I see dead people

Repost from 11/12/2010

By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

Well, actually I do not see dead people but I know people who are living like they are dead.

OK, imagine this.... You are a child and you disappear. Not only are you upset, your entire family is crazy with despair and your parents are distraught. They might go on television and beg the people who took you to please bring you back. Your mom and dad might even divorce since they cannot forget you and they can’t seem to heal since you are missing.

You (the child) on the other hand, might be too young to fight back, or even try and escape. But you want to.

That is child abduction and we all take this seriously in American and all over the world.

Now, change the word child to adoptee.

This life changing event: “adoption” does change you and your parents. America and the world do not think of adoption as abduction but I do. Why? It feels the same to the child. And to some mothers, it feels exactly like your child was abducted.

The trauma of being abducted or adopted is the same for the child. You are feeling you are not where you are supposed to be. Let’s not get into the medical terms but those words do exist in medical journals.

So, I ask you, when will people who adopt children begin to understand that adoptees have feelings they cannot describe or display? Some adopters I know have taken this very personally and have tried to make the child feel better and assure them they will meet their natural parents someday. I have friends who have adopted and some are remarkable in their sensitivity. Some of them advocate for open adoption, so their adopted child meets their parent on a regular basis, if at all possible.

So, if you are adoptive parents and reading this, I need you to do something TODAY. Forget that there are laws preventing disclosure when it’s a sealed adoption. I want you to request the adoption file – the legal proceedings. All of it! You signed the documents so you can request them.

OK, you did it. When your adopted child asks, I want you to tell them you have the name of their natural mother and that you will help her/him find their natural parent(s) when they turn 18. It depends on the child and when they ask. If they don’t ask, I want you to give them the file when they are 18 as a gift.

That is why I see dead people. If you are a mystery, it feels like you’re dead.

Capobiancos sit down for Dr. Phil interview #BABY VERONICA

The adoptive parents of 4-year-old Veronica Capobianco said in a television interview that they promise to keep her biological family a part of her life.

Oct 30, 2013.

By MICHAEL OVERALL Tulsa World Staff Writer |

Speaking publicly for the first time since winning custody, Baby Veronica's adoptive parents promised Tuesday to keep her biological family a part of her life.
Appearing briefly on national television, Matt and Melanie Capobianco confirmed that they have stayed in touch with Dusten Brown and other members of Veronica's Cherokee family.

"It's been positive," Melanie Capobianco said, "and we feel really good about it."

No recent footage of Veronica was included, but the Capobiancos apparently sat down for the interview over the weekend at their home in the suburbs of Charleston, S.C.

"All the people who love her, all of her family members," Melanie Capobianco said, "will be in contact with her."

A short segment on the "Dr. Phil" show included video shot while the Capobiancos were in Oklahoma to fight for custody, where the Brown family waged a court battle for weeks in hope of keeping Veronica.

Riding in the back seat of an SUV, the Capobiancos drove past the Cherokee Nation headquarters near Tahlequah, where they spotted Veronica in the yard outside of a VIP house where the Browns were staying at the time.

Brown said goodbye to Veronica at that house Sept. 23, when the Oklahoma Supreme Court cleared the way for the Capobiancos to take her.

But the video of Veronica, obviously shot from a distance, was apparently taken Aug. 15, after reality television personality Troy "The Locator" Dunn appeared at a Tulsa news conference with the Capobiancos.

Dunn tried to approach the house where Veronica was staying, but Cherokee deputies turned him away.

With the Capobiancos filing a writ of habeas corpus later that day, the incident led to the first of several court appearances that ultimately sent Veronica back to South Carolina.

Following the adoptive parents while they were in Oklahoma, Dunn had offered to be a "neutral" mediator between the Brown and Capobianco families.

But he was a registered member of the Coalition for the Protection of Indian Children and Families, a group founded by the Capobiancos' spokeswoman to lobby for changes to the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Brown used the law to challenge Veronica's adoption and take custody of her in 2011.

The Capobiancos appealed the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled this summer that the law didn't apply to Brown because he didn't have custody of Veronica at birth.

The Browns and Capobiancos have mutually agreed not to comment anymore to the media, Dunn told the Dr. Phil audience.

Although South Carolina is no longer seeking Brown's extradition, he still faces a felony complaint of "custodial interference" for refusing to hand over Veronica while appealing the case in Oklahoma.

The complaint could make him subject to arrest if he ever visits South Carolina, according to attorneys.

SOURCE: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/adoptive-parents-in-baby-veronica-case-speak-on-dr-phil/article_c3f1dbbd-0c59-5f81-ad16-202ca0deeb5e.html

OPEN ADOPTION DEBATE: No matter what, some sense of loss (from my archives)

Experts on both sides of the open-adoption debate agree that most adoptees realize they've been given up once and fear it happening again. 


By Sonia Nazario, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer  August 6, 2007

EXPERTS who advocate open adoption as well as those who oppose it say that adoptees grapple with a sense of loss. Virtually all adoptees understand that they have been given up by their birth parents and fear deep down that they might be given up again. Open-adoption advocates say that most adopted babies grow into well-adjusted children. At any given time, however, these advocates say, adoptees might react to the loss of their birth families in more pronounced ways.
Some of them express loyalty and gratitude constantly, trying to win favor with their adoptive parents. In the extreme, these children become overly adaptive — compliant to a fault. They often show little or no interest in the "other mother."
Others act out. These children test their adoptive parents repeatedly, seeking reassurance that their second set of parents won't give them up. In the extreme, they act out violently to test their adoptive parents to the limit.
They love their adoptive parents, but they also long for their birth families and feel sadness, even anger, about being adopted.
Kendall McArthur's adoptive mother, Dorothea McArthur, a therapist who works with adoptees, places Kendall in the mid-range of the children who act out. This has made Kendall's experience with open adoption more difficult than most. Still, Kendall did not require help at a residential mental health facility, as do 7% of adolescent children who are adopted as babies, according to an Illinois State University study.
 
Some of the pitfalls that Kendall and both sets of her parents faced as pioneers in open adoption have been eased today by counseling. Many adoption agencies now require "vision matching" sessions, where birth and adoptive parents state their expectations about visits and future communication. These sessions determine how special occasions will be celebrated and how future conflicts will be resolved. Birth and adoptive parents learn how to deal with fear, distrust and anger.  They learn how to set boundaries and ground rules and how to be assertive but sensitive. Birth parents are counseled to stay in touch and not to contradict adoptive parents in front of their children. Adoptive parents are counseled to work with birth parents to keep children from dividing and conquering.
Many birth and adoptive families describe wonderful relationships in open adoptions, where the birth mother becomes like a loving aunt. Indeed, the most comprehensive longitudinal study of open adoption has found that openness is beneficial in significant ways.
The study, conducted by the University  of Minnesota and the University of Texas, is known as the Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project. It is ongoing and tracks 190 married couples in 23 states who adopted infants before their first birthdays in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The adoptions represent more than 30 levels of openness — from closed adoptions, through adoptions in which parents have contact through
intermediaries, to adoptions in which adoptees have direct contact with their birth families.
Though the study has found that the degree of openness does not affect self-esteem or emotional adjustment, it also has found that by adolescence, children in open adoptions:
•  Were not confused about who their parents were.
•  Clearly understood the roles of their adoptive and birth parents.
•  Felt their relationships with their birth mothers gave them a strong
source of additional support.
•  Helped them understand who they were.
 
By adolescence, 62% of the study subjects had stayed in contact with their birth mothers. Of those, 98% wanted the contact to continue or to increase.
Among the adoptees in closed adoptions, the study found, half wanted their adoptions to stay closed, mostly because they felt that being adopted was not important and that contact with birth families might be negative. The other half wanted contact and felt hurt that their birth mothers had not sought them out.
 
Thomas Atwood, the president and chief executive of the nonprofit National Council for Adoption, which has lobbied against open adoptions, rejects the notion that adoptees are somehow incomplete if they do not know their birth family. "We will defend the option of confidentiality," Atwood said.
 
Sharon Roszia, coauthor of "The Open Adoption Experience," and who proposed open adoption to Dorrie and David McArthur, said children in closed adoptions wrestle with many of the psychological issues that Kendall faced. For these children, Roszia said, the issues simply remain submerged. These children deal with additional issues: Didn't my birth mother care enough to find me? Are the people I come from so terrible that I can't know them?  Parents who approach open adoptions with an open heart find that the benefits outweigh the risks, Roszia said. "It is better to deal with reality than fantasy and fear. Better to know than not know."

[ I know children need good homes, of course. But if it is possible to have an open adoption, it is much better for the child adoptee...  And again, if it is a Native child, they need to remain in their tribal nation.... Trace]

Ain’t Life Crazy?

Mind Masons

            By Trace Hentz (blog editor)

Words, words, words. That’s what a blog is, right? Words.

            
 Yet I don’t think of this as writing words but sharing actual experience, my adoption experience, my American Indian experience, and my overall ain’t-life-crazy experience.

             
Life is crazy when you think about it. Lots of ideas became American products which started out as patents and experiments: for example – adoption was an experiment and now we’re finding out for those who were the recipients of being adopted aren’t quite tickled pink about their experience. Few in the adoption business want to change anything. They prefer to be known as “do-gooders.”

             
Secrecy permeates lots of experiments. I put this Albert S. Wei’s quote in my book: “My problem is secrecy. I believe that perpetually secret adoptions assure un-accountability and lack of transparency. And secret adoptions are only the tip of the iceberg. The secrecy permeates the process: secret identities, secret parents, secret records, secret foster care providers, secret social workers, secret judges and lawyers (all their identities are sealed, typically), secret physicians, secret statistics and, in the case of some adoption-oriented organizations, secret budgets and secret boards of directors. In any social practice, when people in positions of power hide behind masks, one can be pretty sure that they have something to hide.”  Wei is special advisor to the Bastard Nation Executive Committee.

            
 I had no idea how much was secret. Without the internet and light bulbs, I might still be in the dark.

            
 I write lots of words no one will ever see or read. Why? Writing has been a trusted friend and I consider some of my ideas secret.

             
Writing is a way to work things out in my head. A way to reason, looking at things one way and then another. If I find out it’s a bad idea, I change my mind.

             
Too bad those who could change things for adoptees haven’t had this happen yet.

HANAI: Why all adoptions should be open

Since I was writing a memoir about being adopted, in 2005 I started to intensely study adoption and read blogs by adoptees, birthparents and adopting families - the triad. I looked for examples of good, even great, adoption experiences.
In 2010, finally, more and more adoptive families are becoming more sensitive to the children of "mixed race" they adopt. This example of HANAI was particularly striking to me, since I was in a closed adoption and knew nothing about my birthfamily or their names or tribal origins. I wish I had known something and had been given respect for my Cherokee-Shawnee-Delaware ancestry.
It took me many years to know my own name and the names of my grandparents and their parents...

One blogger wrote this review of The Family of Adoption* by Joyce Maguire Pavao


This book is a bit more academic than Birthmother, but still an important read. It examines the adoption experience from all three perspectives, giving special attention to the children. It devotes a chapter to each important developmental stage in the adopted child’s life – exploring common issues and conversations they will have as they grow up. Pavao’s years of psychological training and experience have given her some powerful insights into what makes adoption a successful, enriching experience. Once particular passage in the Epilogue really stuck with me – it was upon reading this that I really became convinced of the beauty of adoption:

Many years ago in Hawaii, I was one of two keynote speakers at a conference, both of us adopted. The gentleman went first. He was native Hawaiian, and in Hawaii there is an ancient custom of adoption called hanai. In a Hawaiian marriage, when you become “related” to the in-law family, you are then considered one family, and you would not “war” against each other. The same is true in hanai — if you place your child with another family, the two families become connected, and are considered one large extended family. This Hawaiian adopted person opened the conference with loud drums and chanting. It was beautiful—stunning—and it went on for quite a while. The entire audience sat very still and listened, mesmerized.


When he had finished, he stated that he had just recited the names of his ancestors. He had chanted the lineage of both his family by birth and his family by adoption. He said that it is a great honor to be a hanai person, as you are the reservoir that holds the lineage of two great families; you are the place and the person where they connect and become one extended family. It is a prestigious position to be the connector of two families.

~~ If adoptive parents read this, please show this respect to the blood and origin of your adopted child. Give them all the information you can to spare them the trauma of not knowing....
AHO!
Trace, author of ONE SMALL SACRIFICE: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects (2009)
(birthdaughter of Earl Bland and Helen Thrall)
(adopted by Sev and Edie DeMeyer)