Dear FMF: Why did my (reunited) daughter's Facebook posting hurt so much?

Lorraine

Dear First Mother Forum:
I met my daughter a few years ago and we have had a couple of good meetings. She looks a LOT like my mother when she was younger, and reminds me a lot of my sister…same mannerisms, laugh, big personality, sense of humor, etc.  

But don’t talk about that stuff with her for she will not go there…it is probably the damnedest thing I have ever seen. She mentioned a couple of things to me…we have the same dark brown eyes, but the last time we were together, my husband mentioned the similarities between her and my sister, and my daughter absolutely clammed up.

After the birth mother/adoptee reunion: Dealing with rejection all over again

Jane and Lorraine in Sag Harbor, circa 1996

The reaction to the post about my daughter that have stayed with me were with ones from first mothers whose children, now found, are not speaking to them. I mentioned the lapses in my relationship with my  own daughter's at the end of the previous post, Remembering my daughter on her birthday.

I usually don't write about her not talking to me much now because it's obviously no longer an issue. She is gone. I don't cry anymore because she won't speak to me; I have cried plenty, but now she cannot speak to me, except in dreams.

Korean Adoptee Meets Birth/First Family in Seoul

An addendum to yesterday's post about Koreans reuniting with their birth parents back in South Korea: The Harrison (Arkansas) Daily Times has a long story about the reunion of Willie Whitescarver, or Jo Kyung Nam, with his natural family, including his birth/first mother, Choi Chun-Hak of Seoul, in October. Willie, a 54-year-old building contractor in Harrison, took his wife, their three children and spouses with them to meet her family.

From the Daily Times: Now, at her home near Seoul, [Whitescaver's] 81-year-old mother is wearing a necklace her American son gave her, with half of a metal coin dangling from a chain, and back here in Arkansas, Willie is wearing a necklace with the other half of the coin. On the coins, the Mizpah blessing from Genesis is inscribed: “May the Lord watch between me and thee while apart from one another.” Willie gave the necklace to his mother as a gift during their visit.

 Whitescaver said he hopes to go back to Seoul to help the Holt International Adoption Agency and orphanage, which facilitated his adoption, to repair and rebuild its building, and after that, bring his mother to Arkansas for a visit. Meeting his birth mother was “the experience of a lifetime,” Whitescarver said.

The story at the Daily Times page has photographs, including a shot of how the story ran in a Korean newspaper. In light of our discussion yesterday about educating adoptive parents to not feel rejected if their children seek out their natural parents (see Osolomama's comment) , we wish we had a comment from the adoptive mother, who lives near Whitescarver in Arkansas. The comments at the end of the newspaper story are all positive--you might want to add your own. --lorraine

Two Mothers, Part 3

As Linda and Lorraine reported, the course of a reunion never does run straight when it comes up against the realities of ”that other family” which is how birth mothers cannot help but see the adoptive family.

In my own case, my surrendered daughter, Rebecca, searched for me for over ten years in order to, as she put it, “solve the mystery of my life.” She found me in 1997 when she was 31. Initially, she told me her adoptive parents, Norma and Nelson French, were “okay” (not thrilled but okay) with our reunion. When Rebecca and I continued to correspond, the “okay” turned to fear. Several months after our reunion, Rebecca traveled from her home in suburban Chicago to spend a week with her adoptive parents in California “to reassure them.”

Rebecca's adoptive parents, particularly Norma, continued to be alarmed by our reunion. According to Rebecca, Norma protested that she “was promised this would never happen.” She asked repeatedly “What’s Jane’s agenda?” The Frenches were politically conservative and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They knew through Rebecca that I was politically liberal and active in women’s rights. Norma suspected that I continued the relationship with Rebecca in order to convert her to feminism, ignoring the obvious – that love and the pull of my own child might have been a factor.

I admit that I did not want to meet the Frenches at first. Rebecca and I had a special relationship which they rightfully had no part. When she spoke of them, it felt like a knife in my heart. Jealously raged; we were competitors for her soul.

Eventually I began to think that meeting the Frenches would be beneficial for all. Over the next few years, I offered to meet them. Rebecca always shook her head and said “They have no interest in meeting you.”

I told Rebecca about adoptive parents and birthparents I met at conferences of the American Adoption Congress that were friends with or at least accepting of their counterparts. The AAC president at the time, Jane Nast, spoke affectionately about her son’s birthmother and introduced her to the audience at the main dinner at the conference. I met an adoptee whose birth and adoptive parents became such good friends that they “ganged” up on her, pushing her to go to college. Another birthmother told me that she always stayed at her daughter’s adoptive parents’ home when she visited her daughter, and despite problems that came up later, that is what fellow blogger Lorraine (see previous post) always did when she visited her daughter. Rebecca could not grasp these kinds of relationships and didn’t see the value of them. It was as though she thought of adoptive and birth parents as natural enemies.

Norma passed away five years ago so we will never meet. I regret this. While the simple act of meeting (and perhaps exchanging Christmas cards and so on) would not have bonded us, I believe it would have made life easier for Rebecca. At least we would have known who the other was and not depended on Rebecca to fill in blanks. Perhaps, knowing the other family might have helped each of us understand Rebecca better. Although it’s unlikely we would have become pals given the differences in beliefs and values, perhaps the Frenches and I would have begun to see each other as partners, working for the well-being of Rebecca and her children rather than as rivals for her affection.

I have read memoirs by adoptees and met hundreds of triad members at support groups and conferences. I am convinced that integrating adoptive and birth families results in the best outcome for all. This does not happen in most cases I am aware of because of the resentments and jealousies built into adoption, particularly closed adoption. And of course differences in personalities, life styles, education, values, and life experiences also play a part. Counseling for birth and adoptive parents, much like that available for parents getting divorced or parties in open adoptions, would be beneficial for parents brought together when adoptees and birth parents re-unite.

Telling My Daughters, Part II

This is actually being posted on Sunday at...6:11 p.m. as Jane is on vacation and wrote this before she left.

In my last post, Telling my family about my first child – and then going public, I promised readers that I would write about how my daughters reacted to Rebecca and how she reacted to them. In a nutshell, they are not close and seem to prefer it that way. Rebecca lives in the Midwest; my youngest daughter on the east coast; and the other two in Oregon. They are cordial when circumstances bring them together but make no effort to have a relationship.

Although their physical appearances and careers are similar, their differences in life experiences seem to outweigh these similarities. All the girls have occupations which require gathering, analyzing, and presenting information. This is not surprising since their fathers are both attorneys and I am an attorney, turned government administrator, turned blogger. Rebecca conducts and presents marketing studies, my oldest raised daughter is an attorney, my middle daughter is a business analyst, and my youngest daughter directs communications for an elected official.

While the way they think is almost identical, their information base is vastly different which results in major differences in beliefs and values. Rebecca is a Mormon, who opposes welfare, feminism, gay marriage, and sex outside of marriage. My raised daughters are irreligious and supported Hillary Clinton in the last election. In areas outside the LDS Church’s dogmatism, however, Rebecca and my oldest raised raised daughters have common values: helping animals, protecting the environment, and supporting gun control. Rebecca joined the Million Mom March in 2000. My oldest raised daughter wrote a law review article on the liability of gun manufacturers when guns fall into the wrong hands. She and Rebecca both create an environment of ethnic diversity for their children.

The differences in age and family circumstances also come into play. Rebecca is 42; my raised daughters are 37, 35, and 32. Rebecca is married with four children ages 10 to 20; my oldest daughter is married with two young children; the other two are enjoying their single, childless existence.

In Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter, B. J. Lifton describes an adopted person as “the changeling, the imposter, the double.” When I look at Rebecca, I see two women: the natural Rebecca, so familiar, who would be a great “big sister” to my other daughters, and the created Rebecca, with whom they have a relationship only because of an accident of birth. Sadly, the differences that drove Rebecca and me apart also divide Rebecca and my raised daughters.
_______________________

Lorraine here: My surrendered (and only) daughter fit into my family like a pea in a pod she was temporarily missing from. And I know this was part of the emotional backdrop she had to deal with after I found her. Though she had epilepsy, and took a heavy dose of drugs that slowed down her brain, she told her parents she wanted to be a writer. In fact, the first time I spoke on the phone with her, before she knew who I was or what I did, and I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up (she was 15 at the time) she said: journalist. I have been a newspaper reporter, magazine writer and editor since I was in high school. When she went to junior college, what did she excel in? English Composition. She and one of my brothers got along exceedingly well.

But like Jane's first daughter, she never spent enough time with my entire family to ... blend in easily. I had moved from Michigan to New York as soon as I finished college, and the distance meant that she was not around my larger family often.

After the adoptee/birth mother reunion: Is Secrecy Necessary?

What I've learned from all the comments on the last post, When the adoptee keeps the reunion secret, is that openness is often undesirable and best to keep the reunion a secret...because there are too many problems if the adoptee/birth mother reunion is out in the open. And that everybody--first mother and adoptee, need to find his or her own way.

Amen.

We first mothers need to learn to trust that the adopted person is doing all that he or she can to handle two mothers (yes, one is enough trouble), and maybe, two fathers, or a combination of them. But what this discussion has reminded me of is something that I read elsewhere: how we birth mothers are "thanked," but when we come back, are then often feared, denigrated, and dishonored. And really, there is nothing we can do about that. That is out of our hands.

We are feared because adoptive parents fear our children will somehow prefer us. We are feared because they find it upsetting to see how alike--physically and psychologically--we may be to the "children" in question, who are now teens, young people, or fully formed adults. We are feared because the biological link by its very nature can not be broken; and the adoptive link, because it is based on proper conduct and associations, can be.

I can hear the chorus of people disagreeing with this statement, that the bond of love and relationship between adoptive parents and their children can never be broken, but we have seen indeed that it can. I know of too many situations where the adopted person has moved away, and rarely, if ever, maintains contact with the adoptive parents. And over at Cedar's Blog, On a Little Island in the Pacific, she has just written about how she adopted her grown son back; screen writer Joe Esterhaz spoke at the last American Adoption Conference with his daughter, about how he did the same thing.

If that is the sum of the relationship with the adoptive parents, is it any wonder that such individuals do not feel the need for a close relationship and frequent contact with their natural parents? And while you may cut off contact with one's biological child, or mother, the link is still there and will always be. Disinheritance does not break the biological connection.

But back I'm rambling here, and to go the topic of how adoptive parents deal with us:
We are denigrated because they fear us. So the way to deal with that is to put us down. And we are dishonored because they fear us. Most adoptive parents are now, after reunion, after years of raising the adoptee, not going to be willing to save a chair for us at the dance recital, as adoptive father Brooks Hansen wrote in The Brotherhood of Joseph talking about why he chose to adopt from Siberia.

But now we are talking weddings, christening, graduations. After years of "thanking us" for our child (but being glad we were no where in sight), they are not going to say, Hey, here's a spot up front at the wedding!" And we need to be mindful not to put extra pressure on the adopted person to make sure it happens.

In my own case, I was amazingly fortunate, and indeed, not only did I attend my daughter's wedding, I was asked to read a psalm during the ceremony. Since Jane was my only daughter, I got to freak out over what to wear to the wedding. There is no "birth mother of the bride" protocol. I sat right next to her other mother in the front row. We even had matching corsages. When the parents of the bride danced, there were three parents on the dance floor. I danced with my husband (whom Jane saw as a kind of step-father), and nobody threw eggs at me. My brothers and their wives and some of their kids were also there, and we sat with them at our own table--fortunately we filled the table.

Yeah, I know, amazing.

But there were some hairy moments. The bridegroom's mother was cool (very); I wouldn't say most of the adoptive family relatives were friendly (curious, but not friendly) and two days--hell, at the rehearsal the night before--the wedding, the bride's other mother was not speaking to me over a side issue. I've gotten off here on a tangent, but I just wanted to say there are a million ways to have a reunion.

Let's all just try not to further hurt each other.

Why Is Adoption Like Slavery?

Lorraine

When adoption reformers such as myself make the connection between adoption and slavery, some people--adoptive parents in particular--get very upset. I can understand their objection. When I made the connection the other day in an earlier post, we received a couple of comments objecting.

After all, adoption is not slave labor, incarceration, and inhumane treatment, though such troubling adoption stories do bubble up now and then--as they do with biological children. But slavery involves the buying and selling of human beings against their will. Slavery treats the slaves as lesser human beings, not entitled to free will. Adoption is not like that, right?