#naam2015

[the-world-upon-my-shoulders]

#FliptheScript for NAM2015 Day 23

If you are an intercountry or transracial adoptee, talk about how you view yourself in relation to your families, your friends and peers, and the community you either grew up in or live in now. If you were adopted from a country outside the U.S., do you identify as an immigrant? Where/how do you find resources to fill the gaps in your cultural identity formation?

Growing up my brother and I plus one other family with 3 kids who were also transracial adoptees were the only people of color in the neighborhood. At elementary school I could easily count the number of children of color. In middle school I noticed there weren’t really many blended tables there was definitely a racial and economic division and I never knew where to sit, I never really felt entirely welcomed or like I fit anywhere.A few of the elementary school and middle school kids I would call friends. In high school there were still only a handful of Latin@ students and again it felt like I wasn’t welcome because of cultural and economic differences. The one non-adoptee middle class Colombian girl I met was so excited to find out I too was Colombian but, refused to talk to me again after finding out I had been adopted as an infant. Again I only had a handful of friends of color in High School, most of the time I just felt lost and adrift. A lot of the time I suppose I ended up feeling like an ambassador trying to bridge gaps between different groups when issues arose because I didn’t really fit anywhere.

The only other exposure I had to other Latin@s was the other 8 Colombian adoptees I grew up with. We had get a together every few years. I was only really ever close with 2 or 3 of the 8 and as we got older we have completely drifted apart. 

So that was it, that was the extent of my exposure and relationships with other kids and families of color growing up. Race never really came up in my house unless someone was being very obviously racist to my adoptive brother (Black Latino). Even then it was usually very quickly and quietly dealt with and then never really talked about again. Growing up as transracial adoptees we knew from a very young age why we looked different from our parents but beyond those basics no one ever really talked about the deep issues and history of race. I think everything we knew and learned at a young age came from books and school textbooks, nothing ever came from adults of color.

I remember in elementary school one day out of every year my mother would come in to my class to talk about how our family was different and too talk about Colombia. This always felt awkward to me as a kid but I never felt I could say anything to my mom. I didn’t realize until several years ago, as an adult, why exactly I felt so uncomfortable. I get that I often got a lot of questions and so she took to coming in to try and head off any problems (I still don’t recommend this, I think this is where putting kids in contact with adult adoptees really important). There’s this whole other piece of having this white woman come in to talk about the country and culture of my birth. To have my mom up in front of my class and me talking about a place she only really knows from books, the news, and the week or so she spent both times she came down to get my brother and then me, a place I had at that point never seen myself, and meanwhile at home we hardly ever talked about Colombian culture or history. Everything I knew about myself, my culture, my race, my ethnicity, my language, was taught to me by white non-Latin@s.

This continues to this day. My goal for the coming year(s) is to really figure out how I learn languages best and to become fluent enough in Spanish to seek out written and in person sources of language, culture, and history. At this point even after 3 years in middle school, 4 in high school and 4 in college, I still don’t have enough mastery to use Spanish language sources. So many of my sources are still either blogs by white adoptive parents with Colombian children or white ex-pat news sources. I don’t know how many people (who aren’t transracial/transnational adoptees) will really understand how awkward, to say the least, that feels.

I wrote a tweet the other day about how I had this sudden realization, after reading some general issues on race and racial identity on Twitter, that I think a lot of my struggle with my racial and ethnic identity probably had some elements of loyalty struggle. I think, consciously or subconsciously, I think I sometimes felt like I couldn’t really ask or talk about race, ethnicity, culture, etc. because that would somehow be disloyal to my parents. I feel like I would have, and maybe did, defend them if someone where to call them out for discrimination or racism even if they were in fact being racist because otherwise that would be disloyal, which then leads to all the fears adoptees have of “what happens if I’m disloyal?“ I actually do recall a few of the first times as an adult I have called my parents out for saying discriminatory things or microagressions and it was a little scary but probably way less scary for my adult self than it would have felt for my childhood self. I can’t really get more into it than that, it’s too new and too painful a realization.

As a kid other than the issues within my family of culture etc. I never really felt like I was non-American really. As an adult however I feel like I’m constantly reminded that I was not born here. Whether it’s random people asking where I’m from, did I grow up here, or the college academic adviser who even after telling her I was adopted as an infant praises me for how “good” my English is, or the questions and snafu with my citizenship papers when trying to sign up for the government healthcare website,etc there’s always some reminder that I wasn’t born here. So, yes I consider myself an immigrant and I am all too aware of the issues my fellow international adoptees are facing with potential deportation. So even though we are frequently left out of the conversation, and many of us probably leave ourselves out, on immigration…this is who we are and the government has no problems making sure we don’t forget. 

I am a transracial, transnational, immigrant, adult adoptee and I’m hoping more and more of us will start banding together make our voices heard in the larger conversations on race and immigration.  

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

The Foundation of a Promise http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2015/11/the-foundation-of-a-promise/ By Carrie Goldman, Friday at 8:22 am In honor of November being National Adoption Awareness Month, Portrait of an Adoption is hosting the fifth annual acclaimed series, 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days.  Designed to give a voice to the many different perspectives of adoption, this series will feature guest posts by people with widely varying experiences.   By Astrid Beemom There wasn’t much of a choice, really. At least that’s what I believed, and that is what was reinforced to me by the professionals. To keep my baby, it appeared, would mean destitution and poverty for the rest of her life. This sentiment was supported and encouraged by the social worker that made her weekly visits for the last few months of my pregnancy. I didn’t want to give up my baby, not at all. I wanted to keep her and fight for her, but that wasn’t really presented as a viable option that would be in her best interests. And so, with tears smearing the ink of the writing, I signed my name and, in the eyes of the law, became a legal stranger to someone that I had loved and nurtured for the past 9+ months of my life, her beginnings. The only thing that made this horrible nightmare bearable was the promise of an open relationship; visits, phone calls, updates, and pictures to assure me she was okay and to give us the opportunity to have a relationship, even if not the traditional mother and daughter type. It is the hope that I held onto and it was the talisman that got me through the darkest of nights those first few months. It is the only reason I was able to put my pen to that paper and seal her fate, our fate, forever. Without this promise I knew that the person I was, and the person I hoped to be, would cease to exist. Without this promise a piece of my soul would die and leave a scar where hope, faith and the ability to love unconditionally used to reside. Shortly before her second birthday, and after our second visit in her lifetime, I gave birth to my youngest child. Although I was still in a place of financial instability, it was a much improved situation than it had been two years prior. Regardless, in a panic, adoption was once again brought to the front of my mind. Relinquishing a second child would be hard but if I could keep my babies together, in the same family, at least they would have each other; sure as anything, full-blooded sisters. My heart was in the right place and my intentions were good. My heart, however, could not take the pain and trauma of relinquishing another child, as much as I didn’t want to hurt the people who had lovingly became the mother and father to my most precious gift, my daughter. I still remember the last thing they said to me when they walked out the door, “You’ll never see her again.” Words born from a place of deep hurt, understandably. As much as those words stung, I still felt guilt for the pain I had caused. That pain, however, would have been nothing compared to the emotional death that would have transpired with becoming a birthmother to not one, but two children. Words were said, in haste, on both sides. Angry e-mails written by two women who were both passionate about their families and passionate about a little girl they both loved. Eventually, with time, things calmed down and politeness ensued. Updates about the little girl became fewer and far between but, thankfully, never ended. It seemed as though all was well with the little girl and as long as she was well, I was content. Until she wasn’t okay. Updates started to come more often and questions were asked. “Did you take anything during your pregnancy that you didn’t disclose?” Words such as “defiant,” “oppositional,” and “hyper” were being used to describe the little girl. I tried not to take offense to the question of any drug or alcohol use because I understood. I tried to explain that it was in her genes. That seemed sufficient, I was thanked, and everyone moved on. Updates became more steady and consistent. A possible visit was mentioned, after 5 years with none, and I had hope for a little while, until I realized it was something that was probably not going to be brought up again. Five more years passed as they always had. The little girl was becoming a young woman, and, as promised, I had not seen her again since that day ten years prior. I began to feel that I should just be thankful for what little I was given, never mind the sacred promise that was made between two women, two mothers. I hid inside of my shell, talked about how great adoption was and how wonderful I was for doing such a “selfless” thing for my child and a couple who wanted to be parents. Something inside of me, however, challenged everything that I had been told was true about adoption. For two years, I explored these feelings. I realized that I had been faking it all these years. I began to explore emotions I never allowed myself to before, and what I revealed to myself was making me angry. What is a choice if there are no other options? I had no other options. Not only that, the foundation in which my adoption plan was made on was the promise of a relationship with my child. No awkward reunion or getting to know each other was supposed to transpire. I was just always supposed to be a part of her life. The shoe dropped with the discovery that her “oppositional” and “defiant” ways had sentenced her to two years away from her home in a behavioral boarding school thousands of miles from where she had lived her whole life. I started to question everything. Was she having issues with identity? Was it her adoption? How have questions about her adoption been handled between her and her parents? This was not what I wanted for my child at all. Yet, I was helpless to do anything. I began to have nightmares. Horrible dreams that she was in distress and I couldn’t get to her. I equate these two years of her life with the very first days after I had lost her to adoption. My old friend, panic attack, began to make appearances frequently and I absolutely could not find peace in my heart or my mind. The only thing that gave me any comfort was being granted permission to write to her by her parents. The first communication I would have with her, even if one-sided, since she was so small. I began to write to her every three months. I believed that would be sufficient enough for her to get an idea of who I was and what I was like. I didn’t want to write too much because I didn’t want to overwhelm her or make her parents feel like I was stepping on their toes. I wanted to make sure they were still secure in their roles as her parents. I sent photos once in a while, a picture book once, and made her a Life Book (sort of like a scrap book about an adoptee’s birth family and their birth story). My only comfort was knowing that she was receiving these items and my letters and that in some way I may be able to help her with any identity or adoption issues she may be having. I encouraged my other two daughters to write to her as well, and they did. My husband, however, felt he had no right and stayed silent. All the while her mother was tender and loving and telling me that she “just wasn’t ready to write back yet, but hopefully one day she will be.” One glorious day, a package arrived. It contained a handwritten letter to my husband, her birthfather, from our relinquished daughter, a letter from her mother, and some pictures. We cried, cried and cried some more. To hold something in our hands that she had held was an amazing feeling. Part of me was sad that she had not chosen to write to me but I thought it made sense. My husband had never written to her before and she was asking him to in her letter. Maybe she was willing to go outside of her comfort zone in hopes she would receive a letter from him as well. She was right. It worked. The last line of her letter is something I read and re-read on nights I’m having a hard time. “I know I don’t know you, but something inside of me loves you anyway.” For a short time, there was renewed hope. The letter had again mentioned a visit the next time they happened to be in our state. Even if that was a year or two away it was something. Something is definitely better than nothing. This next part will be vague, but you must trust me that these are the facts, even if I cannot reveal how I know they are. I learned that my daughter had not been getting my letters. I learned that I did not get the one she wrote to me, written long before my husband’s letter. I learned that she thought I had been ignoring her and that there is something she must have done to make me not want to communicate with her. I learned that people I once trusted were now people that had not only betrayed me, but my daughter’s heart. She was led to believe I had received her letter and then was led to believe I had been ignoring it. I cannot fathom why. I do not understand, as a parent, why you would put hurt in your child’s heart for the sake of your own insecurities. Again, it felt as if a knife was put into my heart. Betraying me is one thing. Betraying my child is a totally different beast altogether. To think that precious little girl would ever think for one moment that I didn’t love her or want to know her made me weep. I’m not sure what the long-term plan is here, from their point of view. I wonder if they’ve hidden my letters away to give to her when she’s older. But then I think, “why not tell her that I’ve written but they don’t feel she’s prepared emotionally to read my letters?” If there was no intention of giving her the letters, I wonder why I was granted permission to write them in the first place. I wonder if there is even a plan at all. I wonder if maybe, initially, everyone was okay with the letter writing but then someone changed their mind and didn’t know how to tell me. I wonder if my letters are simply thrown out with the garbage. I also wonder why my husband’s letter got through and his letter to her. None of it makes sense to me right now. What I do know is that there is a woman-child out there somewhere who is very much wanting and needing to know where she comes from. I do know that there will come a day that she will decide for herself. I do know that the best thing for her is that all of her parents, adoptive and biological alike, get along and work together for what’s in her best interests, no matter how old she gets. I still hope and pray that this is possible one day. I hope that she is never put into the position to “choose.” I know, from my side, that will never be the case but, given the history, I cannot say the same about the other. My experience has taught me many things. Most importantly, the only way to truly influence the fate of your child is to be their parent. I’ve learned that adoptive parents are not perfect. They are often misguided and sometimes react from places of deep insecurity. Not all, but many. There are certainly a few good ones out there, a few which truly “get it”. I’ve learned that life circumstances can change, for birth parents and for adoptive parents. No one is immune from divorce, financial hardship, or illnesses. Just as no one is immune to success, a lucky break, and the fruits of hard work. I’ve learned that it is very rare indeed to find a woman whose sole reason of contemplating adoption is because she just doesn’t want her child. Almost all women want to parent their children. What all women don’t have, however, is a support system to help them do that. Sometimes it’s as simple as someone stepping in saying, “You know, it will be hard, but you can do this.” There are certainly cases where adoption is the best route. Ask yourself this question, though, is adoption about finding a home for a child who truly needs it, or is it about finding a baby for a family who wants one? If just one person had reached out to me and said, “I believe in you. It will be hard, but you can do it” then I wouldn’t be sharing this story with you today. Astrid Beemom is a married mother of four parented children and one relinquished daughter. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, and in her free time, she is a search angel, helping to reunite adoptees with their birth families, and vice versa, as well as an adoption reform activist. She is one of the founding members of a grassroots organization called Saving Our Sisters, which is currently awaiting non-profit status. Saving Our Sisters helps give pregnant women considering adoption the resources to successfully parent their children, if they so choose.

http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2015/11/the-foundation-of-a-promise/

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

And too often the reason, that no one should have to help these women with their "mistake", is used. Which is especially heinous when you consider that abuse, age disparate relationships, reproductive coercion and rape often play role in the pregnancies of the young and vulnerable. "I agree with that but it seems off that prospective parents who can afford the fees aren't getting the moral blame that parents who can't, but are looking for crowdfunding are." I would say that I do actually think there is culpability in both, and in the societal narrative that feeds this. Biological parents are told to buck up and endure the horror of losing their own children because they don't have enough money, and if they REALLY love their kids they will make the ultimate sacrifice for them. Society acts like there isn't enough money to help when it's actually a willful choice to not help. If you just got 10,000 donation money, it wasn't even yours, you didn't even earn it. Why not just sponsor a family/families? I can understand that potential adoptive parents may be too emotional from their own issues and from society narratives that innately tend to match up the suffering of infertile as equal or even greater than the horror of watching people walk away with your child while your nipples still drip with milk for them, while your body screams to bring them back to you. Many stories on adoption shows these two forms of suffering as equal or even that the sadness potential adoptive might feel if they are unable to adopt a particular child they had their sights on. Pre-birth matching is considered exploitative by many in the adoption reform movement, and it's favored by agencies because it more often secures a placement, ensuring the pregnant mom sees how much better and more resourced these people are then her, forms a bond with them, and feel indebted for relieving their "suffering" that she would cause by keeping her own child. I still think human rights are wack when we are fighting as communities to help get money to people who want to take other people's kids before we will fight to get that money to the families themselves. Taking part in using the charity of others when the original mothers are not allowed to in order to take their babies really is an additional level of disregard for the power being used to harm another for personal gain. I think it's very hard to stop ones self from participating in unjust systems which is part of why I like laws and protections put in place for the vulnerable rather than asking people to behave better because for one many just don't care, and for another even those who care can struggle with denying themselves things they want very very badly the market is all to happy to sell them at someone else's expense. I understand that very well as it's how many heinous human rights abuses that many of us have a hard time separating from. I think if we fixed the ethics of the system itself, it would benefit the potential adoptive parents who actually do want adopt ethically because these abuses are certainly not on them alone. Anyone with privilege should examine their role in an abusive system and work to not participate if possible, but since that will always have limitations, policy changes and regulations can have even bigger impacts. When society is really quick to say that adoptive parents have no obligation to support some random family, it should also be noted that despite the fact that pregnant women in a crisis should have no obligation to alleviate some random families desires for a child- yet only one person in this equation is being asked to do a horrific sacrifice for the other. And it's not the adoptive parents we're asking to suffer for the benefit of others.

posted by xarnop at 2:06 PM on November 12

[the-world-upon-my-shoulders]

Flip the Script NAM2015 Day 18 Adoption Trauma

Nancy Verrier coined the term “primal wound” to describe the pain infants and very young children experience when they are permanently separated from their biological mothers. Others have said that some adopted children may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A recent study also found that adopted people are more likely to attempt suicide.

Talk about your thoughts on trauma as it relates to adoption. Do you believe adopted children suffer a primal wound? Have you struggled with anxiety, depression, or other issues as a result of your adoption? Do you think trauma in adoption can be avoided, and if so, how? If you have ever sought counseling for issues related to your adoption, talk about how that experience went for you. Did you have difficulty finding a qualified therapist? Did you find therapy helpful? How can counselors and therapists better support adoptees?

I do believe adopted children suffer a primal wound. How each individual handles that trauma seems to vary. I wasn’t able to write on the prompt about talking to other adoptees and how we approach each other but I feel like keeping in mind that we don’t all cope with our traumas the same way is important. Some people are going to face their past trauma right away, some people are going to come into it slowly when they’re ready, and others are just never going to feel like it’s safe enough to do that and that’s fine if they are ok with that. I don’t want to be one of those people who gets pushy about “oh, you need to confront the truth!” I remember how scary it was, how painful, actual physical pain at times, it was to delve into that trauma and I don’t think anyone should ever feel pushed into that or like they are wrong for not wanting to go on that journey. I was lucky to have the time and energy, I was lucky to eventually find someone to help me to go through that trauma again. Not everyone has all of those things.

I suspected in middle school or high school that I had something like PTSD but you know people typically believe only soldiers get that. I knew as a toddler something wasn’t quite right or at least that’s what I believed and I was terrified of being found out and sent away or locked up in “the loony bin/nut house.” I on and of went to therapy starting in middle school but I didn’t want to talk, so I just rambled about nothing but gave enough to make it seem like we were accomplishing something. I was in my mid twenties when I started to struggle with other things from my past and it just kept domino-ing until I couldn’t ignore where it all started. Until that point I swore up and down my adoption had no affect on me, how could it? I had been roughly 2 months old when I finally came here to the states, babies don’t remember things like that!

I think it really started to hit me that I was wrong about that, that I had just been avoiding what I knew in order to protect myself, when I started taking an adolescent developmental psychology course. I had taken regular intro psychology classes before so the basics of human development, the reports on babies in orphanages who were given basic care and no human contact beyond what was necessary, the Harlow’s monkey experiments (do baby monkeys separated from their mothers prefer food from a wire “monkey mom” or no food but a soft warm cloth “monkey mom”) etc. In this class though we had to cover and study it all in detail. I began to realize all the stages of brain, emotional, personality/identity development I never had even in the short 2 months or so of my life (because those two months are not short when it comes to development, it happens fast). I began to think back on the things I saw when I visited my orphanage when I was 14, and the photos my parents had took on the two trips they took to pick up my adopted brother and myself. I began to realize how deep my adoption actually ran in my life.

I was originally diagnosed around that time with PTSD, when I finally found a therapist who specialized in trauma it changed to PTSD due to complex trauma, sometimes now referred to as Complex PTSD or C-PTSD. This due to the fact that over the course of my life I have had multiple exposures to trauma and due to that I have had significant issues with not just PTSD symptoms but issues with my sense of self (various types of dissociation), changes to the wiring of my brain, and impact on my health. It took a long time and a very good therapist for me to understand how this could all be. Some days it just clicks, “yes of course this all makes sense” and some days, like right now, it just hits me like a brick. I’m not sure there is ever going to be any getting over the weight of that, that this all starts way back with my little one day old self.

For me therapy was necessary, I was not in a good place, I was not safe, I couldn’t deal with it on my own. It took years to find a good therapist or at l least one I felt safe really talking about my actual thoughts to and even then that took warming up to. I found it really helpful though to have someone who was trained in trauma and kept upt to date on the latest brain science ect even though she wasn’t necessarily an adoption specialist, it was helpful for me to have someone who was willing to teach more about how brains and memory works, it was helpful to me to be able to think about those things and come back and ask questions. Some of those questions for me were “I am realizing I block out a lot of my basic needs signals. I could go a day or more without eating, not because I forget but because I either never feel hungry or because when I do notice I ignore it until it stops. When I notice it now and pause to see what I’m thinking, I’m aware I feel like a nuance, that I shouldn’t be having these needs. I’m thinking about how i was cared for in the time I was in the orphanage and thinking could it be because I had to wait my turn to have my basic needs attend too?” So for me it was helpful to have someone to bounce those thoughts off, who didn’t give me their answer but said here’s what we know about how the brain and nervous system wire themselves what do you think? (For me I decided that seemed to fit what I was feeling and I’ve done a lot of work rewiring those signals, they aren’t perfect due to a lot of factors but I feel they work better than they did and I do still think that, for me, not having one on one care was the starting point for those signals getting suppressed)

I remember the first time I actually let myself cry. For years and years ever since I could remember I would never really let myself cry. I always thought it was just because I felt it was a weakness but as I worked on my trauma issues I slowly began to realize that I was really afraid to actually cry. I sat there that night feeling like I needed to cry and trying to hold back but this time I was aware of my thoughts, I realized they weren’t new but that I had never really listened and probably with good reason. “If I start crying I will never stop”, “If I start crying, I’m going to die”, “I’m never going to be able to stop and I will die from crying”, the more I really listened the more I became aware of how incredibly tiny I suddenly felt. This was far enough into my therapy work that I knew what was happening and I knew that instead of doing everything to shut that message out, I need to find my compassionate side, I needed to tell myself what I’d tell one of my little kids at work. “I’m not going to die”, “I will stop, this will not last forever”, “this might feel scary but I am not going to die from crying”, “I have lots of things I can use to help comfort me”, “I’m not alone, I’m not going to be left to cry forever”, “If I’m really scared or it’s too much there’s people who will help me, I’m not going to cry forever, I’m not going to die crying”. So, I finally cried and I won’t lie it hurt and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to go through that but at the end I learned crying can stop without forcing yourself to stop or emotionally beating yourself up, I learned that although my infant self may not have always been cared for or comforted immediately, I know now how to do those things for myself, I now have a voice and can ask directly for what I need, I can now seek out people who will help me, and I learned that after you’re done crying it can feel really good. Feeling safe to cry is a work in progress for me, even years later but I am glad to know I won’t actually die even if it is intense and painful sometimes. This is why I could never comment on another adoptee’s “unwillingness” to confront their trauma, we do what we feel is safest for us even if we don’t recognize that’s what we are doing.

As infants and young children we may not have memory as we do once we have a good vocabulary to describe our feelings, needs, and the world but we do have physical memory and memory from our senses about how we felt. Sometimes we knew what they are when they pop up, sometimes we don’t, sometimes we pay attention to them, sometimes we ignore them, sometimes we know what they are, sometimes we have no idea what “that” was, sometimes we get by just fine without addressing them, sometimes either we feel the need to adress them or they become too intrusive in our lives.

Honestly, I don’t think there is any avoiding the trauma of adoption I think there’s only how everyone involved addresses and acknowledges it and how those involved, professionals, and the public are educated. The only avoiding is putting more effort, by everyone, into helping people from feeling like they have no other choice but to place their children up for adoption, by helping families and extended families get the services and resources to stay together. I feel like I should clarify this last bit… I don’t think that all adoptees are “disordered”, I feel like that’s something that gets tossed about outside the adoptee circle and I wholeheartedly disagree with the over lableling, mislabeling/made up labeling of adoptees, but I do think all adoption involves a type of trauma and as I said each adoptee will handle that differently than another. I think there needs to be more support for adoptee therapist/adoptees pursuing degrees in these fields and providing families with the names of adoptee therapist and encouraging them to seek care early and to let kids know that there’s nothing wrong or bad about them if they go to see a therapist.

I have said this on Twitter but I feel the need again as I finish this with so much still on my mind, still unsaid. My thoughts are with all my fellow adoptees, those who took their own lives, those who have been institutionalized by their adoptive families (or of their own will), those who have been kicked out of their homes or left by adoptive families due to issues with trauma, mental health, or perceived “disorders” (aka you did not fit expectations of your family). I know far too many.

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

This month on the 4th the Department of State's Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Michele Bond issued a statement on the occasion of National Adoption Month, which is celebrated every year in N

“ Posted: 11/16/2015 2:40 pm EST Updated: 11/16/2015 2:59 

This month on the 4th the Department of State's Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Michele Bond issued a statement on the occasion of National Adoption Month, which is celebrated every year in November. She writes: "I want to highlight that maintaining intercountry adoption as a viable option for children in need throughout the world is a top priority for the Department of State." And then she writes: "We are advancing new initiatives for intercountry adoption and strengthening our relationships with the adoption community. We appreciate hearing from you about ways that we can continue these efforts." 

There is no doubt in the Department of State that intercountry adoption is good thing, a child welfare measure that not only has to be supported, but even has to be promoted.Where the Assistant Secretary talks about the communication with the adoption community she assumes that the whole community shares State's positive take on adoption. She is wrong. For sure: adoption agencies, adoption lawyers and many international adopting parents, who are all depending on the successful transfer of kids from foreign countries, see adoption as great way to help children in need. 

But the adoption community consists not only of mediators and adoptive parents; the main and most important constituencies are first (or birth) families and adoptees, people without whom the community just not exists. Many of the latter adoptionland denizens are not so much in favor of intercountry adoption: first mothers and fathers suffered under the loss of a child and adoptees have to deal with the trauma of abandonment and displacement; many have observed or experienced as well fraud, corruption and child trafficking in their countries, countries that seldom have a reliable infrastructure to protect them from the power of western currencies.

Many countries where the State Department supports and promotes this peculiar kind of welfare, are also not in favor of intercountry adoption either. A report from a pan-African conference on child welfare in 2012 called for "a reversal of the current trend of resorting to intercountry adoption as an easy and convenient option for alternative care in Africa, and for giving absolute priority to enabling all children in Africa to remain with their families and their communities.' Grassroots organizations, not only in African countries like Uganda and Congo, but also in countries like Cambodia and Haiti are working indeed hard and successfully to find an alternative for intercountry adoption by supporting families, extended families and communities to take care of their own children. It is not hard, and should not be hard for the Department of State, to choose this way of helping children in need, as the preferred way.

Michele Bond's Happy National Adoption Month statement asks for answers to some burning questions, which are implied above. Here they are:

1. Would it not be appropriate to include the other denizens of adoptionland, who don't see maintaining intercountry adoption as a 'top priority' and who support other ways to help children in need, in your communications, and ask them at your table? 2. What is the size of State's annual budget for intercountry adoption, and what is the number of international adoptees entering the US? 3. Can you give an indication how many children could be helped in-country with the current 'adoption'- budget? In a rough calculation, published elsewhere, my sources in Uganda estimated that social workers need an amount of $500 per child to succesfully reunite a child with his family or community for the long term.Let's hope the Department of State will surprise us with serious answers in this month, which is not a happy one for all in adoptionland.

Follow Frank Ligtvoet on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_ligtvoetMORE:International AdoptionInternational Adoption PolicyAdoptionState DepartmentCambodiaIntercountry AdoptionAlternative CareUgandaHaitiAdoption FraudCongoMichele Bond”

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

No one is "meant" to be a parent. Parenting happens. There are good parents and there are bad parents. There will always be children who are not going to be raised by the parents who gave them life for a variety of reasons. But all involved in those situations deserve openness and honesty at every turn.

Anonymous

[confessionsofbirthmothers]

I have to admit to some judgyness on my part.  I struggle with judging adoptive and especially potential adoptive parents.  I have many people that I care for who are adoptive parents but at this point in my life I can’t excuse them.  I look at my daughter and her friends.  They are so young and vulnerable but full of bravado.  And I realize that my son’s adoptive parents were very close to my age now when they met me at the hospital and left with my son.  I was my daughter’s age.   It kills me that they saw my young face with my red rimmed eyes and still took my son.  They never knew what happened to me after.  They never knew if I had any support to be OK.  And I don’t think they gave it a thought.