Twitter+ #NAAM2021

 

You wouldn't tell a black person not to talk about racism. You wouldn't tell a gay person not to talk about gay rights. You would t tell a woman not to talk about feminism.

But Adoptees had just better not talk about adoption. 🤦🏻‍♀️ #NAAM #AdopteeVoices

— 💣⚰️The Ungrateful Adoptee ⚰️💣 (@IHateAdoption1) November 15, 2021

Issue 002 of YOU ARE HOLDING THIS: an abolitionist zine for and by adopted, fostered, and trafficked people has arrived!

Order yours here: https://t.co/zSDbO1UPzq#NAAM #FFY #AdopteeVoices https://t.co/inaDXzd5je

— Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez (they/them/elle) (@b_lts_) November 21, 2021

The knowing is the most important part for me.

Folks not separated from family sometimes lament their own harmful families when I talk about the significance of relationships with first family, not acknowledging that they have context to know & define their family relationships https://t.co/Yv1hmOk8pF

— Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez (they/them/elle) (@b_lts_) November 23, 2021

 

Adoptee and adoption Twitter: After a long process of doing DNA tests and family tree research, I am meeting my birth father today for the first time in over 20 years. Any tips or advice? I don't feel too nervous, but I'm not really sure how much I should ask about.

— mark (@MapleSystemsRd) November 23, 2021

 

Ken Burns: “Being American means reckoning with our violent history”

November 23, 2021 Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

Video here.

 

50 Ways PTSD Undermines Intimate Relationships #NAAM2021

Grief may not be always considered in relation to PTSD. But what happens when you have PTSD and go to therapy? At a certain point, you come across a great loss that was sitting underneath the trauma all along. You lost someone you love. You lost your appearance due to injury. You lost an opportunity. You lost your innocence. You lost love. 

READ

Triggered #NAAM2021

 

Good Read: https://www.dailybastardette.com/my-nam-basket-was-poked-sorry-adoption-is-not-normal-and-adoptees-dont-have-normal-lives/

Highway 43 in Alberta. 7310 flags to represent the missing children that have been found. 🧡#EveryChildMatters pic.twitter.com/disUeDioAu

— Wambli Ska Wicasa 🦅🪶 (@LakotaWambli) November 13, 2021

Sealing birth certificates is a human right’s violation. #AdopteeVoices

— Victoria Holmes (@spyturtle96) November 13, 2021

 

I found out I was adopted 22 years ago when I was 36. To this day, I’m still not ok with the secrecy. I’m not ok with the lost years with my first family. I’m not ok with everyone thinking our “family” is great. I’m just not. It hurts. #adoptee #LDA #LateDiscoveryAdoptee

— That_LDA_Guy (@ThatLda) November 14, 2021

 

By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

The internet is full of adoptees writing (some yelling) about their loss. Like on twitter: Being Adopted Means @Being_Adopted

We know the loss is real.  Our ability to grieve is difficult and different for an adoptee.  It shapes us but perhaps biggest is the loss of mother.

The loss and grief are a constant, a background noise in your spirit. You don't wake up one day and say the loss is gone. It changes you in many ways, and makes you question "can I make this internal anguish stop?"  Being an adoptee becomes your theme song.  It never goes away.

This month is Nati onal Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM2021) and if you read twitter or other social media, you may find yourself triggered at all the loss and pain adoptees are sharing.  It happens to me.  It happens every year in the month of November especially. When I started writing about adoption, I had never heard of being triggered.  It means you have a bad sad hurt feeling. The pain seems bigger whenever I read ADOPTEE VOICES.

Something and someone is missing in your life. That affects you. That triggers you.  Reaching out to other adoptees and reading what they say can make you feel less alone. That is also the reason this blog exists. You are not alone. There are hundreds (millions) of us. We needed to find each other and it worked. (Social media helped.)

There is no doubt that American Indian and First Nation and Aborigines in Australia were the target of cultural genocide.  Children were stolen, children were sent to strangers, our identity was erased. To deny this now is absurd. It happened. Even if the people who write history didn't tell us.

This blog or website is for you to find others. And learn what happened. It may be triggering, of course.

For me, finding out why my mother Helen gave me away to strangers, this did not magically end the trauma and loss I feel and felt. 

Every relationship an adoptee has will be affected.  I asked other adoptees. The overwhelming sense of loss lies under the skin, in the brain, in the heart. That loss can't be grieved in a way like when you lose a relative to death.

I can only say I try to be kind and remind myself I am OK now, I am safe now. I go minute by minute...

Adoption is trauma - from pre verbal to the grave, annual, seasonal, festivities, life events, daily, second by second, never going away, one big fucked up trauma to satisfy Adopters needs to play at parenting. #AdoptionIsTrauma #NAAM #YouCanAdopt #AdopteeVoices

— cactus_mother 🌵 #adoptee (@cactus__mother) November 11, 2021

"My baby was stolen" #NAAM2021

 

NEW SPECIAL FEATURE: A religious youth home in the 1970s and 80s took babies from teen moms and put them up for adoption

Women are still searching for what happened to babies they say were “Stolen”https://t.co/U2XmuHXpL2 @nbcnews

— Tyler Kingkade (@tylerkingkade) November 11, 2021

 

DALTON, Ga. — On a humid evening in August, Nancy Davis Womac paced anxiously on her front deck. Her hands trembled as she stared at a text message from her firstborn daughter, Melanie Spencer, saying that she was minutes away.

The two had never met.

Forty-three years ago, Womac was pregnant and living in an orphanage when she was sent to the Bethesda Home for Girls on the outskirts of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It was run by Baptist preachers who forced girls to memorize Bible chapters and scrub carpets by hand. Staff members beat the girls with wooden boards if they broke a rule. 

Nancy Davis Womac waits for her daughter to arrive on Aug. 3. (Brock Stoneham / NBC News)

 KEEP READING

Reframing Adoption Stories #NAAM2021

 

Alice Stephens is a fiction writer. She is also an adoptee, born to a Korean mother but raised by a white American family. Stephens shares her humble opinion on “parent narratives” and how she learned to become the subject of her own adoption story, rather than the object.

WATCH: Author Alice Stephens on reframing adoption stories | PBS NewsHour

Who is Delusional? What is Stockholm Syndrome? #NAAM2021

(written in 2014) Updated in 2021

By Trace L Hentz

 

"...I’ve been thinking about this concept for a long time. Adopters, when it comes right down to it, count on Stockholm Syndrome. Children who don’t succumb are labelled RAD.
Whenever I encounter an infertile woman so desperate to be a mother that she’ll bring home a stranger’s baby and force it to live in her fantasy, I always secretly wonder what she would do if she were single and desperate to be married.
Would she drag some strange man home and force him to watch the Notebook and cuddle? And if she did, would society think it was beautiful and precious?  Or would they think she was delusional and dangerous?  Rhetorical question, of course.  But why? Why is what is clearly a crime between adults viewed in such an overwhelmingly positive way when one of the parties is a child?..."  - Renee Musgrove 

 

This comment by Renee has been in my head (since 2014) then I did research on Stockholm Syndrome!

 

What was legally thrust upon us as adoptees is an illusion/fantasy, right?  From babyhood, we are supposed to pretend these are our only parents -- years pass and if they raised us, they ARE our parents. They are the only people we know that intimately so we call them mom and dad. We don't know anything else. Of course, years pass...

 

Then one day you wake up and think, "What about my ancestry, what about my medical history?" and you start to feel despondent since you can't ask your "parents" since you found out they get upset when you ask about your identity (We chose you, you're ours...) -- and even if you do ask, too often they know absolutely nothing. Why is that?

 

Eventually you realize that you are really not "their" child. You're not related in any physical sense or biology.  Then the adoptee realizes and finds out quickly enough that lawmakers (and your adoptive parents) are on the side of secrecy - that they don't want you to know who you are and they DEMAND privacy for the mother who created you.  REALLY?

On my writing blog LARA, I wrote about the ADOPTION EXPERIMENT and then my friend Cully Ray did a guest post about Stockholm Syndrome: which is when you are abducted and start to identify with your captors.

 

Cully wrote:

As do Stockholm Syndrome victims, these Adoptees have great difficulty identifying and expressing their feelings, tragically some are unable to go on with their lives.
Some of the effects that are seen in adoptees and foster children who are objectified by their adoptive parents, foster care givers, and/or communities and peers are:

* Denial of actions by the adoptive parents or foster caregivers that make the child feel inadequate or physically hurt.
* Co-dependency
* Substance abuse
* Minimizing their feelings – self-sacrifice
* Disassociation with the idea of natural family or parent-child relationships
* Failure to make realistic relationships in both personal and professional life
* Internalizing – blame and guilt for things they have/had no control over
* Over achieving – fear of not being “good enough”
* Anger/Rage/Overwhelming depression often triggered by birthdays or celebrations
* Suicide

No matter how much I write then think about this - we still come back to the lawmakers still demanding sealed adoptions and secrecy again and again. 

What about you? Do you think they are delusional?

 

From my post Adoption Experiment:

The modern process of breaking the spirit of an expectant mother for the purpose of stealing her infant, reminds me of that old film taken by Hitler’s doctors of their own medical experiments, whereby they left a parent locked alone in a room with their baby, but without food or drink. They watched and filmed through a one-way mirror as the adult victim unraveled. It only took a couple of days for the adults to crack completely. In the same way a vulnerable expectant woman is easy pickings for the public and its press. The North American press behaves just like Hitler’s doctors, carrying out goulash experiments on defenseless victim mothers, who are unable to fight back or protect themselves. The North American press appears to be in love with adoption. Or maybe in love with the wash of money always associated with slavery?  -Joss Shawyer, Death by Adoption

What you need: Court Order Petition

 written in 2012 for this blog (Nation Adoption Awareness Month - #NAAM)

What you need: Court Order Petition

Hi! I wrote about this in my memoir One Small Sacrifice but I am going to post it again. (p.s. what is in your adoption file will AMAZE you)

Since it's National Adoption Awareness Month and we still need our information, adoptees can petition the state court for your adoption file! You get a court order to request a copy of your adoption file! A judge has to agree to release it to you!

You have to pay for it ($75-100+) but what is in the adoption file are documents about your birth, your social worker, where you were placed in foster care, who they were, and even doctor appointments you had prior to your adoption.

What is in my adoption file:

1 - State of Wisconsin Order for Hearing and Investigation, where my adoptive parents petition in writing to adopt me: Laura Jean Thrall and the court ordered Catholic Welfare Agency of Superior, Wisconsin and the State of Wisconsin to investigate, as required by law.

2 – The letter to my parent’s lawyer from the Wisconsin State Supervisor of Adoptions, Division for Child and Youth who wrote, “According to our incomplete record, it appears this child was committed permanently to the Catholic Child Welfare Bureau and that agency placed this child in this home. If that is true, no action is necessary on the State Dept. of Public Welfare. We are sure that if our assumption is incorrect, the agency will so notify us and appropriate action of the state dept. can be taken upon receipt of the investigator’s report.” Dated June 9, 1958.
ALSO in my file, the state of Wisconsin sent a letter to the Judge in Superior, Wisc. acknowledging the date of my adoption hearing: June 24, 1958. The investigator was the Catholic Welfare Agency who had complete control of me.

3- Report: Movements of Child while Under Care: Catholic Infant Home, Foster Care in Superior (with their name and address) and Foster-Adoptive Home (DeMeyer).

4-Certificate of Baptism: First Baptism: 9-18-56 (requested by my mother Helen) and a New Baptismal Certificate was issued on 2-21-1964. Wow – Catholics get this done quick and recorded. Up on the top of the form is Legal Status: Illegitimate and Mother’s Name: Helen Thrall. My Birthplace: St. Paul, MN. In my adoption file is the signed “Certificate of Baptism, Cathedral of St. Paul,” listing my adoptive parents and my new name! It is signed by Rev. Barr and dated March 10, 1959 when in fact I had been baptized in Sept. 1956. This falsified baptismal certificate and my amended birth certificate are two fake documents made to hide my adoptee status – in case my parents decide not to tell me I am adopted.

5- Hospital Discharge Report: The Physical Record of Mother. She was admitted to the Catholic Infant Home on May 23, 1956. Her home address is in Chicago, IL. She delivered on 9-9-56. She stayed in the hospital 5 days until 9-14-56. Children living: One. (This is the proof Helen had already had a child who was also given up for adoption before me!) Delivery: Normal, spontaneous (Helen had an lml episiotomy with no complications). On 5-25-56, Helen’s blood work: Her RH factor was positive. Helen was allergic to penicillin. No Sauk Vaccine given. (I am also allergic to penicillin.) ALSO: The Child (me) Physical Report: full-term, 10 lbs., 3 oz., 21 ½ in., Head Circumference 14” and Chest Circumference 14 ½ in. I was discharged from the hospital on 9-26-1956 as a normal female infant. Social Worker: Miss Underhill.

6- Catholic Infant Home Report – Their Address, Nurse: Sister Enid, Physical Exam at Birth and Physical Exam on Discharge from Hospital to Infant Home, 2 doctors signed. Feeding: Similac every 4 hours. (Obviously no breast milk for me!)

7- Medical Exam (Infant to Two Years, Wisconsin Child Center) – Laura Jean Thrall in Foster Care, General physical: Ok with Mild eczema on face. March 12, 1957.

8- Medical Exam – July 15, 1957 – now named Tracy DeMeyer, General Development: Normal and lists all the various immunizations and vaccines I had. (My adoptive mother told me I was covered in rashes and bald on the back of my head when they got me.)

9- State of Juvenile Court, Vilas Country, Wisconsin, Parental Consent to Termination of Parental Rights, dated December 5, 1956. Miss Alverna Underhill (social worker) is the witness. "Father’s consent is not necessary In case of illegitimate child." Signed by my mother Helen Thrall.

10- Leo Block, Director of Catholic Welfare Agency appears before Judge Robert Curran on May 28, 1958, in the matter of Adoption of Laura Jean Thrall and Mr. Block consents to my adoption on this legal form. Block’s reason for consent: for the best interest of the child.

11 – Form letter: Request to the State of Minnesota Dept. of Public Welfare on April 9, 1958, states that Catholic Welfare Agency needs a copy of my birth record to be used as proof of birth to protect the interest of this child at the time of placement of adoption. Required fee enclosed $1.00. Signed Jean Johnson, Supervisor Protection Unit. Certified Photostat April 16, 1958 sent to Social Worker Miss Underhill.

12- Copy of Investigation, submitted by Catholic Welfare Agency, done March 17, 1957 through May 28, 1958 to the County Court in Wisconsin. Describes The Child (me) and Mother of Child (Helen). INFORMATION NECESSARY FOR CHANGING BIRTH CERTIFICATE in bold type. This is the story I wanted – all the details and dates.  My first months, Helen’s life, and my adoptive parents life and their desire to adopt me, was revealed on four typed pages.

This is what to expect: PAGES of legal documents, reports, letters, stories, arrangements, explanations, descriptions, maybe even a Baptismal Certificate, places and dates.

The BUREAUCRACY they created for each adoptee, all the paperwork, judges, lawyers, social workers, no wonder they don't want to change their system - it's jobs and generates billions of dollars each year!

Every adoptee needs to read their file.

Out of the Shadows: An Adoptee Perspective on "American Baby" by Gabrielle Glaser #NAAM2021

2021 BOOK REVIEW:

Lost Daughters: Out of the Shadows: An Adoptee Perspective on "American Baby...: American Baby is a new non-fiction book about the history of closed adoption in the United States that takes a critical look about adoption...  While anyone reading about these situations would be horrified, reading it from the perspective of an adoptee made them very personal.

Still here 17 years later... #NAAM2021 #Adoptee

This post was written in 2014 - now UPDATED in 2021 for National Adoption Awareness Month (#NAAM2021)

By Trace L Hentz (formerly DeMeyer)

If you had asked me in 2004 what I had planned for myself, I would have not said “writing” about adoption and child trafficking. I had just left my editor’s job at the Pequot Times in Connecticut in August and by September I was married, my second time. I have always known adoptees. It's like some (╋) magic radar that we seem to find each other... (which has always been life-saving for me.)

When I first started writing the article GENERATION AFTER GENERATION WE ARE COMING HOME in 2004, finally written and published in 2005 by American Indian Community House in New York City then in News From Indian Country, it was like a door opened.  That door is still open and I am still learning (and blogging here and covering news). I am not in Higher Ed nor do I wish to be. 

I write for adoptees like me. I am not a leader of adoptees/Lost Birds/SplitFeathers. I am an adoptee, someone who gathers stories who happens to be trained as a journalist (aka blogger.)

Second, I do help adoptees (Native and non-Native) connect with one another. There are plenty of adoptees with leadership skills, like my friend Levi EagleFeather and Sandy WhiteHawk, both are Lakota. If adoptees need ceremony, they are the people to approach. I am a bridge and can help you reach them.

Third, I am an adoptee myself so I know what I went through. And I write about it in great detail but that doesn't make me an expert. I do feel like I have an advanced degree in adoption after 17+ years of reading and writing on this topic. (And I'm 65 so it's a lived experience too.)

To me it doesn’t seem possible that those years went so fast – I didn't have any idea my skills would be put to use in this way. I am deeply humbled and deeply grateful to Great Spirit...Wakan Tanka.

Since I started American Indian Adoptees in late 2009, I met and know many bloggers on the topic of adoption (and many are good friends to me). We had hoped we’d made a strong and lasting impact by now.  

We all knew:

The adoptee voice was missing. 

Chapters of history were blank. The changes I worked for: giving voice to adoptees and writing that chapter, and I did what I could. There are four books in the Lost Children Book Series. That was the history few had ever documented...I had saved one article from Canada when I was working as a journalist at NFIC from 1996-1999. One!

 
Changing adoption? I had that dream myself.  I am not sure we can actually gauge or measure how worldviews of adoption have changed. States still have adoption files sealed tight. Are they hiding something? Are they afraid of a massive uprising of adoptees? (There are an estimated 10 million of us, maybe more!) Are they afraid we'll find out adoption agencies and churches were trafficking in children? For a profit?

The governments of Canada and America have much to fear.

Other changes? If books on Amazon are an indication, adoptee memoirs are still climbing the ranks over all the propaganda books about how to adopt a baby.

If the statistics on adoption are any indication, the number of babies adopted by Americans are dropping each and every year. There is definitely a demand for infants (primarily because of rising infertility since the 1950s) but there is still a short supply of newborn flesh to adopt.  (I do believe the adoption traffickers are constantly reinventing new ways to grab a fresh supply of infants. Think of what new poor countries or communities they will invade as the demand increases!! Propaganda will change.)

Will there be more adoptees? Sadly yes.

A happy ending in the media erases the very real structural realities of the adoption industrial complex, one that orchestrates the exchange of babies for money. - Alexa Strabuk

What hasn’t changed much since 2004 are adoption laws, sealed adoption files or the old archaic views of promised secrecy and confidentiality for first mothers.

Haven’t we moved past shaming women for unwed pregnancies? Yes, but not enough, apparently.  Lawmakers are still being wined and dined by adoption agency lobbyists so I don’t expect to see much change in the laws – but I hope I am wrong.

What I’d hoped would change faster is the perception of adoption, that it’s not as great and wonderful for adoptees as the public was made to believe. (In fact, vocal adoptees have changed everything in that regard.) 

As much as I’ve read in these past 17+ years, blogs and books changed me beyond recognition!  

Many times I have emailed legislators (like in New Jersey and Illinois) and offered my memoir (as a free book) hoping they would see the light and change existing adoption laws. Maybe it helped?

The big question: Open Adoption--when adoption is necessary--is also an indication that times are changing! But we have a long way to go…This is a quote I saved about open adoption:

…ignored by the adoption agencies is the reality of “open adoption.” Only 22 of fifty states in America (in 2014) recognize open adoption agreements, but failure of the adoptive parents to comply with the agreement is not legally enforceable by the surrendering mother.  (It is failing from many accounts I have read.)

There are many excellent writers making profound statements too.

A quote by adoptee-author-blogger Elle Cuardaigh: 

And adoption certainly is “worked.” When supply of newborns decreased in the 1970s, the adoption industry had to put a new spin on relinquishment  to stay in business. Since women could not be so easily shamed by single motherhood, they changed tactics. Potential suppliers (pregnant women) are now encouraged to “make an adoption plan.” She reads the “Dear Birthmother” letters and interviews hopeful adoptive parents. She is provided with medical care and possibly even housing.  She is promised this is her choice, and that she can have ongoing contact with her child in an open adoption. It would seem she has all the power, but she is being systematically conditioned to accept her role, her place. She doesn’t want to hurt the baby’s “real parents,” feels indebted to them, emotionally invested. She is soon convinced they are better than she is. She becomes “their birthmother.” It almost guarantees relinquishment.  READ Elle’s blog and new book THE TANGLED RED THREAD.  Or visit: http://ellecuardaigh.com

Read any and all posts at THE LIFE OF VON. (Von has since passed.)  Powerful WRITING!

In Blogland,  when your topic is adoption, you can never be free of trolls, extremists, zealots, fundamentalists, missionaries, the blinkered and the closed-minded. - (adoptee) Elizabeth Von Hughes

The number of excellent powerful blogs by adoptees and first parents (and even some APs) exploded in the past 15 years but there are far fewer now.

Helping to writing and publish four books about the Indian Adoption Projects and Programs and contributing to books like ADOPTIONLAND certainly changed me. And the Vance twins are doing a new anthology on Adoptionland and I have contributed (in 2021).

Back in 2014, #FliptheScript in November was brand new and really moved people - tweets and comments were flying everywhere, some good, some not so good. Discussion is still needed and the people who need to hear adoptees out are the ones we don't reach that well: ADOPTIVE PARENTS. They have their own fog to lift.

Last but not least: I am happily shocked this blog AMERICAN INDIAN ADOPTEES reached over 1,600,000 million hits with 1800+ posts!  If that is any indication, times really are a changin’.  Thanks to all the people who comment and read and subscribe!

There are thousands of Lost Children/Adoptees who are Native American. They are still out there. I do hope they find this blog and reach out and contact me!

There are two things I hope to see for Lost Bird Adoptees: A class action lawsuit in the USA on behalf of those children who were taken from their tribes because of the gov't programs (IAP and ARENA) and admitting PUBLICLY it happened with a declaration of this FACT. 

(Canada is now doing this for the 60s Scoop adoptees.)

I never would have guessed my life would move in the direction it did. I want to thank those hundreds of adoptees and families who have inspired me so much over past 17+ years.

So what will the next 17 years be like? I don’t have a clue.