An action alert for New Yorkers (or anyone) connected to adoption in any way!

Lorraine at a hearing on unsealing
records, 2015

THIS IS AN ACTION ALERT.  While the New York legislature is winding down, and again we have bills to do away with the archaic laws of the 1930s ending up in the dustbin, there is one bill that might have a chance of making even a small difference. A crack in the New York sealed door, you might call it. I refer to the bill that would allow adopted people to find their biological siblings (S2939). That ought to be a no-brainer, right? Why was this crucial information even denied adopted people in the first place? Because people have cockamamie ideas about the importance of knowing your roots and having a sane life. Because people who know their own roots, who are familiar with people who look and act like them, who do not question their biological place in the world, do not comprehend what it means to lack that. They do not understand or empathize the need for everyone to have the same comfort of true identity.

So this morning, I get an alert from Joyce Bahr of Unsealed Initiative to make a call to Sen. John Flanagan (518-455-2071) and ask that the adoptee-siblings bill (S2939) be moved to the Senate floor for a vote. Since I have been crusading on a sometime lonely soap box about unsealing the birth records of adopted people since the fucking Seventies, since I was forced to reluctantly agree to sealed records when I signed the relinquishment papers for my daughter, since sealed records are detrimental to the mental health of millions of adoptees, since they absolutely discriminate against all adopted people, I was in a fighting mood when I made the call.

So I dial 518-455-2071 and go into a short and heated rant about why at least bill S2939--the adoptee siblings bill--ought to be moved to the floor. I said I was a 75-year old birth mother who had been lobbying for this since the Seventies, had found and reunited with my own daughter, criticized the legislature for letting these open-records-for-adoptees bills die one after another, called sealed records emotional slavery--YES, I DID--said that we mothers should not be protected from our own children, that that was crazy!

Then said you can tell I am pretty passionate about this, and she said, I agree with you completely, I am an adoptee! and I will let the Senator know! SO MAKE THE DAMN CALL AND FEEL YOU HAVE DONE ONE THING TODAY FOR YOUR RIGHTS! Don't forget to give her your name and location. My own senator, Ken LaValle, has put his name to the bill. Action can have results! 

And after you make the call, have a nice long weekend everyone. 

 Sen. John Flanagan's office (518-455-2071). --lorraine

'Our Little Sister' a tender study of family and kinship

Sisters greeting an unknown sibling who shares one parent is the subject of Our Little Sister, a Japanese film now in art theaters. Adoption is not part of this story, yet the issues were close enough to the bone I was glad to be sitting in the dark, alone, with no one near me. They would have wondered how this deeply charming and quietly moving film would have elicited deep feelings in me. Some people might simply get misty eyed as the film ends, but I slipped my sunglasses on as I left to hide the outright tears.

Let's get on with the story: Three sisters, now grown and working, were left by their father 15 years earlier when he had an affair that produced a daughter, Suzu, now an adolescent. Suzu was living with the father, and a new wife in a distant village when he died. The three sisters travel by train to funeral, and Suzu, the little sister, meets them at the station, walks them to their hotel, and quietly says goodbye.

Should adoptees contact their siblings when first parents are reluctant?

Amy Dickinson

"Should I contact my siblings (or half siblings) even though my first mother wants to keep me a secret and hasn't told them about me?' "It's my right, to know them and their right to know isn't it?" Advice columnist Amy Dickinson (ASK AMY)  handled these questions deftly in two recent columns, showing understanding and sensitivity. Her response was a welcome change we must say from those self-designated experts--Joyce Brothers, Ann Landers, Drs. Drew, Phil, and Laura, and Marguerite Kelly with their cookie-cutter, birth-family-be-damned answers to all questions adoption.

An adoptee, identified as DQ, asked about contacting her full birth siblings. Her adoptive parents had told her that her first parents were married but gave her up because they didn't want children. After her adoptive parents' deaths, she found her first parents and learned they had had three more children after she was given up.