Exploiting first mothers, then and now

(Jane, second row on the far right)

Babies come from mothers who don't want them was the shocking message of an adoption agency advertisement from the 1940's. The agency guaranteed prospective adoptive parents that babies would be matched to them not only in appearance, but also in intelligence. And unbelievably, prospective adoptive parents were also promised a "one year return policy" if the baby didn't fit into their family.

Ann Fessler's film, A Girl Like Her, includes this and other videos to present pictorially the ugly truth about adoption in the mid-twentieth century. As the videos of happy housewives dancing in their oh-so-modern kitchens and teens in full skirted strapless prom dresses switch to pictures of soldiers in Vietnam and war protesters, off screen first mothers tell their stories of loss without redemption.

Heart to Heart

I spent the weekend before last in Denver with a charming group of about 30 mothers who came together for a few days to share their stories, their pain, and their hopes. These women met through an online support group, Heart To Heart (hearttwoheart@yahoogroups.com), and have been coming together each year since 2003. Next year H2H, as they refer to it, will meet in Boston.

Many of the women were younger than I; a few young enough to be my daughter. Some had forged strong relationships with their excised child although others had been rejected and one had not been able to find her child. The younger women did not appear to have the same “hang up” about being pregnant “out of wedlock“ that women of my generation had.

Their reasons for surrendering their infants, however, were the same. “Don’t come home with that baby,” they were told. “If you love your child, you will give him away.” “You’re too young to be a mother.” "You’ll forget and get on with your life.”

The H2H agenda was simple: A trip to the mountains with great views of the rocky peaks when the clouds parted; an afternoon ceremony honoring ourselves for the births of our children; and a buffet dinner. We received small mementos including three CDs with songs of motherhood and empowerment. “Lullaby” by the Dixie Chicks; “I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan; “Mother and Child Reunion” by Paul Simon; and many others.

It was a sweet and sad day.

Sweet because these women were so supportive; they put aside inevitable personality conflicts to comfort each other.

Sad because their presence was a reminder that the carnage of adoption is continuing. I wish I had known these women before they signed away their children so I could have warned them. Would they have listened to me? I question whether I would have listened to Lorraine or Carol Schaefer or Meredith Hall or Pat Taylor or any of the other mothers who preceded me. I fear that we mothers are modern day Cassandras, doomed to tell the truth but never to be believed.


PS Regarding Linda’s post, I knew another mother whose sister cozied up to her daughter and the two of them cut her out. The sister’s reason may have been jealousy; she never married and had no children. The daughter may have been using the sister to get back at her mother. It was also a way for the daughter to maintain a connection with her birth family without conceding anything.

Happy Birthday, Sarah

Here it is. My version of 9/11. Today is my daughter's 32nd birthday. But I'm not sad or angry, just wistful. Frequent visitors to FMF know that my daughter hasn't spoken to me for the past three and one-half years, but thanks to my Internet search skills I know that she has two sons, 2-1/2 and 1, and that she moved, but didn't know where. Tonight the guardian angel/goddess of first mothers was on my side and within minutes I had located her new address (I have no idea how I found it, it was as though some force was clicking the mouse for me). Satisfied with that information, I went to bed. But I could hear my heart pounding in my chest, my ears, and the tears started to fall. Last year was the first October 16 in 31 years without tears, and that's how I planned to spend this one. I'll go to work, have my lunchtime walk, come home, pay bills, and settle in for "Holy Night," my night to veg out in front of the TV.

At the urging of adoptive and birthmothers alike, I've tried to stay in touch, but my attempts at contact have been fruitless. I sent her firstborn son a small birthday gift on his first birthday in 2006 and Mother's Day and Christmas cards in 2007; all were unacknowledged, but I know the Christmas card unsettled her (she contacted my sister, who she'll contact on an as needed basis) because I addressed it to all the family, including her second son, whose first birthday is in eight days, and she was shocked that I discovered she had a second child (such information is a matter of public record, and again, the Internet is my paintbrush/cleaver/stethoscope, i.e., it's essential to my vocation.)

At the stroke of midnight, I pulled out a long-neglected necklace from my jewelry drawer and put it around my neck, hoping it might be a talisman. The necklace was a Christmas 2001 gift from my daughter--a spontaneous, very unexpected holiday surprise, our only Christmas together. We had been joking about those cheesy jewelry commercials for Kay Jewelers and J. C. Penney, so I thought it might be a heartshaped diamond necklace for $99. I was sitting by myself on the floor when I opened the box. The necklace was under a piece of cotton; I took it out, held it up, and started to cry. I held it up to my sister, she started crying. My niece started crying. It was a silver mother/child pendant, an abstract circle design that represents the eternity of a mother's love. The brick walls just tumbled down, we were kissing and holding each other. I had been holding in so much until that moment, it just all came rushing out; I swear I cried enough tears to fill a stream. That was the closest we've ever been, and one of my fondest memories.

And here I am, sitting in the dark illuminated by my computer screen, aching to send her flowers for her birthday, anonymously, knowing that I shouldn't because it will ruin her day knowing that I'm stalking her. And why do I want to, after the way she's treated me? Well, quite simply, because she's my daughter. And while I haven't always liked her, I've always loved her. I'm thinking of the moment I first saw her, and how in awe I was that something so beautiful, so perfect, came from me. The image is so vivid that it feels as though it happened a few hours ago, not 32 years ago.

So, readers, I'm asking for your help. Adoptee fans of FMF, if your birthmother sent you a birthday bouquet out of the blue, how would you feel? And first mothers, would you be able to resist temptation, or just go with your gut instinct? I suspect in the light of day this too, shall pass, but I'd like to know what you think.

Birth Mothers Attacked as Usual...or, Maybe I Need New Friends

I seem to be attracting fireballs lately--mainly because a) I'm writing about my daughter and telling people, so that brings up the whole idea that I found her, not the other way around; and b) I live in a world where adoptions are plentiful--everybody knows at least three people who have adopted and so far, so good. The kids are generally doing fine and so...the elephant in the room is the specter of the birth mother coming back.

That would be me.

So after just having had that horrible eruption with my close friend and neighbor, Yvonne, I got gob-smacked the other night by childless successful corporate attorney, also a friend. Call him Aston. He is godfather to one Chinese adoptee, who lives down the street from us, she's now fifteen; friend to another women who also has a Chinese girl, now fourteen; and one of his very best friends has a white son...from Gladney in Texas, one of the agencies that supports the National Council for Adoption.

Anyway, those are only the adoptions we know about that Aston is close to. God knows what started it, but he went on a long nasty harangue about how any birth mother coming back is always interfering, always upsetting this nice family, and after the parents have "invested" so much, both financially and emotionally, this WOMAN HAS NO RIGHT TO DO THAT!!!!

After I tried to make a case for the agony of not knowing, and gave him a brief history of sealed adoptions (Kansas and Alaska didn't count because they weren't big enough states) he came up with this question: What part of the pie chart of a birth mother who searches can be ascribed to self-interest? ....

Tell me, how do you answer that?

My husband Tony was there throughout and took Aston on as much as I did because that question left me speechless. The "discussion" might have taken place in a courtroom. Aston didn't know (why would he?) there was any research about birth mothers. Or the great mystery in the life of an adoptee. I did have him leave with both a copy of The Adoption Triangle and the Donaldson adoptee report. He's never had kids, when he and he wife wanted to adopt, his mother talked them out of it.

Damn, I can't even write about this without crying. All I know is that birth others are really seen as the pariahs by the elite class of adopters who have never been in the position of being poor, or feeling they had no options. Yvonne is one, Aston is another. Aston's wife, who did want to adopt quite badly, it came out, mostly said nothing but she at least got it that birth mothers would feel ...what is the word? Aston and I ended up using agony to refer to the pain birth mothers feel.

Here is what I emailed him the next day:

What I never got around to saying during your prosecutorial attack--the pie chart question seemed only designed to make birth mothers look bad and in doing so denigrate me--was that adoptees often want to be found because it indicates that their mothers do think about them, want to know them, want to know what happened, that the baby wasn't just dropped off and the woman/teenager went on with her life as if the child was a mere temporary inconvenience.

I'm just one person but I have had stacks of letters over the years thanking me for what I do from adopted people; what they want is for their mothers to find them. Adoption is painful, and keeping everything locked up--no matter who does the searching--does not make it less so. Only in the minds of people who have never walked the walk. Since you have such strong opinions that I'm in the wrong in such a major way, I hope you will take the time to read some of the material, including the birth mother survey that is at the site I sent yesterday. (you don't need to read it all, you can find the relevant sections from the TOC.

Unless you walked in my shoes, I don't think you can understand the depth of feeling that goes toward one's one flesh and blood. As someone one said, we can be casual about our own parents, but our kids always have us by the balls.

lorraine

In a message dated 09/07/08 10:10:49 Eastern Daylight Time, nccar@mindspring.com writes:

Lorraine,

I have given the following young lady your email and asked her to contact you, as her adoption was handled in New York. Please if you can pass her along to anyone who might be of assistance to her. She contacted me through the Care2 network.

Hello Ms. Roberta,

Thank you for responding to my inquiry. The main dilemma that I have been encountering is that I was born in Miami FL, but taken away from my mothers arms (when she moved up to NYC I might have been 1 yrs old) and put into foster care in Bronx, NY and that eventually led into an adoption by a family that was not well receiving of me as the adoptee. I somehow remembered from the time I was 4 1/2 yrs old that the foster care agency was located on 349 East 149th Street; Bronx, NY 10451 because of the building structure and the CitiBank logo on there; however, nobody knew the name of the agency that was once in the basement area of CitiBank back in 1984-1990's. I was told by CitiBank reps that that organization left during the 90's. This is the only detail I could recall of that has made me continue asking people if there's a way to get the agency's name during 1984. I even wrote Governor Pataki to please help me in this search and he replied with several agency's names in the Bronx and they claimed that I don't exist on their system.

I greatly appreciate your interest to assist me in any way, I hope to receive guidance if that's possible so that my life mystery can come to an end. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Christina

Do you think this woman would feel that her birth mother was causing an unnecessary conflict in her life if she were to call upon her daughter?

One more thing, that I did not bring up that night: Aston's father was the guardian ad litem for the Schmidt/DeBoer child, Baby Anna/Jessica. Who argued in the Michigan court that the baby's best interests were with staying with the DeBoers....Who in my mind were nothing but baby snatchers as the real mother asked for the child back within the time limit but fought her for two years in the courts. Incidentally, the DeBoers later divorced.

Oh yeah, where did all this take place? At my dinner table, just the cozy four of us. I'd love to hear from other birth mothers about the reactions they get when it becomes clear they were the ones who did the searching.
--lorraine

In Adoptee's Search, Loss and Grief Collide

Double Header Day:

Folks, I've twice lost everything I have written and so I'm a little nuts...so as lightening strikes overhead I'm going to try one more time because it's important to get our voices heard when adoption reunion stories make news. Today's New York Times (8/11/08) has a story about an adoptee, Mark Cellura, who searched and found that his twin, seemingly an identical sibling, had died in 1987. Reporter Sarah Kershaw does a good job of highlighting the necessity of this man's search, and the long slog it is taking to change laws to give adoptees their birth rights. For us, the only really sorry note in the story is that Mark's mother has not responded to a letter from his intrepid searcher, Pam Slayton. (However, there is one adoptee mentioned in the story who has happily reunited, so all first mothers don't look like--jerks.

I know adopted people are afraid of rejection, but is it really any easier if it's done through a third party? Adopted people should make contact themselves, have the courage to make a phone call. Just by the mere fact of birth, they are entitled by the laws of nature one meeting, one day of answers, all truths revealed, nothing held back. This is the story of their lives. I know some of these women still say no, but I'll go out on a limb here and predict that the total reunion-rejection rate is probably lower than when the contact is made through a third person, via letter. The only exception I can feel good about is when a confidential searcher, as in some states, is also a birth mother, and is able to allay the fears of women deep in the closet.

See "In Adoptee's Search, Loss and Grief Collide" at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/nyregion/11twins.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

So, let's use today's Times story to storm our version of the Bastille: Write to the Times (Letters@nytimes.com) and email a copy of the letter to your legislators, all of them: Your state senator and assemblyman, as well as your congressman and senator in Washington. Unless you let them know what you want, they're not going to know. Urge them to get behind a clean bill--one that gives adoptees the rights that should be theirs as a matter of course. Read about the good New York bill at: http://www.unsealedinitiative.org/

You don't have to be brilliant, you just have to voice your opinion. The more letters the Times gets, the more ink we will get in the paper. You do have to remember to include your name, address, and phone number. Be brief, but be quick. Allow yourself to get angry! Me, I'm angry at all those women in the closet. I'd like to pull them out by the short hairs and give them 40 whacks. But how do we reach them? Aye, that is the question. How do we reach them, how do we change their minds and open their hearts? Through my high school grapevine, I know of one woman from Sacred Heart High School in Dearborn, Michigan who apparently is not curious, and never looked back. How do I reach her?

Dunno.

But remember, Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Watch Your Tongue. Sometimes.

It's hard not to think about language when writing about adoption from our vantage point --because it feels as if we are assaulted constantly by admonitions to watch our tongue, in an effort to not offend someone, aka adoptive parents. I have a friend, an adoptive mother, who is offended when I refer to my daughter's adoptive parents as my daughter's adoptive parents. (Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, as long as the person gets the drift.) She has, on two occasions, corrected me, and on a third, my husband, because obviously, she finds it offensive to use the word "adoptive" before "parents" when referring to adoptive parents. I've said nothing, but internally seethe.

I don't refer to her child as her adopted child, or make the distinction (except with those in this inner circle of hell we inhabit) when I talk about her. But that's what is so infernally frustrating about life at our end: we are continually asked to be deferential, when as far as I can tell, adoptive parents feel no such compunction.

Shortly after my daughter committed suicide, my husband Tony was at a Christmas party (which I did not attend) and a close friend, who had known my daughter for over twenty years, was asking Tony about Jane, and me...and simply referred to "Lorraine's daughter." An adoptive mother whom I don't know well was in that circle of three, and the second time Genie referred to my "daughter" the adoptive mother corrected Genie and said, "birth daughter."

My husband was irritated, but of course, said nothing. Impolite to point out? Right. But I do feel like asking her one day, how her adopted daughter is.... Why do I think she won't be happy? Guess we won't be good friends any time soon.

While that was irritating, sometimes spontaneous language that isn't "correct" feels just right. At one point during my daughter's wake a woman approached me and asked: Are you Jane's biological mother? She said it without hostility or emphasis, and I answered in kind: Yes. She was with a small group of people who turned out to be Jane's friends from Toastmaster's, and they seemed all delighted to meet me. They woman told me that Jane had talked about me often, in obviously a good way, to judge from their enthusiasm at talking to me.

In that moment, being Jane's "biological" mother was just fine--in fact, it was better than having this woman know the proper language. On that occasion, I preferred "biological" to "birth." When you deconstruct the word, "birth" gives off the vibe of being there only for the birth; biological says it all, clinical and machinistic though it can sound in a different situation. It's all in the context.

I try not to be overly sensitive, but sometimes you just can't help feeling that people on the other side of the adoption equation need to get a grip on reality, and be more sensitive our our feelings. How hard would it have been for the two adoptive mothers quoted above to simply hold their tongues? They can refer for me as "birth" mother or !@#!!* mother not in my presence, but when my husband or I are there, please refrain from feeling you have to put me in my place. I--or my husband--are really not going to forget that--Oh yeah, that's the daughter I gave up for adoption.

But what all this fuss over language does is acknowledge the enormity of the bond between mother/parent and child. If that biological/genetic/blood bond meant nothing, there wouldn't be this tug-of-war over language. I'm willing to be sensitive to adoptive families' feelings, and certainly those of adopted people, and consciously try not to offend them, but it would be nice if the favor were returned once in a while.

Lorraine

The Things That Take You Back

Ah well, sometimes you come face to face with the devil. As I did last night at a party on Shelter Island. I heard someone introduce someone as "Tom Junod" and immediately the wretched thing he "allegedly" did a number of years ago to the late Carole Anderson came roaring in. Carole, as some of you remember, was a leader in our adoption reform and a vice president of Concerned United Birthparents (CUB). While Junod was considering adopting, he wrote a piece for Esquire or GQ about all of us crazy natural mothers who go looking for our children, and egads, sometimes finding them and reuniting, having a relationship!

Carole told me she spent quite a bit of time with him, tried to make him aware and sensitive...as long as he agreed not to include in his story her personal saga--that although she had reunited with her son, he had not yet told his adoptive parents. He was an adult at the time, married with kids. Yet he couldn't bring himself to tell his adoptive parents.

When I hear about the "kinning" (a word I heard a the Pitt Conference last fall, there was much talk about how the adopted person becomes one with the new family, never mind the old) that goes on between people who adopt and their children, I can not help but think about the lack of honesty regarding the adoption process that still goes on between many an adoptee and many an adopter, even in our supposedly enlightened era when...it is not supposed to be that way.

On my bulletin board in front of my I have an old bumper sticker that says: Adopted People Are Not Allowed Ancestry Because It Might Upset Somebody. Now I suspect that initially the sentiment was to counteract the idea of the firstmoms in the closet, but it can also be read the other way, now can't it? Adoptees are not allowed to speak of that relationship...that will hurt the adopters' feelings.

I digress. When Tom Junod's story came out--I've been trying to find it on the web without success, help anybody?--it put Carole in a precarious position with her son as well as made birthmothers who simply don't walk away look like loons. Though she was devastated, Carole, a lawyer who worked in Des Moines, considered legal action but ultimately decided against it. I remember a long, long conversation we had about the story. To add insult to injury, the piece was one of the finalists (all of which get a certain amount of publicity, I know because I was a finalist once) for one of the big prizes in magazine journalism, the National Magazine Award. There's a big lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the winners are listed in the New York Times, the editor and the writer go home that day very happy with the bragging rights that come with winning. Before the winners were announced, I wrote an outraged letter to the head of the organization, ccd. the editor in chief of Esquire (who is still there, incidentally) but to no avail. I received no response. At least I let a few people know that he had gone back on his word. As least Mr. Junod did not win that year. Shortly afterward I heard that he and his wife adopted. Hmm, I wonder how open their adoption is?

So...last night on a crowded deck, ice cubes clinking against the plastic tumblers, I hear his name, and BAM! I'm right there, looking to see who he is, and he's chatting it up with other journalists/producers I know. At some point in the evening, we caught each other's eyes they way eyes do, but that was it. Fortunately, the party was big enough that I did not have to meet him. I think I might have at least said: I was a friend of Carole Anderson, and see his reaction.

I am not railing here against journalism or journalists because I've been a newspaper reporter or a journalist, and an editor, most of my life. It's just that when you promise someone you will not include certain information, that's it. If you are an honorable person, you do not go back on your word--no matter how much pressure the editor gives you, or how much better you think the story will be if you do.

Lord, the simplest things take you back. I think that the mothers who really put the children out of their minds, who really do find a way to exit the stage, are better off than we are, but then--they must be the cruel ones, who do not meet their children when the children come calling.

Hello Everybody

Lorraine

Hello Everybody--

I've been writing and commenting about adoption-related issues for--yikes--more than half my life, and so it seemed like it was time--actually past the time--for me to start a blog, and I'm hoping that my first mother friends around the country will join in too.

About me: I surrendered a daughter for adoption in 1966. I wrote a book about giving her up, Birthmark, that came out in 1979 to raucous reviews...well, with headlines such as: Obsessed with Guilt. As it was the first birthmother memoir, it rankled a lot of people who really really wanted us all to stay in the closet and throw away the key.

We were reunited in 1981, before her 15th birthday, and not a minute too soon. We've had a a mostly copacetic relationship with some bumps along the way, and then we would pick up as if nothing had happened...even though there was a period when she did not talk to me. It turned out that she was trying to make her adoptive mother love her more...this was after one of the adoptive mother's sons died in a skiing accident, and she told the assembled...that he was her favorite. So my daughter set out to show that she was worthy of mama's love. The best way to show that? Not talk to me for about a year.

The end of the story is that my daughter committed suicide in December. Her life was punctuated by much sadness, not all adoption related, and I'm telling her story in a memoir I am writing now..but so much other stuff comes up about adoption that I won't be putting in the book, so the blog.

As in The New York Times had a double-whammy in adoption-related stories in the real estate section. One story about a couple looking for a new home said...their adopted son...so they needed a bigger place. The other story was about the author of a book that became the movie Then She found Me. Did anybody out there besides me have trouble with the scene with the Helen Hunt character when she made her mother say repeatedly that she gave her up so she could have a life? Not acknowledging that the Bette Midler character said that she was 15 or 16, that her parents threw her out, that she had no money and no one to help her. I wanted to scream at the camera, okay, we get it, you don't understand how that might have felt, how desperate such a character would be, you are still pissed off and we get it!

I hope you like the name of this blog--I thought about using birthmother but my friend came up with this title and it seemed better. Birthmother is such a loaded word. Adoptive parents like it, most natural mothers don't. I'm somewhat neutral, except the year my daughter sent me a "birth mother" card! HATED IT. We had known each other too long and too deeply for a "birth mother" salutation. I think it's the only card from her that went into the trash. But the word has become part of the language. In a personal essay in the Sunday Times, (I do read other publications but the Times is a barometer of the zeitgeist) , a writer used the term "birth mother" to differentiate between her step-mother and her birth mother. First time I've seen it like that. Used to be, "mother" was enough.

Gotta go, it's getting late--

Firstmother