Another adoptee suicide makes the news

Lorraine

There was a time when adoptee suicide was a matter for other people. I could hear about this one or that, and feel it was part of some "other" category than the one I was in: first mother, found daughter, complicated relationship.

My found daughter was alive; struggling, yes, but making a life. After more than the usual share of hiccups--epilepsy, sexual abuse by someone part of her unofficial adoptive family, a neurosis that led to continual untruthfulness, a daughter she gave up to be adopted--slowly but surely she emerged on the other side. Now she was happily married, and had a smart and sassy daughter who did not share her emotional or physical problems. After being shuttled off to learning-disabled math classes in high school, now she had an

Adoption--Is it the new normal?

Lorraine

Is adoption "normal?" The question isn't asked because of course adoption is not normal--in the normal order, babies stay with their mommies and daddies are nearby, one hopes, if not actually right there changing diapers and sharing the middle-of-the-night feedings.

But adoption seems so prevalent today that it no longer seems abnormal. In my world, everyone knows someone who has adopted, or who is adopted, or who is thinking about adopting.

Consider: The other night I learned that a woman I see a couple of times a year at some gathering--and is a rather well known psychotherapist in New York--is adopted.  While she herself is almost certainly not ancestrally Jewish, she keeps a kosher household and according to our mutual acquaintances, has made clear that she is most decidedly NOT interested in learning the identity of her natural parents.

'De-facto parents': Another way to steal children?

Would-be parent Kelly Gunn

What makes a parent? How does money play into who ends up with legal rights when a couple separate?

The legal issues surrounding gay couples where one has a child or adopts one continue to be litigated one case at a time.  As with any couple who separate, the child becomes the battle ground, as is the case of Abush, a seven-year old Ethiopian boy.

He was adopted in 2011 by Circe Hamilton, She and Kelly Gunn, a successful business woman, began a relationship in 2004 and moved in together in 2007. They began talking about adoption that year and attended an event for would-be adoptive parents. Jane Aronson was one of the speakers. She is a pediatrician and adoptive mother who calls herself "the orphan doctor" and is a comrade-at-arms with intercountry adoption advocate and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet.*

Feminists exploit anti-family adoption laws

Jane

 When I read Liz Latty's excellent piece on why mainstream feminism is pro-adoption* I was reminded of three strong feminists I've known in Oregon, all of whom served in the Oregon legislature and were adoptive mothers, I don't know why they adopted; two had biological children as well, suggesting to me that they saw adoption as both a way to save a child and a way to build their families without increasing the population.

From a few discussions with these women, I'm convinced of the sincerity of their actions, but also convinced that they wanted to accept the adoption industry Orwellian double think: Mothers love their children so much that they make the selfless decision to place them.

Adoption: The only option for low income women under the Republican agenda

Republicans celebrate House passage of AHCA,
Or, a bunch of white guys smirking that they can
take away health care and facilitate adoptions..  

To 217 House Republicans, choice for low income women means abstaining from sex or losing their children to adoption. By a four vote margin, the House passed the American Health Care Act. Twenty Republicans and all 193 Democrats voted  against this draconian measure. The AHCA caps Medicaid funds to the states, which will result in doctors cutting or denying services to low-income pregnant women. The AHCA allows states to permit insurance companies to exclude maternity benefits from their policies and deny coverage for "pre-existing conditions" including pregnancy. 

h♥le cont.: As a first mother, testifying for adoptee rights in New York, 1976

Lorraine 

By 1976 the New York state legislature amazingly enough is considering a bill that will allow individuals born and adopted in New York to obtain their original, unamended birth certificates.

Florence [1] is planning a lawsuit to have the amended birth certificates be declared unconstitutional, but holds back now. If New York’s law fell, could the rest of the country be far behind? Florence and I troop up to Albany with a handful of others—adoptees, adoptive parents, a phalanx of psychologists and social workers, attorneys, adoption-agency heads, and another natural mother who turns out also to be an adoptee, a double-whammy that is way more common than most people know.[2]

h♥le, cont.: Telling the family about my lost and adopted daughter

Lorraine

This next section in hole in my heart follows the preceding blog, where I have just testified the first time in court for an adoptee hoping to access her original birth certificate. The judge has turned down her request. The year is 1974. My daughter was born in 1966 and due to living in another state at the time of her birth, my family did not know about her.

A few weeks later, I fly to Michigan to tell my mother. If I am going to be public, she has to know before she reads about me in a newspaper or sees me on television. Given our fight over college, spilling the truth to my father would have been much more dreadful, but his death two years after my daughter’s birth spares me  that humiliation. I tell my mother at lunch, over gin and tonics, and I see her wince when she understands what I am revealing. 

h♥le, cont.: Testifying to unseal the birth records of an adoptee

Lorraine testifying a a public hearing on
unsealing records in New York City, 2014

An excerpt from Chapter 8 in hole in my heart. Previous sections can be found by scrolling down on the HOME page.

February, 1974

I’m in an airless, overheated courtroom in the Bronx, where I will soon testify—as a natural mother—that we do want to know our children. An accountant named Ann Scharp is trying to get the records that were sealed thirty-seven years earlier when she was adopted. Her identity is likely to be sealed in papers at Spence-Chapin Adoption Services. She’s there to show that she has “good cause” to get her adoption agency records. If any adoptee has taken the trouble to go to court to learn their identity, doesn’t that  prima facie demonstratethat she ought to be able to find out who she is? But never mind—we know that whether her “cause” will be deemed good enough depends solely on this one person, this man in a black robe sitting up high in the judge’s seat.

Easter: The day I miss my lost daughter most

My garden today

Holidays were always bittersweet without my daughter. Easter is a huge holiday in the Polish Catholic tradition, so big, in fact, that when I was a little girl I remember trying to decide whether I preferred Christmas or Easter as an occasion. Even without the presents from Santa, Easter was equal to Christmas because it brought other gifts: coloring eggs with both my parents on Thursday or Friday the previous week; making bread with my mother early Saturday morning, before anyone else was up; then moving onto the pastry, stuffed with walnuts and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, the heavenly aroma filling the house by noon; preparing a basket of special foods for breakfast on Sunday and taking it to church to be blessed in the mid afternoon on Saturday; making nests from corn flakes and chocolate to be filled with jelly beans.

Sunday meant searching for a hidden basket of goodies somewhere in the house, my father making sure it was never easy to find; followed by Mass in our new Easter outfits with a pink carnation pinned to my shoulder, followed by a breakfast of those blessed foods, and then, finally big extended family dinner with my aunts and uncles and cousins with ham and Polish sausage and borscht and the hard-boiled eggs topped with beets and horseradish ending with my mother's delicious prune layer cake with buttercream frosting. And, of course, lots of chocolate.

Then suddenly, in my early twenties, I was the mother without the daughter to pass on these traditions. I gave

h♥le, cont.: Upon learning that birth records would be sealed--FOREVER

About to be swallowed up by the deep                             photo by Ken Robbins

“But we’ll be able to—find each other when he’s eighteen, right—or twenty one?” I ask matter-of-factly—it’s half a statement, half a question, surely that’s the case. I am talking to the social worker at Hillside Terrace, the euphemistically named adoption agency. Her first name is Helen, but to me, she is Mrs. Mura. She is in her thirties, not that much older than me. She is my confessor, my therapist, my authoritative conduit to adoption. Other than Patrick, and an occasional visit from my lone girlfriend in town, Christy, Mrs. Mura was my only outside contact for those last months. Christy works on the afternoon paper in town; she and I were both young, ambitious and from elsewhere when we landed in Rochester, but she’s busy with her own career, and I rarely hear from her.

I am holed up in my apartment, and don’t venture much beyond a nearby
grocery store, the pharmacy across the street, and the library a few blocks away.

h♥le in my heart: The Sixties, the inevitable, the life-changing reality

The long winding road ahead               Photo by Ken Robbins

The mores of the times kept a’changin’ with the music, but no cultural shift happens all at once. While the sexual strictures were loosening, and hip young women like myself were supposed to be sophisticated about sex—not only having sex but wildly enjoying it—the heart-breaking irony was that being caught “in a family way” without someone to marry you revealed a society still stuck in the sexual shaming of earlier decades. Good girls still didn’t do it. Smart girls didn’t get caught. A great many found ways to get an abortion. The lucky ones got married. It’s estimated that more than a quarter (27 percent) of all children born to women between the ages of 15 and 29 in the decade between 1960 and 1970 were conceived before marriage.*

Today is my daughter's birthday

Jane and Lorraine, April 1982, about a week after her birthday

Today is my daughter's birthday.

Okay, I'm done trying to ignore it. Some years I do better than others but today, maybe because the forsythia bush outside is ready to burst into bloom, maybe because I'm packing to move and going through a lot of adoption papers, and finding letters from her from that first early part of our relationship, and letters from people who wrote me after Birthmark was published, maybe because moving upends your life and you keep making decisions about what to keep, what to pitch, maybe because the song on the radio coming back from the super market was that soulful She's Got You by Patsy Cline, maybe because I watched Long Lost Family two nights ago, maybe because...well, there it is.

Having my daughter and giving her up to be adopted is the single most traumatic event of my life. Relinquishing her was more than a life-altering event; it was an invisible barrier separating me from the rest of humanity. I would always be a woman who lost a child to adoption. I would find her, we would have a reunion, but nothing would ever be as if she had not been adopted. Our relationship would proceed, but it would always have that huge hole in it, and neither one of us would ever get over it.

h♥le in my heart: Sore and ready for new love who comes riding in

Lorraine and daughter Jane, summer of
1982, seven months after we met 

In the last segment of hole in my heart (3/31/2017), my first love and I had parted. I was living in Saginaw, Michigan, a weeks after graduating from college, and working for a daily newspaper. Another reporter on the paper was flirting with me, finding it hard to believe I was still virginal. This picks up after first love did not show up after a night in which he asked me to marry him--now. I was uncertain, I had an apartment where no men were allowed over night, and he left shortly before three in the morning to drive back to Flint, about a 40 mile drive. He was supposed to return the next day; I waited for him all day. He did not return.
                                     *     *     *
The following morning, July 5th, my virginity, such as it still remained, seems as outdated as a lorgnette, pretty to look at but impractical to use. Dashing scion continues to pursue me with the kind of charming intensity that such men possess when their goal is a reluctant cherry. I am a modern woman, right? I am hip, right? It is 1964! Even though all I knew about birth control could fit in a thimble, I am hardly the good Catholic who once believed in mortal sin, or someone who would reveal this transgression in a confessional. If I went to Confession.

Adoptee and birth family synchronicity: Quirks run in families

Jane, Julie, Lucy

A couple of weeks ago I took a cruise with my two sisters, Lucy and Kate along the California coast. We live in different parts of the country--Lucy in Orange County, CA, Kate in Central Illinois, and me in Oregon. During a stop in San Francisco, we met up with my youngest daughter Julie for a dinner in Chinatown. While showing off our deftness at manipulating chopsticks, Julie noticed that she, Lucy, and I had identical nail polish, a sort of shell pink. We hadn't planned this, didn't discuss getting a mani before our trip; still out of the scores of colors at Vietnamese nail salons in different cities, all of us picked the same color.  (Kate's nails were natural.)

H♥le: A chapter ends: Goodbye first love...more or less

The next day, the Fourth of July, is another scorcher, blistering hot and  humid all over again. That teasing shower the night before has not broken the heat wave. I wake when the sun comes up and it comes up before six. The ceiling above my bed has no writing revealing the future. I shut my eyes, hoping for a few more
moments of oblivion to stop the constant question but I might as well have hoped to stop time. I was either going to marry him, or not, and I’d know the answer before the day was done. If you want to marry someone, you know, right? You aren’t undecided between something from Column A and something from Column B at Won Ton Charlie’s
Take Out. It’s either YES, or, no. Somewhere inside I was
listening to a language learned before I was born: This is your
fork in the road, kiddo. Don’t screw it up.

h♥le in my heart: Two steps not taken

Lorraine in 1964, in Saginaw

July 3, 1964
I am being pursued—presumably because I was initially standoffish as much as anything—by the good-looking scion of a wealthy Michigan family who is obviously destined for greater things than the police beat of The Saginaw News. He has a law degree from the University of Michigan, a socialite mother, a publisher father on a sister newspaper, but three desks away from me is where he is for the time being. Someday he will marry someone named Pru who went to a Seven Sister or a near cousin, this I know, but being the object of his ten minutes of attention is momentarily flattering. It is a given he is lobbing pretty women like tennis balls from one of those thingamabobs that automatically shoot them into the air, one after another.

It’s Friday night, we’ve had drinks, he’s made me dinner at his insanely fabulous single-guy studio on the top floor of a once-grand house on Mansion Row. I am a virgin, I say, disentangling myself from he who is so smooth his cologne should be called Savoir-faire. He is astounded—how could this be in this day? It’s 1964! The promise I’d made to Tom bounced around in my head: I wasn’t going to give up that just yet for a quick flash in sheets, despite his insistence, despite how Victorian I suddenly feel.

h♥le in my heart: The boy back home

Lorraine

Chapter One, Back Story, Continued:

Once I’d planned to marry the boy back in Michigan, but so much had come between us. We were victims of parental interference, communication complications, physical distance. Tom Kleskowski and I decided to get married after the four or five occasions when we were together, if you count: one, my cousin’s wedding our freshman year of college when we met: two, Christmas Day a month later when he formally called on me and met some of my extended family in a scene straight out of Jane Austen; three, going to the movies with his four year-old brother in tow; four, New Year’s Eve; five, two months later when he proposed by saying, I have to make something of myself because I want to marry you.

When fate knocks and I walk through the door

Lorraine

February 13, 1965
We are making small talk as we walk across the Genesee River on my first day of work cityside at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. I don’t know it yet but I am brushing up against the man with whom I will soon fall truly deeply madly in love. Our love will thrust me into a life I never could have imagined, but at this moment I am merely walking across a bridge.

He is somewhat older, already established in the profession that I have dreamed about since the fourth grade. It’s early evening, dusk is hurtling toward dark, but it’s not cold for February, it’s foggy and damp but not quite raining. A silk scarf is tied at the back of my neck a la French movie star, and I am wearing a slick soldier-blue trench coat with a red lining—Made in France!—that cost a week’s salary. I am high on life at that moment—hell, I
am practically gliding across the bridge—for I’m the first woman to be hired
for the metro desk at The Democrat & Chronicle since World War II emptied
the newsroom of men.

How life changes when you became pregnant and have to face adoption for your child

The mother walks in following a child who runs ahead of her. The child is two, could be three. I’m sitting at Starbucks in the morning reading The New York Times, wishing the music was turned down a tad. Sun is streaming through the window behind me. My husband Tony is doing the crossword puzzle. Both of us are writers and it’s nice to get out of the house in the morning.

But for the moment—fifteen seconds or so—my attention is diverted to the child, and then to the mother, and back to the child. Unconsciously I look to see if child resembles his mother.

I want to be able to tell myself he is not the child of someone else.

I want to reassure myself that the woman is his only mother.

I have been doing this ever since she was born.

Probably before. As soon as I knew I was pregnant.--by lorraine from hole in my heart: memoir and report from the fault lines of adoption  [Prologue.]

Excerpt from hole in my heart: A few words about language

Daughter Jane and Lorraine, circa 1992

Regular readers know that I'm moving from a house where my husband and I have lived for 33 years ago another house in the same village.

It's only a mile away, but even moving next door means going through the collection of a life and deciding what to take, what to discard, what is worth taking, what is not, what you cannot live without, what you no longer want to live with. It's time consuming and somewhat emotional. My husband and I are both collectors of a sort--he has 5,000 books and he's getting rid of about a thousand; I've collected various sets of dishes and odd plates and platters that I like, as well as antique butterfly wing trays from Rio, and they are going to go!

We are moving from an Arts and Crafts house built in 1930 to a modern house built in 1990. And I want our new life to reflect the change. I'm going on here more than I meant but this is a way of saying that for the next couple of months (the move itself is in May), I won't have much time for writing. Jane will undoubtedly post now and then, but she too is busy with her life. While this is going on, I will publish excerpts of my memoir, hole in my heart: memoir and report from the fault lines of adoption. The spacing will follow how it reads on the book page. This is the first section, not a forward, but "A Few Words about Language":

Sealed birth records are an abomination of individual rights; CT needs written testimony by TUESDAY eve

Lorraine testifying in New York, 2015

Imagine that you are at a family gravesite. A grandmother is being laid to rest alongside her husband, perhaps a sibling or two, and other relatives connected by birth. You are standing there, head bowed, but you can’t squelch the awareness that when you die you do not really belong in this family plot. You should be elsewhere. You have a whole other passel of relatives, but you don’t know who they are, or where they are. You are adopted.

You have no knowledge of who you really are, where you came from and how you got here, you have no family medical history. You don’t look like anyone in this family, and you wonder where you got your flat feet or why your second toe is longer than your big toe, when nobody else in the family has feet like yours.

You are an orphan in the world.

You’ve known since you were five or six that you came from another life, but you understand that you are not supposed to question, or

Donaldson Report on 'Options Counseling': No surprises, proceed to adoption as primary 'solution'

Adoption counseling is biased towards adoption rather than providing a full consideration of all options available (parenting, adoption, abortion, foster care, family placement) so that the parents experiencing a crises pregnancy can make a sound and informed decision about their pregnancy, according to a recent report by The Donaldson Adoption Institute and the University of Texas, Arlington School of Social Work, Understanding Options Counseling in Adoption.

Researchers surveyed 20 adoption professionals who worked in different types of settings and had various levels of experience. Less than half reported specifically mentioning "parenting" as an option. Those that did framed it in terms of finding a "resource" ignoring the inherent value of maintaining the natural bond between mother and child. Only a small number discussed terminating the pregnancy.

Ken Robbins: A photographic tribute to my friend

                                                 All photos by Ken Robbins

Ken Robbins, a friend of mine, died in the night the day before yesterday. He was a great photographer, and a generous, wise, intelligent man who will be missed by his friends. His photos were collected in two books; he did the pictures for numerous book jackets, LP albums, and magazine covers, including for Time; took author photographs, and wrote more than 20 children's books he illustrated with his pictures. He was a brilliant mind, and conversation with him might range from philosophy to politics to pop culture. Whatever the subject, his observations were sharp and sometimes challenging, as he relished lively discourse.

For the last couple of years, he was on dialysis and lately had an infection that he could not shake. At the same time, he was caring for his wife, who has advanced dementia, at home with limited help. We all knew his life was difficult, but Ken kept a positive attitude about everything and never appeared to feel sorry for his lot.

This isn't a usual post for First Mother Forum, but I wanted to share some of his photos here as he let me use them for the blog whenever I asked. This is a tribute to Ken and his talent.

This Is Us: Adoptive mom says she's sorry for hiding the truth

Lorraine

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.

Paula Fox: Author and first mother

Lorraine

The writer Paula Fox died recently and she rated a half page obituary in the New York Times. I scanned it immediately to see if the fact of the daughter she gave up for adoption was included. I knew she had written about it in one of her memoirs.

Well, there it was: 

"At the end of Borrowed Finery: A Memoir Ms. Fox tells of being reunited with the daughter she had borne at 20, the offspring of a brief liaison after her first marriage had ended. She gave the infant up for adoption, a decision, she wrote, that pained her the rest of her life. In middle age, the daughter, Ms. Carroll-Barraud, found Ms. Fox. (One of Ms. Carroll-Barraud’s children, it transpired, is the rock singer Courtney Love.)"

When an adopted teen wants to live with his birth/first mother

Lorraine

Two steps forward, one step back is how I'm feeling about open adoption today after reading family-expert John Rosemond's recent column about a 14-year-old who "now wants to go live with his birth-mother."

The adoptive mother writes that at the onset of the adoption, the first mother was out of the picture even though there was an open-adoption agreement. A few years ago she phoned, saying she had changed her life, and "wanted to re-establish contact with 'her' son." Phone calls led to visits, led to overnights, and apparently eventually the teenager wanted to go on vacation with her last summer. Whether or not he went is not included in the column. The teens grades have taken a nose-dive, he's become difficult to live with and now, the column question is framed:  "He’s told us he doesn’t want to live with us anymore. I think he believes there will be no rules with her and he’ll be able to eat ice cream all day long, figuratively speaking. What should we do?"

First Mothers: What not to do at the start of a reunion

Lorraine

In an earlier post we urged first mothers to react with their hearts when a child--now adult--lost to adoption first makes contact, even if the words you hear put you off. What about the next step, once the first flurry of words and excitement is over, and the conversation continues?

From listening to adopted people for the last several decades, I've learned that a great many of them have spent their lives past the age of reason reassuring their adoptive parents in ways large and small that they love them, fully, deeply, completely. Because of what parents have said about them and to them--You were the answers to our prayers; I couldn't love you more if I had given birth to you, when we found you we knew our family was complete, I thank God every day for bringing you to us...they have fully absorbed the message that they are responsible for their parent's well-being and happiness. This message will be inculcated further if the individual was adopted after having children via nature failed, or a biological child's death. The burden the adopted person carries is heavy indeed, no matter how great the parents' affection.

Here's how to write good adoption law

Although adoption experts—the Donaldson Adoption Institute,* the Child Welfare League of America,** and others--agree that children should be raised in their biological families if possible, state laws are tilted to increasing the supply of infants for adoption resulting in the unnecessary separation of mothers and children.

These laws allow mothers to consent to adoption before or immediately after birth with little or no opportunity to revoke their consent and with little or no counseling. Open adoptions agreements which may encourage mothers to relinquish are often unenforceable.*** Unmarried fathers have few rights.

Those of us interested in reforming adoption so that it coincides with its original purpose—to find families for children who need them—are faced with well-funded and well-organized opposition from the adoption industry. While adoption is governed mostly by state laws, adoption reform must occur nation-wide. Otherwise, those who put profit before child welfare will simply move their operations to “adoption-friendly” states. Adoption reform organizations throughout the country must come to a consensus about adoption laws so that they speak in one voice to state legislators and the media.

To First Mothers: When your adopted 'child' calls out of the blue

Lorraine

This is for the mothers (first, birth, natural, biological) who search on the web for how to react to a phone call they are either waiting for or fearful of--that from their child lost to adoption. Years ago I would have assumed that every mother on earth who gave up a child would be overwhelmed with joy and say something like: Oh my god, you found me! I have been waiting for you to find me! 

Today I know that is not true. Not only have I heard of so many birth mothers rejecting reunion that it makes my head spin in sorrow, but I also had a long-time neighbor and friend who did not admit that she had a child that her other children did not know about--until she was on her deathbed. For years we managed to maintain a friendship while we argued about what I fought for, mystifying me and her children. One of them figured out the truth before she came clean, only weeks before she slipped away. If such a mother was that close to me in real life, there are many others out here.

When first parents adopt their surrendered 'children'

Jane

A father wrote to advice columnist Amy Dickinson recently about his wife's adult daughter whom she placed for adoption as an infant. His wife was reunited with the daughter, Betsy, now 30, ten years ago. Now she wants "to divorce her current adoptive parents" because of "irreconcilable differences", and for legal reasons involving her own 8-year-old daughter. Betsy wants her natural mother, and her biological father (who has been out of the picture for 30 years) to adopt her. The man who wrote to Amy says he and his wife (the natural mother) have children together, as well as children from prior marriages.

Apparently the letter-writer will be asked to go before a judge and make a public statement that his wife and Betsy's biological father are now the adoptive parents. He identifies himself as "No Prior Precedent" (NPP) feels uncomfortable about doing so. He asks if he is being "an oversensitive territorial man"?

Making the first contact with a first mother: What not to say

Jane

"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's Ithaka: A Daughter's Memoir of Being Found comes 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:

Lion: An adoptee returns home

If you haven't already seen Lion, grab a hankie and catch it before it is gone. Besides being a compelling story and a well acted film, it reinforces what we who live adoption know to be true: the need to know one's original family is universal. It could be the story of a young girl from Kansas or a weary warrior in Greece. No matter how difficult the journey, it must be attempted.

Lion is based on the Saroo Bierley's memoir "A Long Way Home." Five-year- old Saroo lives in abysmal poverty with his mother, sister and older brother, Guddu, in a small village in India. One evening he goes with Guddu, whom he adores, to the train station. Guddu tells him to wait there while he seeks work. When, after many hours, Guddu does not return, Saroo crawls into a train and falls asleep. The train leaves the station. He is unable to get off the train until it arrives in Calcutta several days later. Saroo has to survive on the mean streets, which is particularly difficult because he speaks Hindi, not Bengali, the language of Calcutta.  Eventually he is taken to an orphanage which arranges his adoption by a kind and loving Australian couple, Sue and John Bierley. The contrast between the hovel where he lived for his first five years and the Bierley's beautiful home and opulent surroundings in Tasmania could not be more stark.

Mr. President: Pardon Sandy Musser

Sandy Musser

Dear President Obama:

In 1993 Sandy Musser was sentenced to federal prison for four months. Her crime? Finding a way to reconnect individuals separated by adoption--mothers and grown children who had no legal recourse that led to reunion. At the time all but two states--Alaska and Kansas--had legislation that forever denied an adopted individual a way to reunite to his family of birth, and vice versa.

What Sandy Musser helped effect is becoming increasingly commonplace as state legislation slowly but surely is ending secrecy and anonymity in adoption. In 20 years, what Ms. Musser did will be seen in a whole different light, and her "crime" will be seen as a courageous act of compassion.

Some background: From the Seventies onward, a movement comprised of adoptees and mothers who relinquished children to adoption began demanding an end to the anonymity and secrecy that had ruled adoption for the previous half century. The forced anonymity of closed adoption was a practice that began in the mid-teens of the last century, as state after state sealed the original birth certificates of individuals when they were adopted. Neither adoptees nor their mothers--the two groups most affected--had any input into this legislation. For both sides, there was no recourse, for the anonymity was designed to be for all time. Health histories were not possible. Even descendants of the adopted could not learn the true family of origin.

When an adoptive mother says...My daughter isn't interested in searching

Lorraine

What do you say to someone you meet at a luncheon who says that she has an adopted daughter who "isn't interested in searching" as soon as she hears the subject of your recent book. Daughter is in her late twenties.

I said that many adoptees don't search until their parents are much older or dead, because then they feel that are free to do so. I said that adoptees don't search because unconsciously you [adoptive mother] have made it clear that doing so would hurt you very much. She understood. And she added that she always thought her daughter would search one day. I realized that my new acquaintance instinctively understood that the desire to know one's history and reconnect with kin on some level was instinctual, and not unusual. She wasn't being aggressive; I think she was simply surprised to meet a birth mother in real life, at a New Year's luncheon in an artist's studio.

Life lessons from Downton Abbey

Lorraine 

It's New Year's Day and I've been hearing from first mothers and adoptees who had a difficult time this holiday season, but then...all major holidays can be difficult for us because we are either missing people, or a whole family, in our lives; or we are alienated from someone we don't wish to be at odds with.

You know the drill--should I make that phone call? Will I be rebuffed again? Can I talk to my mother without the daughter she lives with (my half sister who sent me a wretched email) listening in? If I send a card/gift to my son/daughter will they acknowledge it? If I call my 15-year-old daughter will I be able to talk to her, or will this upset her adoptive parents and make life more difficult for her? Will she be cold if I call? What if she doesn't answer the phone? Should I contact a cousin, the only one in my biological family who is willing to be in contact with me?

What Happens to women who give up their babies for adoption?

In today's New York Times: 

RE: Emboldened by Trump’s Victory, Abortion Foes Vow ‘Onslaught’ ” (front page, Dec. 12):

The increasing difficulties that women are likely to face in getting an abortion make clear that two things will inevitably rise in response: More women, denied access because of distance and cost of travel, lodging and so on, will try to self-abort, and many will be permanently injured as result; and there will be increased pressure for women to carry to term and give up their babies for adoption.

The short-term reaction to such a loss is expected, but the long-term consequences for a mother to lose a child to adoption are nothing short of disastrous. Poor grief resolution for a great many women leads to lasting

Merry Christmas. Happy Hannukkah Everyone!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a Festivus for the Rest of Us...

 Gulls at Otter Pond on half frozen ice; above Manhattan skyline from tram to Roosevelt Island.

there are more photos...read on.

At Christmas first mothers and adoptees get the blues

Our Christmas tabletop "tree"

I'm reposting a blog from a few years ago, with some updates:

We had a Christmas lunch at our house yesterday--friends came by for Champagne punch and sustenance. Two guys my husband made sure to introduce to each other were both Vietnam vets. One was a journalist who was captured and briefly imprisoned; the other was a Naval officer who had spent two years in combat. After my husband made the introduction, they spent a long time talking. Later my husband said: It's the most intense experience of their lives--no one who hasn't been through it can quite understand. My husband was in the Army between conflicts, and after ROTC, only spent six months on active duty. But he understood immediately why these two men would bond.

I thought: That's what being a birth/first mother is like. No one who hasn't been there can understand the immense loss and grieving that comes with relinquishment--except another first mother. And yet, most of us don't go around talking openly about our experiences so that it's unlikely that I'm going to end up at a party one day and the host will introduce me to another person and pass on what we so deeply share: that we both lost a child to adoption.

Why do some first/birth mothers reject reunion?

Lorraine

Why do some first/birth mothers reject reunion?* Or even resist acknowledging a lost son or daughter? It's a question that won't go away, and at the holiday season the slings and arrows of adoption and separation hit their mark ever more keenly. With families every where planning celebrations, the hurt of every rejection by a natural mother is magnified.

Adoptees call and write us asking for suggestions on how best to reach their mothers, especially when the mothers are not responding to a letter or email--when other first mothers are praying and waiting and hoping for that phone call--and so I've done a fair amount of thinking about why do some mothers reject when others rejoice. There are multiple causes:

Sofia Vergara sued by her own frozen embryos in unethical case

Lorraine

I did not want to get pregnant when I did, but once I had my baby I knew doing anything but keeping her was wrong. I knew I would "never get over it." I knew I wanted to keep her and take care of her and watch her grow up and be her mother in every sense of the word.

Now imagine that someone else is trying to force you to become a mother because in a moment of craziness you donated an egg and it was implanted with your boyfriend's sperm, and then frozen away for use (as in birth) at some future time. Then imagine you decided the boyfriend was a creep, broke up with the guy, met and married someone else and now the ex wants to hire a surrogate to nurture the embryos because he wants...your children. Nightmare scenario, right? 

Giving up a child may mean giving up a grandchild

When I gave up my infant daughter Rebecca half a century ago, I did not consider that I was giving up my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, that giving up a child could create a cascade of loss and mystery. I am one of the lucky natural mothers, though. Since my reunion in 1997, I've been able to spend time with Rebecca's children. I've been to their weddings, They've visited me at my home in Portland. I spent my birthday last October exploring a park on the Great Salt Lake with one granddaughter. I traveled to Peru with another.

Many natural mothers--like Jane Guttman author of The Gift Wrapped in Sorrow: A Mother's Quest for Healing--are not so lucky. Their lost child shuts them out. They are told in no uncertain terms, "You are not my children's grandparents. Please go away." Or worse, they are threatened with legal action if they dare, dare send a birthday card. Guttman writes:

"Soon Adam [her grandson] will be two and a half. I long to see him. I long to hold him. His smile and laughter are such significant moments

First Mother Forum under construction

Patience please!

First Mother Forum is being updated and getting a new look but we aren't quite there yet. You may have noticed tonight that the blog appearance was changing as we were reconfiguring the layout, and it is still under reconstruction. All the posts are there if you scroll down, but we removed some of the clutter of the sidebar to focus on the posts themselves. Suz Bednarz was most generous in giving us her time and expertise as we work through this. Another change will be coming in a day or two. But in the meantime, none of the posts are missing, and the pages can be accessed in the pull down menu, as can our popular posts and our bios on the right. We hope to get this all finished tomorrow! --lorraine

This Is Us gets adoption right

Lorraine

Does media attention to the issues of adoption change society's perception of adoption?

Absolutely.

Every show that focuses on adoption moves public opinion--media attention is a major reason the acceptance of LGBT individuals and marriage equality moved seemingly quickly, compared to the adoption reform. But progress on our issue is being made and more states have at least limited access to birth information for adoptees. Shows also now portray adoption in less than a glowing light. Sixteen and Pregnant, for instance, went from showing Catelynn and Tyler's giving up of their daughter in at least partly positive light so they could go about their teenage lives and finish school, et cetera, but a few years into their semi-open adoption, the audience learns that not all is happy in adoptland, and the limited contact with their first daughter Carly is far from ideal. In 2013, The Baby Sellers on Lifetime with Kristie Alley showed the dark side of international adoption.