The Sought-After

Poetry Wednesday

2011-05-18T14:33:00.003-04:00

This is a fake legend. I wrote it to try to portray the feeling that many adoptees have that they are not fully human because they aren't allowed to know their true origins.

Sometimes, we invent our origins.

The stanzas written in regular lettering are meant to represent someone telling a story, the italics indicate where the storyteller is spinning a tall tale.

Raven-Watcher

by Andrea Ross

Crouched on a shale slope, she peered

from between yucca spears

to watch them toboggan down snow patches

on their black-feathered asses; she muffled

her laugh when they snacked on snow-clods.

She learned raven-talk—

the sounds of water pouring into a canteen,

a hasp settling into place.

But what she loved most

was the way ravens loved: in mid-air.

Opposites attracted;

her sweetheart was a rock-climber.

He spent each free moment pressed

to canyon walls, while she loved the air’s caress.

Some swore she jumped.

She tumbled over the rim

like the pack-mules in the snowstorm that year.

Black feathers crowed across her face in love—free-fall, a mile.

They twirled, iridescent, and then swept upward.

Now, in a pile of raven’s down,

a human-raven baby softly grows

while mother blackness swoops

around the world, calling.

Blog Spotlight: The Declassified Adoptee

2011-04-05T11:09:00.003-04:00

Hi, Everyone:
I recently found this excellent blog, The Declassified Adoptee, written by a woman who has had similar experiences as an adult adoptee as I have had. What I find especially exciting and compelling about her blog is that she writes eloquently about many of the same feelings that I try to write about, and she writes about them with real aplomb. Like me, she has found her birth family and has a good relationship with them and with her adoptive family, but she still feels a sense of loss about being adopted and a sense of injustice about the way that adoptees are regarded in this country. Check. Her. Out.

I'm Missing You, Betty Jean Lifton.

2010-12-03T19:17:00.002-05:00

From the New York Times Obits.
She was an amazing person who helped so many of us to understand and accept ourselves.
Blessings, Betty Jean!

"The Quirk of the Smile..."

2010-11-20T21:48:00.006-05:00

Last night I met a woman who was a friend of next-door-neighbor. The two of them were chatting in the hallway of a venue of an event we were all attending, and I introduced myself; I said, "Hi, I'm Andrea." She said, "Hi, I'm Marissa. I work at the preschool. You have a child who used to attend the preschool, don't you?" I said "Yes," and asked how she knew that.
Here's the clincher:
She said, "I have seen pictures of him at the school, and I recognize him in the features of your face."

She couldn't have said anything more profoundly gratifying to me. No one could have.
Adoptees want to look like their family. And we don't get to until/unless we have our own children.
I'm so grateful I have my son.

In the words of the venerable Nancy Verrier:
Growing up in a family where they are not reflected back is a tremendously difficult experience [for adoptees]. A great deal of an adopted child's energy is used in trying to figure out how to be in the adoptive family. It is important to an adoptee to have the opportunity of experiencing that reflection: the tilt of the head, the quirk of the smile, the pace of the gait, not to mention the more obvious aspects of physical similarities or of talents, aptitudes, and interests.

"'I was adopted because I have _____________'"

2010-11-03T21:18:00.004-04:00

How many times have we adoptees filled in the blank about why, oh why, oh why we were given up?

Finally, some good news:

I just read this little article at the Adoptive Families Magazine website in which a social worker explains that it's important that adopted children get to make their own "lifebook" or scrapbook so they can express their feelings and ideas about being adopted and so that their adoptive parents can witness those feelings and ideas.

Let me just say: we have come a long way, baby. Doing something like this was so far off anyone's radar screen when I was a little adopted kid. I wish I had been guided as a child to express some of the fear, confusion, and guilt I felt as an adoptee. Instead those feelings had nowhere to go and so instead they got stuffed away somewhere and have been seeping out for decades in everything I've written and all over every relationship I've been in.

So, kudos to you, social workers who encourage adoptive parents help their their adopted children do this emotional work, kudos to the parents who have the guts to do it, and most of all, blessings on the forthcoming generations of adoptees who may grow up with the ability to name, expose, and dissipate the shame, guilt, and fear associated with being adopted.

The Terrible Twos?

2010-10-06T15:09:00.004-04:00

Today, The Sought-After turns two years old, so I've come out of cyber-hibernation to post!
(Finally!)
Yes, it's been two-and-a-half months.

Frankly, I was having too much fun to think about being adopted; I went on a beach vacation to the Outer Banks, backpacking in the high sierra with good friends, visiting family and friends in California, and camping in the sand dunes in southern Oregon with my son and husband. It was a really, really good vacation. And then we came back to crazy busy September, during which all three of us went "back to school." So I'm just now lifting my head out above water to take a breath and say hello to you.

Thank you for your continued interest in my blog, dear reader! Knowing you're out there helps me collect and articulate my ideas in a way I might not otherwise do. Please keep reading!

And now, for a moment of joy:

Film Review:Mother and Child

2010-07-18T17:51:00.004-04:00

I finally saw the movie Mother and Child.

And I have a few thoughts about it.

Annette Bening plays a 51-year-old single woman who gave up a baby girl for adoption when she was 14, and she has never recovered from that loss. She frequently writes letters, never sending them, to her daughter. She is bitter and isolated and doesn't want to let anyone into her life. Not even Jimmy Smits.

I would love to hear from you birth moms out there about how this character resonates with you and your experience. To me, Bening's character seems caricatured. She's our imaginary version of a birth mother: a woman who pines after her lost child, unable to think of much else, and who, when said child re-enters her life, suddenly lives in technicolor and becomes happy and satisfied with her life and all is right with the world.

Real reunions, of course, are much more nuanced than this.

Now, on to the adult adoptee character: Naomi Watts plays a beautiful, 37-year-old lawyer who is cold, manipulative, and creepily detached from any kind of emotional intimacy with other people. She seduces inappropriate men (married ones with pregnant wives, ones who are her boss), and casts them off indiscriminately. She has no friends, and has divorced herself from her adoptive family.

Ok, now, is this how the general public thinks of adult adoptees?

Overall, the portrayal of these two members of the adoption constellation seems ham-handed. I assume the director is trying to show us that adoption can cause a lot of grief, and that the secrecy and shame surrounding closed adoptions can compound that grief and wreak havoc on peoples' lives.

Yes. True.

But must we stereotype birth mothers and adult adopted women as unsympathetic, unsavory, super-yucky people? Who is this movie serving?

Your thoughts?

conversations

2010-07-09T12:08:00.003-04:00

My self-imposed writing retreat has gone well so far. It has been helpful that the weather here has been atrociously hot and humid, so going outside to play has not been much of a temptation. For the whole first week, I took advantage of my overly air conditioned college office, even wearing a sweater for most of the day as I huddled over my computer.

This week I have been less disciplined, but I got enough done to give a draft to a lovely writer friend who stopped by for a visit on her way to England. I'm planning to get back in the saddle next week.

Sometimes I feel ridiculous writing a book while the publishing industry as we know it is imploding, but I have lots of friends who are publishing books as we speak, and I do think that what I have to say about adoption and identity is important. There is still so much resistance to accepting that the adopted person's psyche is different than the non-adopted person's. And I want to bust that resistance.

I started this blog to try to generate a conversation about the issues relevant to adult adoptees, but it's been difficult; adoptees who read it say "Yep, I'm with you," and non-adoptees either disagree or are silent. Mostly.

Anyone want to chime in?

Turning the Corner

2010-06-25T15:18:00.002-04:00

A little update on SuperBob:
he's doing much better! My brother has been feeding him nonstop, and with the appetite inducing magic of prednisone, the Super One has gained 15 pounds back! And he has energy! And he even talks on the phone now!

With regard to my writing midwife/pitocin:
I don' t want to jinx it, but I am going to try a writing experiment for the next two weeks: My son and I will ride the train downtown in the morning, where I'll take him to science camp, then I'll write all day in cafes, libraries, what have you, until 4pm, when I'll pick up my little scientist and take him home on the train. A sort of forced writing retreat. Wish me luck and perseverence.

And with regard to feeling wild and free
(see picture of me in grand canyon with crazy hair a few posts ago):
I'm planning not one but two backpacking trips with friends this summer, and one or two camping trips with my little family.

The universe is on our side. The universe is on our side. The universe is on our side...

a little more about the universe

2010-06-10T13:34:00.003-04:00

Superbob is still hitting some bumps in the road. Last weekend, while strolling through Target with my mom, he fainted and whacked his head on the floor when he landed. An ambulance ride to the ER ensued, where, after 6 hours, the final diagnosis was that he was severely dehydrated. He has also lost 30 pounds. So my brothers and I are gearing up to take turns going out to California again to help out and to give my mom some much-needed respite from Cancer World. In fact, one of my brothers is headed out there today, thank goodness. I'll probably go in two weeks.

I don't think any of us knew how hard this was going to be. I, for one, have been in quite a funk since Superbob went into the hospital back in March. I have been so sad that it has been difficult to say "yes" to things. Instead, my psyche has shut down and I say "no, no, no," not wanting to let any more bad into my life.

But by way of explaining the poem I posted a while ago, I have lately been trying to re-convince myself that the universe is on my side. That saying "yes" to possibility, to friends, to help, is in fact a way to say "no" to the bad stuff.

Birthing

2010-06-02T14:44:00.006-04:00

As an adoptee, I found it extremely difficult to imagine giving birth to a child.

During my pregnancy, I repeatedly tried to visualize giving birth, I read lots of birth books, looked at lots of birth pictures, and attended birthing classes and even hypnobirthing classes.

But I had a really hard time picturing all this happening to me, and week before my due date I had a crisis of confidence. I sat in my living room, huge and gravid and undeniably pregnant, and I still couldn't figure out how the baby in my belly was going to join us on the planet.

Intellectually, I knew that every person who has ever lived has gotten here essentially the same way, but since I had no connection to my own birth, I could not imagine that birth could actually happen to me.

I called the hypnotherapist, who talked me through a visualization of it, and reassured me in as many ways as she could. I felt a little better for a while, but when the rubber hit the road and I finally went into labor, my troubles returned.

I was as physically prepared as a woman could be for birth: I had all the right equipment: yoga ball, gatorade, candles, a detailed birth plan, a supportive partner, and an awesome doula.

But my labor kept stalling out and stalling out, no matter what natural route we tried: walking, cohosh root, showers, baths, you name it.

At one point, after about 24 hours, my doula asked me, "Is there something that's holding you back, something that's keeping you from doing this?" Wild-eyed from sleep deprivation and painful contractions, I answered "I don't think so," feeling as if I were being accused of purposely holding back (although I'm sure that's not how my doula meant it.)

But I knew even at that moment that my lack of connection with my own birth and my birth mother was somehow stalling out my labor, but I couldn't think of what I could do about it--I had already tried everything I could think of to prepare for this birth.

I labored for 35 hours, without much progress. (But not without pain!)

Finally, I allowed the midwife to give me pitocin, and things started moving along. As the pitocin was administered, I noticed that the contractions felt very different. I remember thinking that they were foreign contractions, not my own.

Those foreign contractions did the trick, and a few hours later, I was dilated enough to push.

Finally, I was able to take action, rather than enduring the contractions while hoping I was dilating. At that point a doctor was preparing a operating room for an emergency C-section for me because my baby was now in distress. But I was determined to do it myself--something had changed for me, and I knew I could do it myself now. Once I was allowed to push, my son was born within an hour, safe and healthy, and naturally. The way everyone else got here.

Having a child of my own has helped heal some of the scars of being adopted; it has helped me feel more connected to other people, it has helped me feel more grounded, and it has helped me appreciate my adoptive parents more.

But without the pitocin, I would definitely have ended up with a C-section, and I wouldn't have gotten to experience birth the way I wanted to. Even though I really, really wanted to go through labor and birth without drugs, I really needed that pitocin to get where I needed to go.

Sometimes when we are stuck and we can't unstick ourselves, we need an intervention, an unanticipated shot in the arm of something foreign to jumpstart our progress.

Right now, I'm stuck in the process of writing my book about adoption, and I have been laboring with it for a long time. I know I have to write it, but I don't know how to get to the next step with it.

It's very scary to write because I'm afraid it will make people in my families angry (that old fear of abandonment rears its ugly head again), I'm afraid people will discount what I say ("Everyone feels lonely and alienated sometimes"), and I'm afraid it won't be good enough.

I am very tired of being in this place and letting this loop play in my brain.

I hereby open myself up to an intervention. But what will it be?

Intuition

2010-05-29T14:11:00.003-04:00

When I was 23, my boyfriend and I planned a climbing trip to Ecuador for the winter. We were going to put our stuff into storage, get on a plane, and scale volcanoes for three months. We had plane tickets and everything. Expensive ones.

Then, in early December, I got a phone call from someone at Grand Canyon National Park asking me to go out and be a ranger there starting in less than a month. For some reason, I accepted the offer even though I had those other big plans. And my boyfriend said he would go with me.

I only spent one season working at the Canyon because I didn't like working for the park service, but I fell deeply in love with the landscape there, and it became a touchstone for me. I have gone back countless times, I have led backpacking trips through the canyon, and I even rafted the canyon for my honeymoon.

My season at the canyon also catalyzed my search for my biological parents in an interesting way that I am working to recount in a book about wilderness and adoption search and reunion. It has become immensely important to my identity and well-being.

Limbo

2010-05-24T23:46:00.003-04:00

Between May 20th, the day I was born, and June 12th, the day I was adopted, I was in "foster care." I don't know how many families I lived with during those three weeks, or who they were, or how they "parented" me, or why they would take a tiny newborn baby into their home(s) for a few weeks and then gave her away.

It is so weird to think about that three week period, and I'm really thinking about it right now. I hate it. What a stupid, stupid idea, to needlessly shuffle a newborn around from home to home, from caregiver to caregiver three--or more--times in her first three weeks of life.

the end of May and beginning of June is always hard for me. I feel so at sea.

What if the Universe is on Our Side?

2010-05-18T21:48:00.001-04:00

S u p p o s i t i o n

Suppose the molecular changes taking place
In the mind during the act of praise
Resulted in an emanation rising into space.
Suppose that emanation went forth
In the configuration of its occasion:
For instance, the design of rain pocks
On the lake’s surface or the blue depths
Of the canyon with its horizontal cedars stunted.

Suppose praise had physical properties
And actually endured? What if the pattern
Of its disturbances rose beyond the atmosphere,
Becoming a permanent outline implanted in the cosmos—
The sound of the celebratory banjo or horn
Lodging near the third star of Orion’s belt;
Or to the east of the Pleiades, an atomic
Disarrangement of the words,
“How particular, the pod-eyed hermit crab
And his prickly orange legs”?

Suppose benevolent praise,
Coming into being by our will,
Had a separate existence, its purple or azure light
Gathering in the upper reaches, affecting
The aura of morning haze over autumn fields,
Or causing a perturbation in the mode of an asteroid.
What if praise and its emanation
Were necessary catalysts to the harmonious
Expansion of the void? Suppose, for the prosperous
Welfare of the universe, there were an element
Of need involved.
—Pattiann Rogers (from Firekeeper: New & Selected Poems)

Back from the Land of Superbob

2010-05-14T22:41:00.005-04:00

It was like living in a little nest with my parents.

How to explain this?

They are currently living in a small apartment across the street from the Stanford Medical Center.

So living there with them for a week without my husband or my child or my job, and caring for my dad and helping out my mom felt sort of like being an infant again (I had my parents all to myself! Plus they let me sleep a lot.) and sort of like being a mother bird. I had nothing to do but to help my dad and my mom feel better.

It was very peaceful having few real world distractions and performing tangible tasks--so very unlike my usual life in which everything feels scattered and difficult to quantify.

By the end of the week, my dad was definitely doing better than he was when I arrived. He was walking a little faster, feeling less nauseous, and smiling a little more. It was a quantifiable improvement, even though he's still very sick.

And I felt sad to climb out of that little nest in which the most important thing--really the only thing--to do was to care for one another.

But I had to fly home.

The Return of Superbob

2010-05-06T02:04:00.005-04:00

Superbob is out of the hospital!

Thanks to everyone who has been keeping him in their thoughts.

I am with him now, helping my mom with his 'round the clock care, and I'm so happy to be here.

He still has to go to the hospital every day, but the fact that he no longer resides in the hospital means he is getting better.

Tonight I sat at his feet and clipped his toenails for him, then massaged lotion into his dry and swollen feet and ankles.

I felt grace in the room.

Superbob has rescued me so many times from so many bad decisions and bad situations, and he's not the kind of guy who ever really lets anyone do anything for him, so to be able to help him a little felt very rare and wonderful.

Silence.

2010-04-25T13:25:00.003-04:00

I stopped blogging when my dad--I call Superbob--was admitted into the hospital. He's been there for five weeks now, getting a stem cell transplant for lymphoma. It appears that all my blogging energy has been siphoned off to the silent, private vigil I'm holding for him inside my mind. I have lit a candle there, and it takes a lot to keep it burning; I find myself withdrawing from most of the aspects of my life that are not utterly necessary--social engagements, planning my family's summer activities, because I just want to spend time thinking about my dad, who lies in a hospital bed three thousand miles away, vomiting and trying to generate a new immune system. Maybe I'm trying to generate one for him.

Or maybe I'm just perpetuating the poison of closed adoption: to hide your wounds and scars and march forward.

When I tell people my dad is sick, they ask, "Which Dad?" Since I'm adopted, I have two dads. This question always throws me, because my instinct is to answer, "My real dad: the one who raised me."

Open Adoption Interview!

2010-03-22T18:12:00.006-04:00

In the "Open Adoption Interview Project," I was paired up with Jenni, author of In His Easy Yoke . Jenni relinquished her first daughter fifteen years ago to what was supposed to be an open adoptive situation. Since then, the adoptive family has cut off all contact with Jenni, and she's trying to resume contact so that she can know her daughter.
Jenni writes passionately and convincingly about the dark underbelly of the adoption process from the perspective of the expectant mother considering adoption. Check her out!

Here's a link to all the adoption bloggers who participated in this interview project.

My interview of her follows; you can find her interview of me at her blog.

The Sought-After: If you had a magic wand that would allow you to change three things about adoption practices in the United States right now, what would they be?

In His Easy Yoke: Well, I’m not sure we could change adoption in the way it needs to be changed unless we addressed what causes it to be so broken. Otherwise, the “fixes” are just band-aids. I believe the driving force behind the broken system is the fact that adoption is considered to be the panacea for infertility. That right there, unfortunately, gives birth to a gigantic snowball of issues that just rolls on and on and grows larger and larger. Infertility is a grievous thing, and so naturally it draws all sorts of sympathy and compassion, as well it should. What it should not do, however, is merit greater sympathy and importance than other losses. Within adoption, that is exactly what has happened.

I would say that the falsehoods that have been born from this hierarchy of loss have led to too many injustices to count. But if I had to pick a top three, they might be:

1) Sealed original birth certificates which are replaced with falsified BCs. Speaks for itself, right?

2) Openness agreements are not legally enforceable, and are only made as “good faith” agreements. Again, the problems with this are pretty self-explanatory. I’m hoping to post about the myth of openness sometime in the near future. Many women are “sold” on adoption because of how openness is presented today. It is presented as something that provides more of a choice for an expectant mom, but in reality, she has no choice or power in the situation at all. Conversely, adoptive parents are often very ill-informed and therefore ill-prepared for what open adoption actually is. I find that many parents agree to it out of duty once they get beyond their initial fears, but do not equip themselves to follow through when they discover it can be hard work. Agencies often don’t provide much information on the front end of things regarding what adoption looks like further out from relinquishing or adopting a child.

3) I believe it is a very large conflict of interest to allow agencies that profit from adoption to represent both the adoptive families and the expectant parents. If it is illegal in many states for a real estate agent to dually represent sellers and buyers, how can we not see the seriousness of this within adoption? It is a simple concept, but so hard for people to see. They don’t like to view adoption as a business like real estate. Of course not. That is vulgar, right? But although children are not commodities to be bought, that is what it boils down to. The agency or attorney is weighted toward the side of the deal that has the most to offer. Throw in the element of religion and faith-based organizations that are prejudiced against single mothers and it becomes so heavily weighted to one side that it’s a wonder it doesn’t fall right over. LOL Mothers and their babies need to be represented with as much care and concern as those who long to be parents. Anything less is inhumane.

TSA: Since we don't have a magic wand, how do you think these changes can be brought about?

IHEY: So many efforts are underway to open birth records. There is a big beast standing in front of the door, and many, many people who are not familiar with adoption law don’t even know it is an issue. I believe that we just need to keep spreading the word and bombarding our legislators with fact and real life experiences. I know from working inside politics and among senators day in and day out that hounding your legislators DOES work if you are persistent enough. J But we need to be articulate, informed and compelling in our persistence if we want to be heard and respected and effect change.

2) With regard to openness, I find that just like in the case of sealed records, when I explain to someone how openness agreements work, they are usually shocked. It seems to be another one of those issues where the problem is not a lack of compassion, but rather, just a lack of knowledge. Adoption is still a relatively taboo subject. We need folks with real life adoption experiences to share them and talk about what life inside open adoption is really like – the good and the bad. People run from what they fear. If we rely on the Lifetime Movie Network to be the basis of what we know about adoption, we will only know fear and not reality. LOL As more people speak up and speak out about healthy adoption relationships, I believe there will be more support for legally enforcing openness agreements. Just as with open records, we need to be hounding our lawmakers on the state level about this issue. Above all, we need to be asking those affected the most by the contact agreements, the adoptees, what their experiences have been and listen to what they want us to hear.

3) I am honestly at a loss for how dual representation can be addressed. It already seems like such a no-brainer, for lack of a better term. But I guess that is what happens when you have a multi-billion dollar industry that is unregulated. Things like this just go unchecked. The marketing paints such a beautiful, emotional, bitter-sweet picture, that it is hard for anyone to see past it. There are some things that give me hope, though. I am so glad to know many adoptive parents who understand the problems within the industry. I don’t believe all of the burden should fall on them, but I do believe they wield a lot of power. Many of them adopt more than once. This is an excellent opportunity to speak with their agency about the concerns they have regarding policies and practices. If more people would walk away from unethical agencies, the agencies would either have to change their practices or lose clients, therefore, losing business. Women who relinquish can’t remain silent, either. Ethical agencies need to be commended, and unethical ones need to be spoken against. We can’t bury our experiences, wash our hands and walk away. We owe it to others who will come behind us to speak out about damaging counseling methods and to offer resources and working solutions to problems within the process.

TSA: If you could have the kind of contact you want with your firstborn daughter, what do you think your relationship with her would be like?

IHEY: If I could have things exactly how I wanted them, I would never have relinquished my daughter. I know there are reasons that others feel were legitimate (mostly due to my age) but in all honesty, I believe that I should have fought harder against all of that. I wish that she was upstairs sleeping right now as I write this… a daily part of my life. Obviously, that’s not how things ended up. I have a semi-open agreement on paper. In reality, it is closed. We have no contact. I would be overjoyed to be able to correspond with her directly. I would like to have a relationship rather than be strangers. In all fairness to her, I believe I would probably want more from the relationship than she would want to give. (Don’t all parents of teens? J) I’d love to see her and talk with her about her life… what is important to her. I’d love to answer my phone and have it be her on the other end… to have a conversation that was natural and easy. But I don’t know if that is possible. I have hope for the future, though. My heart tells me that I want to soak up everything about her and demonstrate how much I love her and care about her life – flaws and all. I love her with a mother’s heart. But my head tells me that it is selfish of me to desire that from her, and that I don’t deserve anything of the sort. I gave her away to strangers, and I just don’t know how a relationship recovers from that. I can give her all of the reasons and circumstances behind it, but at the end of the day, I believe I failed her, and it seems like that resigns me to be to her whatever she will allow. I’ll take what I can get.

TSA: You mention that there are lots of "triggers" in your adoption life with no healthy way to work through the resulting issues--what do you think would be healthy ways to work through them?

IHEY: Up until recently, I really had no one in real life with whom to discuss adoption and my grief. Recently, my sister and I have begun talking about it, and just a couple of weeks ago my mother found my blog. That has prompted some good discussions and has opened the door for more healthy communication about what happened so long ago. We have only mentioned it a handful of times in the last 15 years. So I am hopeful that the newfound openness will allow me a place to go when I need to discuss something adoption-related that is weighing me down. Honestly, the best thing I believe I can do for myself is to focus on what I CAN change instead of letting what I can’t change cripple me. I do have to revisit the past in order to sort some of that out, but blogging has been cathartic and does provide some clarity. Writing is a good thing. I can work through my thoughts and emotions, and if I do it online, I can benefit from connecting with others who understand. I believe that it is extremely important to read views that differ from our own in order to stretch and grow and give us greater understanding of the complexities of adoption. But at the end of the day, when I am heartsick about how broken and twisted adoption can be at times, it is good for me to talk with people who share my same convictions and can help encourage me to focus on what is right and true, rather than let emotions get the best of me.

TSA: If you were in a room with ten pregnant women who were considering adoption, what would you tell them?

IHEY: I LOVE the CUB pamphlet written by Heather Lowe. It is entitled “What You Should KNOW If You Are Considering Adoption for Your Baby”. If anyone reading here is unfamiliar with it, I STRONGLY recommend you check it out, no matter how adoption has affected your life. You can find it at http://www.cubirthparents.org/.

I first read it years after I relinquished, but my jaw just hit the floor. Many of the things it addressed were feelings I had at the time I relinquished that went against what I was being told by my agency and my parents. It is a very common sense approach that is most definitely NOT offered through the counseling a woman gets from an agency or attorney. I started to go into specific points that the brochure addresses, but I just couldn’t say anything better than what it already explains. I think bringing up these facts to a woman who is considering relinquishment is one of the kindest things I could offer her. When you make a decision based on facts and truth, you are more likely able to own that decision. Oftentimes, during the process of making that decision, the focus is placed solely on what the mother cannot or should not do. I have never spoken to a woman who relinquished who said that anything long-term was discussed – especially with regard to how her relinquished child would feel. Being a “birth mom” has affected every area of my life. With each new phase or milestone, the wound is reopened in some way and I have to process things all over again. I think it would be foolish to assume that my daughter has just gone on to live a perfectly happy life without being affected by being relinquished. It would have changed things drastically for me had I realized that my decision did not guarantee happiness for her. I find that many women who have recently relinquished often have some sort of sad resignation to “getting pregnant so that the adoptive couple could have the gift of being parents… It was God’s plan.” Sigh. This is probably my number one thing that I want to shout from the rooftops to others considering adoption… Your purpose in life is not to fulfill the desires of people who want to be parents! Don’t let anyone guilt you into believing it! LOL There are other people to be considered who are rarely entered into the equation – the adopted person and the mothers who give birth to them. Their desires, happiness and well-being are just as important and God loves them just as much as He loves people who want to be parents! Babies don’t stay babies, but rather, grown into people with feelings and opinions that MATTER. And women who lose those babies have a lot of years of living ahead where they will struggle with how their loss affects them within each new phase of life.

Love fest: Kudos to "Adopt This!"

2010-03-17T20:15:00.001-04:00

My new favorite blog: Adopt This!: confessions of an ambivalent adoptee. Check it out. I love it.

Missing? Me?

2010-03-16T21:00:00.005-04:00

Here's how I feel:

when I go to places like this:

My spring break is at a different time than my son's and my husband's, so I took off by myself and went to the desert.

It felt like a century since I had been outside (Stupid Philadelphia Winter. GRR.), so hiking for 4 days helped restore me mentally, even though it took some long plane rides, some long car trips, and a lot of dollars to do it.

I need the desert. It's my touchstone.

It's where I learned I wanted to search for my birth parents. It's a place where I can set my sights on a butte or canyon ten miles away, point my feet in that direction, and walk until I get there. Being in the desert made searching seem possible for me all those years ago. And it was possible.

And I keep returning and returning to the desert in search of other wisdoms.

Thanks for reading.

From the other Side of the Uterus

2010-03-05T11:11:00.006-05:00

Ok, so who's heard of the birth mother memoir Without a Map, by Meredith Hall?

It was published in 2007, so I'm a little late to the party, but geez, this one is a must-read. Hall's writing is exquisite, so if for no other reason, read the book for the beautiful prose.

Of course, there's more to it than that. She describes being shunned by her family and community as a result of becoming pregnant at age 16 in 1965, and her portrayal of her isolation mirrors my (and many other adoptees') experiences of loneliness and loss of sense of belonging. I have recently been thinking about how the birthmother's experience is very like the adoptees experience, and she affirms it here:

"It feels like a murder, and is baffling because there is no grave; no hymns were sung to ease my going or to beg for God's blessing on my soul."

The book chronicles her pregnancy, and much later, her reunion with the son she placed for adoption. Although it's incredibly painful to read about how she was treated and how she dealt with that treatment, I'm finding it very instructive and comforting to get inside the mind of a birth mother who is the same age as my birth mother, and was therefore subjected to the same kind of social stigma as she was. Because my birth mother is silent about all this.

Have you read this book? If so, what do you think?
Please, let us know!!

2010-02-27T10:43:00.001-05:00

Found a new adult adoptee blog that I really like: http://ibastard.wordpress.com/ check it out!
Tell me what you think!

Adoption Reading, Anyone?

2010-02-23T16:33:00.002-05:00

Well, here's an idea: a virtual adoption book club! Check out Eva's idea over at Egg Drop Post and consider joining up!

Lovely Lucille is Gone

2010-02-15T19:44:00.003-05:00

I just heard today that Lucille Clifton, poet and national treasure died on Saturday, February 6 at age 73. She was wonderful. I had the tremendous good fortune to take three poetry workshops with her when I was an undergraduate. Sitting in a room with her was like being in the presence of a prophet.
I'm very sad that she's gone.

Here's one of her most famous poems:

Homage to My Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

Lucille Clifton

We'll miss you, Lucille!

How About a Fan Page for "I Love Blinking My Eyes"?

2010-02-10T12:41:00.003-05:00

Facebook has a lot of inane fan pages, and this one is no exception: "I Love Adoption."

Check it out and let me know what you think.

2010-02-08T10:59:00.004-05:00

Did you read the article in the New York Times Magazine on 1/31/10 about "Solastalgia," a term for " the pain experienced where there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault... a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at 'home.'"?

It's a really interesting article,--read it if you have time--and it made me think about the potential analogue between the psyches of people whose home has been taken away or degraded and the psyches of adoptees and birthparents.

As a person to whom home landscape matters immensely, and as an adoptee, it makes a lot of sense to me.

But what about you?

Grief = Searching

2010-02-03T08:29:00.001-05:00

I've been reading this article about grief in The New Yorker. The author Meghan O'Rourke chronicles popular thinking about grief, and mentions that:

"In the nineteen-seventies, Colin Murray Parkes, a British psychiatrist and a pioneer in bereavement research, argued that the dominant element of grief was a restless “searching.” The heightened physical arousal, anger, and sadness of grief resemble the anxiety that children suffer when they’re separated from their mothers. Parkes, drawing on work by John Bowlby, an early theorist of how human beings form attachments, noted that in both cases—acute grief and children’s separation anxiety—we feel alarm because we no longer have a support system we relied on. Parkes speculated that we continue to “search” illogically (and in great distress) for a loved one after a death. After failing again and again to find the lost person, we slowly create a new “assumptive world,” in the therapist’s jargon, the old one having been invalidated by death. Searching, or yearning, crops up in nearly all the contemporary investigations of grief. A 2007 study by Paul Maciejewski found that the feeling that predominated in the bereaved subjects was not depression or disbelief or anger but yearning. Nor does belief in heavenly reunion protect you from grief. As Bonanno says, 'We want to know what has become of our loved ones.'"
(emphasis added)

I wanted to post this to propose the connection between some adoptees' need to search and what is commonly understood about how all humans deal with loss of loved ones. That is all.

Comments?

Are You a Writer? Do You Want to See your Work Performed?

2010-02-02T15:08:00.001-05:00

I recently found this posting over at the Adoption.com forums for adult adoptees:

"I am a recently reunited adoptee. I am currently a theatre arts major in New England and composing a senior project that reflects my experiences with adoption. But I would like to give it a wider scope and represent more than my own opinions and emotions. I would like to create a collage of different experiences in order to paint a unified portrait of the truth behind adoption.

I am looking for submissions from all those involved in adoption (adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, foster parents etc.) to include in my piece. These can be anything from memoirs, letters, poems, songs, art etc.

You will be credited if I use any of the material in the production (unless you wish to remain anonymous). There will be no monetary compensation as this is a non-profit, educational production. By submitting your work you acknowledge your approval for their use in an original script and any resulting performances.

I promise to approach all material with the utmost respect. Adoption is often overlooked or stereotyped, it is time to represent the truth. Your involvement would mean the world to me. Please help me tell your story!

You can reply here with your material, message me, or e-mail me at bwing@students.stonehill.edu

Thank you for your time,
Brianna Marie"
Here's the link for her project's website.

Brianna told me she'd love it if I posted her call for submissions on this blog.

Have at it! And let me know if you think you might send her something!!

"What is Lost Can Be Recovered," (but Watch Out for the Tornado)

2010-01-28T14:54:00.004-05:00

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Betty Jean Lifton, the great mother of the adoption rights movement? I have read everything she's written, and have been immensely comforted and educated by her words. Here's a little excerpt from her website, describing the counseling work she does with adult adoptees:

"I see adopted people who are in a life crisis of one kind or another, due to the breakup of a relationship, the loss of a job, an adoptive parent's death. Many come when they are in the throes of search and reunion. They are struggling to deal with the tumultuous emotions that are surfacing, as well as with the complexity of forming a relationship with the birth mother, birthfather, or siblings. Their task is to reclaim those split off feelings and emotions and integrate them into the adult self.

For both the adoptee and birthmother, there is the bittersweet realization that what is lost can be recovered, but never in the form in which it was lost. The birth mother cannot have back the baby she gave up; the adoptee cannot have back the original mother that he lost. Their reunion will be influenced by the way the adoptee and birth mother have coped with their trauma and dissociation over the years. It is not easy. Going through reunion is like experiencing a tornado that swirls you around and then sets you down in a foreign land from which you have to slowly and painfully make your way back to a place that you can call your own."

Adopted People who Adopt Other People

2010-01-22T11:01:00.002-05:00

Ok, I'm back to grinding away at this issue. I blogged about my uneasiness with being an adopted person and thinking about adopting a child awhile ago in this post. But now I'm trying to get over myself, and I really, really, want to hear from adult adoptees who have adopted children and how they feel about the experience. As I mentioned in my the old post (see above), I have long feared that adopting a child would undo me--that I would vicariously live all the pain of loss, separation, shame, and not understanding all over again through my adopted child. But sometimes those things we fear most are the things that can open a completely new door for us, and, dare I say, heal us, or at least help us to become the person we want to be.

So I want to know how people do it--if you are an adult adoptee who has adopted a child, please weigh in. What is it like for you? How did you come to it? How do you think your status as an adopted person has affected your child?

Fickle Weather and Loyal Children

2010-01-08T12:17:00.004-05:00

It's snowing and I'm snuggled up in one of my favorite cafes with my laptop after a good workout at the gym across the street, and I'm enjoying having some free time: my son is back in school and I don't start teaching for another 10 days. The holidays are over, the Christmas tree is going to be recycled into mulch this weekend, and our house is relatively clean. I have fed my need to do house projects--some sanding, painting, refinishing, etc., and now I finally have some time to think. And write. And surf around the net.

Over at the awesome open adoption blog "This Woman's Work," I found an excellent post about the author's dealings with her adopted daughter's loyalty issues. The weather outside, contrasted with my recent visit to California, where I'm "FROM," reminds me of this adoptee issue of divided loyalties, feelings of betrayal, wondering where you belong; as I look at the snow speeding by outside, I discredit it, thinking "this isn't where I really live, so I don't really care that it's snowing. I'm from California." But I have lived here in Philadelphia going on five years, and no big move back to the west is on the horizon, the economy being what it is, so really, I DO live here. But I have loyalty confusion. I'm always thinking about how much better California is, how I understand the people, the culture, the weather better there. but, like I said, I really do live here. And there are things I like about Philadelphia.

At Christmas, when my brother was finishing his visit with our family to go visit his wife's family, I told him that my son and I were flying to San Diego to visit my sister. My half-sister, that is; my birth mother's other daughter, whom I met about nine years ago. It felt really awkward telling my brother I was going to visit her. It felt like a betrayal, even though intellectually, I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong. I saw what I interpreted as a slight hesitation in his response to my announcement. What was he thinking? That it was totally weird for me to be leaving our parents' house to go visit this stranger, this woman he's never met, whom I call my sister? Maybe he was just wondering what it's like to be me, wondering why I do all this work trying to keep up with all these people in my various families. Who knows, but I always worry about the people in my family getting upset when they hear of or see evidence of my contact with my birth family. Probably, this is all in my head. Is it an adoptee's issue and no one else's?

Anyone out there in the adoption constellation want to weigh in on this?

Missing Sisters

2009-12-31T19:59:00.001-05:00

Have you read Missing Sisters by Gregory Maguire?

I just ordered it. Let me know what you think if you've read it--I'll check in once I'm finished with it. And p.s. Happy New year!!

From Publishers Weekly

Affectionate humor and a particularly well-defined setting lend distinction to this touching novel set in 1968. Alice, a 12-year-old beset by hearing and speech impediments, lives in an orphanage run by nuns in upstate New York. After Sister Vincent de Paul, Alice's closest friend and supporter, is severely injured in a fire, no one explains to Alice that the sister has been sent for a long stay in a nursing home. Alice, worrying that Sister Vincent has died, makes a pact with God: until she knows that Sister Vincent will recover, she won't even consider an offer of adoption that has been extended to her--her first. A girl Alice despises gets her place, but Alice has a drama of her own, inadvertently learning that she may have a twin sister. With a mixture of cunning and courage, Alice finds her. Maguire, who spent some of his childhood in a Catholic children's home, avoids pat and obvious resolutions, and he conveys Alice's faith lightly but substantively. Characterizations of the Catholic environment are sharp and funny. Some poignant, genuinely suspenseful moments express, among other truths, the value of individuality. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-7-A portrait of a 12-year-old handicapped girl, raised by a stern group of nuns, emerges from this ragged novel. Alice has spent her life in an orphanage, steeped in rigid religiousness and-because of her hearing and speech impediments-in confusion. When the one nun who is sensitive to Alice tragically vanishes from her life, the girl's isolation is compounded by grief. Then, through a fluke of mistaken identity, she discovers that she has an identical twin sister who does not suffer from disabilities and who has a loving, supportive adoptive family. As Alice struggles to find her place, the story struggles to deal with attitudes that seem dated and off-balance without really giving a sense of upstate New York in the 1960s. Supporting characters and issues are left dangling, although Alice, finally, is not; her sudden adoption in the last few pages is abrupt and unsettling. An imperfect book, but an unusual look at Catholic family values and at a troubled child.
Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Find My Family

2009-12-04T10:33:00.008-05:00

Well, I've already blogged a bit about the TV show "Adoption Diaries" here, and I've Tivoed another show called "Adoption Story," (haven't watched it yet) and, oh, what's this? Yet another adoption-related television show? And this one is brought to us by one of the big networks? Yes, I speak of "Find my Family." (See photo, above.)

Have you seen this show? It presents almost-real-time searches and reunions, wherein adopted people get help from the show's "experts" to search for their biological parents, and birth parents get help to search for their long-lost offspring. It's another example of exploitative television, showing the anguish of the search and the bittersweet emotions of reunions after decades of separation. It tugs at our heartstrings, especially if we are people who have been intimately affected by adoption, and especially especially if we have conducted our own searches ourselves and are figuring out how to live in reunion.

The New York Times published this article about it on Monday. In the article, someone who works at an adoption advocacy website (and who mentions that she "supports efforts to allow adoptees and birth parents to exchange medical information," so I have to surmise that she is NOT in favor of full reunions) accurately observes that "anytime you film somebody in real time having an emotional breakdown, that is exploitative." I agree with her on that point.

However, others who were interviewed, including an advocate for birth mothers, see some potential benefits of airing the program; to wit, FirstMotherForum.com author Lorraine Dusky said "Maybe this will be heard by people who think it is unloyal somehow for a person to search out his or her roots, parents, family, when it is a most natural desire of consciousness." I see her point, but I still believe it's exploitative.

However, the most burning question for me about all this is WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? Never before in my life have I seen so much spotlighting on issues of adoption, especially on search and reunion. I totally agree that as homosapiens, we have a primal need to know our origins in order to feel completely human, and I also believe that we adoptees have a basic human right to the information that is ours. But why is all this suddenly coming into the limelight? We have lived in silence, anonymity, shame, and doubt ("Is this really the big deal it feels like? Why doesn't anyone else except my therapist think so?")

What has shifted in our culture that has begun to train the spotlight on all issues adoption? I don't think it's the mere fact that adoption is occurring more and more often in the United States, and I don't think that it's just because our society is now much more accepting of people being born in situations outside of marriage. It's something else.

What do you think it is? Please, I'd really love to know.

"I'll Stand by You" (?)

2009-11-19T13:07:00.003-05:00

Did anyone watch "Glee" last night? In this latest episode, Finn, a high school football player whose cheerleader girlfriend is pregnant and has decided to make an adoption plan, admits to a friend that he's really sad that he'll never get to know his unborn daughter (the baby's actually another man's child, but he doesn't know that yet, so disregard that fact for now), and will never get to tell her he loves her. He also mourns the fact that she'll never know that he loved her and wondered about her and wanted to know her. The scene comes to a climax with him singing The Pretenders song, "I'll Stand by You" to a video of a sonogram of the baby that's playing on his computer.

"Glee" is a silly show. It's a sit-com with some musical theatre thrown in. I like it, sure, but it's pretty fluffy.

But.

But I have to say, watching Finn sing longingly to a little pulsing sonogrammed image of what he thinks is his unborn daughter about how much he cares for her, how he wants to support her throughout her life both caught me off guard and choked me up.

So many of us who were adopted under the closed adoption system fantasize about having been wanted and thought about and cared for in this way, and so many of us never get to know if it happened. The not knowing hardens us, leads us to think we weren't wanted, weren't ever cared for, weren't longed for or pined over. Maybe it's just a fantasy, like the musical theatre sequences in "Glee." But maybe, just maybe, somebody really wanted to "stand by" us, but just couldn't.

Your thoughts?

Belated Birth Father Visitation Post

2009-11-07T21:41:00.005-05:00

I haven't posted for a month, and it's the first time I've neglected my blog like this. It feels awful, but I have been incredibly busy and sick, dear readers. So I hope you haven't given up on me. I just needed to attend to a few other things, like my new job that is kicking my butt, and these viruses that are kicking my immune system's butt.

ALSO.
Also, my birth dad came to visit me for the first time ever. Yep.
Yeah, that's him up there in the picture standing next to me. I'd love to hear from you whether you think we look alike. He claims I am a spitting image of him and the rest of the fam.

So, you might ask, was his visit a big event for me? Yes. Yes it was. Was I freaking out? Oh, just a bit. Why? It's hard to explain.

But that's what I want to write about because that's what everyone wants to know about this business of being an adult who was adopted as a newborn under the closed adoption system. What's it like to meet a parent you've never known, a parent who (at least claims he) never knew you existed, and to try to strike up a relationship with him? Especially when that parent is a 65 year old politically conservative male cattle rancher who runs a heavy equipment leasing business, and you are a youngish-middle-aged, super lefty female college professor and writer who has no business sense whatsoever? But there is some spark of recognition between us, and there's a drive to know one another, to understand what we mean to each other and what we have in common.

The real problem is that there's no map.
Francis and I are Lewis and Clark stuck in a canoe together with nothing to help us navigate but an overused spotting scope and some old inkpens.

One thing I learned about him during this visit is that he's a pretty quiet man. or maybe this quietness is a new thing--he's had some pretty serious health problems during the last year, and I can't help but wonder if they have changed him. He seems more forgetful, more reticent than the first time I met him (about a year ago), when he seemed gregarious, loquacious, forthcoming. Which one is the real him? I wonder if I'll ever know who he really is or who he has been all these years that I didn't have the chance to know him.

Another thing I learned about him during this visit is that he's really into geneaology, which would explain his interest in me. He even asked to see baby pictures of me! Too bad he asked for them when he was on his way to the airport to depart, but it's a start.

So, do you think we look alike? (Maybe just in my baby pics?)

New Study

2009-10-06T18:53:00.004-04:00

(Pictured: One of my brothers, his son, my son, and me)

Ok, my son's in the bathtub, so this is going to be quick:

I was just perusing my email inbox and found this article on a study in Adoptive Families Magazine. It's about how adoptees fare psychologically when compared to their non-adopted siblings.

Often, I find the articles in Adoptive Families frustrating, as they tend to wax Pollyanna about all things adoption. However, this study seems to have some solid research behind it, and frankly, it's a breath of fresh air after reading all those studies about how screwed up adoptees are. I'm tired of feeling screwed up.

What do you think about this study? How does it compare with your experience in the adoption constellation?

Do You Love Mad Men? I Do!

2009-09-30T09:21:00.003-04:00

Check out what ReadingWritingLiving is posting about how adoption is treated on the TV show, Mad Men.

A New Low In Reality Television

2009-09-19T22:22:00.004-04:00

(this is a still from the one I'm watching right now.)

...or is it a documentary? I'm referring to the new television series "Adoption Diaries," an episode of which I am watching right now. I'm a bit flabbergasted by the show's goal to condense the entire length of a pregnancy, an adoption application process, and the placement of a baby with an adoptive family into one half-hour segment. It's so short, in fact, they throw in another segment of another adoption process just to make the program last a whole hour.

So one adoption isn't worth even one hour on television? What is the takeaway message from this show, then? It's all neat and tidy and wrap-up-able in thirty minutes?

They do show some of the uncertainty and sadness that the birthmothers feel, but the show definitely seems slanted toward the experience of the adopting family.

The whole thing seems really gross and exploitive to me. UGH.

This just in: I just watched a commercial about the show that comes on AFTER "Adoption Diaries" . It's called "The Locator," and it's about--you guessed it--a guy who helps family members reunite after they've been separated for decades by adoption and other such situations.
Unbelievable. Really, now.

Basic Human Rights

2009-09-09T21:59:00.002-04:00

What does original identity mean to you? Check out this Adoptee rights video on youtube; it's very moving. Footage from the July 2009 adoptee rights protest in Philadelphia.

Well, Here's One Way to Search I Never Thought About

2009-09-07T21:39:00.007-04:00

A biological dad of a 19 year old girl, who was recently informed of his paternity, is searching for his lost daughter via...ebay! Check out his auction here.
What do you make of this approach??

Social Networking, Adoption Style

2009-09-01T11:24:00.003-04:00

Anyone out there checking out the adoption-themed social networking site, Adoption Voices? I recently joined, and would love to hear your opinions about it.

Taxonomy and Adoption

2009-08-15T12:45:00.005-04:00

Disclosure: I am a secret science geek. Every week, I look forward to the arrival of Tuesday for the sole reason that that is the day of the week when the New York Times "Science Times" section is published. I read it from cover to cover, which sometimes takes all week, if I'm particularly busy, but I carry it around in my purse, reading bits of it every chance I get. Ok, that's enough disclosure about my dorky habits for now.

Here's an article from the Science Times on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 that struck me as particularly pertinent to both adoption and poetry (another of my passions). Entitled "Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the Living World," the article argues that taxonomy is a dying practice. I must admit, I can't understand how it could possibly be a dying practice, because from my biased perspective as an adoptee and a poet, naming the world is central to existence.

Yet the article's author, Carol Kaesuk Yoon says that "we are, all of us abandoning taxonomy, the ordering and naming of life. We are...losing the ability to order and name and therefore losing a connection to and a place in the living world." Do you feel this is true? Please let me know what you think about her assertion.

But here's my thesis: naming the world leads to knowing the world, and knowing the world helps us know ourselves and our place in it. This is especially important for adoptees, who don't know their place in the world because of their displacement from one family into another, often at a very early, preverbal age. Naming is also important for the poetically inclined, because in my opinion, poetry is the act of renaming the world, and in naming it, we both renew it, and we come to understand it better as a shared, universal experience.

Carol Kesuk Yoon also mentions some recent scientific studies that have led "some researchers to hypothesize that there might be a specific part of the brain that is devoted to the doing of taxonomy." If this hypothesis is true, it would suggest that taxonomic tendencies are evolutionarily based, integral to our humanness. Conversely, she says, people whose brains are damaged in this taxonomic area are "completely at sea. Without the power to order and name life, a person simply does not know how to live in the world, howo to understand it..They are utterly lost, anchorless in a strange and confusing world. Because to order and name life is to have a sense of the world around, and as a result, what one's place is in it."

Sound familiar, adopted people? I would posit that this "anchorlessness" due to the inability to name the world is similar to the unmoored feelings some adoptees (including myself) have when they do not know their origins. What do you think?

I also think that this cellular need to know my origins, to understand my place in the world is what drove me to become a poet. It was a stopgap way to name the world, to name my life, until I could find my birth family.

As David Kirk, a social scientist who did research about losses in adoption, concluded the way we heal is understanding those losses. I believe that in order to understand those losses, we must first name them: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

Do any of you readers out there have a similar (or opposite) opinion or experience to share?
Give us a shout!

Reality?

2009-08-10T22:59:00.002-04:00

Check out what Heather over at Production not Reproduction's got to say about a new "reality" show, Adoption stories.
She's a smart mama, that Heather.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

2009-08-06T16:44:00.005-04:00

Picture this: the first time you ever see your birth mother's face is when she was in a casket at the morgue.

So goes one of the true stories in Jean Strauss's beautiful documentary about middle-aged and older Americans searching for their birthparents called "For the Life of Me".
(She also wrote the fine adoption memoir, Beneath a Tall Tree, shown at right.)

It's heartwrenching and frank, and talks a lot about the toxicity of secrets.

Additionally, it made me wonder how the fact of my adoption will affect my son and his descendents? Anyone want to weigh in on this idea?--how one adoption in the family orchard affects the leaves and fruit that are borne thereafter?

The parting quote:

"For adoptees, the light at the end of the tunnel is illumination, and any school kid can tell you that all living things need light to survive."

Thoughts?

Plus, anyone want to fill me in on the protest in Philly on July 21st about adoptee rights to birth certificates?

Conference Tidbit

2009-07-21T20:40:00.005-04:00

It's been a whole week since I returned from the adoption conference in Provincetown, and my life has been too busy to blog about it yet. But here's a little taste:

On Sunday, July 12, I got to meet the fabled adoption writer, Betty Jean Lifton (of Twice Born, Journey of the Adopted Self, and Lost And Found fame). She gave a great keynote address, and afterward, a friend of mine introduced me to her. I asked her about living in reunion--when it feels like you've finally arrived because you've found the sought-after person (in this case, my birth mother), but even though you've finally "arrived," you don't know where you are. (That's how it feels for me. I'm so happy to know Carol and to have her in my life, but I have a hard time connecting with her.)

When I asked Betty Jean Lifton what I should do about this, she asked me, "What do you want from your birth mother?"

I had to think quickly--I realized I don't really know what I want from my birthmom. I said "I want to know what happened!"

"Aaah!" Said BJL, "That's what all adoptees want--to go back in time to the 'then-and-there,' to the point of connection, to the point of conception, to the Navel of the World! But the birth mother doesn't want to go there, she wants to move on. She doesn't want to stay in that place; she wants to run away from it like it's a house on fire. She wants to be with you in the 'here-and-now.'"

Yes, I suppose that does create a conflict. And a bit of an impasse.

Thinking about it more, I realized that what I want from my birth mother is to know everything. To know her. And it seems so impossible.

On another note, BJL's reference to the "Navel of the World" stunned me. I have long had an obsession with the mythic idea of the navel of the world--I've written about it, researched how this notion is expressed in various cultures around the world, and, most importantly, have identified it as an important centerpiece in my understanding of myself as an adopted person.

I would love to post a few pieces of my writing here that refer to the navel of the world to show you what I mean, but alas, I am away from home and thus away from all my computer files. I'll post them later, when I return home.

Which brings me to my final point: I'm going on vacation--the kind where there are no computers (hard to believe such places exist anymore), so I'll be on hiatus from posting until August 1.

Catch you then!

I'm off to Read at and Enjoy a Conference

2009-07-09T22:55:00.004-04:00

The Adoption Resource Center and The Center for Family Connections is sponsoring a special conference in Provincetown, MA this weekend, and I'm lucky enough to be able to go! I even wiggled my way into giving a little reading of my adoption-related poems and essays, and I'm so excited. I'm looking forward to telling you all about it, but in the meantime, check it out via the link above; maybe you can drop in for part of it. I would especially recommend the performance, which is open to the public, btw, by actor, comedian, and writer Alison Larkin. I recently read her novel, The English American, and I loved it. I highly recommend it--it's written from an adoptee's perspective (she's an adult adoptee), and it chronicles her search and reunion experience with her birth families.

Here's the official blurb:

"When Pippa Dunn, adopted as an infant and raised terribly British, discovers that her birth parents are from the American South, she finds that “culture clash” has layers of meaning she’d never imagined. Meet The English American, a fabulously funny, deeply poignant debut novel that sprang from Larkin’s autobiographical one-woman show of the same name."

Have a great weekend!

Adoptees' Rights--Protest Coming Up Soon!!

2009-07-07T15:18:00.004-04:00

Check out this adoptees' rights site!! I'm so excited--just found it. There is going to be a march/protest in Philadelphia on July 21st to demonstrate our rights to open records of our birth. The site tells you more. I hope you can attend--I can't; I'll be out of state, but I'll sure be there in spirit!!

What about you?

(More soon, I've been busy, busy, busy running a day camp for my six year old son and ten of his dude-friends. Man, do I feel old and tired!)

A Father's Day Post Script

2009-06-22T21:37:00.007-04:00

Pictured here: my awesome dad, Bob, carrying my little son in an ad for Nike. (No not really--not the Nike part, I mean.)

I have known my dad, Bob, since I was three weeks old, and he has always been amazing to both my brothers and me. He is so excellent that I long ago dubbed him SuperBob, in celebration of his Super Dadly powers.

SuperBob has helped me out of sticky situations so many times, I can't remember them all. Some of them I wish I could forget, because I'm embarrassed to have gotten into them in the first place, but SuperBob was always there to show me how to pick up the pieces and go home. (Like the winter I decided to move to Flagstaff, Arizona to live with my boyfriend, and I packed up all my stuff in the back of a big old white pickup truck and the boyfriend and I drove all the way from northern California to northern Arizona. Correction: my boyfriend drove us all the way because, having been in a bad car accident less than a year before while attempting to drive home from Alaska, I was too scared to drive the humongous truck that was not only full of stuff, it had the stiffest clutch I've ever tried to engage. You can probably see this coming, but on we go: I had only been in Flagstaff a few days before I knew it wasn't going to work for me to stay there. Not a healthy relationship. I knew I had to get back home to California, but I was trapped--I couldn't drive that truck back across the desert by myself, no way, no how. So who came to my rescue? SuperBob, of course. He got on a flight to Flagstaff, picked me up, and drove me the 850 miles back to California in the big, white pickup truck, never once berating me or making me feel like a total loser for not looking before I leapt, or anything. He just treated me to dinner at the Sizzler in Barstow [that's about as good as it gets in Barstow, by the way], and hugged me while I cried about my broken relationship with the boyfriend.) SuperBob is a really good guy.

Fast forward a couple of decades to last summer, yes, less than a year ago, when I first met my birthfather, Francis. I contacted Francis via the good old US Postal Service in 2007. When he got he letter, he was shocked--he said he had no idea I existed, but in his hands, he held a long treatise from me, telling him about myself and my family, and a big 8-12" x 11" inkjet-printed color picture of me with my little son , smiling out at him from the abyss. He called me on the phone as soon as he got the letter, and said "I thought I had four children, but now I have five!!" He couldn't have been more welcoming, despite his claim of not knowing I roamed the Earth.(Someone's memory isn't serving him/her: my birthmother claims he knew...but anyway.)

A few weeks later, he sent pictures of himself and his family, and wouldn't you know it, in his high school graduation picture, he looks very, very much like SuperBob. What do you make of that?

So now I have two dads, one who has dealt with me and all my neediness and warts for 42 years, and one who I am just beginning to know.

And both of them are very kind men.

I feel lucky.

Happy Father's Day, Dad and Francis!

A Poem A Day...

2009-06-17T12:16:00.007-04:00

Why Wilderness?

Because the truth
about origins
is built on pillars

of dreams and lies,
and family is built
upon wooden planks

of blind hope, the way
a nest is built in its tree
of presumed potential.

Because a forest is the one
who teaches how to question,

a desert is the one
who embraces,

and a canyon is the one
who knows how to keep.

--Andrea Ross, 2001

A little poetry explication:

The ten years I spent searching for my birth parents coincided with the ten years I spent as a wilderness guide, living outdoors or in wild places most of the time. I'm working with this idea (and as you can see by the date on the poem, I've been working with it for quite awhile,) that this coincidence has a deeper meaning--that the need to search and the need to be in the wilderness are intertwined, and that they each inform the other in an important way. The wilderness was my "home base" while I did this scary, nebulous thing called searching for my origins. I found a lot of solace in wilderness, and the poem explores some of the reasons why.

Recently, my smart and lovely friend Tamar directed me to Gerald G. May's book, The Wisdom of Wilderness, in which he writes, " ...The primary meaning of wild is 'natural.' In turn, natural comes from the Latin nasci, meaning 'to be born.' Wilderness, then, is not only the nature you find outdoors. It can also refer to your own true Nature--the You that is closest to your birth. This inner wilderness is the untamed truth of who you really are."

Well, there you have it. Thanks, Gerald G. Mays; you've put elegantly into words what I've been inexpertly gnawing on for a decade.

I'm interested to hear from you, readers, about what wilderness does for you--are you scared of it? Do you love it? Do you feel at peace in it, or nervous? Do you avoid it, or are you drawn to it?
Does it feed you in a deep and synergistic way? If so, please try to tell us about it.
Thanks!

Go Ask Your Father

2009-06-15T22:27:00.007-04:00

Father's Day's just around the corner...

Did any of you listen to This American Life last week? It featured a narrative told by Lennard Davis, author of Go Ask Your Father: One Man's Obsession to Find Himself, His Origins, and the Meaning of Life Through Genetic Testing, which will be published in 2009 by Random House.

Davis isn't an adopted person, a few years ago, after his father died, Davis's uncle told him that he (the uncle) was Davis's biological father.

The meat of the story is about Davis's quest to find out if his uncle's claim is true, and when it becomes clear that the man who raised him is definitely NOT his father, he says he feels "abandoned."

This is the part that caught my ear--feelings of abandonment run so rampant in me, and in many other adoptees, that I'm always trying to figure out how to come to terms with them, how to contextualize them in new ways to understand them better, and in doing so, to drive them away.

So Davis feels abandoned when he finds out his father is not his father, which highlights the fact that keeping secrets from people about their origins almost always leads to more pain than openly sharing the facts from the very beginning would have done.

(Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sharon and Bob--my parents--for telling me I was adopted from the minute you got me. I wish all adoptive parents had your strength and foresight.)

Anyway, so even though Davis is not an adopted person, he feels abandoned in the same way that many adopted people feel because his parents kept secrets from him about his biological origins.

The reason I bring this up is that so many non-adopted people have a hard time understanding adoptees' feelings of abandonment; they say things like "but you were chosen," or "you were raised by wonderful, loving parents, how could you feel abandoned?" So here you have it, nay-sayers: proof that feelings of abandonment arise from confusion about one's origins, no matter the circumstances.

I'm curious about what you readers think of the "abandonment issues" argument: your thoughts? Comments? Questions? Let's hear them!

Touched-By-Adoption Blogs

2009-06-01T21:27:00.003-04:00

Hi there, everyone:
Are there any blogs by adoptees, birthparents, or adoptive parents that you read and would recommend? I'm always on the lookout for new ones--the ones I like are found on my "Blogs I like" list. I'd love to read your faves.
Please share!

Playing Hooky, Managing the Abyss

2009-05-26T10:58:00.006-04:00

I haven't posted recently, and in trying to figure out why, I realized it was because I was just having too much danged fun to sit in front of my computer very much these last two weeks; I finished my teaching semester in mid-May, and I've been playing hooky from being an adult ever since; for fun I have gardened like crazy, mountain biked in the leafy spring woods, celebrated my birthday by surfing, buried my 5-year-old up to his neck in sand (his idea, not mine), decorated sand castles with clam shells and crab legs, went on a few dates with my husband, saw the Cezanne and Beyond exhibit at the Phila. Art Museum (gorgeous), sometimes spent three hours a day at the gym (!), went thrift shopping, and hosted my parents for a nice little visit. Generally, I have been packing all the fun that I should have been having during the past five months into the last two weeks. That's what summer is like for us teachers.

So, on to my latest thoughts about adoption.
Let's talk about Abyss Management, shall we? What is Abyss Management? It's the term that Dr. Joyce Pavao, adult adoptee, author of the excellent book The Family of Adoption, and founder of the Center for Family Connections, uses to describe the task adoptees are faced with post-reunion, which is to recognize and deal with the missing spaces in both places in one's life--the feelings of longing and loss we feel about both our adopted family and our birth family; for while reunion may engender feelings of wholeness, completion and healing in the adoptee (it certainly did for me), reunion also throws into stark relief the holes that remain--holes that really cannot be patched because they have existed for so long. One way I try to deal with these abysses is to think of myself--an adopted person--as being from two "countries," wherein one country is my birth family, and the other is my adopted family. Working to integrate these two countries is a lifelong process. I have been told it gets easier the longer you work on it.
Here's hoping.

Your thoughts? I'd love to hear them!!

Adoption in the News

2009-05-13T09:07:00.008-04:00

What do you make of the news stories about adoption reunions that appeared on NPR around Mothers Day?

In one, which aired on May 8, two days before Mother's Day, the adopted daughter calls her birth mom a "Mentor" as well as a mother. Check it out and let me know what you think.

And In this NPR story, which aired on Mother's Day, an adopted son and his birth mother describe their reunion after 20 years of separation.

And finally, consider all the buzz about "Raising Katie: What adopting a white girl taught one black family about race in the Obama era." See My American Melting Pot for commentary.

I think something's afoot with regard to adoption in the media; are we approaching the critical mass of attention required to become a mainstream, highly publicized topic of discussion? What do you think?

A Word About Mother's Day

2009-05-10T08:33:00.008-04:00

(Pictured left to right: My mom; me, 8 months pregnant with my son, and my grandmother)

Finally becoming a mother myself at age 36 helped me to better understand how much my mom has loved and cared for me ever since she received me from the adoption agency when I was three weeks old. I never understood, until I had my own child, the bonding that goes on between a mother and her baby during all those hours of holding, wiping spit-up, changing diapers, rocking, strolling, and nursing or bottle feeding. Doing all those things with my infant son birthed a new relationship between my mom and me.

So, Mom, Happy Mother's Day. I love you.

Then there's the birthmother issue. 2001 was the first year I had the opportunity to wish both my mothers (my mom and my birthmom) a Happy Mother's day. I had found my birthmother, Carol, and had exchanged emails, phone calls, letters and photographs with her, but I had not yet met her. I was elated that my birthmom was finally in my life: I could actually wish her a Happy Mother's Day, and it made me feel more whole to have access to her and the part of my personal history that accompanies her.

We have since met each other, visited on numerous occasions, and we have become a part of one another's lives. But to live in reunion is to navigate uncharted territory; we don't know who we are to each other. She is my mother, but she was unable to mother me; I am her daughter, but I am a stranger to her. When I reunited with Carol, I felt as if I had finally arrived at a place I had long yearned to be, but when I got there, I didn't know where I was. I'm curious to know whether other adoptees in reunion feel this way.

So now, when I go to the stationery store to select Mother's Day cards for my mom and my birthmom, I get a little stymied trying to find an appropriate one to send Carol. Mostly the cards wax poetic (albeit Hallmarkily) about all the things the mother has done for the child--all the boo-boos kissed, dinners cooked, long talks enjoyed in the middle of the night while snuggled up tight in bed. None of them, of course, says "Thanks for relinquishing me, I know it was an excruciating decision; Happy Mother's Day." I mean, really.

I usually end up making a card, or buying a card with no salutation inside and writing in my own sentiments. But my own sentiments are conflicted, so even doing that is difficult. I want to acknowledge Carol, to let her know she's important to me. I want to forgive her for giving me away, I want to absolve her of all the guilt she feels. I want to wipe it all away. I want her to be the person she would have grown up to be, had she not become an unwed teenaged mother in a society that condemned her. I wish all these things for her. And I also wish that my feelings of guilt, unworthiness, and confusion related to being adopted could be wiped clean. Finding Carol and building a relationship with her has helped to repair some of these wounds, but it has also opened up others. Becoming a mother myself has also helped bridge some gaps. But it's an ongoing process, a lifelong one, I suspect.

With that in mind, I wish a Happy Mother's Day to Sharon and Carol, and to all the brave adoptive- and birth-mothers in this confusing, wonderful world. Love to you all.

The Long Road Home

2009-04-20T18:39:00.007-04:00

I just returned from wandering the desert for 4 days, searching for ancient ruins and petroglyphs.

On Friday, my friend Kim and I hiked for 9 hours straight, almost without stopping, trying to find some ruins we had sketchy directions to. It was quite an adventure: We had to get permission from a cranky woman to walk across her land into the canyon where the ruins were, then bushwhack our way downstream for several miles, then climb up pouroffs and cliffs of a side canyon for a couple more miles. At one point I was scritching on my belly over a big sandstone boulder on a cliff ledge, trying to avoid falling to my death. We finally turned around without finding the ruins, and got back to the trailhead well after dark, nauseated and headachy and dehydrated.

Why, you might ask, would any sane person do this to herself?

The short answer is: I'm obsessed with finding ruins, rock art, and any kind of artifact.

The long answer is: I think it has something to do with being adopted. Searching for ruins, pot shards, projectile points, ancient corncobs, granaries, pictographs and petroglyphs replicates "The Search"--for self, identity, ancestors, birthparents.

I talked to Kim about this obsesssion--she has it too, but she's not adopted. I asked her what it means to her to goat around the wilderness, searching for artifacts. She says she likes (and I mean really likes--we were both so stubbon about finding those hidden ruins, we almost ended up spending the night huddled under a rock ledge; we just couldn't admit defeat and turn toward home) it because it's a like a treasure hunt.

But I really think that for me it's something more than that. In searching for, finding, and trying to decipher rock art, a very hidden part of myself thinks I will learn something about that very hidden part of myself.

This whole process reminds me of a dream I once had in which I was digging around in my backyard, and I uncovered some human skulls. They had been embellished with decorative carvings and were very beautiful. They were the skulls of my long-lost ancestors, and finding them led me to a great epiphany in the dream--sadly, a non-verbal epiphany, but in retrospect, I realize that this dream was about finding my personal history, my true identity, very close to home--in my own backyard--that is to say, in myself.

Book Giveaway Winner!

2009-04-14T19:22:00.002-04:00

I must say, I am impressed. Your stories of peeing in the wilderness are very touching. Kim gets special recognition for writing a rhyming poem about peeing her pants, and Maggie gets an honorable mention for admitting she used to pee outside while wearing full colonial regalia.

All the responses are funny and/or heartwarming; I regret not having copies of the book to give to all of you for baring your, er, souls for all the blogosphere to see.

(If you haven't yet read the responses for the giveaway, I heartily encourage you to do so; they're fabulous. And you can always add one of your own. Everyone loves a good wilderness/pee story, right?)

So, the results are in: I wrote your names on pieces of paper, put them in a bowl, and had my husband draw a name, and the winner is: Heather! You, lucky dog, are the soon-to-be owner of a brand- spankin'-new copy of The Double-Daring Book for Girls. (Heather, email me at writerinres2004 at yahoo dot com and let me know what snail mail address you'd like me to send the book to.)

I'm off to the desert to backpack and rejuvenate (and pee in the wilderness). See you next week.

I Double Dog Dare Ya--Book Giveaway

2009-04-07T15:13:00.005-04:00

Ok, so once upon a time, I was a wilderness guide. I hiked up big mountains, paddled through whitewater, shinnied my way through sandstone caves, and slept under the stars a whole lot.

But one of the most useful things I learned how to do was pee outside without, um, getting myself all wet. There was a lot of trial and error, and I have to admit, I learned a few things the hard way.

But you don't have to make the same mistakes I did because in The Double-Daring Book for Girls, the newly-launched sequel to the wildly popular Daring Book for Girls by Miriam Peskowitz and Andrea Buchanan, you will find a little section about "going to the bathroom in the woods." I am extremely proud to say that little section was written based upon my techniques. Yes, folks, I provided wilderness bathroom methods consultation for this fine book. (You should have seen me giving a demonstration to the author at our local cafe. Well, maybe you did.)

There are lots of other super cool things in this book, most of them far less scatalogical, aimed at girls ages 7-14. To read an interview with Miriam Peskowitz, read this post at My American Meltingpot.

At any rate, I have a hot-off-the-presses copy of Double Daring to give away to someone who comments on this post with a good story about being (not necessarily peeing) in the wilderness. Comment by midnight on Friday, April 10 to be eligible.

A Birth Mother's Point of View

2009-03-25T09:20:00.003-04:00

This blog post portraying a birth mother's point of view is definitely a must-read, if you haven't seen it already. It's heartfelt, sincere, and very raw. Interestingly, many of this birth mother's points about her feelings of loss and anxiety related to relinquishing her baby correspond with what I perceive as the adoptee's feelings of loss and anxiety about having been relinquished--they certainly reflect mine.

Ironic that these groups of people (birth mothers and adoptees) who have been forcefully separated and hidden from each other via closed adoption, shame, etc., for so many years have such similar feelings about their experiences, despite our society's mandates for us to forget about one another and go on living our lives as if the other never existed.

Whose Heritage do We claim?

2009-03-14T16:16:00.001-04:00

A great-great-great uncle of my dad's signed the Declaration of Independence. There's even a little placard with his portrait and name on it embedded in the sidewalk of the historical district in Philadelphia. My great aunt Ruth, who lived to be 103, traveled the world when she was 22 in 1919, and was generally a super cool woman and a role model for me, was the family's heritage-keeper. That is to say, she kept records of the family's geneaology, photographs, accomplishments, etc.

I have always found this family's history very interesting, but also felt conflicted about it since it is the geneaology of my adoptive father's family, not my blood relations'. I have always felt uneasy about claiming his heritage because I was unsure I was entitled to it-- so much of the pride (and shame) of heritage in our society is based upon blood kinship, not adoptive kinship.

One day when I was in high school, I was called out of class by the guidance counselor to take a special test administered exclusively to descendants of the DAR to determine eligibility for a college scholarship. I had to ask the counselor what the DAR was, and when she told me it was the Daughters of the American Revolution, I remembered the great-great-great uncle, and figured it had something to do with him. Even then, when I was only 16 and had no idea what the DAR was all about, I had an inkling that I didn't technically qualify to even take this test, much less to receive the scholarship.

I didn't do well on the test, so I didn't advance to the next level of competition for the scholarship, but as it turns out, I wouldn't have been eligible for it anyway, as membership in the DAR is, as I suspected, based upon bloodlines.

Which brings me to the question I have been pondering: whose heritage do I claim? Do I claim the Scottish and Finnish ancestors I've heard about all my life from my adoptive parents, or do I claim the Norwegian and Swiss ancestors I've recently learned about from my newly found birthparents? Neither feels completely mine, yet I don't wish to eschew either of them because they both feel familiar and true. Who are my ancestors?

As adoptees, how do we reconcile our dual heritage?

You Were Only Waiting for This Moment to Arise

2009-03-12T13:57:00.007-04:00

This has nothing to do with adoption, but I simply must share it because...well, read on:

Last night, my five-year-old son and I were sitting at the dinner table eating noodles, when suddenly he hopped to his feet and started doing what appeared to be his approximation of jumping jacks, which involve a lot of hopping and flailing of arms (in his kindergarten, he has an old-school gym teacher who tries to teach these little, totally uncoordinated people to do things such as squat thrusts, lunges, and jumping jacks).
I said, "Oh, are you showing me what you did in gym class today?"
"No, mommy, I'm dancing."
"Oh," I said, "What are you dancing to?"
"I'm dancing to 'Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night'" (also known as "Blackbird" by Paul McCartney).
Since it was quiet in the house, and he was singing to the song playing in his head (I guess) I suggested,
"Do you want me to sing it and you can dance to it?"
His eyes lighted up, "Yeah!!"
So I started to sing, and he performed this exquisite, spazzy (he's got fire in his soul, but no rhythm yet), and very heartfelt, spontaneous interpretive dance throughout the dining room while I warbled away:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,oh
You were only waiting for this moment to arise, oh
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

And that, dear readers, is why I love being a parent.

How do you Make a Child Your Own?

2009-02-28T12:58:00.001-05:00

In Shelley Burtt's "Lives'" essay in the New York Times Magaine on Feb 15, 2008, she writes, "Your birth children aren't offered to someone else first. As contingent as their existence is on particular circumstances, once they're on their way, there's only one place they can end up. To be confronted, 10 years later, with the physical evidence that my son, this generous soul I loved so deeply, almost belonged to someone else, and almost was someone else, brought tears to my eyes and a knot to my stomach. Ryan was ours not only because we had wanted him but also because another American family had not. How do you make a child your own?"

There are a couple of things that struck me about this passage. First, let me say that I understand what Burtt is getting at. But, I take issue with her first sentence; if you're a birthmother, your birth children ARE offered to someone else first. Second, I think it's strange that after living with her son for almost a decade, she suddenly realizes that he had "almost belonged to someone else, and almost was someone else." She adopted him. Did she completely disregard the fact that he had birthparents and a point of origin before she came along? Why does it bring "tears to [her] eyes and a knot to [her] stomach" only that another American family had not adopted adopted him, not that he was taken away from his original family?

The Moment of Truth

2009-02-19T15:23:00.003-05:00

It finally happened. I finally told my son I'm adopted. Only in not so many words.

He loves to talk about when he was inside my belly, asking me thing such as "Mommy, did I kick you when I lived inside your belly?"
and I say "Yes"
and he says "and what did you say?"
and I say "Baby! What are you doing in there???!"
and he thinks that's incredibly funny and he laughs.

It's quite the comedy routine we have here.

So, like all things do, it changed: the other day, after a visit from my parents, he asked,
"Mommy, did you kick Grandma when you lived inside her belly?"

and I said, "No, I didn't live inside Grandma's belly."
and he said "WHAT?!"
and I said, "I lived inside grandma CAROL's belly instead."
and he said, "WHAT?!"
and I said, "Yes, I lived inside grandma Carol's belly, and when I came out, she decided I should live with Grandma and Grandpa."
and he said "Why?"

Ahh, the million dollar question. It always stops me cold. Why did she give me away? Oh, I know, I know. I really do. I get it. But how do I explain it to my five-year-old son? (And how do I explain it to my child-self?)

and I said, "because grandma Carol decided it would be a good idea if I lived with Grandma and Grandpa."

and he said, "oh." and was off to play with his Magic School bus. End of story. For now.

2009-02-14T17:22:00.006-05:00

How I Woke Up on Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T17:07:00.003-05:00

"You're someone who I'm going to love for a long, long time," says a little person clad in footie pajamas, as he pads into my dark bedroom and curls up in bed next to me. "I love you too, sweetie," I say, putting my arm around his small torso and wondering if my husband has sent him in with a scripted conversation.

"I'm going to miss you when I grow up and move away," he says.
"I'll miss you too, sweetie. But you'll come to visit, right?" I ask.
"Yes, and I'll bring my children to visit you, Mommy." He says.
"Good," I say, drifting back to sleep. It's still early, I'm still tired, and I can barely stay awake, but I'm trying to memorize what he says so I can write it down later. By now I'm pretty sure this is a spontaneous conversation, not a proscribed Valentine's Day one. My husband is downstairs, awake, reading the paper, eating cereal, being the early riser of the family, and my five-year-old valentine is in bed with me telling me how much he loves me because that's just the way he is. Lucky me.

Thumbsucker

2009-02-12T15:22:00.002-05:00

One of the things that made me feel more connected to the world when I was a child was...a drum roll, please: sucking my thumb.

It was so great that I didn't give it up until I was nine years old. And by that time, boy were my teeth messed up. But I didn't care. Sucking my thumb was a kind of communion. I thought I could contact aliens while sucking my thumb--that's how tuned into the universe I felt when I was doing it. (I don't, however, know why I wanted to contact aliens, but whatever.)

I even told my best friend Robin about it. And 25 years later, when she had a thumbsucking baby of her own, she made me a special birthday card with a picture of her daughter sucking her thumb. The message read "calling all aliens to wish you a happy birthday!!" Now that's a good friend--one who remembers what you said about contacting aliens by sucking your thumb for all those years.

New Writing Workshop in the Works!

2009-01-27T15:38:00.004-05:00

OK, Folks, I'm trying again: I need at least five people to sign up for this class in order for it to run, and I'd really like it to run!

So, If you live in the Philadelphia area, please consider signing up--I'd love to meet you.

Voices of Adoption Writing Workshop

taught by Andrea Ross

Class meets three times: Sunday afternoons from 2-4 pm; February 22, March 1, and March 8

This course is for anyone touched by adoption who wishes to explore his or her stories through creative writing. In a relaxed and supportive environment, the instructor will guide students through writing prompts, sharing of work, giving and receiving of constructive feedback, and discussion of the writing process and adoption-related topics. This writing-intensive course will draw inspiration from various authors and will culminate in the production of an optional class anthology.

Course fee: $44, plus $5 materials fee payable to the instructor

More about Bellybuttons

2009-01-27T10:37:00.006-05:00

This morning before he got dressed for school, my son snuggled up with me on the living room couch in his polarfleece jammies. The room was darkish and my husband was off in the kitchen eating breakfast, and my son and I had the most lovely, intimate conversation:

HIM, patting my belly: Mommy, was this my home before I was born?

ME: Yes, it was.

HIM: And you fed me through here? (unzips his jammies and points to his bellybutton).

ME: Yep.

HIM: I didn't have a mouth, so I needed to eat through my bellybutton.

ME: Well, you did have a mouth, but you ate through your bellybutton.

HIM: What would happen when salad tried to go through there? It would get stuck.

ME: Umm...

HIM: Or tomatoes? I hate tomatoes, so when a tomato went through there I spat it right out.

ME: Umm...

HIM: But mashed potatoes would fit through; they would just slide right into my bellybutton.

ME: I guess so...

HIM: I love you, mommy.

ME: I love you, too, sweetie. Now go change into your school clothes.

He's the best. And I know I've posted about bellybuttons before, but dang, this connection I have with my little son is so very rewarding.

I don't know why he's so obsessed with his bellybutton, but I know why I am, and I feel so very lucky to have been able to carry him in my body and give birth to him so that I can have conversations such as this one.

I'm just a little nervous about what other people are going to think when he starts telling them that he spits tomatoes out of his navel. Oh well. It won't be any worse than what they think when he tells them that before he was a boy, he was a fish (the results of my attempts to explain evolutionary biology to him), or when he tells them that after he dies he's going to turn into a plant (the results of my efforts to explain decomposition to him).

Finished Running

2009-01-20T16:03:00.006-05:00

Well, I finished reading Ann Patchett's Run a few days ago. I really enjoyed it, but I did wonder what Ann Patchett's relationship to adoption is. In the interview with Patchett at the back of my book, she says nothing about adoption, but emphasizes that in all her books she writes about people who don't know each other being thrown together in a situation, which would definitely describe the setting of both Patchett's Bel Canto and the maternity home situation in her Patron Saint of Liars. Still, I can't help wondering what her fascination with adoption is...

Did anyone sleuth anything out about this?

Literature

2009-01-14T09:29:00.003-05:00

I just started reading Ann Patchett's Run. It's about a white family who adopts two African-American boys after having one biological son. I am hooked, but I'm only on page 80 or so. Thus far, it's about the unplanned reunion with the boys' birthmother when they are 20 and 21 years old.

Have you read it? What do you think?

Who We Become

2009-01-06T13:44:00.006-05:00

Check out this article in the New York Times. In it, the author Ellen Ullman ends by saying "Knowing every single ancestor...will never solve the deeper mystery, which of course is the dreadful question of who we become."

Is it always a dreadful question?

(Does she mean dreadful as in

in causing great dread, fear, or terror? Or does she mean dreadful as

in inspiring awe or reverence?)

If she means the former, I disagree; if she means the latter, well ok then.

Moving on:

Yes, we humans all want to know who we are going to become as we grow into ourselves, and adoptees tend to be especially curious about this, as we often have been deprived of information about our ancestors.

I believe I'm a result of both nature and nurture: I'm very much like my adoptive parents in that I'm a college professor and so were they; my politics are very lefty and so are theirs. On the other hand, I have this obsessive need for wilderness and wide open spaces, and they're not exactly mountaineers. However, when I met my birthfather last summer, I saw in him what appears to be the origins of my outdoorsiness: we went hiking together and he pointed out to me various birds and plant species; he told me there's nowhere he'd rather be than outside; and he collects rocks (ask my husband how he feels about having moved my childhood rock collection from state to state for the last decade). I haven't found as much in common with my birthmother, which is sad to me. But I do kind of look like her. One thing I share with my birthmother is a deep sadness. I sense that her life, even her personality, was profoundly impacted by the circumstances surrounding my birth. I think she has been very hard on herself as a result of the shame of being an unwed mother in the 1960s, and of giving me up for adoption. She doesn't like to talk about it, but I got a lot of good information from the book The Girls Who Went Away, and I highly recommend that book to anyone who's interested in this topic.

So, what did you think of Ullman's article? What do you think about nature v. nurture? Have you read The Girls Who Went Away?

Self-Confidence

2008-12-31T20:19:00.002-05:00

So I just finally finished my application for a grant for nonfiction writers who write about the desert. Not sure if I've mentioned that I'm a total desert junkie--used to be a ranger in the Grand Canyon and a wilderness guide in New Mexico and Arizona. So I think this grant is a really good fit for me.

I have a whole theory/hypothesis about the relationship between the Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River as a metaphor for the institution of closed adoption. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

I applied for this grant, and I'd really like to get it. I'd like to know that someone believes in my writing and my quest for identity enough to fund it, even just to throw a little bit of cash at it. So, wish me luck?

I always have a hard time with applications that are about me. (I'm great writing grants for things that have nothing to do with myself.) Something about tooting my own horn is excruciatingly difficult for me, and I end up moaning "I'm not worthy!" (a la Wayne and Garth) and crawling back under the covers for days. Luckily, if my husband's within earshot of this moaning, he might say "You are worthy! You're so worthy!" But sometimes he drops the ball and says "Your application looks pretty good." Like today. (Sorry, honey, but it stings.)

Can I just say, "pretty good" applications do not usually win the prize?

Anyone have any opinions about adoptees and self-confidence? Especially you adoptive moms out there? I sure wish I could shed this garment of underconfidence (like underwear--just take 'em off?) and get on with it.

My Family

2008-12-23T15:11:00.003-05:00

Thanks to everyone who chimed in that they are reading this blog when The Sought-After sought herself some companionship out here in cyberspace. Nice to know you're all there, folks.

After three days spent visiting friends in Sacramento and Davis, I am in a wintry whiteout in intermountain Northern California at my parents' place.

My husband and son and I just came in for a lunch break from fort-building, cross-country skiing, and sledding. There's just about nothing better than the joy and excitement of a five-year-old playing in the snow.

Except maybe visiting with lovely close friends whom I've known since I was three, and since first grade, and since 7th grade, and since grad school, and since my son was born...

My parents just left to drive three hours to Chico so that my mom can receive her chemotherapy, and they're going to try to make it back tonight because another big snow storm is forecast for tomorrow and the next day. I really hope they make it back in time for Christmas. I wish they hadn't had to go at all. But she's got to beat that cancer.

My brother from Florida is due to arrive here with his husband at any minute, and my other brother is coming with his family in a few days; I can't wait for the house to be full of family--all kinds of family. Adoption is one of the things in this world that expands the meaning of family, as do marriage and friendship.

Happy Birthday to Carol, my birthmom, who turned 60 yesterday!

It's so comforting to have all these people around me, my big, extended, blended, complicated family. I love you all.

The Void

2008-12-15T19:05:00.002-05:00

The Sought-After is a bit lonely. No one has posted a comment for weeks. Perhaps I scared you all away with my angry posting about the myth of salvation. If so, I'm sorry. Or maybe it's something else. Send up a flare to tell me you're out there? (I have no idea how to access my statcounter, so I really don't know if anyone's reading at all.) Am I just shouting into the void? Please let me know. And I promise not to be mean.
Thanks.

Busting Myths about Mythbusting

2008-12-08T13:49:00.003-05:00

Last week, this article from Adoptive Families Magazine showed up in my email inbox. It suggests that the media perpetuate these four myths about adoption: 1) Adopted Children are Troublemakers, 2) All Adoptees Have Traumatic Birth Histories, 3) All Adoptees Search, and 4), Adopted Children Are Obtained Illegally.

I take the subtext of this list to be "Things That Dissuade People from Adopting," since from what I have read, Adoptive Families is extremely concerned with making everyone's experience with adoption seem very positive, and they want people to adopt. If this is indeed the subtext, I am kind of appalled by #3, All Adoptees Search.

Does the fact that some adoptees search for their biological origins dissuade people from adopting? If so, why? I understand that the prospect of an adoptee searching may threaten the adoptive parents' sense of parenthood, but shouldn't Adoptive Families, as an advocate for, well, adoptive families, which I assume includes adopted people as well as those who adopt them, support adopted peoples' interest in searching? And, come to think of it, shouldn't they disabuse adoptive parents of the notion that their parenthood is in question if their adopted child searches?

What is going on here? Please read the article (hyperlinked above) and let me know what you think.
Thanks.

More on Adoption and Chronic Illness

2008-12-01T12:42:00.004-05:00

I got really sick right before I turned twenty. I felt very weak, had no appetite, and ached all over. I went to the doctor and told him I felt like I had been hit by a Mack Truck. He said I probably had the flu. But it didn't go away, so after a few blood tests, we learned that I had inflammation in my blood (before which time I didn't know one's blood could be inflamed), indicating some kind of inflammatory arthritis. I had to go on massive doses of cortisone to calm the inflammation, and it helped, but they couldn't give me a specific diagnosis. My new rheumatologist said what I had was sort of like rheumatoid arthritis, although my blood wasn't testing positive for that disease. So it was a mystery.

I decided it would be a good idea to find out about my medical history, something that I had never thought about before, so I wrote to the adoption agency that handled my adoption, and received my "non-identifying" information--information about my birthparents and their families that is vague enough that I wouldn't be able to track them down. There was nothing about arthritis in it. But I did learn that my birth mom liked to swim, and my birthdad liked to sing. (More on that later.)

Eventually, after 8 years of being sick and going on and off various medications, I had accumulated enough damage in my joints from inflammation to indicate that I have a kind of inflammatory arthritis called spondylitis. It is chronic, uncurable, very painful, and in some cases, very debilitating. I am lucky to have a somewhat mild form of it, but I would be lying if I said it hadn't completely changed, and sometimes ruled, my life. I have had it for 22 years now, and I'm very tired of it, but I'm also very accustomed to it. I can also say that it is the reason I became a ranger, a wilderness guide, a search and rescue worker, a mountain biker, a backpacker and a climber.

During the initial months and years of being sick, when I didn't know what it was and I was very scared, I decided to try to exercise/exorcise it out of my body. I bought a mountain bike and started riding it up the humongous hill to my college campus at UC Santa Cruz every day. At first, I sweated and pedaled as hard as I could, while going so slow that flies actually landed on me and other people, who were riding Schwinn 3-speeds, passed me handily. Eventually, though, I worked myself into shape, and gained some confidence, and in turn felt I had some power, some control over the then-mysterious disease that was kicking my butt on a 24/7 basis. My goal was to kick its butt in return, which didn't really happen, since the disease never left my body, but I became very strong and began to identify myself as a rugged, outdoor gal. Which was sort of cool.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with being adopted? Well, I think that adopted people are probably more prone to chronic illness than other people. Why? Because we feel vulnerable and susceptible. It has been proven that adoptees have more psychological disease than the average person, so it makes sense to me that our sensitivity would cross over to the physical realm as well.

I have two brothers; one is adopted and the other is not. My adopted brother has a chronic illness, too. He's diabetic. My other brother is as healthy as a horse.

Now, I know a sample group of three people does not a scientific study make, but I am very curious about this.

Any thoughts?

Amateur Survey

2008-11-24T19:08:00.003-05:00

I'm doing an informal survey based on a very amateur hypothesis I have: Based upon my own health status and that of many other adoptees I know, I think that adopted people may be more susceptible to chronic illness than the average person. Anyone have any experience with this? Comments? Competing theories?
I look forward to your input.

Wonderful Weekend Workshop

2008-11-17T20:49:00.002-05:00

I co-taught my first-ever writing workshop about adoption last Saturday at the fabulous, super-community-focused Big Blue Marble Bookstore. I have taught many, many writing workshops over the last 15 years, but never had the guts until now to do one about adoption, so it was a big step for me. My co-facilitator, Betsy has run workshops about adoption before, so I was less nervous than I would have been on my own--thanks Betsy!!

We had five participants, some of whom were adult adoptees, some of whom were adoptive parents, and one who was an adoptive uncle. Everyone did some great writing and sharing, and it felt really good for me to be in a roomful of people touched by adoption. It can be very lonely to be an adopted person, so being in that room was extremely comforting for me--it was very nice to not have to explain myself in the way I usually do when speaking about adoption. There was a level of understanding, of knowing, that is rare for me to find.

It kind of reminded me of when I was pregnant with my son, walking down the street all humongous and feeling very much on display and very guarded--people I didn't even know said the weirdest things to me when I was pregnant, such as "They're still letting you out of the house?" I know. Anyway, whenever I would pass by another pregnant woman thumping her way down the sidewalk, I'd shoot her a knowing glance, as if to say "can you believe the craziness of this situation?" And she'd smile back at me, seeming to know exactly what I meant with my look.

Even more similar was the feeling I got in my prenatal yoga class where once a week I got to be in a room full of pregnant women and nobody else, and I felt such a kinship with these women who were like me in this very obvious way, but who otherwise were strangers to me. So this workshop was a bit like a prenatal yoga class: a gathering of strangers to meditate on a particular kind of sameness in each of us. It was wonderful.

The Myth of Salvation

2008-11-05T10:14:00.005-05:00

A few days ago, I was trying to explain the premise of this blog to a few people, and I found myself using the word "myth" a lot. Yes, I want to dispel myths about adoption. One of these myths is that it's a tidy solution to a bunch of people's problems: adoptive/infertile parents get the baby they've been wanting so much; a woman/couple who need to choose not to parent find other parents for their baby; and a child gets a loving home. Signed, sealed, delivered, everybody's good, right?

Not so fast, everyone. One thing I really appreciate about the blogs I've been reading by adoptive moms and birthmoms is that they seem to deeply understand the complexity of the adoption situation--for everyone involved. I'm not sure I can say the same for some others who have commented on my blog postings.

I get that everyone has her/his own vulnerable feelings, that everyone feels alienated in some way at some time, and that many can identify with the "broken chain" metaphor in some way; however, I maintain that these feelings are DIFFERENT for people who are adopted. And our experience needs to be heard and understood and validated.

I imagine that people who have commented that the way I feel is a common to many people, that people who are not adoptees feel that way too, are just trying to help--they see me hurting and want to fix it. I appreciate their interest in making me feel better, but it doesn't help me--or any other adoptee who feels this loss--to invalidate my feelings. They are real. This is my reality. I am tired of being made to feel like a whiner for saying things like "I feel loss because when I was born, my mother gave me away and I never got to know anything about her or why she did that."

It is a big deal, folks. It really is. Everyone who is touched by adoption experiences a profound loss. And it's time that was recognized by others. I was fortunate to be adopted by a loving family when I was a baby. I wasn't abused by my parents, and I didn't grow up in an orphanage. But I was not "saved," as Fang put it in his post: ("Someone is waiting for you to save his or her life as yours was saved.") Adoption is not about salvation. And an adoptee's feelings of loss and alienation are different than other feelings of loss and alienation. Everyone is entitled to their feelings.

Proud and Happy and Just So Relieved

2008-11-05T10:02:00.004-05:00

Oh, Thank God!
I know the World Series is over, so baseball metaphors are probably passe, but I must say that the people of this country really stepped up to the plate yesterday.

I can't think of the last time I actually felt proud to be an American, but today I am. Thanks, everyone, who helped vote Barack Obama into office.

I might add that my 5-year-old son freaked me out the other day when he said that in his kindergarten class's mock election, he voted for John McCain. "Why did you vote for John McCain?" I asked, thinking, "Dude! We have an Obama sign in our front yard! We talk about him every day!" But he said, "Because I can't say 'Barack Obama' very well." Hmm, OK.

Yesterday, we convinced him to go into the voting booth with my husband instead of riding his bike outside the polling place while daddy voted. I'm pretty sure he pressed the button for Obama.

It's a good day.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2008-11-05T09:46:00.009-05:00

I'm co-teaching a free, one-afternoon writing workshop about adoption here in Philadelphia soon, and there's room for a few more participants, so if you're interested, please read on and sign up! I'd love to meet local readers who are touched by adoption. It's free, people!

Voices of Adoption

This one-day workshop is for anyone touched by adoption who wishes to explore her or his stories through creative writing. In a relaxed and supportive environment, the instructors will guide students through writing prompts, sharing of work, giving and receiving of constructive feedback, and discussion of the writing process and adoption-related topics.

WHEN: Saturday, November 15, 2008, 1-3pm

WHERE: Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 3rd Floor Community Room, 551 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19119

COST: Free

To RSVP for Voices of Adoption, contact Andrea Ross at writerinres2004@yahoo.com.

Andrea Ross, M.A., was adopted in Colorado in the late 1960s. She has a Master's degree in creative writing, and has been teaching creative writing courses for all ages since 1992 through California Poets in the Schools and the University of California. A former wilderness guide, Andrea is especially interested in writing about the intersections between adoption, literature, and the environment. Since moving to Philadelphia recently, she has taught writing at La Salle University and The Morris Arboretum.

Betsy Self Elijah, M.F.A., was born in South Korea and adopted by a Caucasian family in the 1970s. With an MFA in Creative Writing: Memoir and Creative Nonfiction, Betsy serves as nonfiction editor for Quay, a literary journal, and has taught personal narrative writing workshops in the Philadelphia public school system, Free Library of Philadelphia, Asian Arts Initiative, Pan African Studies Community Education Program at Temple University, and Mt. Airy Learning Tree. Betsy works as a Reading and Writing Specialist for Community College of Philadelphia and as a freelance writer for the Chestnut Hill Local.

The Power of Secrets

2008-10-29T14:39:00.005-04:00

Shining light on secrets. That's what all this keeps coming back to for me. By writing about adoption, I hope to diminish the power that those secrets wield.

Often, while bathing or dressing my young son, anytime I catch a glimpse of his bellybutton’s curved, labyrinthine contours, I am compelled to touch his navel and tell him “This is where you were connected to me before you were born.” It’s a comfort and an inspiration to do this; his bellybutton is evidence that he is mine and I am his: we share the singular connection I have longed for over many years. I have been thinking about the idea of the navel of the world—a concept that exists in many cultures: the Hopi Sipapu, the Greek Omphalos; it is human nature to connect our existence with the earth’s—to create the cosmology of where we came from, to ground and connect ourselves with that which came before us and that which is larger than ourselves.

In this country, kinship is defined by biological relatedness, while in other cultures, genetic inheritance is not the main focus of kinship. Perhaps in those cultures, adoption is a non-issue; a child can belong to everyone, to everything, including the granite domes, basalt cliffs, and winding whitewater of the landscape. Perhaps one could belong to the earth; yet, here, because of the secrecy surrounding my birth and the circumstances under which I was relinquished, because my birth certificate—our culture’s signifier of belonging, heritage and kinship—was amended after my birth, and a second document replaced it while the first one was sealed in a envelope and hidden in an inaccessible vault, because of this early secrecy and scrambling of my personal information, I have not felt that grounding, that rootedness, that sense of belonging.

Despite the fact that if I wanted to, I could now put my hand on my birthmother’s belly, touch her navel and remind myself, “this is where I came from, this is who I was connected to before I was born,” a long-ingrained feeling of disconnection persists.

Linkage

2008-10-27T10:45:00.005-04:00

Ok, so it seems like the notion of broken links and whole links and restored links is something that many people, not just those touched by adoption, identify with in profound ways. In her comment, Lori B. says, "..the idea that mother and child are both link and broken link I share with you." And as I noted before, Maria wrote that she feels we are all broken links struggling to find wholeness.

What do you think?

On Gratefulness and Controversy

2008-10-25T16:30:00.006-04:00

First, let me say that I really, really appreciate all the feedback I've gotten from everyone to this blog. I have been reading and considering what you've written to me, and frankly, I'm so new to this medium that I'm still figuring out how to respond to comments, etc., so I'll do that soon in the Comments section, I promise! (It matters to me a lot that you're reading this blog and commenting on it, and I definitely don't want you to think otherwise.

In the meantime I want to touch upon a few things. I have gotten such a strong response from people (both via the blog and in person) about my reticence to adopt a child myself, that I think the topic deserves some more time here. On Thursday night at my knitting group, while we all knotted away on our various projects, my friend Meredith said something that has really stuck with me: when I was trying to explain to her how I think it would be too hard for me to be the mother of an adopted child because I have all my own pain about being adopted to deal with, she said "but don't you think that most of the time, the way we feel about things before they happen is completely different than the way we feel about them once they've happened?" (At least I think that's what she said; it's a hard idea to recap.) Anyway, she has a point. For me, things almost always turn out differently than I expect them to, especially emotionally. So does that mean that I should go ahead and adopt a child? I don't know.

One friend of mine who is an adoptive parent is currently dealing with her 9-year-old daughter's occasional statements of "I don't want to be adopted!" The thought of trying to someday deftly handle those sentiments from my own adopted child stops me in my tracks. My immediate response would be to say, "I don't want to be adopted either!" Making your child not be adopted is not something anyone can undo, even our parents, supreme protectors from all boogeymen real and imagined. And adoption can really be a boogeyman, a shadow, an apparition that follows us around, no matter how hard we try to shake it or ignore it. The specter is still there.

Some would argue that my adoptee status qualifies me to empathize with and deeply understand the pain of an adopted child, so I would be a good choice to be an adoptive parent. but there's a part of me that thinks that exposing myself to that specter of pain would be my undoing.

But who knows, it might be the thing that makes me feel whole. The stakes are high, and I don't yet know how to make this decision.

I was so glad to hear from Dawn, an adoptive mom, that she appreciated my need to have children who are biologically realated to me. I also really respect her opinion that adoption has its positive and negative aspects; it's not perfect. I concur.

Finally, I want to say that Maria's comment that fundamentally, we're all broken links, and that each moment in our life "is an effort to connect to [our] broken parts" is well-taken. I agree that as humans, we all feel alienated in some way, whether we're adopted or not. Sometimes our feelings of alienation become our strongest points of connection with each other. That's why I'm glad that so many who are not touched by adoption are reading this blog anyway; it's another way to forge a bond.

Thanks, everyone, for reading.

Fall is a Good Season for Reading

2008-10-21T19:31:00.004-04:00

It's getting cold and dark earlier and earlier here in Philadelphia. This morning I finally turned on the heat, although I was having a secret contest with myself to see if I could make it to November before turning it on. October won the contest. Last night I was so cold, I crawled into bed at about 9pm to curl up with a good book (as they say) and with the frosty tip of my nose sticking out of the covers. I mentioned in a recent post that I've been reading adoption memoirs like crazy lately. I've also been reading other adoption-related books. It took me quite a bit of research to find them all, so I thought I'd compile a list here to share with anyone who's interested, and to save you the trouble of finding them all by yourself.

However, let me say that this list is in no way exhaustive, nor is it representative of everyone's experience with adoption. For example, most of these books are by or about white women. That's because I'm a white woman who was adopted into a white family and I have been looking for books that reflect my experience. So there's almost nothing about the transracial or transnational adoption experience in this list. Please feel free to add a comment with your recommendations in these or other areas I've missed; I'm always looking for the next good book to huddle under the covers with.
Here goes:

Adoptee Memoirs:
The Mistress' Daughter, A.M. Homes
Beneath a Tall Tree, Jean Strauss
Mother Me, Zara Phillips
All My Mothers and Fathers, Michael Blumenthal
Swimming up the Sun, Nicole J. Burton
Twice Born, Betty Jean Lifton
Ithaka: A Daughter's Memoir of Being Found, Sarah Saffian

Birthparent Memoirs:
Giving up Simone, Jan L. Waldron

Birthparent Stories:
The Girls Who Went Away, Ann Fessler

Books about Reunion:
Lost & Found, Betty Jean Lifton
BirthBond, Judith S. Gediman and Linda P. Brown
Adoption Reunions, Michelle McColm

Psychology Books about Adoption:
The Family of Adoption, Joyce Maguire Pavao
Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, Sherrie Eldridge
Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self, David Brodzinsky, Marshall D Schechter, and Robin Marantz Henig
Journey of the Adopted Self, Betty Jean Lifton

Fiction and Poetry about Adoption:
Ghost at Heart's Edge, edited by Susan Ito and Tina Cervin
An Adoptee's Dreams, Penny Callan Partridge
Then She Found Me, Elinor Lipman

A Word About the Not-So-Wonderful World of Infertility, as it Relates to being Adopted

2008-10-17T14:08:00.007-04:00

I am a mother of one, and I'm darned lucky to be, as near as I can tell. It took a year of trying to conceive before I got pregnant with my son, and we were fortunate to be able to avoid the gaping maw of Western Infertility Intervention--that time.

I had hoped to be the mother of two, so when our son was two years old, we started trying to conceive again, thinking that once again, it might take awhile, but having faith that it would happen eventually. The short version of this story is that my son is now five-and-a-half years old, and it hasn't happened.

The long version is that we did end up looking into the gaping maw of infertility treatment, jumping down its throat, and eventually getting chewed up and spit out by way of 4 medicated intrauterine inseminations; 2 in-vitro fertilizations; an early miscarriage; a second mortgage on our house; and untold stress on my marriage, my son, and my psyche.

Throughout the grueling process of infertility treatments, my husband and I frequently visited the idea of adopting a child instead of continuing to try to conceive one. My husband has two adopted siblings, so he grew up in a family of adoption, and feels very comfortable with the idea of us adopting. For me, the issue is not quite so cut-and-dried.

This is the part that gets very difficult for me to explain. Since origins and sense of belonging are very important and raw issues for me, part of my reluctance to adopt stems from the feeling I have of being the broken link of a chain. The idea of me (an adoptee) adopting another person conjures up an image of one broken chain link trying to connect to another broken chain link. It just doesn't make sense to me. What I have found is that this description doesn't make sense to other people. Often I get a very quizzical look from those I tell about it. This has long frustrated me. But recently, I had two breakthrough experiences about it:

Last fall, I went to a conference about adoption with the intent of learning about the adoption process--we were investigating starting the adoption process. I went to a talk by Zara Phillips, author of Mother Me: An Adopted Woman's Journey to Motherhood, and without identifying myself as an adoptee, I asked her what she thought about adoptees adopting children. She said "I don't know of any adoptees who have adopted; we tend to want children who are genetically related to us." It was so gratifying to me to finally hear another adoptee's view on this issue. I no longer felt like I was crazy for wanting children who were biologically my own.

Next, another adoptee in the audience contributed his point of view, which was that he felt very strongly that he wanted an adopted child, and in fact, he had recently adopted a little girl. He also said he hoped that when the time came, his daughter would also adopt. Obviously, this is an emotionally charged topic. People have strong opinions about this one, and they're hard to sway.

Later, when I read B.J. Lifton's Twice Born, I saw my broken link sentiments expressed by another adoptee for the first time; she writes "I was like a link from a chain that had been allowed to break..." Yes. That's how I've felt, and both sadly and thankfully, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

I departed from that adoption conference pretty sure I would be unable to adopt. Yet my husband and I are still grappling with the idea that our family will remain a family of three, when we would really like it to grow to four. Nothing is set in stone: maybe I'll find a way to forge that chain link back together into a stronger whole.

An Adoptee's Arboretum

2008-10-08T11:50:00.009-04:00

I cannot believe that until now, I hadn't read Betty Jean Lifton's Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter. I have been hungrily reading adoption memoirs steadily for about a year, and have enjoyed and found resonance with most of them, but Twice Born is possibly the most satisfying one I have read to date. It was published in 1975, just as the adoption rights movement was beginning, and it chronicles Lifton's life as an adopted person, and her search for and reunion with her birth parents. One would think that something written over 30 years ago on the topic of adoption might seem dated, but sadly for us adoptees, much of what she says still holds true.

In one section of the book, her school-age son, whom she has not yet told that she is adopted, approaches her with a class assignment to create a family tree. He wants her to help him with her side of the family tree. She resists, wondering "Does the adopted person go on the tree she was placed on biologically or the tree onto which she was transplanted? Who's to say?"

I have been wondering how to explain to my five-year-old son that I am adopted. He knows he has three grandmas, and he thinks that's awesome--the more adults who love him and get on the floor with him to play Thomas the Tank Engine, the merrier. But he doesn't know why he has an extra grandma, and he hasn't asked, so I haven't told him. I want to, but I don't know if he's developmentally ready. How does one know these things?

My parents told me I was adopted from the moment they got me, and I thank them for that; I am so grateful that there was never a time I didn't know I was adopted, and more importantly, that there was never a time when I suddenly found out I was adopted, which I think would be incredibly difficult to deal with.

The time is soon coming when I will explain to my son the intricacies of what Betty Jean Lifton calls her family "arboretum." I love the idea of a family arboretum rather than a family tree (or, as I have heard suggested for adoptees, a "family orchard"), partly because I love arboreta, especially the arboretum near my house, which boasts not only lots of cool trees and plants that make me very happy, but also a garden railway, which makes my son very happy. Also, sometimes I get to teach creative writing classes there, and that also pleases me greatly.

I look forward to describing the adoptee's arboretum metaphor to my son, when the time is right. I thought it might happen a few months ago, when we were eating dinner one night several weeks before getting on plane to visit my birth father for the first time, and I said "We're going to visit _____ when we go on vacation!"
"Who's _____?" he replied.
"Well, that's a very good question," I said.
And I took a deep breath, preparing to tell him that Mommy has two dads, one is Grandpa Bob, and the other is this man we're going to meet in a few weeks, etc., etc., but before I could get a word out, my son asked "Can I have dessert?" and with that we had moved on to another subject, entirely eliding my personal arboretum. I took his response to mean that he wasn't ready/ it wasn't time, but who knows? I could have probably just hauled off and told him, and he would have said, "OK, Mommy,"--he is, after all, one of the most flexible children I've ever met, the kind of kid who rolls with whatever comes his way, and I really appreciate that about him.

So I have to surmise that my reluctance to spell it all out for him is really about me, not about him, dangit. I'm afraid that when I tell him I have two dads and two moms, he'll wonder which one is the "real" dad and the "real" mom, and then he'll wonder why didn't I grow up with the parents to whom I was born. I'm worried that this information will cause him to wonder if he's likely to be given to another set of parents, and I'm worried that I won't be able to dispell that notion, no matter how hard I try.

So the issue is really still mine--all this stuff probably won't bother him, but it bothers me. After all these years, I am totally freaked out that he will ask me, "why did your original parents give you up?" and I'll be flattened because I still wonder that myself, even though intellectually I know that the 18-year-0ld girl who was my birth mom could not keep me, could not parent me alone, didn't have support from her family do do so, was shamed by society for getting pregnant out of wedlock, etc. There are so many reasons she couldn't keep me, but there is the part of me, the part I call the "Baby Self" who will never understand or accept why she was given away. And I don't want my son to see that part of me because I think it would scare him. It certainly scares me. But when the time comes, I'm going to call upon the strength of the oaks and cedars and redbuds, and all the other trees I love-- to explain to him my arboretum, and then we'll build a swing hanging from one of the tree's branches, and we'll play and play on it.

So, Who is being Sought After Here, Anyway?

2008-10-08T11:31:00.006-04:00

Recently I was reviewing the materials I kept from the long search I conducted to find my birth mother (more to come on that), and I looked up the organization that allows adoptees born in Colorado (like me) and their birth parents to use a confidential intermediary service to find one another.

Back in 1996 when I was searching, this website didn't exist, so it was interesting to see how the program was described on its website. One of the terms used on the website particularly intrigued me: it described the person being searched for as "the sought-after." The air of mystery and the inclusivenes of this phrase piqued my imagination. In a sense, the sought-after could be anyone; obviously in this case, it refers to someone touched by adoption: a birth parent, a child who was adopted, or any member of their families.

However, for me this term also conjures up the sense of longing for connection and belonging that I and many other adopted people feel as a result of the way that closed adoption obscures our origins. In the end, The Sought-After becomes more than a euphemism for the birth parent or birth child we seek; The Sought-After is also the elusive self we are trying to find and trying to become as we grow into ourselves as people touched by adoption.

Introduction to The Sought-After

2008-10-06T11:22:00.007-04:00

Hello, Everyone:
Welcome to The Sought-After, my blog about being adopted, and about my experiences with search and reunion my birth families. I've had adoption on the brain for ever so long, and have been writing about it in secret, during the interstitial scraps of time between being a mom and being an English professor and learning how to do plaster repair on the walls of my century-old house, and, well, you get the idea.

I have been closeted about writing about being an adopted person mostly because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings: I love and respect my parents and my brothers, who have been very supportive about my search to find my birth parents, but I'm scared of hurting them by writing about my experiences of alienation and longing; I love and respect my birth parents and my newly found half-siblings, and don't want to hurt their feelings either. I also worry that writing about my experiences as an adoptee might offend other adoptive parents and birth parents who read this blog, so I am scared to do it.

But do it I shall, because I find the perspective of the adult adoptee strangely scarce out there in the current discourse about adoption. Adoption is a huge, important topic in our society and in our world right now, with so many parents choosing to adopt domestically or internationally these days; I am thankful that the adoption process in the United States now includes educating adoptive parents about issues adopted babies and children may face with with regards to attachment, grief, identity, and abandonment, just to name a few.

Don't get me wrong; I am not "anti-adoption." My parents are loving and kind, and they raised me well. But being adopted made me different; it made me feel different and it made me act different, and it took me a long time to figure out why because I was born at a time (in the late 1960s) when educating parents about the special needs and circumstances of the adopted psyche was not the norm.

So I'm here to tell the story of my journey as an adopted girl who really needed to know where she came from. I'll write about my search and reunion with my birth families, my thoughts about contemporary adoption, and my reactions to adoption literature. I'll do this in hopes of shining light on the secrets of adoption, especially closed adoption, to diminish the power that those secrets wield against adopted people and those who love us. I hope to generate discussion that will help us all feel more whole and more understanding of each other.

Thanks for reading, and tell me what you think!