Estranged? | Adoption Illusions and Stockholm Syndrome

Estrangement is a very common outcome of adoption and fostering. We all deserve to be safe and respect our mental, physical, emotional and psychological health and many times estrangement is the only option. #adopteetwitter #adopteevoices #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth pic.twitter.com/6MCHsEEVe4

— Lina Vanegas (She/her) (@LinaLeadsWLove) May 18, 2023

 

I'm a member of several online adoptee-only support groups, and it's astonishing how many of us are estranged from our adoptive families. #AdopteeVoices #AdopteeTwitter https://t.co/ZAL6HMDXXS

— Jill Daviau 😷 (@neithskye) May 19, 2023

 

👇AN OLD POST from 2014/2021

Adoption Illusions and Stockholm Syndrome

By Trace - BLOG EDITOR

 

"...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 for over a year and I finally did research on Stockholm Syndrome! KEEP READING

My family was torn apart before the Indian Child Welfare Act passed. Will SCOTUS upend it?

 

Terria Smith is editor of News from Native California magazine and a member of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians. She is also a member of The Desert Sun Editorial Board. Email her at terria@heydaybooks.com

(EXCERPT) I support ICWA too. But to me a ruling upholding ICWA in the Brackeen v. Haaland case is not just about doing the right thing for tribal children. For me, it is very personal.

Around 1949, when my mother was an infant and her older brother was about 5 years old, they were taken from their home on the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation. At the time, my uncle only spoke Cahuilla. They went to live in a foster home with a non-Native family in Riverside. The parents of this family did not treat my mother and uncle like their own. They did not love them. They took them in for the foster care money. They were especially mean to my mother.

The foster parents made it very clear that my mother and her brother were not part of their family. The resounding message that came from the community that my mother and uncle grew up in was that they were different.

My mother grew up wondering where she belonged and who her real family was. What she didn’t know was that just on the other side of the county, her real family never forgot about her and her brother. And when she was a teenager, her only sister — my aunt — found her and eventually brought her back to our people. But irreparable damage was already done. My mother and uncle lost their tribal language. They lost years with some of their closest family members (many even passed away before they had the chance to meet them). They had to relearn our customs and traditions. There is a deep emotional wound of just being wronged.

There are thousands of cases out there like my mother’s.

PLEASE READ

Increase in Native American children entering the system + tweets

NEW MEXICO: There was an increase in Native American children entering the system—from 134 or 6.1 percent in 2019 to 147 or 7.4 percent in 2020. The increase of Native children in the foster care system happened after children’s biological or legal guardians have passed. Native American families often live with several generations in one house, and we saw that, tragically, many family members in one household would contract COVID. 

 

Take action now to stop this horrific attack on Native rights! https://t.co/WjXC3cDybi

There was an increase in Native American children entering the system—from 134 or 6.1 percent in 2019 to 147 or 7.4 percent in 2020. https://t.co/yvHl442Emf pic.twitter.com/IN2G0Xl72G

— Lakota Law Project (@lakotalaw) December 6, 2021

“Indigenous resistance” doesn’t cut it. Fighting back against murder and enslavement so widespread = genocide.

— Stacy Parker Le Melle (@StacyLeMelle) December 5, 2021

Those who refuse to acknowledge the trauma adoptees experience likely have never had to submit an empty page when attempting to complete "Family Tree" or "Life Timeline" assignments in school or write "N/A" in the Family Medical History section on forms at the doctor's office.

— Christina (@DiaryAdoptee) December 6, 2021

Bank of Canada to work with Indigenous groups on reconciliation https://t.co/phOk6Es43u

— Trace kalala Hentz (@StonePony33) December 6, 2021

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

The Body Remembers

New research reveals that trauma experienced in childhood has long-term damaging effects on quality of life and lifespan. But the same research shows that adults play a critical role in helping children overcome this damage.

READ: The Body Remembers | On Being

Here’s a quick experiment about your past that will tell you a vast amount about your future.
Check all that apply:

• Did you experience recurrent emotional abuse as a kid?
• Physical?
• Sexual?
• Did you experience physical neglect?
• Emotional neglect?
• Did anyone in your childhood home have substance abuse issues?
• Did anyone struggle with mental illness?
• Did anyone participate in criminal behavior and/or go to jail?
• Was your mother ever treated violently?
• Did you experience divorce or parental separation?

How many checks do you have? This is what clinicians call your ACE score. It stands for “adverse childhood experiences” and study after study has confirmed that it has a huge influence on your lifetime health. For starters: The life expectancy of individuals with ACE scores of six or more is twenty years shorter than it is for people with no ACEs. And a person with four or more ACEs is twice as likely to develop heart disease and cancer.


Editor Note: Being adopted is high stress, too. We have posted about ACE on this blog - use the search bar.

DR GABOR MATÉ - CHILDHOOD TRAUMA CREATES ADDICTION #NAAM2019

PTSD | Time Machine

By Trace L Hentz (blog editor)

There is no time machine to transport you back to the moment you were abandoned. You can’t erase how you felt or how it feels now. Or how it controls your life. Or how it breaks your heart into a million pieces. You don’t know how to stop feeling this way. You pray you’ll find your family, some one like you, who gets you, who looks like you. You want to put the pieces of your life back together, but you don’t know how.

These were thoughts I had – as I was processing.

Yes, there are adoptees who also feel this but never get to say it. I see it on their face. I hear their words and their silence.

No matter how much love and care we are given, the truth is – we are (and will always be) someone else’s children. We’re just not able to say it out loud, usually.

No doctor diagnosed me with birth trauma or splitting sickness. Therapists would recommend drugs which would only deaden my senses, missing the whole point. I didn’t want to feel more dead; I was already dead, or at least part of me was. I wanted to feel alive! Instead I just shut down. Power off.

My sickness was a dead zone, a black hole. It was not visible on my skin, nor did it raise its ugly head in one outburst or one tantrum.

I heard a story about another adoptee, a doctor with an Ivy League education, who was unable to meet his birthmother before she died. His wife told me he was never able to get the information he needed to find his birthfather, or know his identity.

Regardless of this man’s expensive education and medical training, the pain wounded him so badly he just couldn’t function, feel love or have a successful relationship. The pain was so deep, he couldn’t see it.

His wife told their therapist about his adoption, how he reacted, and how he seemed cold, heartless. Even marriage counseling didn’t save their marriage. Their therapist thought his adoption trauma was too much for him to handle; trying to work on it might kill what was left of him.

I’m not sure where I got my strength.

(excerpt from One Small Sacrifice, which is out of print)

The power of vulnerability | Brené Brown

This is so important. Adoptees do numb their feelings and some have emotional difficulty. Trauma is like that.

Please seek help if you find yourself numbing and shutting down.

Goldwater lawsuit is a fight for the soul of tribal nations

Navajo Nation President: Separating Navajo Children from Their Parents & Families is Devastating

Published December 12, 2015

ALBUQUERQUE—During the opening banquet for Navajo Division of Social Service and Casey Family Program’s Navajo Child Work Session in Albuquerque on Monday, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye called for the absolute protection of Navajo children in his support of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

“There is nothing more devastating than seeing a Navajo child being taken from their parents. The connection that exists between a child and their parent is strong. It’s a sacred bond. In our support of the ICWA, we are protecting the connection between children, their parents and siblings,” President Begaye said.

Last week, President Begaye delivered a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell asking for her to support ICWA in enforcing that state courts investigate and verify the enrollment of Native American children in cases regarding custody and foster care.
President Begaye talked about the boarding school era in the history of American Indians to emphasize the historical trauma caused by the separation of Indian children from their families, culture and language. Both President Begaye and his brothers attended boarding school as young men.

“Imagine your identity being erased. Imagine not being able to see your mother and father. Imagine knowing you have family but not being able to see them. The separation is too much,” he said. “Now imagine children who are separated from their families and cultures for the entirety of their lives."

On July 7th of this year, ICWA came under fire when the Goldwater Institute filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in federal district court in Arizona challenging the constitutionality of ICWA and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) guidelines that strengthen this legislation.
The Goldwater lawsuit has sparked a national discussion questioning the purpose of ICWA.  It is the position of the Navajo Nation that tribes, states and partners do everything they can to advocate for this legislation which protects tribe’s connection to Native American children.
President Begaye said the lawsuit portrays the lifeways of Native Americans as being insignificant while also portraying tribal communities as substandard.  For non-Natives, the lawsuit could be interpreted as compelling.

“It makes you think about the issue in the questions it raises,” he said. “Rather than go down that road, we, as Native Americans, need to know that we are just as good as anybody else.”

The Goldwater lawsuit is a fight for the soul of tribal nations, he said. It challenges the equality of tribal nations against non-tribal paradigms of societal standards not based in traditional culture or knowledge.

“Our traditional ways nurture our children and foster environments that are conducive to the success of our children. Navajo culture inherently protects the future generations as it does the elders.”
President Begaye expressed his gratitude to all departments in attendance, as well as the Health Education and Human Services Committee and Law & Order Committee delegates, for coming together to support and address the importance of ICWA in keeping Navajo children with Navajo families.  He called for the Nation’s continued support of ICWA and for tribes to stand against the Goldwater Institute’s lawsuit, which questions the constitutionality of the Act.

“Native Americans are just as good as any other society on earth. We love our families and will stand with them,” he said. “We need to make sure that every Navajo child in state custody or foster care doesn’t have to go through life wondering who they are or who their parents are.”

During the following morning’s agenda, Vice President Jonathan Nez presented a welcoming address to the work session that supported President Begaye’s position while also supporting positive, healthy families and homes on the Nation. The vice president also extended gratitude to the partners who organized the conference.

Regarding the Goldwater Institute’s lawsuit, Vice President Nez supports the need for all tribal nations to come forth with strong messages supporting ICWA.  He said there is a the need for the Nation to develop a strong strategy in combating the Goldwater Institute’s messaging and media campaign.

“What they are doing is chipping away at the sovereign rights of Native Americans which can eventually extend beyond ICWA,” Vice President Nez said. “What the Goldwater Institute is doing is wrong.”

Both President Begaye and Vice President Nez voiced support of ICWA and the protection of Indian children by keeping them with Native American families.

Toxic Trauma Stress: ACE STUDY

By Trace Hentz

I don't know if you have heard of the ACE Study. I found it when I was writing One Small Sacrifice.  I have tons of these issues, even now. And I cut most of my remarks about the study in my memoir (too long) and now I think that was a mistake.
Childhood Trauma is toxic and can kill us? (What is an adoptee's experience?)
Poverty kills, too.
Food scarcity kills, too.
Violence kills, too, right?
That is life on the rez, right?

We are in crisis!

Childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity. As such, early experiences and trauma are an important public health issue. Much of the foundational research in this area has been referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
ACEs can be prevented. Learn more about preventing ACEs in your community. HERE

right click and save to your computer to enlarge this graph

Lost Daughters: Is Knowing Our Parentage Our Right?

My grandparents grave...I took this photo at my father's funeral

Please read this post at Lost Daughters. Lost Daughters: Is Knowing Our Parentage Our Right?

"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.

How much I changed (Part 5) #adoptionsurvivors

I gave this interview some time ago but my thoughts still stand...Trace
Take a read:

Excerpt:


Interview with Australian blogger ONCE WAS VON in 2011
old link: http://eag-oncewasvon.blogspot.com/search?q=One+Small+Sacrifice

Trace DeMeyer published her first book ONE SMALL SACRIFICE on the Split Feathers, the children taken from the First People of Turtle Island or the United States of America as it was renamed by those who claimed it. The Split Feathers (adoptees) were taken for education and for adoption in planned destruction of their Peoples. Many have not been found or found their way home. Trace includes the story of her own journey and tackles the difficult areas of adoption and the adoptee experience.

Von: In your life was there a pivotal event that changed you from being a victim of adoption to a survivor?

Trace: That is a great question because lots of people won’t recognize there is a definite shift from victim to survivor.
When laws restrict opening adoption records, these policymakers make us victims. There are many adoptees ready to know their family name, meet relatives and have reunions, but cannot because of adoption laws. Other adoptees, lulled by gratitude, may fear upsetting their adoptive family, and may not see themselves as victims of a corrupt unjust system.
The adoptee moves from victim to survivor when they decide to break the law, when they decide to regain and restore their own identity, and get their name. That’s a giant leap forward.
My becoming a survivor happened in stages, in a sequence of events. As a child I grieved. I promised myself as a teenager that I would find answers but it looked impossible with sealed records in Wisconsin. I felt overcoming my low self-esteem was first. In my 20s, I realized there would be “emotional processing” I’d need to do, slowly, over time. Opening my adoption records was very important in 1978 but troubling since I had no help to locate my parents. This was before the internet. I also had to face reality that I might not find them or my parents might not be willing to meet me. I never met my mother Helen which felt like a second rejection in the 1990s. I was almost 40 when I met my father Earl in 1994. Reunions (or not having a reunion) take time to process. Over the years, other adoptees were great teachers for me since there are no guidebooks for dealing with adoption trauma. There is so much to understand, obviously.
Writing my memoir, remembering everything again and adoption research changed me most – like a light bulb went on. I started to see adoption as an industry and a measure of control over a mother’s maternity and placed orphans in a state of emotional disgrace. Recognizing adoption as an institution, one that has outgrown its purpose, one that is damaging for mother and child, was perhaps my biggest transforming moment.

Von: You say in your book, that adoption involves many traumas, not just the one of the loss of a mother. Many of the things that happen to us, the damaging relationships, breakdowns and illness result from those traumas. How do we move from being vulnerable, to strength and survival?

Trace: In my book, I mention four distinct traumas for adoptees and I know there are more. Adoptee and natural parents are vulnerable to the billion dollar adoption machine that still manipulates us. I felt manipulated. Restricting us from meeting, laws which prevent our meeting, then add a dose of shame, judgement and misunderstanding, all deeply affects and even harms adoptees. I do write about this in depth in “One Small Sacrifice.”
Adoption is very isolating. Many adoptees like me suffered in silence. I see many adoptees create stories for their missing parents. If they do not know the truth, and never meet them, adoptees can stagnate emotionally and get trapped in illusions, lies and excuses. That is a very hard way to live. It’s very difficult to tell an adoptee what to do, or how to heal and overcome this vulnerability. I took small steps on my own and finally realized that there was only one solution – find the truth.
A closed adoption is the ultimate act of disruption. Because of my disgrace and orphan-status, I was not living emotionally well. I was not empowered as a human since the very act of adoption removed my identity. I made a decision to not live this way or accept the fantasy-land my adoptive parents and adoption industry created for me. I had to open my adoption, period. I would not give up.
It took me a long time to see how I failed myself with very troubling decisions and blamed Helen my birthmother for misery I had as a child. I fought the idea of being a disgrace. I fought feeling rejected by Helen when I finally found her. I fought very hard to heal myself, know myself and release judgment. Even as a teenager, I thought it was ridiculous to be expected to live a fantasy and project gratitude.
Finding the truth and meeting relatives moves you from feeling vulnerable to empowered, from victim to survivor.

(to be continued) How much I changed (Part 6) #Starved into submission #Food Insecurity #Occupied Tribes

#BabyVeronica a Victim of Colonial Domination

Baby Veronica: U.S. Doesn't Respect or Understand Native Culture

A note from Ray Cook, ICTMN Opinions Editor: The political and legal ramifications of the Baby Veronica case have, in broad strokes, done two things....

Read more

Baby Veronica Is a Victim of Colonial Domination

Click here to read part 1 by Dina Gilio-Whitaker....

Read more

For Indigenous people around the globe, far too many moms and dads had no choice, truly no choice, when their children were taken. Even uneducated Indian people are not stupid. Giving Indian babies to white families was part of a larger plan: colonization. It worked. It ultimately did change our future.

            This was quite a revelation for me, being one of the colonized....Trace

Please READ: Observations of Adopted Children: http://larahentz.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/observations-of-adopted-children/

What adoptees do to survive (some call it walking in a fog)

my first memory

By Trace A. DeMeyer

The adoption industry is so fricking clever at marketing itself.  They hide that adoptees are in therapy more than any other human, and that adoptees are institutionalized more than any other person, and that adopted children today are often drugged into submission for their acting out or behaving badly.

Ask yourself: Why would anyone do this (do a stranger adoption) to a child?

This is my life, my own experience.

The breakdown I had as a baby was fear-based. I’m born, mom disappears. I am in an orphanage then foster care then adopted. This sets my adrenals into fight-or-flight. Emotionally I’m scared. A part of my mind shuts down to protect me. As an infant, I deaden myself. I want my mother but she is long gone, never coming back. Read The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier.

The science of birth psychology hasn’t caught on with the public yet but it states that babies in utero are sensing everything.  We need contact with our moms (and dads) to grow and become fully functioning.  If that bond breaks, we break.  [Read http://birthpsychology.com if you don’t believe me.  For example: stress hormones in womb may be linked to neurodevelopmental diseases such as autism and schizophrenia, which affect males more frequently or more severely than females. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130304151811.htm]

So eventually I get adopted by strangers and I adjust. But I am not fully functioning. My ability to grow and trust was damaged. That’s why it’s called the primal wound.

I get along, graduate college, work as a musician. I make more bad decisions than good. I am smart enough to know I am sick. It took years (and therapy twice) to actually see how I was half-alive. The part of me I’d buried wasn’t going to walk out of the fog unless I was really safe.  It happened in my late 30s in Seattle.  When I start to feel again, it’s like I walked back in to my own body. As I told my holistic doctor, this was a serious emotional illness, what Indians call the splitfeathers syndrome. My mind protected me because it had to, for a long time. I got well. I walked out of the fog.

Are their adoptees out there who are not well?  Definitely.  Some self-medicate since we know something is wrong with us.  Some adoptees are drug addicts, alcoholics, even criminals.  Some kill themselves. Adoptee suicide rates are very high, another fact the adoption industry doesn’t mention in their forever family ads. (Read http://www.amfor.net)

So whoever invented “closed adoption” and “stranger adoption” was pretty sick themselves. Certainly after the world wars, there were war orphans. For Indian Country, there were these human experiments called the Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA Programs. Thousands upon thousands of Native children were placed into stranger adoptions, building the booming adoption industry it is today in the USA. The damage to us Lost Birds is rarely mentioned in this bad history.

Believe it or not: there are very few orphans in the entire world but the adoption industry has decided to keep selling babies -- they just call them orphans to grab our attention.

Why? The Adoption Agency morphed to serve a bigger ever-growing market: infertile couples. There are thousands and thousands of couples who can’t get pregnant.  Infertility is a silent epidemic. One thing leads to another, right? Toxic environment = infertility.

As I wrote in my op-ed for Indian Country Today published yesterday, the supply of infants is diminishing.  The adoption industry makes more than a billion dollars every year.  Where do you think they’ll go next to get a fresh supply of babies?

Excerpted from NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM, NCJS Journal Abstract, "ADOPTION AND MURDER" (from Psychology and Law" p.274-280, 1997, Santiago Redondo and Vicente Garrido et al, NCJS 176632)

“…although adopted children commit murders more often than commonly believed, there is resistance to making an issue of this fact. This may be because of the secrecy associated with many adoptions and the failure of criminal justice agencies to record the nature of an offender's family background. From a legal posture, an adopted child is simply the child of his adoptive parents. …the psychodynamics of adoption are easily overlooked in forensic mental health evaluations.” 

Excerpted from "ADOPTION FORENSICS: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ADOPTION AND MURDER" by David Kirschner, PhD

“Of the 500 estimated serial killers in U.S. history, 16 percent were adopted as children, while adoptees represent only 2 or 3 percent of the general population. Adoptees are 15 times more likely to kill one or both of their adoptive parents than biological children.”

And my earlier post in 2012 about Adoption Propaganda and Dr. Phil: here