Generations After Me Are A Part of Me

I have my own mitochondrial DNA. When it becomes a part of another person--no matter how that is done--that person is a part of me, I am a part of her or him, and will be for generations hence.

I have a granddaughter whom my daughter gave up for adoption. I only learned about her after she was born. I never met her. Yet she is a part of me and I am a part of her. I worry that she needs to know who she is, why she was available to be adopted, who her biological, genetic, real non-adopted relatives are. I wonder if her adoptive parents--genetic strangers--are good to her/good for her. I wonder if she has an ability to write and express herself. I wonder if she has flat feet. I wonder if she is allergic to cats and ragweed. She should know that several grandparents died of a heart condition, and that cancer is rare in the family. I wonder how she feels about being adopted, if she questions her identity, and where she came from.

However, the laws of Wisconsin, where she was born and adopted, deny me this information. I am left only with eternal questions. It is true, my longing to know this granddaughter is not as all encompassing as was my need to find my daughter. That ruled my life until I found her.

As regular readers know, my daughter--my granddaughter's mother--died last year, and even if she were alive, the state would not search for her daughter; only the adopted person can initiate a search, as I recently learned when I emailed someone in the appropriate Wisconsin agency. I do have on file my willingness to be contacted, and the news that her mother is deceased--information that will be given to her should she contact the state. This unknown young woman, born April 3, 1986 in Madison, named Lisa by her mother, is a part of me.

Though I cannot walk in the shoes of the childless who yearn for a child, simply saying, Here, take some of me and make a baby, and we'll go on living as if that individual has nothing to do with me, is against any and all reasonable laws of nature. Embryo adoption as well as egg and sperm selling--they are not "donations" since donations are just that, donated--are abominable prima facie. Though the urge or procreate is what continues the human race, the world has enough people in it without making more when nature is trying to put on the brakes.

With all we know today about the need to know one's heritage, we should not be cooking up people in laboratories who will never be able to learn from whence they came. If anyone doubts this, look up the websites of sperm-donor babies searching for their fathers and siblings. Go to a meeting of adoptees in search. Read their postings on the Internet. Talk to a late-discovery-adoptee and hear their pain.

The need to know one's roots is basic and universal; no one should be denied this. Laws that seal records of adopted people are abominations that go against the grain of reality, nature, any ethical standard. They are the remnants of a culture that condoned slavery.

Because someone wants to have a child, no matter how deeply felt the desire, no matter that the science makes it possible, does not make creating that life from this one's eggs and that's one sperm right. Because someone cannot have a child does not give them the right to someone else's, whether as a living baby or an embryo frozen in a tube.
--lorraine

PS: Aston, a friend who let loose one night about how selfish birth mothers are who search, and I have reached a rapprochement of sorts. He called, apologized, came over, we talked. He said he read the Donaldson study of adopted people and had gained some new insights, but if I made any headway on his harsh and unyielding attitude towards birth mothers (that we have absolutely no right to ever initiate contact, because that might be disruptive) is unknown. Aston is a church-going man, and--only when I asked for compassion for the birth mother's point of view--did he seem to respond positively and think it over.

I did use what one of our readers wrote: that adoptees are told they are selfish for searching because they might upset the birth mother's neat little life. That seemed to hit the heart of the matter: both sides being told they are selfish to seek reunion. (By the way, I've seen some new list of acceptable language [to adoptive parents, one assumes], and reunion is now verboten.) When the conversation started he seemed only to want to tell me that I should warn people that adoption was a subject not open to discussion, which seemed a bit boorish on his part. I have been treated better by hostile attorneys when I testified in court for adoptees asking for their birth records. Aston ought to try discussing the reasons against international adoption with our mutual friend who has a Chinese daughter. She gets apoplectic if you mention Emily Prager's name. (more on this later.)

Perhaps the good that came out of this whole disagreeable incident is that I was confronted head on the attitude of many today--many today in our legislatures--and because of our friendship and numerous connections, possibly I opened Aston's mind a bit to the concept of birth mothers other than Juno. And that would be a good thing. If only he were not the kind of person we encounter in Albany when we lobby for open records.

The I-Ching says: Work on what has been spoiled.

"Abortion Not Adoption" the Mantra of the GOP

Officially, Firstmother Forum is not taking a position on the upcoming presidential race, but there are issues raised and comments made by people running that deserve our attention--and form our opinions. Such as: during the interview with her good friend at ABC, Charlie, Sarah Palin made a quick reference to adoption in lieu of abortion. Any mother worth her hormones knows that the two are not interchangeable.

Senator McCain also made the same statement at another time. Both candidates are opposed to abortion to varying degrees. Sarah Palin, the veep choice of McCain, would only allow it if the mother's life were in danger; McCain, I believe, is a wee bit more liberal. Perhaps you can get an abortion if you were raped.

Abortion is either a simple procedure not involving a crisis of conscience, or a morally difficult solution. But it is final. It has a beginning and an end. It is not a living death with out peace, as is giving up a child--particularly in a closed adoption. Given the emotional fallout after the heated discussion with the aforementioned Aston(I became physically ill by the end of the week), I took to re-reading parts of the Donaldson Report on birth parents and came upon these words on Page 50:

...Birthmothers in fully disclosed adoptions (all parties share their identities) had significantly better grief resolution than those in confidential adoptions at both the first and second follow-up periods of [the study].

Paraphrasing here, the study goes on to say that at approximately eight years after "placement," only 30 percent of the women had a good or very good level of "grief resolution" in closed adoptions (as in the case of Jane, Linda and myself, the three bloggers here ) and 25 percent of the women involved in "time-limited mediated" adoptions which I presume means a limited period of time when one gets news of the placement but without contact or the names of the adopters; and "ongoing mediated," 52 percent had good or very good grief resolution; and fully disclosed (which I would take to mean an open adoption), 68 percent.

That means that 70 percent of the women who were forced into, or given no choice, or agreed to a "closed adoption" have poor grief resolution eight years after the relinquishment. Sounds like a pretty poor rate of success, for the life-givers.

More than a dozen years ago I wrote about the first Bush advocating "adoption not abortion" an op-ed that was picked up by newspapers around the country. That was about crack/AIDS babies; I didn't get into the unresolved grief of the person who gave life to the baby. Because, as most of us are aware, in the minds of many--if not most of the people who have not walked in our shoes--the emotional turmoil and long-time grief that we suffer is too effin' bad. When I was having that dust-up with Aston, I said something about how adoptive parents really wish us dead; he demurred, but I was right. They do want us dead. If they don' t think about that literally, they certainly want us dead figuratively. They don't want to have to deal with us, or the idea of us coming back. They want us gone. Forever.

And the other day I happened to catch Barack Obama on the tube answering a similar question about children, and I swear to god, I heard him say that the country needed to provide support for mothers who wanted to keep their children.

There you have it.

---lorraine

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