In the early hours of the morning, shortly before waking, I dreamed I opened a trapdoor in a wooden floor and discovered a pulsing, hot ball of pain. I recoiled immediately, as if burned by fire. In my head I heard a voice saying "If you really want to heal, you are going to have to deal with this."  

"Not now," I answered. "Not yet." 

-- me on January 31, 2013

I know what's under the trapdoor, but opening it requires rewriting a key piece of my official adoption story.

Today's "fragment" is a quote from a blogger I admire:

Life is inherently out of hand; death, illness, pain, loss, grief, war, disasters natural and man-made, trauma, heartbreak, abuse, cruelty, racism, sexism homophobia and heteronormativity, oppression and injustice in all its forms, including the depletion, exploitation, and hoarding of the earth’s resources. In the face of all that life can throw at you there are times when blatant mental imbalance is the sanest, healthiest most healing response. 

We are all embedded in enormous systems, familial, social and planetary, which are also cycling, swinging wildly, falling in and out and passing through imbalance, equilibrium and back again. Living and breathing balance requires and contains imbalance within it. 

We will all lose our footing. 

No one is impervious. We will all drop the ball.   

-- Martha Crawford, What a Shrink Thinks 

As I mentioned yesterday, lately I've been a little bit in love with the human race. Illogically and insanely in love. Not in spite of our flaws, but because of them.

Lately, I've been a little bit in love with the human race. Crazy, I know!

My car radio is broken. Well, not broken, exactly. Just not working. What I need is the code, but I can't remember it and I'm to lazy or busy or whatever to call the dealership, or whomever I need to call, to get it.

Also, I'm in no hurry.

Without the radio, my daughters (ages 11 and 12) have taken to providing the musical entertainment themselves. On Saturday afternoon, as we drove around doing errands, Mackenzie was the radio, and Ashley was the human in control of it. Every time Ashley "changed the station" (and she did so frequently), Mackenzie would slide effortlessly into a new song, hitting a range of genres as she did so. (My husband Paul has made a point of exposing both girls to a diverse selection of musical styles.)

I smiled in the drivers seat as this delightful goofiness went on behind me. It was music. It was comedy. It was pure fun.

And the icing on the cake? These are the same sisters who used to fight so intensely in the backseat that I'd have to pull the car over. Needless to say, laughter and singing in the backseat are music to my ears in more ways than one!

fotographic1980 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Whoa! Wait a minute! What the [insert expletive of choice here] is going on here?

I thought this blog was called Love Is Not a Pie. What's with this "Sea Glass" stuff?!

Calm thoughts. Deep breaths. Especially you adoptees! (I know some of you really don't like change!) Everything is going to be okay.

So, why have I suddenly changed my blog title, nixing one that was perfectly fine to begin with?

I'm glad you asked.

I love the title Love Is Not a Pie, and it seemed a perfect fit for a blog that focused on open adoption and adoption reunion. But lately I've been coming to the realization that I want to broaden the focus of this blog somewhat. The new title and look of the blog are my way of announcing my intention to branch out a bit with my writing.

Am I still going to write about adoption and my journey to find my way in this world, as both an adoptee and an adoptive parent? Absolutely! In fact, it would be impossible for me to do anything else, given the extent to which adoption has shaped my identity and my experience of life. Some of the future posts may be less obviously about adoption, but adoption will continue to be both an influence and a common theme in my writing.

OK, Rebecca, so that's why you are changing the title. But why sea glass? In fact, what the [insert expletive of choice] is sea glass?

Once again, I'm glad you asked.

I suspect that most adoptees are conscious of a tension in adoption ideology -- an undercurrent that is rarely raised to the surface but is present nonetheless. In the eyes of others, we are often viewed as either "blank slates" or "bad seeds." At different times in history, one view or the other has prevailed. When my adoptive parents brought me home, during the baby scoop era, they were told I was a blank slate. The prescription: raise me as their own and nurture would prevail. But during a recent online conversation with some adoptee friends, many of whom were of the same era, it became apparent that the blank-slate doctrine was not universally accepted, even in our time period. All of us had experienced the situation of having false, prejudicial assumptions made about us because of our supposed inherited "bad character." And then there are the adoptive parents I've conversed with who have changed their views over time. They speak of how they once bought into idea of the blank slate, believing nurture and love would prevail, but then the child grew up differently than expected -- began to struggle and make bad choices, spiraling into dysfunction beyond the parents' control -- and they realized they'd been sold a false idea. Clearly, the adoptee must have been flawed from the start, in a way that nurture couldn't correct.

You may think I am exaggerating, but this is the world that I walk through. On the one hand, I have encountered people who insist that biology is nothing and upbringing determines all. On the other, I have heard people say that they would never consider adopting because "you don't know what your going to get."  If you are an adult adoptee reading this, I'm curious if the world has sent you similarly conflicting messages.

Image: Idea go at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So, what am I? Who am I?

Adoptee identity is complicated. I was formed by my genes and my upbringing, and by countless other influences. I am a woman of a particular race who was born at a particular time in history. I was shaped by books and teachers. I am the geography of my upbringing and my travels. I am the friendships and relationships I have formed -- all the people I have loved and lost and even left.

And I am an adoptee. I was separated from my biological mother at birth -- that was my welcome to the world. I was raised as daughter by people to whom I am not genetically related. I was a participant in a system that was supposedly acting in my best interest and yet sought neither my input nor my consent, even when I was old enough to give (or deny) it.

I am the mid-life adult women, just now finding my voice and trying to make sense of all this.

Blank slate? Bad Seed? No, it is so much more complicated than that.

Thanks to TAO for bringing this Paul Sunderland lecture to my attention. Many of my readers may have encountered it before, but it is new to me. It's long, but very much worth a listen.

Credit: K. Dahlquist & R. Bangert

Dahlquist & Bangert continue to be on a roll with their adoption-themed graphics. I'm sharing this one today because it hits on some of what Erica and I will be talking about today when we present at the Rudd Adoption Research Program's annual New Worlds of Adoption Conference. We are looking forward to sharing our personal story of joining families.

ponsulak FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The first time Erica and I had lunch together, at the beginning of our open adoption relationship, we discovered that we shared a vision, and it is something that we have talked of numerous times since then. Though in our case open adoption has worked well as a means of creating a non-traditional family structure that encompasses both a biological and a non-biological definition of family, we are both also drawn toward the possibilities of another model: supporting mothers together with their children. I believe in family preservation; I believe in keeping children connected to their biological parents, siblings, and other family members whenever possible. But I also recognize that sometimes families need support. Yes, it's true that there are times when it is necessary to separate the child from a dysfunctional family situation for the safety and well-being of the child, but that is not the case in all of the situations the result in adoption. Sometimes, it's not that the parent is unable to parent so much as it is that the parent is unable to do so alone, without support. Is the separation of the parent and child really the best solution in such cases? What if a model existed that would pair them with people who were willing to help them both? What if instead of adopting a child alone you could adopt a family?

imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Since that initial conversation with Erica, I've been pleased to discover others who share our vision, including adoptees Laura Dennis and 7rin, the latter of whom recently introduced me to the following touching story, submitted by someone named "Bobbi" at values.com:

My husband and I, grateful for our own circumstances, met a young woman and her baby son 16 years ago. They had a rented room, but not much support in their lives. We were childless. We moved to a bigger house and became a family. The woman was able to get off of public assistance, get some experience and get a job (...and now is a very experienced bookkeeper and office manager). Our young boy, now 16, was able to go to school and get a solid foundation that now supports him in high school. We got the best gift...the joy of a little boy running to us when we got home from work, a Christmas morning with a child, the hope for the future in his eyes. After five years of living together, the woman and the little boy got their own place and continued their growth and development. They have allowed us to remain in their lives. Kind of godparents, kind of grandparents. Four lives changed forever from a chance meeting and a willingness to be open to give. We made a choice - they made a choice - and everyone (including the resources of the government) benefited. Although we gave them a place to live, some financial assistance and some needed support, we GOT way more than we GAVE.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

But this is one situation. Adoption, on the other hand, is a SYSTEM ... a well-oiled (and well-funded) machine.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do have a lot of questions. If we truly understood and valued biological family, if we were to really listen to the many adoptees and original parents who are speaking out today about the pain and disorientation of their separation from one another, if we (as a society) were as focused on the "best interest of the child" as we claim to be, what structural systems might we create to support vulnerable families?

Brainstorm with me, people! What would real support of parents who want to parent look like?

Master isolated images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Am I saying that adoption should never take place? No. I understand that there are adoption critics who do go that far -- who believe that guardianship should replace adoption in cases where the biological parents are truly unable or unwilling to care for their children -- but through I respect that point of view, it doesn't happen to be mine. I am not prescribing a one-size-fits-all template. I am simply inviting us all to think outside of the adoption box. What might the alternatives might look like?

What say you? What's your vision?

Credit: K. Dahlquist & R. Bangert

My thanks to K. Dahlquist & R. Bangert for creating the above graphic and for granting me permission to share it here. I have in fact been doing some research lately, and I was surprised by what I learned.

Before I began reading Barbar Bisantz Raymond's book The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption, I knew that Georgia Tann was an adoption worker who who had helped to bring about the practice of amending adoptee birth certificates. And I was aware that her motivation in doing so was to cover her own tracks, given the illegality of the many adoptions she arranged. But I didn't truly understand the extent of her influence and the degree to which the current institution of adoption is her legacy.

For Georgia Tann, adoption was a client-based business, and her clients were the wealthy adoptive parents who could afford to pay her "fees." (Tann's incoming money far outstripped her operating expenses.) What's more, Tann didn't just serve her market -- she created it. Adoption rates skyrocket during her time of operation, starting in her native Tennessee and rippling outward from there. She promoted the doctrine of the blank slate to make her children more appealing and marketable. "Georgia didn't actually believe the children were blank slates, but she made her sales pitch with conviction." (Raymond, pg 78) Tann's methods were unethical to the extreme. She kidnapped. She lied. She coerced. She falsified documents.

She was also a master propagandist who promoted (among other things) the premise of "undeserving" versus "deserving" parents.

[The] babies were, she said, born innocent--blank slates. By virtue of either their single or poor status, their parents, however, were tainted. According to Georgia and the theories of reformers, children raised by these tainted parents would quickly become tainted too. Single mothers, who before their children became marketable would have been forced to raise them, were suddenly considered incompetent to keep them. (Raymond, pg 84)

The results of Tann's methods are chilling. Her actions were devastating not only to the parents who lost their children but also to the children she was supposedly helping, a disproportionately high number of whom were abused or died. But Georgia Tann's direct victims were not the only people she affected. Tann paved the road for the juggernaut that was the Baby Scoop Era, and her influence ripples even into current times.

In her informative and thought-provoking article "Despite Progress, Forced-Adoption Practices Persist Throughout the United States, activist and writer Jessica DelBalzo takes up the history of adoption with the baby scoop era and follows its practices into our own times, ending with familiar question "Will we learn from the past, or will we repeat it?"

Of course, in order to learn from it, we have to know it. The Baby Thief is a good place to start.

In our current societal structure, there is a gap between the typical age of first sexual activity and the age of financial and emotion stability that is considered ideal for beginning a family. What's the solution?

We know the stereotypes and prejudices that teen parents have to face — but we also know the truth. We know that teen parents can be capable caregivers and fabulous role models for their children. We know that, with support, they can achieve academically and professionally. We know young families can be successful.

Note that key phrase: with support!

Teen parents need support, not shame.

This week on twitter teen parents are offering up something to the rest of us: their stories and their wisdom. If you are on twitter, follow @MATeenPregnancy or the hashtag #TPTT (Teen Parent Twitter Takeover) to learn more.

David Castillo Dominici http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Spoiler Alert: This post reveals aspects of the plot of Laura Moriarty's novel The Chaperone.

There was a time in history when children without parents or extended family members to care for them ended up in poor houses, orphan asylums, or baby farms, all of which were pretty horrid places. One could certainly argue that the societal shift from viewing unattached children as potential sources of labor, as in indentured servitude, to viewing them as children to be raised as one's own offspring represented a clear improvement. But the horrors of the past do not excuse us from looking critically at the institutions of the present. We can focus on moving forward, rather than back. We do not have to accept the status quo as merely "better than before" or "good enough." We can do better.

The fact that so many of today's grown adoptees report having experienced pressure (sometimes subtle; sometimes overt) to feel "grateful" for our "better" life demonstrates something important about residual cultural attitudes towards bastard/orphan/unwanted children. Lingering beneath all the warm fuzzy rhetoric of modern adoption lies this unpleasantness: we are still held by many as less deserving than those raised by their own biological parents. We should be grateful for what we got. We should not complain.

But let's take a clear look at adoption as it exists today. Is it an institution that truly exists to meet the needs of children who lack parents or other family members to care for them? In the foster system there are certainly a number of children who are in need of the love and permanency that adoption can provide, but there are also many who might not have ended up there in the first place if our social structures were different. Many at-risk families could benefit from family preservation/strengthening services early on, before kids come into state care, but this is not an area where our society chooses to place funds. Also, many of today's adopters are not drawn to adopt the older, traumatized children found in the foster system.

Instead, they want babies -- and the current domestic infant adoption system can hardly be said to be primarily about finding parents for children who need them. There are far more prospective adopters than there are available infants. This situation has led to an industry rife with corruption and coercion. The desires and dollars of prospective adopters, combined with cultural biases against young parents and a societal structure marked by an ever widening gap between age of sexual activity and age of financial stability, have lead to an untenable situation. These are not the orphans of yesteryear. These are "orphans with parents,"  who also happen to be valuable commodities. Unethical adoption agencies, rather than serving the true needs of children, have become have become agents in the creation of "parentless" children, at times using highly questionable methods to separate children from living parents and place them (for a substantial fee) with others.

In inter-country adoption, it can be nearly impossible for prospective adopters, however well-intentioned, to distinguish true orphans from those obtained from biological families without their full, informed consent and even from those who were outright kidnapped. And even in situations in which the child's parents are actually deceased, the complete separation of the child from his or her culture, language, and birth identity is an extreme measure. Is this truly in the best interest of the child? (Many adult international adoptees would argue that it is not.)

Are there some children who are helped by adoption? Are there some end up in situations that seem better than what they might have otherwise experienced? Are there agencies that are more ethical than others? Are there adoptive parents who are compassionate, moral, and committed to supporting their adopted children as they process loss and find their way in the world as members of more than one family? Yes.

Does any of that excuse us from the responsibility of looking at the flaws in the current system and seeking ways to move forward to something better? Absolutely not.

Stuart Miles www.freedigitalphotos.net

Please click on the link below to see an amazing video. It was created by some non-adoptee friends of adoptee Deanna Shrodes, who has recently emerged as an important voice within the adoption community. As Deanna says, her friends Steve and Indy Dixon "get it," and they have created a moving song and video combination that captures that understanding.

Adoptee Restoration: When It's Hard to Breathe

I registered my daughter for a new soccer league the other day, one that requires that we show her birth certificate as proof of age.

"Oh, can I see it?" she asked, with excitement in her voice, when she saw me with the copy in my hands.

I hesitated. This was it: the moment when I had to tell my daughter that the primary legal document of her life, the one she will be required to produce for identification purposes countless times throughout her life, is a big fat lie.

Ashley, who joined our family by way of foster care and is now our legally adopted daughter, knows and has regular contact with her biological mother. She has also seen the hospital records of her birth. She has read the minute by minute description of her first moments on the planet. Among other things, the record indicates that she was placed on her mother's stomach and that "bonding was noted."

The family later came into crisis and Ashley and her sister ended up in the foster system, but that was years down the road. All indications are that my daughter's first moments of life were touchingly sweet and all about the bonding of a mother and child. But I only have the hospital records and the stories her original mother has told me to go on. Because, here's the thing: I wasn't there. It would be another 8 years before I would even meet this amazing child whom I would come to love.

But there I was the other day, standing in front her, holding a document that lists me as her mother and my husband as her father as though we had been her parents all along. History rewritten.

I took a deep breath and explained to her about amended birth certificates. I talked about the current laws and how I disagreed with them. I told her about the adoptee rights movement and the demonstration I was hoping to attend in Atlanta this summer.

"Can I come, too?" she asked.

We continued our conversation as we drove to the soccer registration.

"I'm not too upset about the birth certificate," she said, "but the thing is, I'm kind of a fan of the truth, and this just isn't it."

Well said, my dear!

When I posted on facebook that my daughter and I were both hoping the attend the Atlanta demonstration, one of my adoptee friends noted that very few adoptive parents have shown up regularly to support the cause of adoptee rights.

Really? That's disappointing news.

I'll be demonstrating in Atlanta as both an adoptee and an adoptive parent, and I'd love to see more adopted parents get involved in the adoptee rights movement. When we take on the role of adoptive parent, we take on many unique responsibilities in addition to the usual parental jobs. We take on, for example, the job of guiding and supporting the adoptee as they make sense of what it means to be a member of more than one family, of finding and forging personal identity within a complex and atypical family structure. We also take on the job of parenting someone who belongs to a class of people whose rights are legally compromised. In most U.S. states, adoptees do not have the right of access to the same personal legal documents as other citizens. This is discrimination.

I am currently working on the logistics. If I can work it out, both my daughter and I will be in Atlanta on August 12 because we are fans of the truth. I hope to see you there!

Click here to learn more about the demonstration. 

I'm what some people would call an "unhappy adoptee" or an "angry adoptee." I get these labels because I speak up about the negatives of adoption, including sharing my own personal story of trauma and loss experienced as a result of my separation from my biological family, and in particular from my mother. I am aware that this loss has affected me throughout my life and continues to affect me to some degree even into the present day. I will never be "not adopted."

And yet, I am neither unhappy nor angry on a regular basis in my actual life. In fact, I would describe myself as relatively happy, on the whole. It's been a long road, but I find myself in a fairly good place here in middle age. I'm aware that my personal adoption story has much that is positive about it when compared to the stories of other adoptees I have met. I was relatively well-matched with my adoptive family. When I was ready to search for my biological family, the information that I needed was available to me and I had the support of my adoptive parents in searching. I have been able to process my adoption issues through therapy, writing, and other means. I have been able to learn about myself and to experience the relief of genetic mirroring through reunion. I currently have good relationships with four pretty awesome parents. I have a supportive online network of adoptee friends who "get" me.

Not a bad situation, all in all.

Adoptees are sometimes asked why we can't just "move on" and "let go of the past." This is not a simple thing to do because our past is part of who we are today, but though I may not have moved on, I have made my peace with my life's story. I have accepted "that what happened happened," to borrow a phrase from Betty Jean Lifton.

But I still get triggered emotionally when I encounter certain adoption-related stimuli. The main things that trigger me these days have to do with the current state of the domestic infant adoption industry in U.S. and with the "positive adoption language" used to promote it.

For example, a tweet such as the following will cause my blood pressure to spike:

Adoption Network ‏@AdoptionFeed "A Birthmother puts the needs of her child above the wants of her heart" - Skye Hardwick

Why does this upset me? It's not because I hate birthmothers or judge them for the choices they have made. It's because the statement includes the automatic assumption that the child's needs are best served by separating the child from the mother, an assumption I consider to be false. Yes, I understand that every situation is different, and there may be situations in which the separation is unavoidable or perhaps even the best of bad options. But it seems to me that mothers considering relinquishment today are given insufficient information about adoptee loss and trauma. Without such information -- without access to the stories of adoptees such as myself -- they cannot make an informed decision about what the child truly needs. Idealizing rhetoric about "brave birthmothers" making the "self-sacrificing" choice to do what is "best" for the child is manipulative. It comes from the industry (initially, at least), and its intention is to persuade mothers that their children are better off without them -- an oversimplification in some cases, and an outright falsity in others.

Idea go at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm triggered when I open up my local yellow pages and see advertisements promising expectant mothers considering adoption that the choice of open or closed will be entirely up to them, when I know that open adoption contracts are rarely, if ever, enforceable.

I'm triggered when I see things like the National Council for Adoption's call for personal stories that they can share to "raise awareness about the positive option of adoption" as part of their iChooseAdoption campaign. And don't even get me started on the organization BraveLove and their mission to celebrate and increase adoption in the U.S.

It's a strange thing to be an adoptee who has struggled with adoption in our current society.

Adoption loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful. – The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE

Lately, I've been thinking also that adoption is perhaps the only situation in which something that is a source of trauma for many is routinely celebrated and promoted by others. Think of other kinds of loss that people experience. Can you imagine those people walking around in a world that actively promoted the source of their harm?

Yes, I know there are adoptees who report being "just fine" with their adoptive situation. But does their  experience override my own? If a number of people reported getting food poisoning at a particular restaurant would we ignore their claims because others reported having a lovely meal?

My perception is that adoptee trauma and loss is given an occasional nod in today's world, but it is still not being fully taken into account in terms of policy and reform. And so I will continue to tell my story, rather than "moving on."

If you are an adoptive parent and your journey included infertility, you likely had to mourn the loss of a hypothetical biological child ... the one who would never be born. If you came to adoption by another route, you may have experienced other kinds of mourning. Beginnings are always endings as well. When we choose one path, we walk away from another. Feelings of sadness are normal even in times of joy and new beginnings.

But I'm going to guess (with a high probability of being correct) that you probably didn't have to exchange an actual biological child for the adoptive one you now love and cherish.

www.123rf.com

Imagine for a moment that you had been required to make this unthinkable exchange. Actually, go further still and imagine that you didn't have any choice in the matter. One child was taken from you and another given in its place.

What emotions might come up for you around this exchange? Sadness? Anger? Confusion? I imagine you might experience a complex mixture of emotions at best. Even if you came to love the replacement child, would you not still feel the loss of the original one? What emotions might come up for you each year near the anniversary of the exchange? Even if you still got to see the first child sometimes, if you knew where he or she was and got to exchange gifts, make phone calls, and even Skype, wouldn't you still miss the child? Or imagine that you were reunited with the original child years later ... would you not you not still grieve the lost years, years you could never get back? Can you even imagine that in some ways, you might never fully recover from the loss of the first child, regardless of how much you might love the second?

When adoptees speak of loss or pain or trauma, we do not do so to be mean to adoptive parents or to make them feel bad about their families. We do so because this is our experience. Even if we appreciate our adoptive families, even if we wouldn't exchange the life we ended up with for another, loss is always a part of the equation for us.

And then there are the original parents ...

In the early hours of the morning, shortly before waking, I dreamed I opened a trapdoor in a wooden floor and discovered a pulsing, hot ball of pain. I recoiled immediately, as if burned by fire. In my head I heard a voice saying "If you really want to heal, you are going to have to deal with this."

"Not now," I answered. "Not yet."

In a halfway state between sleep and waking, I asked myself: How can it be that even someone like me who has dealt with loss in therapy and writes and talks openly about trauma and healing could have such a well of undiscovered pain? Is it possible that my strongest pain is still beneath the surface ... that I haven't even touched it yet?

When adult adoptees speak about adoption using words like "loss" and "pain" and "trauma," we are sometimes countered with the statement, "Not all adoptees feel that way." And it's hard to argue with that. It's certainly true that no two adoptees are identical, in their feelings or anything else. And while I have met many adoptees whose experiences and feelings seem similar to my own, I have also met those who hold adoption very differently than I do.

I often wonder about those adoptees, the ones who are so unlike me. Do they have no trapdoor? Have they just not found it yet? Have they seen it and refused to open it?

I suppose there may be some who opened their door and discovered a milder, gentler pain than I did. Perhaps they took it out of its hiding place and carried it around for a while before eventually misplacing it and barely noticing its absence. Or maybe they keep it on a shelf and are not bothered by it.

But I can't help but wonder if there are some who opened the door and recoiled, as I did in my dream. Not now. Perhaps not ever. And then what? Cover up the door with a pretty rug and pretend it isn't there?

As I said, I wonder.

Cheerful! But what's underneath?

When adult adoptees speak out against adoption practices, we are sometimes countered with something along the lines of the following: "I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but that doesn't mean all adoption is evil."
Adoption as an institution is flawed (let's agree to avoid the inflammatory label "evil," shall we?) because it acts on a person when they are in a powerless state (as stated so eloquently earlier today by Lynn Grubb of No Apologies for Being Me, "I was an infant when my adoption occurred.  I had no attorney of my own protecting my due process rights."), strips that person of basic rights (including the right to an accurate, truthful record of one's own birth) without his or her consent, and includes no mechanism to restore those rights even when legal adulthood is reached.

We did not lose each other.
Even though my OBC was sealed.
Even though my a-parents moved us 147 miles away from the city where they adopted me.
Even though we didn't know each other's new names. (She married and changed hers. My a-parents changed mine.)

We were still connected.

-- Affected by Adoption ~ Body, Soul & Spirit

For many adoptees, the big lie of our lives is that one definition of family obliterates the other, that new connections undo old ones. This fallacy is driven home from day one, and reinforced in countless ways. We are given new names and new identities that obscure the original ones. Our parents, biological and adoptive, sign papers annulling one family and creating a new one, and we are expected to play along, as if the new, legal entity was all that ever was. Evidence of any pre-existing history is sealed away, and we are asked to pretend it never existed.

zole4 FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Except that it lives on, in us. In our faces, our hands, our feet, our mannerisms, our quirks of personality. A million sign posts mark us as different from those who are raising us as "their own," and we are expected to ignore them all. Or at the very least, to act as if such things don't matter in the least.

We are told the rules of our new lives, as created for us by others, and some of us excel at following them. Some of us even go so far as to become participants in maintaining the fallacy, repeating our well rehearsed line: "My only real family is the one that raised me."

But on some level we know, we always know (even when we think we don't), that regardless of what we may have all agreed to pretend, the prescribed "reality" is not the whole truth.

Where do you like to do it?

Get your mind out of the gutter! I'm talking about blogging ... of course.

Here's my favorite spot: