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| My grandparents grave...I took this photo at my father's funeral |
"Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility." -Robin Morgan
By Trace Hentz
For adoptees, I think it is OUR right to know both sides of our ancestry and family and clan system. If I could redo adoption, when a child is adopted, the adoptee keeps their name and knows every detail, including their medical history and ancestry. When you adopt a child, you are borrowing them. They are someone else's child. You don't own them. But you agree to parent them to adulthood.
AND it must be our legal right to know our parentage! Closed adoption creates a fantasy family, and fantasy creates trauma which is not healthy for anyone.
For me the only way to find my father Earl Bland was to contact my mother Helen Thrall - who didn't want to meet me. (I was a secret and she had not told others.) After the shock and rejection wore off, two years later, I sent her a threatening letter. Helen wrote me back, gave me his name and I jumped on a plane and met my dad in Illinois.
Then I met relatives and learned who I am.
Absolutely NO ONE should have to live a mystery, live a lie and not know their identity.
Why would a mother not tell us a father's name? Is it because they were ashamed in some way? Grow up, people. The scandal is in her head and burying the truth won't help. It's a "belief" problem, not an adoptee issue. Adoptees grow into adults and need the truth to live our lives.
Rejection by a mother is one thing but her withholding who your father is should be a crime. She should not have that power over us. She doesn't have that right!
I did DNA with Earl since we were not sure Helen was telling the truth. Yup, 99.9 percent, Earl is my dad.
Adoptees live much better knowing the truth.
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