Remembering Von Hughes #adopteerights

Von and her daughter

Lost Daughters is sad to announce the passing of one of our long-time members, Von Coates. Von was one of Australia’s stolen babies during an era which mirrored that of the “Baby Scoop Era” in the United States (and worldwide). She was instrumental in the official apology issued by the WA government. She stood unapologetically by the wronged mothers as they refused to accept. She was a pioneer in establishing Post-Adoption support in WA. She was also a tireless advocate for bird populations of her homeland and for justice everywhere. She lived a long, fulfilling life. She will be missed.

ETA: Von’s family has asked for donations for a mental health fundraiser in Von’s honor: https://www.mycause.com.au/page/230210/memorial-to-elizabeth-ann-hughes

Her death on May 17, 2020 has been devastating to family, friends and the online community

  

By Trace Hentz, Blog Editor

Every adoptee I know wants to understand why we feel the way we do, and that we are not alone. Von Coates Hughes in Australia was one of my best teachers and she was an outspoken adoptee. She gave in-depth, easy-to-read insight and had the words when I would struggle with how to explain how I felt about being adopted.
Von had a blog on blogger (Once was Von) and someone reported it was not good so it was taken down. What the HELL??? Criticizing the adoption industry and propaganda was dangerous, we soon discovered - and Von and I discussed it via email.  She came to my defense many times. She would openly argue with first mothers/birthmothers and adoptive parents on Facebook - battling as if there was only one victim in the adoption game.
She made many comments on this blog and interviewed me for her blog. Von was also a contributor to LOST DAUGHTERS blog.

Out of necessity, Von moved her blog to wordpress. Below: this was her first post in 2012.

It’s Just A Stage I’m Going Through!

This entry was posted on February 29, 2012, in adoption, Uncategorized and tagged adoption. 6 Comments

I’m a cat person, a Greyhound person, a goose person – well, let’s just say an animal person or an ‘everything that lives and moves person’ and then some. I love fossils, rocks, gemstones, crystals, mushrooms, toadstools, lichens and all the non-green plants. Yes, I even love spiders and have a large Huntsman named Mathilda living in close proximity. Freaky!  It’s not normal in the eyes of some, but then I’ve got adoption to thank for that. My beloved maternal aGrandfather was the same. He loved and was fascinated by everything that moved, didn’t move, lived or had lived. He was born in Victorian times, so was also a collector, kept a pair of chimpanzees and a Cassowary in the garden.
Every Summer he camped out with his geologist mates from the city museum so that they could collect fossils and set up the collection which is still on show today, still neatly labelled with the source, which reminds me of him every time I visit!  I have photos of those times, taken long before I was born, when my amother was a child raised to a life of respect for living creatures and a love of the area I took my family to live in decades and decades later, long after she had died.
Continuity happens in families, whether they are biological families or adoptive families. Adoptees if they are lucky enough to experience reunion can connect with the bits they wish to, not the bits they don’t. Sometimes, just sometimes, we have choices others do not. Does it make up for not having a choice about losing our mothers, the trauma of adoption?  Of course not, nothing ever does. It can’t even be viewed as compensation; often too complicated or fraught for that, but at least it is choice of a sort. Mainly of the “I choose not to take any more of your shit” variety or “I choose not to go to this funeral” or take on a poisonous sister-in-law who hates our guts for being born and then turning up late to the party. At least we can choose not to let these people and situations abuse us, make us victims and categorise us.
In four lifetimes I’ve seen a lot of that!  Each part of my life as been so very different, it feels as if I have had four lifetimes so far, with another yet to come; not completely coinciding with Brodzinsky’s five stages of the adopted life, but fairly close, with some overlaps. I have no anger about my adoption, I don’t hate anyone, although I believe some of them could have behaved much, much better. I’m not bitter. I refuse to let anyone define my life, what it has been, what it is now and what it will be. I do not believe adoption is ethical or the best we humans can do for children and families, for those living in the poverty others created, manipulated or unsupported for the gains of others. I will not ever allow a group of damaged mothers to define what adoption is to me or stand by while they tell other adoptees what adoption is or is not for adult adoptees. Not in a million years. That is abusive, unacceptable and these days very ill-advised.
Adoption and the adoption industry needs to clean up it’s act, get real and begin to be about finding the very best families for the children who have to become adoptees because their parents cannot, should not or will not raise them. It needs to stop being about baby selling, commodification of human lives and filling orders, greed, profit and lies. Easy?? It could be with the right commitment, intentions and goals and a true belief that is is about the best interests of children and not adults.

Go read her blog - from the beginning. Von made us smart. I will miss her so much. My heart is broken.

This is the bio on Lost Daughters:
Von --Life &Wisdom Columnist
Von is an Australian adoptee of the forced adoption era and has lived the adopted life for 66 years. She is known by her family and dearest friends as someone who takes no prisoners and has a horror of bigotry and injustice.She is a strong believer in the rights of children, the power of love and the medicinal powers of chocolate. She speaks her truth and often describes herself as an adoptee who is 'out, proud and loud". She had the benefit of Yorkshire genes for direct speaking and Somerset genes for perseverance. The Grandmother in her avatar she never knew but has taken as a role model and an inspiration. She is still waiting to be told she is not the oldest blogger on adoption in the blogosphere. Von blogs regularly at her personal blog The Life of Von.

She was also known as Elizabeth Ann Hughes. 

QUOTE
For adoptees, the right to know, the belief in the fundamental human right of knowing who we are, where we came from and who our people are, keeps many of us moving forward, steadily, sometimes haltingly, sometimes fearfully and in trepidation and sometimes with confidence and always with the knowledge that we are right to want the truth, to clear away the lies and to hold liars and abusers accountable.  Adult adoptees won’t be going away any time soon, nor will they be keeping quiet or allowing gains to be lost. We have everything to gain – we already lost everything when we lost our mothers,our identity, our history and our names. 

Another post about Von

Adoption Learning and Survival: Loss of mother, father, family, history, ancestors...

This post "Adoption Learning and Survival" and this quote below will resonate with adoptees - please read Von's excellent blog.

http://eagoodlife.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/adoption-learning-and-survival/

"Adoptees suffer many ambiguities in adoption - the loss of mother, father, family, history, ancestors, identity, medical history,birth place, time and date, rights as a citizen, legitimacy and often country, culture, language, food, religion and those subtle things which help us identify with our motherland (the sights, sounds, smells, animals, birds and geology, the lie of the land)...."

Adoption Learning and Survival.

This entry was posted on June 9, 2012, in adopters, adoption, ethics, Food for Thought, life, mothers, pathology of adoption, the adopted life, Uncategorized and tagged adoptees, adopters, adoption, authenticity, childhood, life, pathologyofadoption, primal wound. 7 Comments

Over at my old blog Once Was Von: Surviving, Learning, Laughing. Those of us who struggle for existence, who fight for our place at the table and find every battle is hard-won often manage to use that experience in a productive way, it gives us insight and if we’re lucky, empathy and compassion. Those things are irreplaceable in what some would call ‘the conduct of human affairs’ but I call living. Those opportunities don’t come to all: trauma, pain, suffering, loss are potential human experiences but are not visited on all, as they are on most adoptees. Like oysters we can produce pearls of wisdom, of understanding and develop an ability to empathise with other adoptees which is beyond price. No-one ‘gets it’ like another adoptee even when they’re not reading off the same page
And of course as we discovered this week over at the Facebook Group Occupy Adoption, sometimes Not!

It all began with a quote from adopter and psychologist Dr Whitten. This quote – “It’s important to keep in mind that adoption is not abnormal, nor should discussions about it be stressful for adoptive parents.” Really the point was about the ‘normality’ of adoption and the way in which many involved in Big Adoption like to push the idea that adoption is normal, a valid way to build a family; that adoptees are just like any other kids in families and there is nothing for adopters or prospective adopters or hoping to adopters, the AP/PAP/HAP’s, to be worried or concerned about! To promote those ideas is misleading, inaccurate and mischievous.

Here’s why. There is nothing normal about a child being removed from a mother, being abandoned by a mother or being given for adoption by a mother. Big Adoption has worked for decades on making it seem normal, accepted and a good way to build a family. It appears that this view is now so accepted that those in certain forums are castigated for supporting women who wish to raise their babies following an unplanned pregnancy! Now that is weird! In some circles it seems to have become more important to keep the adoption market supplied with babies than it is to preserve families, support biological connections and ensure that children know their identities and histories and don’t suffer loss and trauma!

I’ve had a few messages and queries lately about Pauline Boss’s work on ambiguous loss which I mention anywhere and everywhere, because I believe it is an essential piece of reading for anyone who has anything to do with adoption in any way. For those involved in therapies, counselling or working with adoptees and mothers, the concept of ambiguous loss makes sense of what has happened and what needs to happen. Loss, as we keep being informed by the ‘experts’ can be healed, and so it can with skilled help and work. Ambiguous loss on the other hand, which is present in mothers and adoptees cannot be healed, has no closure, but can be dealt with, lived with and managed productively if it is recognised and the tools to handle it used effectively.

We see time and time again, mothers going round in circles, over and over their decision, their loss and their tragedy when they chose adoption or were forced to choose adoption. There are many blogs in which the same story is told, retold endlessly, without resolution, because ambiguous loss has not be acknowledged or accepted and guilt, pain and regret take the upper hand. These mothers and many others like them, never appear to fully get on with their lives, some of them appear not to want to, because there is a benefit in retelling the story over and over and the concentration on this episode in their lives is tragic and deeply saddening. Those adoptees who tell us they found a mother in reunion who had discovered  a way to get on with her life were gladdened, relieved and often found reunion went more smoothly and was more lasting. When ambiguous loss is dealt with it provides a much sounder base for a reunion which has some chance of enduring, proving of benefit to all and establishing family connections that were broken.

For adoptees, there is much ambiguous loss in adoption. Loss also, but it is not enough just to deal with the losses. We need to front up to that which is ambiguous, has no resolution but often it appears is helped by the acknowledgement that ambiguity exists. For instance in other situations where a loved family member is missing those remaining are helped by recognising that their loved one may be dead and never return but at the same time holding the thought that there still may be hope that one day there may be a change of some sort. Those relatives of victims of 9/11 dealt with the ambiguity of not having a body to bury by having a funeral or ceremony in which an object symbolic of the person was buried or cremated. Individual rituals were invented which had meaning for the families and we can take a lesson from that in adoption.

Our mothers send us off into an unknown world with strangers and usually have no knowledge of how we are treated, how we survived of if we did survive. They mourn with no body to view, no grave to visit or information to calm or comfort them. It is too big an ask and is often no better dealt with today than it was in other eras of adoption, sometimes it’s worse and even less humane.
Adoptees suffer many ambiguities in adoption – the loss of mother, father, family, history, ancestors, identity, medical history,birth place, time and date, rights as a citizen, legitimacy and often country, culture, language, food, religion and those subtle things which help us identify with our motherland (the sights, sounds, smells, animals, birds and geology, the lie of the land). Many of us have no way of discovering that information and it is lost, as we are lost, in the limboland that is adoption. We never know if it will be possible to recover that information; those who have little reason to hope, cling to any vestige of optimism, knowing in their hearts that the chances are so slight as to be a miracle if it were to happen. That is not curiosity about our beginnings, as non-adoptees would have us believe and convince themselves and others, because it is safer, easier and less threatening. That is ambiguous loss asserting itself and wanting to be dealt with.

With the Indian Adoption Projects, they had a goal - assimilation. Removing us from our families would ultimately remove our culture and language. But adoption never erases our blood... Trace