What happened in your reunion?

I am posting this comment to ask you the question: What happened in your reunion and would be willing to leave a comment or write me about it?
We are in a place spiritually where answers are as important as reunions. Some of us may find wonderful relatives and others won't.
There is no manual for reunions. There are few options other than go and meet.
Please read this.  I'd like to hear about your reunion with tribal relatives.
Trace


Shadoseer has left a new comment on your post "DNA tests: Finding the Truth and your Family":

I am an adoptee and found my birthmother some 25 years ago (give or take). It went fabulously well to begin with but turned very sour after a while. Why? I don't know. She made things up about me that the rest of the family chose to believe. Not much i could do about it. While she would not tell me a thing about my birthfather, it did get back to me that he is half Cherokee. I have researched the name given me but it is a huge family and I have had no luck. On top of that, he has no knowledge she was even pregnant.

I founded and lead a search and support group and have facilitated in many reunions, some went wonderfully, some not so much, but in the end all were good because answers were given. The amputated roots began to heal as did the gaping holes we all felt inside. I feel I will never know my true heritage or at least half of it and for this I hold her solely responsible. It is the epitome of selfish to intentionally hide a child's heritage from them, especially after a long and protracted search.Mine was particularly difficult.

For all of those searching out there, never give up! The answers you get, no matter how dark on the surface, are much better than one at all. I wish everyone the very best in their quest!

Adoption failures and breakdown #NAAM

I offer this as the last entry in National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM)- adoption failures and breakdown do happen - read about it:

Post-adoption depression

By ADRIANA BARTON

VANCOUVER — From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2009

            The minute she laid eyes on her adopted son, a seven-month-old Guatemalan boy, Michelle Brau knew something was wrong, she says. Instead of joy, she felt dread. Instead of wanting to comfort the infant, she found herself not wanting him at all.
            The negative emotions blindsided her, Ms. Brau says. She and her husband, Jim, had yearned to adopt and add to their family of four biological kids.
            “I love children,” says Ms. Brau, who lives in Springville, Utah. But she couldn’t bring herself to love her healthy new son, nor a second boy, aged 2, whom the couple adopted from Guatemala months later.
            Ms. Brau says she assumed her affection for them would grow with time. For more than five years, however, she avoided their hugs and was more strict with them than with her other children, she recalls.
            Consumed by guilt and shame, she told no one about her inability to bond with the adopted boys.
            “I felt like a monster,” she says. “I longed to be dead.”
            When she finally confided in her husband six months ago, he did some research online and concluded she had post-adoption depression, a condition being studied by researchers but not yet recognized as a psychiatric disorder.
            According to adoption professionals, post-adoption depression can range in severity from a few weeks of the blues to a major depression that lasts months or longer. Like  postpartum depression, it may bring intense feelings of anxiety and guilt, fantasies of running away, and suicidal thoughts.
            Ms. Brau consulted two therapists, she says, but her feelings of desperation did not change.
            So this spring - nearly six years after they adopted the Guatemalan children - the Braus contacted an agency to find them a new adoptive home.
            “These boys deserve so much more than I can give them,” Ms. Brau says, adding that her depression has lifted since the adoption was dissolved last month. “I feel like me again.”
            The Braus’ case may be extreme but the potential consequences of post-adoption depression are recognized by a growing number of adoption professionals.
            Left untreated, it can lead to the breakdown of the adoption, says Brenda McCreight, an adoption counsellor in Nanaimo, B.C. “I’ve seen it break up marriages too.”
            Post-adoption depression didn’t have a name until 15 years ago, and it remains a new area of research. Early studies suggest it’s “as prevalent, or more so, than postpartum depression,” says Karen Foli, who co-authored The Post-Adoption Blues with her husband John Thompson, a child psychiatrist.
            A study published last month in the peer-reviewed Journal of Affective Disorders found the rate of depression in women after adoption was about 15 percent - the same rate found in women who have given birth.
            Dr. Foli, a professor of nursing at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., is partway through a study to assess whether the tools used to diagnose postpartum depression are valid to screen for  post-adoption depression. Unlike mothers with postpartum depression, who have a biological explanation for their bleak mood, adoptive mothers cannot attribute their depression to a sudden drop in estrogen levels (although some researchers suggest that nurturing an adopted child may trigger hormonal changes).
            “We desperately need to understand it more,” she says.
            The syndrome appears to be more common in women than in men, Dr. Foli says, since women tend to be the primary caregivers. Stress, sleep deprivation, lack of social support and a history of depression can put women at greater risk for post-adoption depression, according to experts in the field.
            Also, many adoptive mothers have no parenting experience, notes Sandra Scarth, president of the Adoption Council of Canada. For a career woman who has enjoyed years of freedom, the demands of parenting can be a shock, especially if the child isn’t attaching to her well.
            “Suddenly she’s home all day with a child who really doesn’t like her very much,” Ms. Scarth explains.
            When depression strikes, adoptive mothers are often secretive about it. They feel pressure from family and friends to rejoice in the child they brought home after years of waiting, often at huge expense.
            Most are reluctant to seek help from social workers, fearing the child may be taken away - an unlikely event, according to Dr. McCreight.
            Nevertheless, an estimated 11 to 18 per cent of adoptions break down for various reasons during the probationary period (usually at least six months), according to American researchers, and about 2 per cent of adoptive families cannot cope after the adoption is finalized. In both cases, the child returns to child-welfare authorities and may be readopted.
            As awareness of post-adoption depression grows, some agencies are addressing the syndrome in their pre-adoption training sessions. But people who long for children tend to believe it won’t happen to them, says Dr. McCreight, who has adopted 12 times.
            “We think we’re going to be the most wonderful parents and we’re going to form a family identity with no problem - and that’s not going to happen.”
            The expectation of “falling in love” with a child at first sight may be unrealistic, according to Dr. Foli, since most relationships take time to blossom and mature.
            But the guilt of not bonding with a child immediately can be “overwhelming,” says Dr. Foli, who coped with depression after she adopted her daughter from India about 10 years ago.
            For Dina Rodrigues, post-adoption guilt cut deep. She sank into melancholy and began to feel “really run down” a month after she brought her 11-month-old daughter, Sierra, home from China, she says.
            Ms. Rodrigues had no problem caring for her daughter’s physical needs, she recalls, but she worried she wasn’t connecting with her emotionally.
            “It’s like you have this amazing, wonderful child and you can’t really enjoy them,” says Ms. Rodrigues, who lives in a suburb of Detroit.
            Her anxiety intensified when her husband, Ashok, bonded with Sierra easily. “I just felt there was something wrong with me,” she says.
            Having suffered from depression earlier in life, Ms. Rodrigues says, she recognized the signs. Five months after the adoption, she saw a therapist and started taking anti-depressants “for my daughter’s sake.”
            When a parent gets depressed, it doesn’t mean the adoption has failed, says Dr. McCreight. “It just means that you should get help, get it fixed and move on as a family.”
            Major depression requires prescription medication, she says. As well, a post-adoption counsellor can help parents find ways to get child care and emotional support.
            After Ms. Rodrigues began treatment, her daughter fell ill with a stomach virus and wanted to be held by her day and night. The event marked a turning point in their relationship, Ms. Rodrigues says.
            “I was able to be emotionally there for her, and I think she saw that.”
            That was two years ago, she adds, and they’ve had a close connection ever since.
            ***
Warning signs:  Experts say post-adoption depression shares symptoms with postpartum depression:
Feeling sad, tearful, irritable
Self-imposed isolation from family, friends, spouse
Anger at the adopted child, spouse or other children for no apparent reason
Desire to leave home or have the adopted child removed
Loss of interest or pleasure in most activities
Significant changes in appetite and sex drive
Insomnia or a marked increase in sleep
Fatigue, lack of energy
Feelings of worthlessness or guilt
Thoughts of suicide

My Foster Care Training #AdoptionReality #NAAM

I am sharing an excerpt from One Small Sacrifice about my experience getting foster care certified in Oregon.  This month is National Adoption Awareness Month (#NAAM).  I am blogging about my own experiences. I was like so many foster care providers and future adopters, filled with the exciting prospect of taking in a young child and giving them a better life.

I still have the binder and info from my 12 week course in 1994. There is nothing in there about how a child reacts to being abandoned. I was starry-eyed at the idea of becoming a foster mom then adoptive mom. NOTHING was taught about how an adoptee reacts to losing their identity! I was an adoptee myself and clueless, even though I had lived through it. When I started research in 2004 as a journalist, a whole world of adoption reality opened up for me. A light bulb went on and I could see how adoption propaganda had skewed reality and what adoption really is... keeping their billion dollar adoption industry going....

...What I learned and what surprised me most of all is the adoption industry was created for the adoptive parents by the adoption agencies. The system was actually designed to grow and to recruit potential parents. Churches handled immorality so there were plenty of babies to distribute. States opened and operated secret places called maternity homes and facilities for girls and women to wait out their pregnancy until they deliver. Babies were farmed out like fresh produce. Over time it became a booming billion dollar business for someone.

I tried to imagine how it must feel to give up a child. I watched a few television movies about birthmothers who would change their minds, then fight in courtrooms to regain custody using lawyers. People on both sides would argue who was more deserving, which mother had bonded more with the baby.

America finally instituted a six month waiting period for a birthmother to change her mind, before the adoption decree was final. This made adopting a baby more difficult and scary, since a birthparent might want their baby back. Recent movies like Juno don’t mention the orphan who lives with trauma and sadness, nor do the movies relate what it’s like for the adoptee who grows up in a closed adoption.

Foster Parents

Since my adoption in 1957, couples who wish to adopt a baby still fill out paperwork, give references and have two or more home inspections and rounds of interviews. There are still caseworkers in the state-governed adoption systems. Now prospective parents are finger-printed. Most states, not all, perform extensive background checks on potential adoptive parents. In recent years, more and more adoptions are open.

Couples today take classes before adopting; first they must become foster parents.

I know this because I became a certified foster parent in Oregon in the 1994. Single and divorced people do adopt. Most important was income, if I could afford to raise a child.

It’s inconceivable to me that periodic checkups on adoptees are not mandatory, especially for children who come from a different culture or country prior to their adoption. After my adoption was final, all investigation stopped. No one came back to check on Joey or me. Since my original birth certificate was sealed by a court of law, I might never have found out I was adopted.

Again, it’s not about the adopted child.

Social Workers

Who is looking out for the orphans? They are the social workers. There are thousands of them. In my twelve weeks of pre-adoption training in Oregon in 1994, I learned that all children over age three are considered special needs because they have been abused sexually, emotionally or physically, or neglected in some way.

In America? They weren’t kidding. It’s true. One would think this would make adopting a child less attractive. Well, older kids are usually fostered and not adopted. People prefer cute cuddly babies.

Slap on a band-aid, write a prescription and it’s going to be alright. Place these special children with foster families, and move on to the next case, which they do every day.

We know social workers have hundreds of cases, and foster kids slip through the cracks; this makes the news from time to time. There was one story in Florida where children were caged like animals and their foster mother collected money on each caged foster child every month.

During my foster care training, one class debated if drugs and medication are best when it comes to behaviors in young adoptees and foster children, like those who have bonding problems, or they act out, get aggressive, or have the newly-discovered Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

My class heard medicating “troubled children” was the preferred option. To my astonishment (and horror), this is common in every state. Apparently bad behavior is just not tolerated – so at the first sign of trouble, special children are medicated.

I thank God I wasn’t medicated. I’d either be dead or drug-addicted, and definitely not sitting here right now.

Sometimes ideas are just plain scary. It’s easy to see why the pharmaceutical companies (and drug cartels) are so successful, with television campaigns on various drugs. We know what drug we need and tell our doctor.

Really, I use herbal medicine and natural healing and only their western medicine and first aid when absolutely necessary.

Social workers admit but seriously underscore behavior problems in adoptees. In many states, they’ll pay for psychiatric care and prescription drugs until the foster child or adoptee becomes an adult.

You won’t see a TV commercial about this.

 

(I never adopted a child in Oregon.)

Please share this...

Read more  about Lost Daughters NaBloPoMo/NAAM at  http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2012/10/adult-adoptee-centric-blogging-prompts.)

 

Blog Week: What bugs me about the Adoption Establishment

SHOTGUN ADOPTION
http://www.thenation.com/article/shotgun-adoption?page=0,0
This article is from 2009 but offers an interesting insider view of the Adoption Agencies agenda and their role in coercion of young women to relinquish their babies, instead of supporting them so they can keep their child.

Excerpt:
Carol Jordan, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, was living in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1999 when she became pregnant. She'd already decided against abortion, but she was struggling financially and her boyfriend was unsupportive. Looking through the Yellow Pages for help, she spotted an ad under "crisis pregnancies" for Bethany Christian Services.

Within hours of calling, Jordan (who asked to be identified with a pseudonym) was invited to Bethany's local office to discuss free housing and medical care. Bethany, it turned out, did not simply specialize in counseling pregnant women. It is the nation's largest adoption agency, with more than eighty-five offices in fifteen countries.

...instances of coercion in adoption stretch back nearly seventy years.

...CPCs (Crisis Pregnancy Centers) might persuade reluctant women by casting adoption as redemption for unwed mothers' "past failures" and a triumph over "selfishness, an 'evil' within themselves."

...CPCs were wary of looking like "baby sellers"...

Care Net runs 1,160 CPCs nationwide and partners with Heartbeat International to host a national CPC hot line.

... National Council for Adoption (NCFA), the most prominent adoption lobby group in the country, in the company of other benefactors like Bethany; Texas maternity home giant Gladney; the Good Shepherd Sisters, a Catholic order serving "young women of dissolute habits"; and the Mormon adoption agency LDS Family Services.

The federally funded NCFA has a large role in spreading teachings like these through its Infant Adoption Awareness Training Program, a Department of Health and Human Services initiative it helped pass in 2000 that has promoted adoption to nearly 18,000 CPC, school, state, health and correctional workers since 2002.

(Blog Week: http://landofgazillionadoptees.com/2012/02/22/secret-message-for-other-bloggers-about-the-week-of-february-26th-aka-why-the-adoption-establishment-annoys-the-heck-out-of-us-blog-week/#comment-1867)

I added the bold in the excerpt so you can notice the main players in the industry. Stay tuned to this blog - more of my rants coming this week...Trace

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

Lies the Social Worker Told

Guest Blog By Mary-Lee

When I was adopted in 1946, the unrealistic expectations my adoptive parents were given by the adoption social worker were terribly unfair to them, but also pretty darned unfair to me, too.
Of course there are all the usual ones. Most egregious is the one we adoptees all know... the one that said, “If you do a really good job as a parent, she will never want to know anything about her birthparents.”
Then, hedging their bets I suppose, is the one that said, “If she ever does want any information about her birthparents, all you need to do is come to us and ask.” Not all she needs to do, notice, but all you need to do. My adoptive parents, in partnership with the social worker, were set up from the start as the sieve through which all my questions and the answers would be strained and filtered. I was not a part of that plan. But I digress.
The one really unrealistic expectation “my” social worker set up before my adoption was finalized was, “Her I.Q. is one point below genius, so she will be able to take advantage of every opportunity you will be able to offer her.”
I really wonder how the social worker knew this. I was a bit over a year old at the time and barely able to speak. If I had been older, I might have laughed out loud. But again, I digress.
Still, my adoptive parents were required to have me tested, at their own expense of course, sometime before the adoption was finalized. I needed to prove myself able to see and hear perfectly or I would not have been offered for adoption. I also needed to demonstrate my intelligence.
And the intelligence test I was given? My adoptive mother told me about it years later. The doctor had a large picture of some items that he held up for me. He said, “Show me the shoe.” It seems I had just received a new pair of shoes for the special occasion so, quite naturally, I stuck my newly-shod foot straight up and out. “Yes, that’s a very nice shoe,” he said, “but show me the shoe in the picture. “ The second time I barely missed hitting him in the face with the shoe... the one that was definitely not in the picture.
So... onward. No sense kicking a dead horse, or a lively doctor either.
The next task was to put the doll in the chair. The problem was that there was a piece of glass between the child with the doll (me) and the designated chair. The less gifted child would try to put the doll through the glass and into the chair. The “genius” would simply walk around the glass and install the doll safely in the chair. My response? I pulled the glass over and shattered it. But I did put the doll in the chair exactly as I had been instructed.
And so on it went. I can only wonder how the doctor managed to score his test... after he swept up the glass from his floor. Whatever dilemmas he must surely have dealt with, the score eventually did come back to the social worker and I was one I.Q. point below genius. Yeah! You bet!
My parents’ problem, especially my mother’s problem, was that I never managed to live up to my hype.
Yes, at first I got A or A+ in the school subjects, but my teachers wrote that I could do so much better if I would only apply myself, and they all staunchly refused to give me better than A- in effort.
My mother dissolved into tears when I eventually brought home a B+ in arithmetic. I clearly remember her sitting on the lid of the toilet seat sobbing, “Blessed Mother, where did I go wrong?”
Then I got my first D, in religion of all things. My own suspicion was that the grade was given in a fit of pique because I had, only recently, not stopped blowing my nose in class while Sister was giving the meditation. But that’s just my suspicion. My mother had her own suspicions. None of them boded well for me.
I was truly a mediocre student all the way through school. My mother had told me that she would send me to college to become something “respectable,” like a teacher or a nurse... but not an artist or a translator, which were my preferences. I took as many elective foreign language credits and art credits as I could manage, and those good grades actually helped save me from flunking out completely, but still I stuck with teaching. I really tried to please. Doggedly.
Then came a day that I remember especially well... the day before my adoptive mother died. I was barely twenty-one, and still needed her approval desperately, so I pointed out to her that I was finally a teacher, and that I was living on my own and able to support myself, and wasn’t she at least proud of me for that? Maybe that was the wrong time to ask. I don’t know. But her answer?
“No. I'm not proud of you. You could have done so much better.”
My mother died thinking that she had failed as a mother. But I had to live knowing that I had disappointed her in some basic way and truly not understanding how I could have done otherwise. All because of an unrealistic expectation... a lie actually, among many lies that need not have been told. I have long since forgiven my adoptive mother for believing them... and myself, for not living up to everyone's expectations. But I will never, ever forgive the social worker. Never.

"Dad" Reunions ( and what I learned about REUNION meeting my dad)

Maryland father finds his son after 35 years: After many false starts, DNA test leads to reunion http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-adoption-search-ryba-20110619,0,1793711.story

Father, daughter, find each other, in life and song
http://www.ajc.com/lifestyle/father-daughter-find-each-982010.html?cxtype=rss_news_128746





There is great truth and importance in these stories, dispelling myths how reunions between adoptee and first parents won't work...  I have my own reunion story with my dad Earl Bland in my memoir "One Small Sacrifice." I met my dad in 1996.

This is what I learned about REUNION:

• After our first phone call, I wrote my dad a letter and explained what I knew about my adoption and gave details, like my date of birth, where I was born and what I knew from my adoption file. It gave him and his family time to process and adjust to my showing up in their life.
• We made plans to see each other - later we'd talk on the phone, just the two of us. (Repeat after me: "We can't start over. We start here and now.") My dad and I began our lives together when we reunited in person for the first time.
• Plan to meet. Schedule DNA tests if there is any doubt about paternity. Not sure at first, our DNA test said Earl and I were a 99.9% match. Hooray!
• Expect to feel very overwhelmed at first. Reunion is not about rivalry but if you have siblings, expect their surprise (and maybe some jealousy, too). Avoid controversy and meet one-on-one, just you and your parent first. Later spend quality time with the entire first family (your siblings, their kids, your kids and all the relatives.) Don't rush into this one but take lots of pictures! Meet your siblings one at a time, too. It takes time and energy to get to know one another.
• Watch your expectations, adoptees. Earl and I knew there was no way to go back to reverse the past or fix it. He did not apologize nor I didn't expect him to... My dad didn't ask me about my life or what I experienced being adopted. This might happen in your reunion, too. Plan your future together as time, money and distance will allow. Each and every reunion is unique. Share your story if and when you are asked.
• Listen and be patient: that is what I did.  I had no idea how my dad spent his life but I knew it was going to take time to hear his story. I took copious notes!  My siblings and relatives shared much more than my dad and gave me tons of genealogy.
• I knew my dad had no clue how hurt I was being adopted.  That was the truth for me. (Again, don't expect an apology.) I never expected he would fix my brokeness but hearing his voice the first time healed me in so many ways.  The fog I'd walked in started to disappear. Old illusions vanished. My grieving faded.
• Depending on your adoptive family, only you the adoptee can determine if they can handle any news of your reunions.  I know just one adoptee who connected his mothers - now they are friends.  That takes some very strong loving women (and men) to make this happen. Many adoptees did share their reunion stories and it abruptly ended their relationship with the adoptive parents. Be sensitive and don't share details if they don't want to hear them. Many adoptive parents do not realize the importance of reunions in an adoptees life. It is up to the adoptee how to procceed and if you share the news. The risk of rejection by your adoptive family is a whole new chapter to reunion.
• Last but not least, get counselling if you need to and early.  Spouses and friends may not be able to help you process all this. Go slow and be gentle with yourself but try and proceed with the reunion - since noone knows how much time you'll have to reconnect in this life.  In my reunion, I had a little over a year before Earl died. We made the best of our time. I knew he was very sick when we first met. Earl and I spoke often and I wrote letters and cards. When Earl became very ill and was hospitalized, I was updated by my family constantly. Sadly, I only met Earl once but I did attend his funeral and was listed as his daughter in his obituary.

Closed adoption advocates want us to believe secrecy is best and privacy was promised. That was not true in my experience at all. Yes, my mother Helen did not want to meet me but that was her choice, and I respected that. But ADOPTEES have TWO PARENTS. If one reunion fails, there is still hope we can meet someone else in our first family. It may be relatives - aunts, uncles or siblings. Never give up hope or your search! First, we have to permanently end closed adoptions - they do not serve the adoptee or their emotional and spiritual well-being. We must unseal adoption records and shine the light on the truth. We must demand Unconditional Access - so birthparents cannot withhold your original birth certificate or your adoption records.
I pray for each adoptee and natural parent to have a good reunion. There is good medicine and healing waiting for all of you.