What my adoption cost me

(posted on lost daughters blog on 2012 and on this blog in 2014) (i want to share again in 2025, edited a little)

REBLOG
By Trace Hentz (author-blogger)

Someone asked me what had adoption cost me personally. What a loaded question, I shot back in my email.  I said I needed to think about it.

Obviously, first of all, I didn't ask to be adopted!

This situation was thrust on me by a damaged 22-year-old small-town Wisconsin girl who loved Chicago-clubbing and partying too much. She didn't want me after my 28-year-old father (also a big drinker) kicked her out.  He moved back to his Illinois farm-town and found a new wife.  She went to an unwed mothers home in Minnesota and signed me away to Catholic Charities. (Both had new kids right away.) (She kept two daughters.)

If my soul wanted a big test this lifetime, this was clearly the route to take. I am not miserable knowing the truth, not at all. I am better knowing the truth.

Finding out neither parent would ever look for me? That discovery cost me.

Who would tell a woman she cannot keep her own baby? Who made them think this way? Belief systems, religions, social workers, neighbors, parents, judges, priests? 

Even your own family can be so damaged, it's risky to find them.  There were times I wished I had never looked but I had to know why I was abandoned, handed off.  Taking those risks to find out the truth cost me years but I am not sorry.

Being told by my natural mother to never contact her again?  That rejection cost me about two years and added grief since I'd have to contact her again for my fathers name. (No one told me this was somewhat common to be rejected again.)

I made all the moves, made all the calls, did all the travel and took all the risks to find both my birthparents.  I put myself out there to join a family who didn't even know I existed or cared that I did.  That cost me.  The fact is they do not understand what I went through and didn't bother to ask, this cost me and confused me.  But I do know people focus on their own pain.  No one really cared about mine.

The adoption trade in babies was booming in the 1950s.  In my opinion my adoptive parents were not carefully screened.  Despite his raging alcoholism and their marital discord after two miscarriages, Catholic social workers still qualified them to be my parents.  Very young I was sexually molested by my adoptive dad.  That betrayal cost me.

I had to pretend for years I was alright when really I wasn't.  I tried to live up to their expectations and be the baby they lost.  That impossible situation cost me.

My adoptive parents didn't know adopting kids won't fix a marriage and could even make it worse!  I had to suppress my shock and disappointment in them for too long.  It took me years to find and get therapy and counseling that worked.  This delay cost me.

My lack of trust and being able to love someone cost me a marriage.

Many years later I learn my ancestry.  My father, who had the Native blood, didn't intervene to keep me.  How did that make me feel?  Betrayed.  I had no idea what to think about being "part-Indian" since there was no one in my dad's family to reconnect me to my tribal culture.  That cost me.  (Since 2024, I found even more Indigenous ancestry with the help of my niece Tracy on my dad's side.)

How can you measure cultural loss when there is no dollar amount or apology that can undo what happened? There is no easy way to get that back. Those years are lost and cannot be returned.

 

What did adoption cost me? Everything.

What did adoption give me? Strength! And the determination to urge others to seek adoption reform and end all closed adoptions permanently.

My birthmother Helen Thrall died in 2007.  She had diabetes.  This story ran in a Florida newspaper.  I am nothing like her.  And I hate football!

AAC, SEO, Adoption Industry Profits? Read this

By Trace Hentz (blogger-author-adoptee)

I was very fortunate to attend the American Adoption Congress annual gathering in Cambridge, Massachusetts one week ago today... I sat on the Lost Daughters panel made up of unique and passionate adoptees who like me have been blogging on Lost Daughters and writing on their own blogs. It was my first time meeting them in person and they are all honest outspoken activists who care deeply about adoptee rights and finding our voices. You might recall last November seeing a trend of tweets about #FLIP THE SCRIPT and #VALID VOICES - those hashtags (#s) originated at Lost Daughters BLOG, created by Lost Daughter blogger Rosita!

One big thing I felt about AAC was the unity.  The first moms and adoptees had their voice respected and heard.  My friend Lindy was with me and she is a first mom.  Lindy is working on a book interviewing 15 birth moms and she blogs "Telling Our Stories for the Sake of Truth" here.  We are still talking about what we learned, who we met, and the conference itself.

The morning workshop we attended was on SEO (search engine optimization) and blog tips that help readers find blogs and websites, taught by savvy first mom Claudia Corrigan DArcy. (Claud is in reunion with her son Max who was there!)

SEO is critical in the age of social media to help readers find relevant writing and new thinking on adoption by searching Google, Bing and other search engines. I learned so much from Claud and will put it to work on this blog. (I am doing some things correctly as I do share these posts on Facebook and Twitter.) (You can share these posts too!)

Claudia blogged recently about Adoption Industry Profits. I wrote on this blog that billions are earned each year and it's alarming as well as profit-driven.

Please take a look and read the stats:
http://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/adoption-industry-profit-data-2015/

I want to thank you all for reading this blog. It's truly appreciated.

Please read Lost Daughters blog and subscribe!

The more we learn and share, and help each other, the greater the impact!

xox Trace

[I am getting a brand new second edition of TWO WORLDS ready for publication. I will post more when it's all done...]

Broken: Trauma Bonding? #flipthescript #validvoices

trau·ma    

A serious injury or shock to the body, as from violence or an accident. An emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person, often leading to neurosis. An event or situation that causes great distress and disruption. 

 

By Trace Hentz (adoption survivor)

After many years, in many quiet moments, I recognize that adoption has affected me very deeply.   

In my case, the day my mother left me, how she never came back, my world changed.  All I knew as this newborn baby was my own mother was not holding me, nursing me, talking to me. I was devastated by that. Broken. Part of my brain shut down. That pain was too much.

That very early experience needed to be processed as stress and trauma much later as an adult.  No one explained this to me, not even a doctor. As an adult I understand that a church/adoption agency places an infant with new parents and society says this is good and permanent. Good? Good for who?

Years pass and I accept this happened to me and my early trauma scars me.  

This monumental loss of my mother cracks me open and I am left to survive it, or not.  No one explains that I need to grieve this. I figure it out.  After years pass, I finally understand.  This experience affected me in complex ways.  This pain has layers and layers and layers.

But for others to tell me adoption was good for me? What? Or how I need to accept this is "adoption." Accept it? Are they kidding?  My scars are invisible but they are there. I know they are there.

How Catholic Charities took possession of me, handled me, first placing me in an orphanage then foster home, with no regard for my physical health, or my trauma-ridden emotional body, this speaks to the inhumanity of child trafficking and the traumatic consequences of adoption for the infant.  This speaks to the inhumanity of the deadly colonization of Indigenous people whose children were taken from them, calling us stolen generations. This speaks to a society that only sees what it wants to see.

Once adopted, you’re erased, an outsider, a stranger to your own nation, lands and people. I prefer to think of my younger self as brainwashed.

The bonding I had made with those mystery foster parents was also broken. How Catholic Charities and other churches and adoption agencies did this to millions of babies has consequences. This leaves millions of adoptees in the state of trauma, a stranger being raised by strangers, and a stranger to your first family.

Adoption is a cruel and inhumane way to treat an infant. A very sick society would do this.  And removing me from my own mother affected me in ways that are now measured and defined as post-traumatic stress disorder, or reactive attachment disorder, or severe narcissistic injury...and this explains how I was unable to bond with my adoptive parents.

What’s Trauma Bonding? What is Complex PTSD? (traumaanddissociation.wordpress.com) 

 

"When a mother is forced to choose between the child and the culture, there is something abhorrently cruel and unconsidered about that culture. A culture that requires harm to one's soul in order to follow the cultures prescriptions is a very sick culture indeed. This 'culture' can be the one a woman lives in, but more damning yet, it can be the one she carries around and complies with within her own mind....." -- Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

Canada: Vatican Crimes #adoption #validvoices

Christmas is not a good time for many of us adoptees, or mothers of loss... many of us feel loss and anger over human trafficking and loss of family... Trace

Vatican and nun crimes happened in Spain - research "Spain Stolen Babies" by BBC and this atrocity also took place in Australia (so much so that the government even forced the nuns to issue an "apology" in 2012 for stealing babies). The news program "Dan Rather Reports" did a story on this topic called "Adopted or Abducted?" highlighting the fact that this also took place in USA.
Now this video highlights that this also took place in Canada. In fact, we encourage viewers to look for the book called "GONE TO AN AUNT'S" where reporter and author Anne Petrie further discloses how this took place in Canada.

The Protect Your Children Foundation is committed to exposing all the lies and crimes of religion worldwide to alert the nations of the dangers these criminal organizations pose in our communities. For more information, visit: http://areyourchildrenprotected.org and http://www.protegeatushijos.org

OBC Access #flipthescript #adoption

New York State Adoptee Equality on Facebook

This IS Adoptee Rights:
"I look at it as a human rights issue. Why should people who, to no fault of their own, happen to be adopted, have less rights to their existence?" David Weprin said. "It's really a piece of the puzzle people should be entitled to. In this day and age, there is no reason why there should be a restriction to an adoptee having access to their original birth certificate (OBC)."

By Lara Trace

This article sums it up...

 

No Wonder Adoption Agencies are Nervous About OBC Access!

by Jo Swanson on Monday, October 25, 2010 

I was looking for a quote in my 1989 'mini-book' The Adoption Machine and came across something I had forgotten about. It fortifies what we've known all along about why agencies fight so hard to keep adoptees and birth families from locating one another. The agency is in Michigan - it's the one my daughter was placed through. I'll quote directly from the book:

A birthmother who placed her child through our same "Christian" agency contacted me for search help. She had kept in touch with her social worker throughout the years, even after the woman retired, as a way of somehow staying connected to her child. In recent visits, the former social worker had become quite upset about the birthmother's desire to be reunited with her daughter. "Give it up," she admonished her, suggesting that she was merely having a "bad day." "Cheer up! You have another family now! Besides, I checked the phone book recently, and the family isn't living in the area anymore."

Mother and daughter did meet, however, and upon comparing information provided to each by the agency at time of placement and later with the real story, found:

Claim: Birthmother was told by her social worker at time of relinquishment that her infant was perfectly normal and healthy.

Fact: Records indicated the child was diagnosed in the hospital, right after birth, as having a severe hearing impairment (95% loss), possibly due to exposure of mother, unknowingly, to German measles during pregnancy.

Claim: One year after relinquishment, birthmother was sent a letter by the agency, informing her that her child was "in a happy home" and that the adoption was finalized.

Fact: At the time the social worker wrote that letter, this child was back in foster care after a failed adoption. "The adoptive mother was having a nervous breakdown and couldn't handle a handicapped child." A second placement had been made at thirteen months, and fortunately it was a very good placement.

Claim: The adoptive family no longer lived in the area.

Fact: Adoptive father was deceased, but the mother still lived in the same home as at the time of adoption, and was still listed in phone directory. (Adoptive mother was supportive of her daughter's desire to meet her birth family.)

Claim: The adoptive couple had been told by the agency social worker after placement that the child's birthmother had died subsequent to the birth! (Common practice, we now know, as was telling birthmothers their infants died before or after birth.)

Fact: This agency social worker had spun so many lies that she was in a virtual panic that the two parties might actually meet one day and learn the truth!

++++++++++

We're getting the truth out drop by drop. But we've been doing it for so many decades - when will legislators begin to "get it" and realize how power has been abused by adoption brokers at the expense of children and their mothers?...Trace