity of The National Council for Adoption Advocate suggesting that DTC genetic companies should screen for adoptees by asking them if they’re adopted and then providing “adoption professionals” to contact for help so it’s “adoption-supportive and sensitive”.  In my effort to consider whether they have a point re the “adoption professionals”, I googled adoption agencies+reunion advice.