It's always thrilling when someone not a first mother or an adoptee gets it. Kelly Hansen, a high-tech professional in Portland, Oregon not only got it, she turned what she knew into a film.
Kelly was looking for a subject for a film she planned to make as part of an amateur video group. She happened upon Ann Fessler's compelling 2006 work The Girls Who Went Away which profiles mothers who lost their children to adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade.
Kelly wanted to learn more history of first mothers sought them through Concerned United Birthparents. She learned that many women are still manipulated into relinquishing their babies. Eventually she connected with Holly and Hannah, a reunited mother and daughter, and me. In the
Jane
course of the film--only 12 minutes long--myths are shattered. I do a brief intro about adoption, then and now. Then we meet Hannah, a young woman who contacted her mother on Facebook while still a teenager. She met her mother, her mother's husband, and three siblings. Two years later she made the difficult but right decision for her to move in with her new-found family.
Like most of us, when I see a film of myself, I cringe. Kelly says I did great but I think I should have talked more clearly, explained things better, sat straighter. But then I think hey, I did it, maybe made a small contribution to letting people know about the dark side of adoption.
Here's the video on YouTube. An Adoption Story. Please pass it along!--jane
PS What's with my right eye? It was removed twenty years ago because I had a tumor attached to the blood vessels which fed my eye. The doctors tried to remove the tumor several times but were not able to and thought it would become malignant. I make the patches myself in various colors so I can coordinate them with what I am wearing. I do have a false eye sitting in my bathroom cabinet. It doesn't look real because I have no eyelid and the false eye doesn't move. It's held in with glue and always in danger of falling off. It's good for Halloween, though.
Thanksgiving has always been intertwined with the birth of my surrendered daughter Rebecca* and our reunion. She was born exactly a week before Thanksgiving in San Francisco 1966 and we re-united a few days before Thanksgiving 31 years later. As we tend to do with five-year anniversary dates, I am looking back and reflecting. What has my life been for the past 20 years? What have I learned?
When I left the hospital on that bleak November day, I began living two lives, one life in real time, law school, marriage, three more daughters, a career; the second life in my imagination. What was Rebecca was doing at each of life's landmarks? Did she graduate from high school, go to college, marry? I tried to mentally add her to family pictures. Still, if asked how many children I had, I redacted her, answering disingenuously "my husband and I have three daughters."
Over the years, I thought about looking for Rebecca but the time never seemed right. I knew finding her would not restore her as my daughter and it could derail my life, damaging my relationship with my raised daughters, upsetting my career. On November 18, 1997 a relative, an aunt by marriage, called telling me that Rebecca had called her and sent a letter. I was stunned, frightened.
Triggers. They are everywhere. We can try to avoid them, but they will keep on popping up like weeds in your yard that you pullout year after year and they keep on coming. Having lived for more than half my life with triggers that remind me of my daughter lost to adoption, I've stopped trying to pretend that I can avoid them. I just go with the flow.
With that in mind I look forward to watching This Is Us, NBC's breakaway hit that has an adoption reunion in one of its subplots. For most of the season, it has been THE story line dominating the series. It centers around a biological father found by his adult son (Randall, played by Sterling K. Brown), an adoptive mother (Rebecca played by Mandy Moore) who knew who the father (William, Ron Cephas Jones) was all along but never shared that information--with anyone, even her husband.
"One reason I had searched for [my birth mother] was that I wanted to tell her that she'd done the right thing. I always felt she deserved to know that" wrote Jean Strauss in Birthright. "I proudly said it now on the phone, sure this one sentence would make her feel good about her decision thirty-three years earlier to relinquish me for adoption. 'You know, you did the right thing when you gave me up.'
Her answer burst my hallucination. 'I'll never believe that. I should have never let you go. I wish I had taken you and run.'"
Strauss is not alone in her lack of understanding of the dynamics of surrender. We mothers who have ached for reunion are roiling under the long buried grief of loss, and yes, guilt, even if we don't recognize it as such. We someone thanks us for something, the usual response is something along these lines: Oh, you deserved it; I'm so glad you liked it; or, It was nothing. Anyone can see how none of the typical responses to "thank you" fit the situation. We suspect that mothers who hear the "thank you" that seems to be popular today feel a tad weird but ignore thinking about how to react because they are so glad to be found.
What does a "thank you" really imply when said to a first mother by her child? Thank you for giving me up because I've had a better life than I would have had with you. I got this great education you never would have been able to afford, I have a life that is of a higher social class than yours...I made out just fine so thank you!
Now we suspect that adoptees who want to say "thank you" don't understand the meaning that creeps into our mind, or we hope they don't--but that attitude has spilled out some adoptee memoirs. Sarah Saffian'sIthaka: A Daughter's Memoir of Being Foundcomes to mind. (As we recollect, Saffian didn't say "thank you" because she was uncertain about being found in the first place, here we are talking about the general attitude her memoir conveys.
Here are some more clueless comments that we have heard from adoptees which make us cringe:
Today is my lost daughter, Rebecca's, 50th birthday. She was born on a Thursday, like today, a week before Thanksgiving. She lives half a continent away and I won't be sharing this day with her. I do share my life with her and that is a blessing.
We re-connected 19 years ago, a week after her 31st birthday, when she found me. Until then, I was left to wonder about who she was. Perhaps a celebrity, a movie star, a CEO, or in my worst thoughts, a drug addict living on the street. Sometimes she was a phantom; sometimes I thought maybe she didn't exist at all.
We met two months later in January, 1998 in Chicago where she lived at the time and coincidentally where I grew up. Until then, my life had been divided in two parts, pre-Rebecca and post-Rebecca. So while after her birth, my life went on, law school, marriage, three wonderful daughters, a career, a part of me was stuck in the events of 1966 which led to her birth. With our reunion, my life took a third turn, embarking on a new road, rocky in places, but ultimately rewarding.
Adoptees often ask us whether their natural mothers think of them, "at least on my birthday." Lorraine and I assure them that their mothers think of therm often, likely everyday. "Then why doesn't she try to find me?" they ask. "She may be thinking about searching " we tell them, but there are reason why she is hesitating. She doesn't know she can; she promised the agency she wouldn't; she had it drummed into her that she's shouldn't. She doesn't know how to search. She can't afford a searcher. She doesn't want to disrupt your life. She doesn't want to disrupt the lives of her raised children, her husband, her parents.
These thoughts coursed through my mind for years. I'll search later I told myself, when my youngest daughter graduates from high school, when I have more money, more time. Then 19 years ago my lost daughter Rebecca found me. I'll write more about this on her birthday, November 17.
I met the rapper, Darryl McDaniels ( DMC) in 2007 when I attended the annual conference of the American Adoption Congress in Boston with my good friend and fellow first mother Jeanette Roberts. In truth I had never heard of DMC and knew nothing about rap music. I learned he was a late discovery adoptee and an advocate for opening records.
I bought his just published book Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide: A Memoirbecause I wanted to learn more about his adoption experience and as way of thanking him for standing up for adoption reform and taking the time to pose with me and Jeanette in a picture. I'm glad I did.
"Does the pain ever end?" asked a newly reunited natural mother.
"It's always there somewhere," I answered, "but it moves into the background as your relationship evolves."
I thought of this as I was having lunch with Anne, a natural mother friend, the other day. I had known Anne since the early 70's through Oregon politics and the feminist movement. It was only after my reunion 18 years ago that I learned we had something else in common.
Both of us had given up a daughter in San Francisco in the 60's. We went on to marry and have three more daughters. We celebrated our 47th wedding anniversaries in December.
Natural mothers have a date burned in their brains--the day events put them on the trajectory culminating in the loss of their child. It is the day they saw him leaning against the wall at a high school dance, the day they went to that party they really didn't feel like going to--and were raped, the day they had unprotected sex because he pleaded or they thought it was safe or they didn't know any better. Our destinies as childless mothers seem fated.
For me, the day was in 1965, when I decided to return to Alaska from graduate school in the South, intending to resurrect--or end--my relationship with Millard, the man who would become my surrendered daughter Rebecca's father.
I began dating Millard the summer before, right after I graduated from the University of Alaska. I was thrilled! He was thirty, more sophisticated than the college boys I had dated, a professional, fun to talk to, attractive--Warren Beatty
When I gave up my daughter Rebecca in 1966, I promised myself I would search for her when she turned 18. It made it easier to give her up. I've since learned that mothers commonly made this promise.
I didn't tell my social worker of my plan because I was afraid that if she knew, she might send my daughter to China or some place where I could never find her. I was aware that records were closed, birth certificates altered to show adoptive parents as THE parents. I told myself I would go to law school (which I had been considering for several years) and as an attorney I could figure how how to beat the system and find my daughter.
Tears. I doubt that even the most hardened people do not get through a reunion without some tears, whether they are tears of relief and joy or tears of fear and sorrow. Reunions between mother and child touch our deepest feelings, our strongest emotions. I honestly do not remember if I cried when I read the letter informing me that the Searcher, whoever he or she was, had located my daughter already from the clues I left in Birthmark--all I had to do was ask and pay the fee. I asked, and now I had her name, her other parents' names and whereabouts. She was found. What I remember is the enormous relief of the exact moment I read that letter. I was sitting at my kitchen table. Imagine walking on a tight wire for 15 years, holding yourself up and in balance, praying you don't wobble this way or that and fall off, and then learning that suddenly, in the nanosecond it takes for an idea to be realized in the brain, you are able to step off. That is what I felt.
"Do you plan to search for your birth parents" asked my impudent first mother friend at a reading by English writer Jeanette Winterson of her prize-winning 1985 novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Winterson brushed the question aside. "If they want to find me, they know where to find me" referring to her fame and her original parents in the UK. Subsequently, though, Winterson did search and had a good reunion with her first mother, a story she recounts in her 2011 memoir Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal.
Just an add to yesterday's blog about a confidential intermediary's comment about married birth/first parents who reject contact and reunion when sought by the individual who had been relinquished: I hope it is a reflection of adoptions back several decades, and not recent ones, as a great many adoptions today are open (though we know many close), and the first mother is NOT promised anonymity and so there is no thought of her disappearing into the woodwork forever.
The story of Lisa and Lorraine appears in today's New York Times.
Click on link below: Adoption, Reunion, Connection
Writer Sue Dominus, an old friend, was meticulous in getting the language right and the story straight. She did a great job in cramming in a long story in the amount of space she had. We spoke last night as the story went to bed. To keep adoption reform in the news: write to Letters@nytimes.com
The sun is shining. Have a great day. --lorraine
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Those of you who have followed FirstMother Forum know I've written in detail about finding my granddaughter, Lisa, who was adopted.(The link will connect to others with the full story.)
This is the second part of a three part story by Joe Sanchez who lost his daughter to adoption in 1964; the final segment will be posted tomorrow. Joe is pictured here with Charlotte, his daughter's mother.
THE SEARCH
About 19 years ago, I was diagnosed with a serious heart disorder. My condition was asymptomatic (and so it remains), but I was told that data showed a strong genetic link. This irregularity is known for causing sudden death among adolescents and I immediately thought of Margaret and any children that she may have. Of course, I hoped that once Margaret knew about her birth parents, she would immediately ask for identifying information (which Pennsylvania would have provided). In addition to the heart problem and several other health issues of importance, I did feel a certain sense of responsibility. What if Margaret and any family she may have needed help? What if she had searched for us and run into obstacles?
When I contacted the state of Pennsylvania requesting that my heart information and the health history of my family and Charlotte’s family be submitted to Margaret, I was told that my name appeared nowhere in its adoption records. In fact, there was no birth certificate which listed me as anyone’s father. The state had turned me into a non-person.
I did not give up. Over the following years, I experienced the roller-coaster ride that typifies many searches. I retained attorneys, bought search "instruments" and periodically pestered the state with requests for information. Glimmers of hope would be dashed by bureaucratic rejections; I would get discouraged and months would go by before I renewed my efforts. During all this time, Charlotte was not prepared to participate in the search since she had never told her second husband about Margaret. She thought his reaction would have been extremely negative and possibly put their marriage in jeopardy. I had no choice but to respect her concerns.
Fate intervened in three ways. By chance, I happened to see a notice in one of the online adoption groups. A female adoptee born in the Philadelphia area was searching for her birth parents. Although the dates did not match Margaret’s (October of 1964 instead of November of 1964), I wrote to her (Barbara) hoping she might have some information on the best way to work with the State of Pennsylvania. We became fast online friends and even met at each other’s homes. As an adoptee, Barbara gave me insights into how Margaret would react to a search. She was also an attorney and she confirmed that I had done everything I could do. My only remaining hope was that Margaret would launch a search and find us.
Secondly, Charlotte’s husband, who had been ill for several years, passed away. At that point, she informed me that she would be willing to participate in the search. Again I filed all of the medical information and again nothing happened. It took months to learn that (1) I had been interacting with the wrong county. Contrary to Charlotte’s specific request in 1964 (as corroborated in our letters from that time), the adoption had taken place in Delaware County which is where she lived and not in Philadelphia County, which is where she gave birth; (2) The reason my name appeared nowhere was that Margaret’s birth certificate showed Charlotte as the mother and the father as "unknown" (hardly the kind of information which would make an adoptee eager to find her birth parents). The decision to delete my name was made by someone in Charlotte’s family. It wasn’t until Pennsylvania told me about it that Charlotte learned why I had been excluded in 1964; and (3) Margaret had not initiated any search.
Thirdly, with Barbara’s help, we drafted a petition to the judge whose court had the authority to order that the medical information be forwarded to Margaret. He turned the case over to an excellent social worker who quickly found Margaret. She provided the information to our daughter and also told her that her birth parents were willing to be contacted.
THE REUNION
It took Margaret two months to decide that she wanted our names and e-mail addresses. As the mother of two teenagers, she had quickly acted on the cardiac information. She and the children were tested and no signs of any heart abnormality were found. It then took her another six weeks to finally contact us via e-mail.
Over the years multiple scenarios had run through my head: our daughter could have died; she could be disabled; perhaps she did not even know she had been adopted; she could be reluctant to hurt her parents by searching for us; or maybe she wanted nothing to do with her birth parents. I didn’t dwell on any of these possibilities since I had no idea what I would find.
As it turned out, Margaret had been raised by a wonderful mother (widowed when the baby was only two) and had enjoyed a happy childhood. Her mother passed away a few years ago. Margaret is a college graduate, married for nearly 20 years and the proud mother of the aforementioned two children.
After a month of exchanging very cordial e-mails, I suggested a meeting. Charlotte and I are about equidistant from Margaret’s home town and we spent a weekend there. We talked with her for hours, mostly relating the story of the pregnancy, the adoption and the search. Our letters from 1964 were an invaluable tool since they described our mindsets during the pregnancy.
Margaret was an attentive and interested listener; she asked no questions. Although she was always pleasant, polite and gracious, she showed very little emotion. Neither did we. Charlotte and I had gone over the letters on our own and we’re not the kind of people who display feelings in public. We might have if Margaret had reacted differently, but she was consistently poised.
Both in the e-mails and in person, Margaret repeated how grateful she was for what we had done for her. Before she was "found," Margaret had been asked to write 25 facts about herself and the first thing she mentioned was that she was adopted:
"I am adopted. This has never been a big issue with me, just a fact
about my life. There was never a time I didn’t know I was adopted. I’ve been asked if I ever wanted to meet my birth parents, but I haven’t really pursued it. The main thing I’d express was thanks and appreciation for giving me such an amazing mother and family."
We were so grateful that Margaret was not resentful (the stereotypical "How could you give me up?" scenario) that we accepted her comment without question. It is not so much an implied criticism of us as praise for her adoptive mother. Modesty aside, I think that Charlotte and I would probably have been very good parents under normal circumstances, but not in 1964. And after reading an autobiographical essay by Margaret’s adoptive mother, I concur with her assessment--she was indeed a terrific woman.
I foolishly asserted in the June 19 column, “Firstmother Husbands: How They Handle the News of an Earlier Child,” that “the outraged husband who rejects his wife when he finds out about her sin … is a myth.” In her June 21 column, Abigail Van Buren responded to a woman with an outraged husband. Here’s the letter and Abby’s response.
"DEAR ABBY: I became an unwed mother many years ago, when there was a stigma attached to having an illegitimate child. Unable to care for my son, I placed him for adoption. He has now found me.
I have a family, and my husband does not want me to tell our adult children or contact the young man and his family.
Do I go against the wishes of my husband, whom I love very much, or should I tell our children and perhaps risk my husband leaving me? — CONFLICTED IN NEW JERSEY
DEAR CONFLICTED: From the tone of your letter your husband is the dominant partner in your marriage. If that’s the case, and you really think he would leave you after all these years because you leveled with your children about the fact that they have a half-brother, then keep the secret.
However, if your relationship with your husband is anything approaching a partnership, then stand up for yourself and make it clear that you are the sum total of all your experiences — both the joyful and the painful — and you need to see your son, thank his family for the love and care they have given him, and let your adult children make up their own minds about whether they want to be contacted.
This is the 21st century, and we are far beyond the attitudes of the 1950s in which a human being who is born out of wedlock is a shameful secret forever to be buried. In addition, secrets have a way of always coming out eventually."
JANE: The letter is right on except for the “thank his family” part. I can’t agree that raising a child is so much of a burden that birthmothers should thank the adoptive parents.I’d also add the following paragraph:
Consider the situation from your son’s viewpoint. He found you because he needs to know his origins and connect with people who share his genes. You gave him up because you had no choice but now you do. Think how painful it will be to him if you refuse to contact him, in effect telling him once again that he cannot be a part of your life. Learn more about why adoptees search and encourage your husband to do so as well. A good place to start is Tim Green’s “A Man and His Mother: An Adopted Son’s Search.” You and your husband might also consider joining a support group for adoptees and birthparents. The American Adoption Congress has a list of resources on its website.
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.
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.
Continuing yesterday's post about my daughter's first visit to my home on Long Island:
Copyright (c) Lorraine Dusky 2009
That day I made the case for some leeway in this language business because I needed to introduce her as someone other than “my [amazingly young] friend Jane,” which begged the question, Is she your niece? I told her that sometimes I would introduce her as my daughter whom I had given up for adoption because she that’s who she was, right? She agreed. Or just say “my daughter,” so as not to get into a discussion neither of us welcomed at that moment.
But I had better watch it.
So throughout our entire relationship I was parsimonious in the use of the word “daughter” when she was around. She was free to say “mother” reference to me when the spirit moved her, and she knew that I purred with pleasure when she did. If she saw a man she didn’t know talking to me, she delighted in calling “Mother” from across a crowded room. She came up with her own name for me, Maraine (a combination of Ma and Raine from Lorraine), and the two of us used sometimes when no one was around. I typically signed cards and letters to her that way, only daring in the later years to write Mother. Words do matter. The parameters of our relationship were outlined in the language we used. She who had no control over the biggest event in her life could now control this one thing.
Those three packed days of sightseeing and bonding in Manhattan ultimately wracked her with guilt. On the last day, we spent hours at Macy’s shopping for her. Now I am a good shopper. I like to put outfits together, find the right shoes to go with the right top, the right belt to pull the outfit together. Jane enjoyed this as much as I did, looking over racks of blouses and vests and pants and skirts to find outfits that she could take back to Wisconsin and show off to her friends, clothes from Macy’s, the world’s biggest store!
When we met Tony for dinner at Benihana she was wearing one of her new outfits. Tony and I chose the Japanese steak house because we thought she’d get a kick out of the flashing knives as our own personal chef diced and sliced. We had second-row balcony seats for Evita after that.
Now seemingly out of nowhere, gloom settled in as she became silent and sullen. Tony, who can pour on the charm like heavy cream on plum pudding, did his best to amuse her, but Jane could not be moved. Brooding she was. Tony and I shrugged and continued on to the theater. Same thing. She didn’t seem to enjoy the play at all. She was silent on the long drive back to Sag Harbor.
Later, I heard from [her adoptive mother] Ann that when a road show company brought Evita to Madison, Jane told everyone that she had seen it, and on Broadway! She knew the story, the songs, it was great! Fantastic! Really? I said, surprised. Yeah, really.
And many years after that, Jane told me that everything had gone so well, during her visit, she was having such a good time, she felt so comfortable—and now it was being capped off with dinner and Broadway—that she suddenly felt incredibly disloyal to the family back in Wisconsin. She shouldn’t have so much fun with this new family unit, she shouldn’t feel so comfortable. She should feel like an outsider.
It’s utterly totally impossible to plumb the depths of what it feels like to be surrendered for adoption. It happens pre-verbally; it happens without the consent or, or cognitive knowledge of, the individual being given up. By the time the individual is aware of his life situation, being raised with genetic strangers and not one’s own, it is a fait accompli, its undoing impossible, no matter one’s preference. And to be available to be adopted, you first have to be given up.
Of course there are always reasons why adoption can be a better option than living with one’s mother. Drug and alcohol abuse, child abuse, abandonment—all are valid reasons why adoption for many is a life-saving solution. But in situations where that is not the case, it may be impossible for the individual who is given up to truly accept reality and understand a mother’s circumstances and reasons, and ergo, to be able to truly and completely forgive. We are human after all, with all the insecurities and failings homo sapiens is prey to. We are all, birth mother and surrendered child, only human.
And what of the adopted people who never search? Perhaps it’s the impulse that made me a journalist, but I can not comprehend living with such a mystery, such a basic hole in one’s self knowledge, and not doing everything in one’s power to solve the mystery, answer the questions. What we do know is that women search in much greater numbers than men; men often search at the behest of their wives when the time comes to have children; more men than women profess not to be bothered with curiosity about their roots; many who say they do not want to search do so later on, especially after their adoptive parents die, and that adoptees start and stop searches and start again and stop again and start again. Searching can be frightening, who knows what or who we were before we were adopted. --from the upcoming memoir, Hole in My Heart
Jane's post got me to thinking about my daughter's (also named Jane) first visit to my house on Long Island. She had just turned sixteen; it was April; we had met the previous fall at her home in Madison, Wisconsin, with her parent's blessing. Yes, I know, I had done the unthinkable by searching--and finding--a minor, but that is what I did. The year was 1982; the World Trade Center was an icon of New York City. My daughter Jane had never been to Manhattan, so I arranged to us to stay at a friend's apartment there while we took in the sights. Here's a snippet of what I wrote for my upcoming memoir:
(Please excuse the way this looks but I can not fix it without retyping the whole thing. Sorry.)
Copyright (c) Lorraine Dusky 2009
It’s funny what sticks in one’s mind about any event. Sometimes the smallest detail, like the glint of a diamond on somebody else’s hand, is what you recollect, not the size of the rock. And it’s often the gleam that turns out to be the essence of the thing. Like what I remember about the three days Jane and I spent in Manhattan that spring.
She had never been to New York City. We took in all the usual tourist highlights— we shopped in Chinatown for cheap gewgaws, visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, lunched at the historic Fraunces Tavern near Wall Street, cruised around Manhattan on the Circle Line, sat for a half hour on a bench outside at the top of the World Trade Center and watched the helicopters, rode the Staten Island ferry, even had one of the ladies at the cosmetic counters of Saks Fifth Avenue give us the full treatment. I mean, I crammed in everything I could in those three days.
All that was fine fun, of course, but what I remember best is what we shared at the Statue of Liberty. We took the first boat in the morning from Battery Park, and without speaking of it, made sure we were among the first people off. Then together we raced straight for the elevators, not quite running—because that seemed too crass—but almost. Another family made the first elevator with us. When it stopped, we trotted lickety-split out the door ahead of them, trying not to break into an out-and-out sprint. Without so much as sharing a look, we had, each of us, wanted for us to be the first up the steps of the statue. (We had already discovered that we both loved heights.) Once we reached the steps, we clambered up them quickly, wanting to speed ahead of the other family. Only after a couple of twists and turns did we slow down, look at each other, acknowledge our single-minded quest, and giggle like teenagers.
You might dismiss this as not so unusual, lots of people would do this, you can say, but we knew—wordlessly—why it was important to be first up the steps. Just because. Years later, if we ever spoke of that day, Jane would say, “Remember how we had to be first up the steps of the Statue of Liberty?” and smile. I’d nod and smile back. Our particular shared silliness. No one telling the other to “slow down,” or “Hold on, what’s the rush?” Being first up the steps that day was far more important than the view once we got to the crown. That was nice too, yes, but the best part was being first. Standing there just the two of us, looking down over Manhattan, the first of the day to get that view. She knew that too. She was my daughter. Those were magical times, there seemed to be no self-consciousness between us those days. Barriers fell and our bond strengthened.
Because I had written an Op-ed piece for The New York Times about finding my daughter and the sealed-records statute in New York state, the photographer Jill Krementz wrote and asked if we would be willing to be included in a book for children and teens to be calledHow It Feels to be Adopted. She’d photograph us and tell Jane’s story in her own voice. Jane immediately agreed to the project. She was going from simply being a kid in an L.D. class to someone special, someone with something to say that others people wanted to hear.
In her essay, Jane reveals that though her mother was pleased that I called, she was “especially nervous” once I was on track to visit because she was threatened. Jane says that most of her own friends were pitted against me, saying things like “I wouldn’t let her just walk into your life. You should tell her to buzz off.” The story is mostly a straight recollection of events after I phoned.
Of our days in Manhattan she says…“What I liked best was our just getting to know each other…. Now I understand the problems she had before I was born and why she put me up for adoption. Being adopted had always made me feel a little insecure, and even though I loved my parents, I still had a lot of unanswered questions and stranger fantasies. Actually, one of my fantasies turned out to be true. I’d always imagined my birthmother was a writer….”
Yes, she would go home to her other life in a few days, but we had these days. However she felt, to me we were mother and daughter then. It didn’t matter that she called me Lorraine. She mostly called me Lorraine—there were a few exceptions when she called me mother, but they would be later, and always rare. Mom was always the woman who raised her; Mom was back home in Wisconsin. But she also called herself my daughter, when it proved expedient. However I really didn’t have equal rights; if I called her “daughter,” she bristled.
We were in the little supermarket on Henry Street--now it's a fancy take-out emporium called Espresso--but then it was a small grocery story, Federico's Market, located practically across the street from the two-story colonial Tony and I were renting. I introduced her to the woman behind the counter--This is my daughter, I said simply, not explaining further, knowing that the woman already knew the whole story. Jane smiled and said hello, but told me once we were on the street that she did not like being introduced as "my daughter."
Then what should I call you?" I protested. She didn't have an answer. Neither of us came up with "birth daughter," for the term wasn't in vogue then, and besides, it implies that the daughter is a daughter only at the time of birth, as if the ties of blood and strings of DNA matter for naught and had been dissolved with the signing of a paper soon after birth. But here we were, sixteen years later. Jane would always be the daughter of two women: Ann, who raised her, and me, who had given her life.
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