Woman says her mother gave her up for adoption to spare her from residential school

Tina Taphouse is pictured in Langley, B.C., Monday, June 7, 2021. Photo by: The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward

#Langley woman says her mother gave her up for adoption to spare her residential school experience. #residentialschool #Sixtiesscoop 

LANGLEY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, B.C. — Tina Taphouse has spent a lot of time lately reflecting on the impact the Kamloops Indian Residential School has had on her life's path.

Taphouse didn't go to the school because her mother, who worked there and had also grown up in residential school, made the impossible decision to put her up for adoption so she wouldn't have to attend.

While Tina escaped the horrors that many survivors of the '60s Scoop and residential schools endured, Taphouse said she also wasn't brought up in her culture, with her family or her traditions and she felt lost.

She began reconnecting with her roots after her biological father reached out to her through an adoption reunification registry in 1994. Over time, she has learned more about her own family and story, although she said she doesn't push her mother to share sensitive details.

READ: Woman says her mother gave her up for adoption to spare her from

Warning: The information and material here may trigger unpleasant feelings or thoughts of past abuse. Please contact the 24-hour Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419 if you require emotional support.

Tens of thousands of adoptees live in fear of deportation

Like other #Americans, #adoptees are struggling for stability during #COVID19. B/c some adoptees weren’t naturalized by their US citizen parents as kids, they can’t access disability, unemployment benefits, & healthcare. #Citizenship4Adoptees Learn more👉https://t.co/wkclZ2JGEU

— Adoptees For Justice (@Adoptees4Just) September 23, 2020

LINK https://www.nbcwashington.com/local/adoptee-says-learning-she-isnt-us-citizen-was-like-trauma-car-crash_washington-dc/2094/

 

The News4 I-Team found tens of thousands of people who were brought to the United States when they were adopted later learned they aren’t U.S. citizens.

Imagine growing up in the United States, with American parents, only to find out decades later that you're not an American citizen. The News4 I-Team found it's happened to tens of thousands of people.

"It's frustrating and it's devastating," said Joy Kim-Alessi who, at age 25, found out she wasn't an American citizen when she applied for a passport.

Her American parents, who brought her to the U.S. as a 7-month-old baby, failed to fill out the right form, even though her adoption was legal.

"It's hard to wrap your head around that," she said. "To live your entire life believing just concrete truths about who you are ... all of that means I don't have an identity."

Kim-Alessi is in the U.S. legally, with a green card, but she's been fighting for 27 years for her citizenship. Now she's also fighting on behalf of others, like a Virginia man who asked the I-Team only to identify him as "Tom."

WATCH AND READ: Tens of Thousands of Adoptees Learn They Aren’t US Citizens, Even After Decades Living Here – NBC4 Washington

 

 

#Citizenship4Adoptees is a #COVID19 issue @RepKenBuck @RepMGS @RepMcClintock @RepDMP @RepGregSteube @JacksonLeeTX18 @RepArmstrongND @RepEscobar @RepLouCorrea @RepZoeLofgren @RepDLesko @RepAndyBiggsAZ @RepJayapal @RepJoeNeguse @RepSylviaGarcia #HR2731 NOW pic.twitter.com/YrjFN9MjhL

— Adoptees For Justice (@Adoptees4Just) September 23, 2020

Movie Review: After Watching Steve Jobs

Anne Heffron

I was okay watching Steve Jobs until the last ten minutes.

Then I had to keep wiping at my face with my sleeve because I would have had to walk across the room for a Kleenex.

I was at home, and I was watching the movie on my computer, so I was able to rewind and watch the last two scenes again and again: the one scene with Jobs and his daughter Lisa up on the parking structure where, for the first time in his life, he was willingly making himself late for a product launch, and the next scene where he is on stage, walking towards Lisa, ignoring the crowd, focused, for the first time perhaps, solely on her, on Lisa. The daughter he had once publicly claimed was not his. And now there he was, publicly claiming her. It was like a fairy tale magnified a hundred times, a happily ever after many other adoptees and I will never have.

It has been my experience it’s pretty easy for birth parents to deny either the existence of their child (my birth mother) or the importance of a meet and greet (my birth father). I can’t imagine what it would be like for either my birth mother or birth father to walk towards me, beaming with love or acceptance.

Do you remember being a kid and doing something really cool, like jumping off the diving board for the first time or tying your shoes or getting a 100 on a quiz at school? The kind of thing that had you running to your parents because you knew they were going to be thrilled? That’s a big part of being a kid. Accomplishing one thing after another and having your parents mirror your excitement, proving to you that you are a good person, you are worthy of this life you were given, that everything will be okay because you got this.

Imagine showing up at age 24 or 52, and saying to your finally-found mother or father, Here I am. You made me! We get to see what each other looks like! and having that person shrug and turn away or shake her head and say, You have the wrong person. It’s not me when you know 100% this person is in fact your birth mother. Or imagine if your birth father writes, My wife says you’re not family, so I can’t talk to you.

Imagine you find out you have half siblings, and either they don’t want to meet you, or they do want to meet you and suddenly, for no reason you can know for sure, cut off all contact.

This is part of adoption a lot of people don’t talk about. It’s one of the reason adoptees commit suicide. It’s one of the reason there’s a disproportionate number of adoptees seeking mental health care. When blood relatives turn their backs on adoptees, the effects are devastating, and yet many adoptees do what I did, which is to shrug it off.  I didn’t want to meet her/him anyway. I already have brothers/sisters. I don’t need more.

We shrug it off because the alternative is to feel a level of rejection so deep it can’t be compared to anything else. We shrug it off because the alternative is to feel.

When blood relatives turn their backs on adoptees, it’s often a knife in the part of the brain where the adoptee stores self-worth. Why would I want to exist if the very people who made me either deny my existence or don’t care enough about me to meet? It’s not rocket science, and yet it’s a point a lot of people seem to miss.

I don’t get it.
I must be missing that part of my brain.

Narratives of Adoption: My Dream #NAAM2016

By Trace Lara Hentz (author of One Small Sacrifice)

Every year we commemorate the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I too have a dream.

I dream we’ve moved past sexism, racism… classism… and white privilege.  My ongoing prayer is adoption will no longer move any child outside their own culture and ethnicity …I pray everyone knows of the Indian Adoption Projects and 60s Scoop with its intended disastrous results and how my own story is woven into this mess.

In my dream, I pray all adoptees are CALLED HOME, called to be with all our relations, many nations and first families!

I dream that we now live in a new world where adoptees and first parents have educated others far beyond the fallacies… mistruths… myths created by a billion dollar adoption industry who benefits financially even now from trans-racial, international and closed adoptions.

I have a dream the entire world has finally realized children were sold like commodities in many countries and trafficked – too often adoption files were filled with falsehoods and lies to SELL a child to their prospective adopters.  These legal files were sealed to hide an adoptee’s identity, name and ancestry on paper, to conceal the truth. For too many of us, states still won’t release our own names and files to us, even as adults.

I dream all states in America open their closed adoption files in the near future, in 2016 and beyond.

I dream the world sees how this was a money-making operation… a business of baby selling and “creating” orphans; how this is trafficking in human life when mothers and their children are FORCED into this situation with pressure from society… religion… governments with little regard to those same women and children and the health effects on their minds and bodies.

I dream that adoptive parents know and accept we cannot be the child they want us to be or dream us to be – that we are born with our own biology and parents. If you do adopt us, then never lie to us. It’s your job as our loving guardian to share knowledge and truth about our first parents and recognize the lifelong health effects and the fog of stress that we adoptees endure under secrecy and the primal wound our adoption creates.

I dream the entire world sees how children feel like imposters in their adopted family.  As an adoptee, I was posing as a DeMeyer, when I know the falsehood of that name was legally forced upon me.

I want the world to know GOD had nothing to do with creating this torturous invention and experiment but rather adoption was invented to maintain power in ruling families in Roman times and this idea traveled to other lands.

I dream that open adoptions are working better for children who cannot stay with their first parents but we are not there yet. Read this important blog: http://birthmamawasteland.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/if-you-dont-like-what-i-have-to-say-why-are-you-here/

Closed adoption left adoptees like me lodged between two worlds yet not quite fitting in any world.  This is why I have chosen the title CALLED HOME for the new anthology...  I have two close friends who were called home and are back living on tribal lands and they are a testament to the courage needed to be in reunion as adults, as adoptees who were part of these government plans to rid the world of Indigenous and First Nation people.

I dream this new world is one where children and their safety are top priority, not who adopts them.  I dream we are now working harder to unify families, preserving family units, helping parents care for their own children, not separating them unless absolutely necessary. Children should not be placed with paying strangers or paid caretakers if there is kin, other family members who are willing.

[Called Home: The RoadMap is published on Amazon in 2016.]

{I wrote this on 2014 and still have this dream...]

Celebrity Adopter Sheryl Crow (not one word about privacy and trauma)

ADOPTEE TRAUMA and PRIVACY?


My thoughts in 2012? What is classic news coverage when a celebrity adopts?

Bravo for Madonna, Brad and Angelina, Elton John, Ms. Sheryl Crow, and all the others.

We know it's not possible to hide anything when you're the celebrity and you adopt.

Public Relations is for us to think how great and wonderful the adopter is and how lucky the adoptee is, right?

Let's take Sheryl Crow and all the news last year when she adopted again.

Had Ms. Crow considered how the news would affect her sons Levi and Wyatt when they're adult men? They did not choose to be abandoned or adopted. They had no privacy. How will they feel being called the adopted sons of Sheryl Crow forever? Did Entertainment Tonight consider the boys rights before they showed their photos?

Does Madonna or Crow have a clue how adoptees are treated by their peers and bio-siblings in the real world?

How will Crow shield them from the cruel bastard label and the embarrassment they were abandoned by their own mothers? Will Levi and Wyatt be expected to show their gratitude to her and be silent around her about everything else?

Or were these open adoptions so the boys will know their natural mother's identity, their ancestry and their medical history? We can only hope, right?

Did Ms. Crow hire a surrogate? That's never mentioned but it won't change the boys emotional trauma.

What horrible thing happened that her sons were not able to be raised by their own mothers? That's carefully omitted in adoption propaganda and celebrity stories. They'll direct our attention to the famous rich person and have us forget the birth mothers and her loss entirely. The adoptee is considered lucky and now rich.

Do celebrities ever wonder how an adoptee feels after adoption? 

Crow is rich and famous, but her boys will still require truth, reality and plenty of emotional support! Makes you wonder if Crow has a clue about birth psychology, their severe narcissistic injury, PTSD and an adoptee's primal wound (read Nancy Verrier). There's trouble ahead if Crow denies it exists.

Publicity fills the ego of the celebrity narcissist and the hungry public eats it up.

We are supposed to believe Crow SAVED these boys, right? That's one of the adoption industry's clever ways to keep its business running smooth and encourage more women to abandon their children for adoption to the rich, better-off and famous. Forget those pesky rumors about reactive attachment disorders in adoptees!

Sappy stories about MS. CROW ahd her two adopted sons is great publicity for her obviously- but not for the two boys who will have to deal with their adoptee label and adoption trauma their entire life... Trace