Telling a Stranger What It's Like to be a Birth Mother

Education, education, education is the motto today. Do I talk to strangers about adoption reform? We were visited overnight by one of my husband's college roommates and his wife, who is originally from Long Island, where we live. My husband and his friend had not seen each other for decades. We had no idea what to expect--liberals like us? Do we have anything in common? Are they adoptive grandparents? Trust me, I do not bring up adoption with unknowns like this. After lunch my husband took the initiative when I was asked "What are you working on?" He quickly answered: Lorraine is working on something she is not talking about. I turned to him and mouthed, thank you. Okay, it's a conversation killer, and now they are really curious.

But we have avoided, temporarily, the long discussion about adoption. I personally can not think of another topic that would invariably lead to what is so likely a personal and possibly passionate discussion, except maybe if I were having a sex change operation and writing about that. After nearly 30 years of marriage. To a man.

By dinnertime, when it was clear all was copacetic, and they had talked about their own children and their own ups and downs (no grandchildren, they would like some, neither of their grown children is complying), I took the initiative and fessed up. What became clear over the next twelve hours is how the woman saw me as possibly--maybe probably--unusual in how I had so negatively reacted to having relinquished a child. She did know of a sister of a college friend who "got in trouble" back in the Sixties, but that was the closest connection she had to a birth mother. This is an intelligent women with a PhD whose husband is a retired professor, who have lots of friends in various parts of the country. This is a woman I would be friends with if she did not live a thousand miles away. This is someone I will be glad to see again.

But because she had never met a birth mother who talked freely about what it was like to relinquish a child, she asked, in different ways and a couple of times: 

• Was I the only woman who gave up a child and "felt like this?" 
• If my daughter's relationship with her parents had been better--ie, if she had been totally accepted and happy in her family, better adjusted--would it have been easier on me?
• Might then I have accepted what happened and not been so...hmmm, what to say here..."upset" about having relinquished her? 
• How did I think the depression after adoption compared with what I might have felt after an abortion? 
• How had relinquishing my daughter affected my life?
• But I saw this couple once and they were going to adopt and they were so happy....
• And there are other women who feel the same way? You're not...unusual? 

Understand, she was not being negative or condemning, she was simply curious, and she did not confront or deny my feelings. She was obviously somewhat surprised, because I was refuting commonly held beliefs about women who give up their children for adoption, ie, that while they are probably sorrowful for a while, they go on and "make new lives" for themselves, the child put away like a vintage hat at the top of the closet of their memory.

I said in no uncertain terms, my life had been irreparably damaged ("fucked up" is what I actually said) after I gave up my child; that some people have compared what happens to us to post-traumatic stress disorder (and let's not go into that discussion all over again, please), that my life was never the same, that buckets of tears over the years followed this decision, that I never forgot and that giving up a child is a continuing source of sorrow, it is not like burying a child (which as some of you know, I have also done), and I explained why. The sorrow is great, but there is an ending to it; adoption grief continues like a song fragment in your mind that plays over and over again.

I explained about sealed records--how they are sealed not upon relinquishment but upon adoption, so there is no pretense of doing this for the "protection and anonymity" of the first/birth mother; about how getting this message across to legislators is like climbing Mount Everest without a sherpa or extra oxygen; about how adoption today has become a cold business and no, it is not the Catholic Church or the abortion foes who are the greatest enemy of ending adoption, but the adoption industry itself; about how the pressure for "product" (that is, infants) for the agencies has produced all kinds of corruption, kidnapping and murder in counties such as India and Guatemala; that despite how happy adoption makes childless couples adoption is not made to make childless people happy, but to give homes to children who need them. If I'd had the UN quote at my lips I would have added that:  

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year . . .” United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.

When they were leaving in the morning, she talked about getting together her outfit for her high school reunion that night, and showed me one of the choices; I told her about the nightmare of finding something to wear as the "birth mother" to my daughter's wedding. It was a nice moment.

And I couldn't help think, after they left, how much educating we mothers must do. I was reminded of Jane's blog recently about trying to convince a relative to not encourage her daughter to give up a child, and how the woman Jane spoke to seemed convinced that Jane was unusual and the only one who felt that way. I don't know how simply talking to my new acquaintance over part of the evening and again at breakfast will change the course of adoption reform in this country. Or how much the demonstration in Louisville on Sunday at the summit meeting of state legislators accomplished. Or if the the many many blogs about the pain of adoption from the viewpoints of the adopted themselves, and their birth/first mothers reach the right eyes.

But they are something, and they do add up. We are no longer silent. Every single person you educate about adoption today is one more than yesterday. Call it climbing a mountain. You do it one step at a time. So the next time the opportunity comes up, don't let it pass by unacknowledged, don't let the person walk away uninformed. --lorraine
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"Mother & Child" has finally come to eastern Long Island, and I'm planning to see it soon, if not tonight. (The link will take you to Jane's review.) I did catch "The Kids Are All Right," (about kids contacting their sperm-donor dad) and will write about that in a day or two. And by the way, Birth Mother/First Mother Forum is now available on Kindle. How about that?

Yep, that's my memoir there. If you are going to order it, please do so through FirstMotherForum. I am trying to find a way to run ads other than those from amazon.com here, but every time I try, ads for adoption agencies appear along with the search firms. I can handle the search firms, but NOT ADS soliciting product for their businesses.

When Birthdays Are the Saddest Days of the Year....

Birthdays. God, they can sting. Not just because I'm not in my youth. My daughter, even though I found her when she was fifteen, maybe remembered two or three--or am I just imagining that because I want to, maybe she remembered none? because I can not point to a single birthday present or card that indicates she remembered in the 26 years we knew each other. And how do you tell a child, whom you relinquished to be adopted, that you wish she would remember your birthday? That's over-reaching, that's too much to ask for. You gave her up, remember? Be glad for small favors, I would tell myself. Be glad you know her.

But from the other side of the coin, I just read a sad post on a blog, Real Daughter, that made me real sad. Her first mother's birthday was last week, July 22, the same day, I noticed, as an old boyfriend, and Real Daughter is constrained from getting in touch. Claire/Linda wrote:

"Right now I'm just sad. I want to call her and tell her Happy Birthday, but I can't. I am, in a sense, damned if I do, and damned if I don't. If I do, it could be perceived as harassment. She told me she would never speak to me again if I told my siblings about me. If I don't, maybe she thinks I am a cold hearted bitch."

And when I wrote in an previous blog that something had led me to understand better mothers who are unable to tell their families about their (usually) first child, Mark asked me to write more. And yesterday a reporter asked me how I managed not to even tell my family when I was pregnant. (I lived in another state, I was 22, that's how.) But I tried to explain the deep and unabiding sense of shame that I felt over being pregnant back then when a "single mother" was not a phrase anyone said. People just raised their eyebrows and look askance.

When I was pregnant I thought about killing myself. I hoped I would miscarry. I jumped up and down in an effort to do so. I had tried to get an abortion. When my parents phoned, I pretended I was still at my job, rather than hiding out for months in my apartment, lest I run into the few people in Rochester I knew. I endured. She was born. I relinquished her. I surrendered my daughter to adoption. I gave her up, feeling as if I were in a drowning sea. A life shot through with the grief of a first mother began. But today I have two wonderful granddaughters, each special and different in their special and different ways.

I can not forget the shame of the time when my daughter was born in 1966. Only my desire to take an active part in reform propelled me to claim my place as a birth/first mother, and thus, my family had to be told. I was scared. I was embarrassed. It was hard. But I moved forward. I am not saying this as a matter of pride, but just as fact. I took my mother to lunch, she ordered a gin and tonic, I ordered my tonic with vodka. Before the first course arrived, I said: I have something important to tell you...and I kept on going. She was great; her greatest sorrow was that I was not able to tell her out of shame at the time, that I had been alone. I can still see her face today as I sit here, tears freely slowing down my cheeks now, for she has been dead for a decade. Over that weekend, I had to repeat this scenario twice more, telling each of my brothers, who I did not see at the same time. It was hard every time, but less hard once I got it out the first time and told my mother. My father was deceased by then; he never knew my daughter had been born. 

Our sister-in-arms here, Jane had to tell her grown daughters, which she has written about before. It's never easy to be open about surrendering a child.

To all the first/birth/natural mothers who come upon this post and have not told their larger families, their other children, about their siblings who have been adopted by others, let me help you find the way. Your husband and children most likely love you, and once they get over the shock of hearing about this secret, they will still love you and accept you. They might be hurt that you felt you had to keep this secret, but most have the capacity to understand how and why you had to. Most people will offer sympathy and love and hugs. (Bring out the hankies!) And you will give your adopted son or daughter the greatest gift, the gift of acceptance, the gift of not having to be a secret anymore. Some of the saddest comments and posts I read here are from adoptees whose first/birth mothers will not meet them (see above), or meet them, but only in secret.

You could not keep your child when they were born. You can never make up for that. But you can bring them fully into the sunshine of your life today. You can give them that one gift. It's a start.--lorraine

Dear Abby comes up with the right answer

 Just a shortie, here, as Jane will be posting later today, but as I was trolling the stories at the bottom of the blog today, I came upon this in the Dear Abby column, and it's so right on target with what we were discussing in the last post I am sharing it here:

DEAR ABBY:
When I was in high school nine years ago, I gave birth to a beautiful baby whom I placed in an open adoption with a great family. I am now in my 20s.
I find that if I mention the adoption, the conversation sometimes becomes awkward. I don't like to mention it with acquaintances because it's something very personal and I am somewhat sensitive about it.
When people ask me if I have children, what would be the appropriate response? -- BIRTH MOTHER IN MINNESOTA
DEAR BIRTH MOTHER: You are under no obligation to give chapter and verse about your personal history to anyone who is only an acquaintance. If you are asked if you have children, just say no because you are not raising any.

 Well, that's certainly was what I did until I published my memoir, Birthmark, in the late Seventies, and then even after if I knew the person did not know who I was in that connection. And then once I found her, I often simply said, Yes,  I have a daughter. It got easier as she got older because I found her when she was a teenager, and then people wondered why she was not living with me and my husband. Once she was older it was perfectly normal that she lived elsewhere, as in another state.

One last thing about people knowing. Years ago, before I found my daughter, I had a roommate in Manhattan who was dating a rather prominent child psychologist and author. I do not remember what led to this comment but he once said to her: You don't want to end up like Lorraine. 

Whoa! was my reaction when I heard that, and yes indeed, that was pity. No one wants to be a pathetic creature that others pity. So my advice is like Dear Abby's: sometimes choose your answer to give you the least grief.

But let me immediately add, sometimes we all need to speak up, and take the slings and arrows of poor fortune because unless we do, the laws are not going to change and adopted people are not going to be given their birth records in every state of the union. Speak up when you think speaking up just might do some good. Say: I gave my daughter up for adoption and I would like--fervently hope-- to meet her one day.

Or, I surrendered my daughter, or son,  when she was an infant and we have been reunited. And I'm in favor of open records for all adoptees, and yes, if you want to know, for birth mothers too. I was not given a choice when I relinquished.

Or: I relinquished my son when he was an infant but he found me last year and it was the most rewarding day of my life, want to see his picture?

The ups and downs of the post reunion? Ah, that is another question indeed. --lorraine

Talking out about adoption is not always easy. In fact, almost never.

Talking freely about about our children lost to adoption is something that does not come easy, no matter how open one is about it. Reading Stone Diaries recently, I came across a passage where the protagonist, Daisy, is glad to escape from her home town because everybody there knows her marriage of two weeks was not consummated. Her upper-class husband was a secret drunk who fell out of a third-story window on their honeymoon in France. Once back home, Daisy's doctor discovers that she is still a virgin, and tells no one but his wife, who tells no one but her best friend who tells no one but...and eventually this startling news reaches her ex-mother-in-law. Who blames the lack of marital consummation on Daisy, who must be "frigid." Daisy  then became a woman whose story enveloped her around like a coat she cannot throw off.

The shock of recognition hit me hard when I read that passage because that is how I often feel about my status as a birth/first mother. That I am a woman with a story. That precedes me into any situation. Sometimes I merely want to be a woman without such an interesting story.

So I often keep my mouth shut. Do I announce to casual strangers, like someone I might meet at work (if I worked out of the home) that I am a first/birth mother, walking freely among the non-birth mothers of the world? No. Do I tell a dinner partner whom I have never met before that I had a child who I gave up for adoption, and that I searched and found her, and now she is dead, when asked if I have children? Do I sometimes just say no? Depends. (Actually, it's easier now that my daughter is dead, because saying that my daughter died usually kills further questioning and only elicits sympathy.) Do I join a new group of people and introduce myself, if asked, Do you have children? as a woman who gave up a child for adoption, or a birth/first mother? No. That's a question I have dreaded ever since 1966, the year my daughter was born and I surrendered her.

I have to have some privacy about this. I have to not let my adoption sadness and grief and activism take over every aspect of my life. I can not handle being on a soap box every moment. Thank god for good friends, because with them, adoption is only a part of who I am.

If you are a woman with a story such as this, first and foremost most people go, Ohh that's too bad, and Ahh, how are you today? Where's your daughter, how did her parents handle this, did you regret giving her up, why did you do it, who is the father, why didn't you get married?  That takes up the rest of the lunch/hour/group session/afternoon. I do not want to be a woman "with a story," a story that precedes me everywhere, obliterates all other information about me. It's what Jane talked about in her last post.

Sometimes I just want to be a woman joining a reading club, a writer and magazine editor, someone with Francophile tendencies, someone who finds amazing stuff at the local thrift shops, a fan of Elizabeth George mysteries and Preston Sturgis movies, a lover of triple-creme cheese, Indian food, horseback riding, dogs and ballet. It is exhausting to be first and foremost an activist birth mother.

Some may think that because I wrote Birthmark way back in the dark ages of the open-records movement--and been interviewed about adoption reform literally fifty or sixty times in the media--it is a piece of cake to speak out all the time about adoption issues. Wrong. If I have to debate a gang of angry adoptive parents (who usually turn out also to be lawyers with their tongues sharpened), it's emotionally draining and exhausting. If people wonder why I sometimes are not overly sympathetic to adoptive parents without knowing more about them, it's because so many have been gunning for me over the years. One guy I knew slightly told me at a party that he knew people "who wanted to kill me." They lived in his building, he said, they were friends, and yep, they were adoptive parents.

On the day in 1993 that Baby Jessica/real name: Anna Schmidt was returned to her natural parents, Dan Schmidt and Cara Clausen, from the the DeBoers, the couple who fought in the courts for two-and-a-half years, I was the only one speaking up for the Schmidts on the then MacNeal-Lehrer Report on PBS against a group of about six people, including adoptive mother and Harvard professor, Elizabeth Bartholet. You bet that was exhausting. Similar hostile interviews were common after Birthmark came out in 1979.

On the other hand, having people know who I am (reunited birth mother, adoption-reform activist, writer) does make some encounters easier, since I do not have to explain this part of my life. People who might say nasty things about birth mothers are likely to hold their tongue if I'm within earshot. Prospective adoptive parents do not invite me to Gladney fund raisers. Yes, the agency urges prospective adopters to have them, and adopting parents I know held a cocktail party for that purpose. I was not on the guest list. They got a boy soon after.

However, if someone has never talked to a first mother before (that she is aware of), and the situation allows, she is typically riveted in exploring every possible aspect of the story. She has a million questions, and so it goes for the next hour. I remember spending most of an afternoon at a friend's house one summer day and her sister-in-law was full of such questions as we paddled about in a pool. There was nothing to do but answer her questions; to do anything else would have been rude.

But if I can do so, and say, I'm at a social event and someone wants to launch into a discussion of the pros and cons of open records, adoption, my searching, whatever...I do what adoption-reform pioneer Florence Fisher taught me: She says, I am at a social event, I want to have a good time, this is such an emotional issue, I just can't talk about it now, OK? Smile broadly, hope for understanding. If that doesn't work, I add, You know, giving up my daughter was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and revisiting it now is like talking about the time I was raped. (I was.)

I put Florence's advice once to good use on a couple of occasions. Once I "helped" a friend's college-age daughter who was to argue that "adoption records ought to remain sealed" in a debating class (true story). At her father's request I sent her a packet of material (though what I sent argued for the opposite of what she was looking for) about sealed records. I don't know what her father was thinking, as he had already met my daughter, and knew that I searched for her. I did not hear from the young woman, or learn what happened in debating class. Several months later, however, here she was at a Christmas party. She introduced herself and a half hour later called me over and introduced me to another woman as, "This is Lorraine who wrote a book about adoption."

Gulp. Who is this woman? I'm thinking, Somebody about to adopt? Err..."This is a woman who wrote a book about adoption, too," the young woman making this awkward introduction said. "Bye." And then our go-between was gone.

Is this woman my enemy, I'm wondering now. Is she an adoptive mother against open records? About to adopt? What? It turned out that she had been a social worker (not an adoptive mother) who indeed had written a book about adopting for adoptive parents. We stared at each other uncomfortably. After hearing about her book, I said my piece about not talking about this at a party. We parted and have been cool to one another on the infrequent occasions our paths cross. We smile, nod, and turn away.

Being public about your status as a birth mother and lobbying for open records in Albany or Trenton or Boston or Philadelphia or Austin is a whole different ball game. You are with people of like mind, you meet legislators and their aides and tell your story succinctly and hope to open minds and hearts, and it is exhilarating, a great good feeling that gives back more than you give--even when you encounter the folks who will never vote for open records for adoptees and most certainly, not for first/birth mothers.

But sometimes someone I've just met strikes me the right way, and I end up revealing my story. I've told strangers in airports who turn out to be understanding and sympathetic adoptive mothers; I told someone sitting next to me at a dinner party and it turned out that she too, had given up a child many years before, and we spent the next hour talking barely above a whisper; I once told a man I met on a vacation half-way around the world and it turned out he was a birth father and now, with plenty of money, wished he could find a way to help his child, if he needed it. I could send him to college, he said. Just before Birthmark was available, I told a stranger in a bar in Sag Harbor, and he turned out to be adopted, and was excited with the idea of what I was doing. I never met him again. However, a few weeks later he sent a dozen red roses to me on the set of the first media appearance I did for the book. I never knew how he even knew where I would be--the interview was in Detroit, where I grew up, it was not a national talk show.

I think about him now and then. I hoped he found whom he was really looking for, and she was gladdened in her heart. We birth/first mothers have to make the call every day: whether to tell or not. Speaking out and speaking up is what we need to do, but sometimes a woman gets weary and needs a little room.

How Do You Tell Your Family You Had a First Child?

So, you have a secret that needs to come out. How do you tell your family/husband/children? How do you tell them about the child they will be stunned to learn about?

It ain't easy. In my own case, I was able to keep my pregnancy secret from my family, and so I had to deal with coming out of the first/birth mother closet years later. I was living in another state, New York, quite far away from home in Michigan, when I became pregnant. I was twenty-three, less than a year out of college, and kept up the pretense that I was still working as a newspaper reporter in Rochester, when in fact, I had quit my job and was hiding in my apartment.

My window to the outside world was through the father of my child, Brian, who came every day (he worked) after he was done for the day. On a newspaper, the hour one leaves the office is often on a sliding scale--you might work through "lunch" on deadline, you might be filing a late story, you might be out on a long-term assignment. Thus he had a certain amount of leeway. Yes, he was married and had a family. I was the "other woman." Which is why I suppose I have a certain amount of sympathy for John Edwards' other woman, Rielle Hunter, and the father of his last child. Yes, I do, but that's another story.

Eventually my parents tried to call me at work and the operator told them I had not been there for months! But she put them through to the City Editor, a good man who knew about me and knew the secret I and his star political reporter were keeping. He told them I was working on a undercover operation.

Right. I sure was.

But I was able to get through this sticky situation without my having to fess up, and amazingly enough, I had the baby without my family back in Detroit knowing anything about it. Considering all the grief that would have entailed, it was easier to go it alone than have to look my parents in the eye and admit I was pregnant. The year was 1966. A few months after my daughter was born I found a job in Albany.

Two years later, my father died. He never knew. His death was a huge blow because I loved him intensely. We were alike in so many ways beyond the physical. But his death meant I would never have to tell him how I had screwed up. You see, he and I had fought for years over whether I should go college, and then over whether I would ever get a job as a reporter, because he did not believe girls needed to go to college because they were all going to get married and have children anyway. Old world, poor family, old school. After what had transpired between us, telling him that I had indeed become pregnant as a single woman would not have been, ah, easy. I threw two flowers in his grave over the casket--one for me, one for my daughter--but I was relieved of admitting what I had done, how I had failed him, myself, everyone. I was still stinking with shame.

At one time, my mother quizzed me about the "undercover" operation--what ever happened to that story you were supposedly working on, she wanted to know, what was it about?--and somehow the story morphed to me having mononucleosis during that period, I did not want to worry them, et cetera, and while she was doubtful, I kept to my story. Oh, a tissue of lies.

I married the same year my father died, and told my first husband my horrible secret with my heart palpitating, boom boom, feeling the hot flash of an anxiety attack, will he change his mind? when he asked me to marry him. Yes, it was not easy. Yes, I did not know what he would say. Yes, I was terrified, like jumping out of an airplane. But I got through it and we got married.

Fast forward seven years later. I was divorced, and had become involved in the movement to open records for--hell, everyone, not just adopted people, but mothers like me too! Why not? I had only agreed to the ridiculous and stupid "sealed forever" part of the contract because I had no choice. As I noted before, when I protested, Mrs. Helen Mura, my social worker, said, "Well, then we can't help you. You have to agree to this." The law that had sealed all the records from me had been in place in New York since 1935, and the agency, and Mrs. Mura, were not about to try any shenanigans getting around the law with anyone who balked at signing her child away. Northaven Terrace, the agency,  would not help me with the adoption unless it was according to the letter of the law, and that meant, she--and I--were doomed to a fate of anonymity. My child would get a new identity, and I was supposed to act as if I never had a daughter. Maybe this is why I do not flinch from comparing the current adoption model in most states to slavery, because I felt totally coerced into signing papers I did not agree with. I was alive and conscious, yes, but forced to enter into an ageement I did not agree with. The state had all the power as surely as if it held a gun to my head.

I had nowhere to turn. I remember going home from the agency that day full of even more tears and sorrow and telling Brian this latest and unbelievable insult being added to the injury of giving away a child in the first place. Left without a choice, I went through with surrendering my daughter knowing full well that the secrecy I was forced to agree to was further punishment for giving her up. What monster wrote this law? I wondered.

Yet because I could, I had kept this secret from my family for years. But after I had testified in court twice for adoptees hoping to get their original records in New York and New Jersey, I knew I had to spill the beans to all and everyone concerned. Now I had to tell my mother. I went home for a long weekend with this on the agenda. I took her to lunch at a nice place, we ordered gin and tonics and fish as the entree, but between the drinks and the main course, I told her. You just have to start saying the words and hope for the best. Somehow a version of I had a baby and gave her away gets the story across economically. You can fill in the details later.

My mother was absolutely great. Her first words were "Oh honey...." She first said that she was sorry that she had not been there to be a comfort to me, and then...after I told her about the fight to open the records and all, that I was going to be public and she might see my name in the paper and the neighbors would talk...she said, I think you are doing the right thing. I think everybody who is adopted must wonder who their real parents are--how could they not? I hope I live long enough to meet her.

We sent back the fish pretty much untouched. Then I had to tell my two brothers, one older, one younger, and since I did not see them together that weekend, I had to go through this twice more than weekend. They were cool about it too.

What a relief to not have this secret anymore! What a relief to share with my mother on Christmas why now I always got teary during the carols sung during Mass. Silent Night has such a mournful tune, and it seemed to be a dirge for the baby I did not have. Now we could talk about this huge thing that had occurred, and I did not have to pretend all was fine when my daughter's birthday rolled around. My mother, a Catholic who never missed mass on Sunday, started praying for this new granddaughter and our hoped-for reunion. 

And then I started writing about being a first mother--I didn't use that word, I did not even use birth mother then--I was a mother who had a baby and gave her away. The more I wrote about it, the easier it got. I've had people say nasty things--one psychiatrist who was dating a girl friend told her that she "didn't want to end up like me." And you know, he's right. No one should end up like us. It's a life of grief and tears and sorrow.

Most media interviewers have been understanding and sympathetic--Regis Philbin had me on his show in 1979 when other people wouldn't even touch the subject--but some have been incredibly nasty and accusatory, practically calling me a slut. Most of the criticism comes in the form of: HOW DARE YOU? Who do you think you are that you can disrupt the very very very happy adoption and family that I am utterly positive your daughter is situated in!

Nearly all of the criticism expresses sympathy for the saintly adoptive parents...who took in my poor child when I did not want her (wrong) and now, I'm coming along to bust up their Leave-It-To- Beaver-Cleaver-happy-intact-family existence. The critics  never stopped to consider that maybe the  adopted individual might have another take on the matter--that they might want to know from whence they came. That seems somehow to not be the concern of those throwing stones--then, or now. They assume that the adopted person is perfectly happy with the way things are. Period.

I still get brickbats thrown at me, as regular readers will remember, and wrote about it here and here. And here. Actually, I don't think it will ever end. Not in my lifetime. That's why I get so crazed when I read on some websites about the great "gift" that a wonderful selfless teen mother made in giving up her child, and go on to praise her, blah blah, blah. But they praise her in absentia. And as long as she remains in absentia.

But to get back to the point: telling someone your secret--if the relinquished child is a secret--is never easy. I was fortunate in that my family and husbands (two) were both supportive and understanding. I never had other children so telling other children was not an issue. Fellow blogger Jane has written about the difficulties of telling her other family.

I'm not saying that you have to tell everyone on every street corner, or everyone you date, or every casual friend you have, or every person in your office, and there are plenty of times when I keep my mouth shut about this issue because it's still a hot topic that inflames people. Whom you tell and whom you do not is a personal decision.

However telling at least those close to you--friends, lovers, husbands, family--sure does ease the mind. And so, if someday you are so fortunate that you receive a phone call that begins...Does fill-in-the-date mean anything to you...you can answer Yes! and simply be thrilled. And not worry about now having to reveal the painful secret you have buried so deep it hurts, hurts like hell.--lorraine

To Tell the Truth or Not, Continued: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't

My coming out as a birth mother happened under quite different circumstances and back in the old days of the Seventies. Once I decided to write Birthmark (after my first marriage ended), the days of not being a birth mother publicly were over, more or less. I'd previously written two magazine pieces under a pseudonym about it.

I already knew how controversial the book would be when I met a prospective publisher for a drink in Manhattan one evening in the fall of 1978, and he brought along an editor with him, a friend as well as employee. This man, Arnold, did not know anything about me but when it became clear to him, BAM! the guy became extremely agitated, red in the face, practically spitting at me. WHAT RIGHT DID I HAVE! etc. I excused myself and headed for the ladies room; when I returned he had gone. It turned out that he had been raised in an orphanage and was more than a little angry with his birth mother. I'm not sure he was ever actually adopted. I felt he would have shot me on the spot had been possible. His friend had no idea he felt this way--or that he had been raised in less than propitious circumstances.

I turned 37 the summer before the book came out in 1979, and was sharing a house in Sag Harbor, where I live now, with other writers and editors. One woman I had never seen before walked up to me at a cocktail party and handed me a hand-written note with that little poem about "you grew in my heart, not under it" or however that goes and walked away, turning to smirk and stare back angrily. I never found out who she was, or whether she was an adoptee or an adoptive parent.

Talk of the audacity of what I had done--write a book about this taboo subject, that is, say that I had not forgotten my daughter and wanted to know her one day--made the rounds and the discussion, I would later hear from a friend who had been there, often became quite heated. So-and-so, I was told, pounded the table one evening in anger: What right has she? Who in the hell does that woman think she is? And all of this was further exaggerated when I wrote my first My Turn on the subject for Newsweek, for if news of the book hadn't reached you--and it was hardly a major publishing event--the Newsweek piece got people's attention.

But my friends were all supportive (only one of them a birth mother, and we were friends before our mutual reveal), and so I was largely insulated from nasty personal attacks. I told myself I had to expect a lot of criticism, but you can never insulate yourself enough. No one has a crocodile skin. Of course I was fair game during the publicity for the book. Most interviewers were sympathetic, but now and then someone who had been civil before the camera started rolling would turn out to be Raging Arnold in another guise. One adopted radio interviewer was so upset that he wore a full face mask--the kind they wear in Venice--during our half-hour chat to show his natural mother that he was going to stay hidden from her! Yet amazingly, this man--while he was plenty angry about being adopted--was not cruel to me.

That was then. Of course things have changed somewhat since then, and naturally, I do not like to make my feelings and status as a birth mother the subject of every conversation with someone new. I dread it when I am introduced, as one adoptive mother used to do, as the birth mother who wrote that book...because then there was no other conversation possible. I hate to talk about this issue at parties because a) it's not fun, and b) you never know what you are going to unearth. Once people hear this about you, they are likely to pepper you with questions for the next hour. (I stopped seeing that adoptive mother mentioned above much.) If I have to be polite to someone because she's the sister-in-law of a friend, and the sister-in-law is crazy curious, I will go along and do my best to educate someone on a subject that seems so amazingly foreign to them. But boy, am I then glad to change the subject! To get away!

So when new people I meet ask what I have written, I typically do not mention Birthmark, the blog, or any of my adoption-reform writings. Books on health and business, lots of magazine pieces on diverse subjects, I reply. I want to talk about gardening, backyard bird watching, movies, books, the sad state of book publishing, our mutual friends, whatever. When people--even acquaintances--ask what I'm working on now, I'm very likely (and so is my husband, if he's asked) to be coy and just say, Ahem, I'm not talking about it, even thought that sounds off-putting. Regular readers of FirstmotherForum know that revealing the subject even to people I felt quite close to has led to some pretty awful attacks, as I wrote about in previous posts. There and here and elsewhere.

About a dozen years ago when friends started adopting (and it is contagious), I had a tearful telephone discussion with one woman who was unable to get pregnant, and her husband really really wanted a child. They eventually adopted from China. A year later, I was sitting with a mutual acquaintance, and she said...X did it, I'm going to adopt, I'm going to get a Chinese baby. And so she did. And so did someone else we all knew, a year after that. A college roommate of X also adopted, this time a white infant who looks Irish and is being raised Jewish. Another friend's sister got two children in the last couple of years from Rhode Island. I walk into some dinner parties and immediately count three, four, adoptive parents and pray the subject does not come up. And so it goes in my world.

Like fellow blogger birthmother Jane, I do not talk about adoption with people who say they are going to adopt. I nod and look away and change the subject. I'd have to say that many of my friends in this adoption-YES! world do not know how I really feel. Adoption-reform pioneer Florence Fisher--the woman who really furthered our fight to open records by opening up the subject for discussion--once told me that if someone wants to talk about adoption at a party, she tells them, This is a party, I'm here to enjoy myself, this is not fun for me, I don't want to talk about this now. I've kept that in mind more than once and have used the same line myself. If they don't get it, I add, "Look, this was the more horrible thing that ever happened to me, it would be like talking about what it was like to be raped." That usually stops them cold. I can't say I've made any friends that way.

One time someone I know told me his daughter in college was doing something about adoption, could she email me? Sure, I said, thinking I might be able to educate someone. It turned out that she was writing a paper supporting this thesis: Why adoption records should stay sealed.

Cute, huh?

I xeroxed and sent her loads of material and told her taking that point of view was like arguing for slavery. Ah, I thought, I might make a convert. I never found out what she ended up writing--my offering probably got looked at and thrown out. Some months later we were at a big party together, and she pulled me over to meet another woman. "You two have so much in common," said the chirpy college student. "Lorraine has written a book about giving up a child, and you've [to the other woman} wrote a book about adoption..." Turns out the "other woman" was a adoption social worker. Then the college student walked away.

I thought of Florence and told the social worker calmly that giving up my child was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and did not want to talk about it. I did check out her book--it was not written with birth mothers in mind.

Yet saying nothing to friends who are pursuing international adoption is difficult now, especially as the information about kidnapping and various other nefarious means to get children for export is becoming known. For instance, we know someone whose fiancee is trying to adopt from Nepal. We spoke up a bit at dinner (fiancee was not present) at his house, but I could see right off that he was not ready to hear because he immediately said: Well, there are all those poor people in Nepal...Meaning: obviously, we ought to be able to get some kid from a poor family. Later, my husband emailed him and sent him a link to the UNICEF report about adoption from Nepal, that we wrote about here. We did not hear back.

But sometimes it just feels right to reveal. I once told a woman I'd met twenty minutes earlier I'd given up a child for adoption, and her eyes immediately glistened. Right. Turned out, she was a birth mother too, and we had a sweet, private conversation. You just never know. I guess you have to go with your gut.

As for Linda revealing her status to a woman she did not know at work, I can only say, Good job! If she is determined, the woman will probably find a way to adopt, but at least Linda let her know that kids don't come without strings, ancestors, other mothers and fathers. And lots of them are nice people you might know.

So like my fellow bloggers and commenters, being a birth mother is something I will readily cop to when I feel it will do some good, and like Jane says, it is easier being public about the issue without having to confront it one-on-one. But I don't want to be seen as a person who drags around a soap box with me.

Though to some, I am sure that is how I seem.

So it goes. --lorraine

To Tell the Truth or Not, Continued: Secrets and Lies

I am reluctant to discuss my birth motherhood outside of adoption circles. I did not tell anyone about Rebecca, my surrendered daughter, except my husband the day before we were married in 1968, two years after Rebecca was born.

I’ve read about birthmothers who were euphoric when their surrendered children contacted them; they called all their relatives and friends to share the glad tidings. When I learned from a relative in 1997 that Rebecca was trying to contact me, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. I knew calling Rebecca (the relative gave me her number) would force me to reconcile the events of 31 years ago with my current life.

I decided to call Rebecca, partly out of curiosity and partly because I had always told myself I would find her some day. After she turned 18, my thoughts about searching became increasingly intense, my grief at losing her more acute. Yet I procrastinated; the time wasn’t right; it would be a long and expensive process; I needed to wait until I did not have other things going on in my life.

I had no idea how to prepare for the reunion. The adoptee activism/birthparent support movement had evaded Salem, Oregon where I lived. I rented Secrets and Lies (the only “resource” I had heard of) and watched it several times over the weekend. On Monday, November 24, 1997, I dialed Rebecca’s number.

For several weeks, I communicated with Rebecca secretly. As I became more comfortable (she lived two thousand miles away and was not a deranged stalker hell bent on revealing my secret), I shared her entry into my life with my husband and a few close friends. A month later, in January, 1998, just before I was to leave for Chicago to meet Rebecca, I told my other three daughters about her.

During the spring of 1998, supporters of adoptee rights collected enough signatures to place a measure on the ballot which would allow adult adoptees to receive their original birth certificates. I watched with envy as other birthmothers boldly went before the media telling their stories and supporting the measure, something I just could not do. I met with the supporters, however, and suggested they run an ad with the names of birthmothers who favored the measure.

The supporters decided to create the ad and I agreed to appear in it in a photograph with four other Oregon birthmothers. The ad ran in the Oregonian two days before the election. The ballot measure passed by 57 percent of the votes. Since 2000, after court challenges to the measure failed, adult adoptees born in Oregon have had full access to their original birth certificates.

Besides the fact that it was the right thing to do, I agreed to be in the ad to impress Rebecca (if it did impress her, though, she didn’t let on) and as a way of telling everyone I knew about my birth motherhood without a face to face encounter. The day after the ad appeared, a co-worker tried to engage me in conversation, saying “that happened to a friend of mine.” I turned away.

Since 1998, I have had several letters to the editor about adoption issues published, disclosing my birthmother status. Still face to face conversations are difficult. When I’m with acquaintances and someone mentions adoption as in “Isn’t it wonderful the Xs are adopting a baby girl from China,” I just smile and say nothing.

About five years ago, I was having a physical from a nurse practitioner who worked for my doctor. I can’t remember how it came up but she told me she was a lesbian and that she and her partner were considering adopting a baby through Open Adoption, Inc, Oregon’s largest (and most chic) domestic adoption agency. She had had a baby two years before, a product of artificial insemination, and she and her partner wanted another child. She couldn’t go through a second pregnancy and her partner was infertile. Her partner rejected adopting a child in foster care because the available children were older than their biological child. I told the nurse practitioner that I knew women who had lost children to adoption. Whether an open or closed adoption, these women grieved for their children.

I realized that I was being less than honest and eventually told her I was a birthmother. She had a zillion questions: was I in reunion, how often did we see each other, were we alike? My comments made her re-think adopting an infant and she told me she was going to have, as she put it, “an interesting talk“ with her partner that evening. As it happened, my doctor retired soon after and I never saw her again.

How do I answer the question “how many children do you have”? Before my reunion, I said “my husband and I have three daughters.” I didn’t betray Rebecca but I also didn’t reveal anything. Truthful, but not the whole truth. After my reunion I answered “four daughters.” People rarely asked follow-up questions and I didn’t volunteer more information. Several years later, after Rebecca made it clear that she did not consider me her mother, I reverted to “three daughters” without feeling guilty.

I find it so difficult to tell people about Rebecca because I have no excuses. I was 23 when I became pregnant. I knew about condoms (we called them “rubbers” then) and in the past, I had insisted my partners use them. I continued a sexual relationship with Rebecca’s father even though I had had enough doubts about his character that when he had proposed over a year earlier, I had deferred. My mother didn’t force me into surrendering my baby; indeed she didn’t even know I was pregnant. I'm sure she would have let me and my baby live with her. I had a college degree and although it was difficult for women, even college graduates, to get good-paying jobs in 1966, I could have gotten something.

I took the easy path, signing the paper and pretending it didn’t happen, rationalizing that my daughter was better off. I told myself that I would find her someday and make it up to her. I shut out the voices that told me giving my child to strangers was unnatural and wrong.

Coming out of the closet as a birthmother: To Tell the Truth...Or Not?

Regular readers of our blog know that I’ve always been candid about my birthmother status. In the initial post-adoption years it was easy for me to tell people I lost a child to adoption, and they were always sympathetic and praised me for my selflessness. As the years went by and I assumed other roles—wife, professional student, employee, aunt—the birthmother role moved to the back of my mind; but it was always there. Later, when I marked the year my daughter turned 18, and a few years later, when most of my work colleagues were her exact age, my birthmother role became more important. I started to talk about it whenever the conversation lent itself to the topic of single motherhood or unplanned pregnancy, and within the year my daughter contacted me and we began the “reunification process.”

Those who were supportive during my pregnancy, relinquishment, and beyond—my sisters, my college friends, my husband—were thrilled; others, not so much. Even though she initiated contact, I was perceived as interfering in her life. The best example, oddly enough, is provided by my estranged sister. Minutes after I spoke to my agency that afternoon in January 2000, I phoned my sister at work and said, “Sarah called.” At first she didn’t understand, but then she was like a parrot, repeating everything I said—my daughter’s “new” name, where she grew up, where she went to school--and she shared the news with one and all. She had just started a new job and became fast friends with the woman who was training her, who often remarked that she felt as though she already knew my sister. Suddenly this woman was avoiding my sister, and my sister had no idea why. A few days later we learned that the woman’s son and my daughter attended the same school; she knew my daughter’s parents well. Within the week my daughter called to tell me that this woman contacted her father (her parents had been divorced for several years) and told him about the drama that had unfolded; thankfully her father was well aware of the reunion and told this woman he thought it was wonderful, but it was apparent she didn’t share his sentiment. My sister finally shared an elevator with her, and all the woman would say was “I’m never going to speak about it again, but these are two of the most loving parents I’ve ever known,” referring to my daughter’s parents. My sister quipped that the woman felt as though she knew her because, in fact, she knew her niece, and the woman couldn’t get out of the elevator fast enough. This woman, who never met me, wasn’t happy that I was reunited with my daughter.

For me, that reaction is typical of women who aren’t members of the adoption triad. The men who know I'm a birthmother see it differently. It’s very black and white to them…I lost a child to adoption, she found me, and now she doesn’t speak to me because I gave her away. She’s angry and hurt, and surely confused.

I interact with more men than women in my work. In the past several years the universe has arranged for me to cross paths with a lot of adoptive fathers. It happened again this past week. I attended a networking event at a chic local restaurant. I was having a wonderful conversation with a man my age, and we got to the subject of kids. I said, “I’m childfree, for many unselfish reasons,” and I could see the puzzled look on his face. So I joked and said, “I rarely bring this up on the first date, but I’m a birthmother. I lost my daughter to adoption 32 years ago, she found me, we had a rocky reunion, and she hasn’t spoken to me in the past four years.” And then I said, “You’re childfree, too?”

He smiled and said he had three children, adopted siblings. I just rolled my eyes and commented that every other man I meet these days is an adopted father. His kids were in and out of foster care, their mother wasn’t a good girl gone bad, more the stereotypical crack whore version of a birthmother. I just told him what I’ve always said, the birthmothers I know are among the most courageous, tenacious, responsible women I have the pleasure to know. He confessed he never met a birthmother before. I laughed, pirouetted and said, “Well, this is what a birthmother looks like. We’re everywhere.”

And it’s true. We ARE everywhere. We’re your neighbors, your colleagues, your best friends. We’re in your book club, your gym, your church. And yet, here in the 21st century, so many of us still harbor a secret life, and haven’t told a soul that they lost their child to adoption. How often have you been lauded for relinquishing your child to adoption? Probably never.

I think the adoptive dad I met this week gets it, but how much would you like to wager that he tells his wife he met a birthmother and she was a woman just like her?

Adoption touched me in another way this week. Last Monday I was perusing the online corporate classifieds at work when I spotted an ad from a woman requesting adoption information. I instantly responded by directing her to NJARCH, the New Jersey Adoption Resource Clearing House, the Heart Gallery, a nationwide, online photo gallery featuring foster children awaiting stable, permanent homes, and the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. She responded in kind, mentioned she was still reeling from adoption “sticker shock.” I explained that was precisely why I steered her toward the state agencies versus the “boutique” adoption agencies; if she was serious about providing a loving, stable home for a child in need, she could do the most good through these public agencies. And yes, I provided full disclosure, i.e., I let her know I was a birthmother and involved in all things adoption for over 30 years.

When I mentioned it to Lorraine, she said it was a brave and good thing to do. I don’t know about brave, but I do know it was the right thing to do. Even though my adoption odyssey didn’t have a fairy tale ending, I have to believe that contemporary adoptions hold the promise of a win-win, happily ever after ending for one and all.