Why I Don't Want to tell you my Narrative a.k.a. "Adoption Story"

I have been asked to share my narrative several times and once again recently as I have been invited to be a contributing author for a new online adoption magazine and the editor thinks that people will want to quickly get to know me and my background by reading a few relevant posts (narrative included) that describe my life and adoption.  I had it up here before and took it down.  I started to re-write it again and stopped writing it in frustration, for the same reason.  I write my on-going narrative quite frequently on this blog; one would think that sharing my "growing up" narrative would be easy.  Sharing it is easy; having to type it all out as if black and white print can even begin to remotely portray my exact meaning and emotion--not so easy.  And it's not just the difficulty in explaining what it is like to be adopted for people, who often times when listening to an adoptee narrative, will believe that a narrative serves the purpose of giving another person a complete understanding of what it is like to be adopted (sorry, it's just not that easy).  It's what [some] people do to adoptee narratives that I just don't like.


I don't want to be analyzed, labeled, and "diagnosed" by what someone thinks they've read in my narrative.  I don't want to hear "oh, you'd have different opinions if".... "you'd just found out about your adoption at age three and not four," or "your rare conception circumstance skews your opinion on all of adoption, sorry, you don't count," or "oh, your adoption was closed, all adoptions are open now, it's so much different so sorry, you don't count any more," or "oh, we used your agency and know one million people who also have and you must just have a tainted view because we never had any problems with how they treated us/'our birthmother'/me/the adoptee."  The list goes on.

I also think people (ahem, Lifetime Network anyone?  Hallmark Channel?  Every Disney movie...ever?) find adoption narratives entertaining when they're not told for entertainment.  Girl gets pregnant.  Girl feels pressured to choose adoption.  Girl carefully packs an outfit and a bear for the daughter she won't raise and her daughter is never given those things.  Girl waits for decades to be contacted by daughter but the phone never rings.  Finally, the phone rings!  And we all grab a tissue and give a heavy sigh while sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, our hearts warmed that my mother still loves me despite all odds.

When I say "we all" I don't mean "you all."  I have a fairly regular choir here that I enjoy preaching to and I know you won't treat my narrative this way but it being in public means that anyone can.

The funny thing about the possibility of people picking through a narrative to try to find what is unusual about it in order to debase the adoptee and say why it taints their view and therefore, their opinions on adoption and experience don't count is that, when the "unique" stories are silenced or never told, we never really know if any given experience or situation is unique or not.  For instance when it comes to mother's narratives, people might like to think that being pressured into adoption was a rare, unusual, experience and that most mothers danced happily into maternity homes where they were treated like respectable royalty and gladly signed relinquishment papers, pressure-free.  Could you imagine if Ann Fessler had never interviewed all the mothers that she did or if Ricki Solinger had never done her research?  We'd never had realized that instances of coersion were not rare.  We'd be "blind" to an era of adoption with huge ethical errors.  We'd have a huge piece of historical information missing that is vital in working toward ethical change in the future. And all of the women with similar experiences would have missed out on the catharsis and empowerment of knowing I'm not the only one.

This is exactly what people tried to do to the narratives of BJ Lifton, Jean Paton, and Florence Fisher.  In 1974, Arlene Nash, Director of ARENA (Adoption Resource Exchange of North America), an organization founded by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) for the purpose of matching children in need of homes with parents, said this in her scathing review of Fisher's autobiography:

"It will be immediately apparent to the professional social workers that Mrs. Fisher fits the norm of adoptees whom we have always known and research has verified as those most likely to seek their biological parents. They frequently have not been told, or told late in life, about their adoption, have had a less-than-satisfactory relationship with adoptive parents, have emerged with low self-esteem, and frequently have suffered a loss or come to a crisis. 

Had Mrs. Fisher been placed by an agency, the book possibly could not have been written. Very early in her sleuthing she might have come upon the resource of the agency and been able to have her questions answered. In fact, she might possibly have been given assistance in the "meetings," which would have been arranged in a way much less traumatic for her and her biological mother. 

................One hopes, however, that this can be done through exploration of the feelings and attitudes of a wider sample of adult adoptees and their biological and adoptive parents whose adoptive experience exemplifies- the current, more enlightened practice."

So, Ms. Fisher tells her story, society did not like the way in which she told it, the quiet-adoptee-expectation she broke, or the way she rapidly mobilized and empowered other adult adoptees.  So, let's pick through her narrative to debase her, shall we?  She had a "rare, personal experience" as a lawyer-facilitated adoption, late-discovery, adult adoptee who had a mother who was at one point severely mentally ill.  Well goodness gracious if that isn't enough to write this poor adoptee off completely.  We want to listen to adoptees, just not that adoptee.

What is missed in doing that is the thing that Ms. Fisher's narrative can teach us like no other.  It does not matter that a lot of adoptive parents do tell their sons and daughters they are adopted and do not hide the truth from them.  Amending and sealing still provides the basis for lies to be told.  It's not OK that amending and sealing allowed Ms. Fisher to be lied to, not even if she was the only adoptee in the entire universe that it ever happened to.  Her story alone proves that amending and sealing is not OK.  Ms. Fisher's story is the epitomy of examples of the damage secrecy can cause and the strength and resilience individuals have to form strong identities and positive self-esteem despite it.

I'll also point out the "research-based" profile of the "mal-adjusted" adoptee who only searches because they think their life sucks or had horrible adoptive parents has been completely debunked.  It's easy for people to say "adoptees who search are mal-adjusted" when it is the searching itself that makes one "mal-adjusted."

Many adult adoptees could tell you that it's not the "norm" to get all the answers you are looking for by going to an agency.  Not in the 70's and not in 2009 when I was searching and trying to get my agency, the largest agency in the United States, to help me.  Fisher wanted her mother and father's names and an agency probably would not have given that information to her as Ms. Nash claimed.  Records in New York had been sealed for over 50 years by that point in time, in part by the pushing of those adoption agencies who were trying to compete with the illegal adoption market by offering the same secrecy that had begun within the illegal market itself.  It was this secrecy that made adoption more attractive by promising to keep the stigmatized original family out of the adoptive family's life.  Adult adoptee narratives have really exposed this issue and a common problem where the same mega-agencies that oppose Adoptee Rights happen to also be the same one who want to hold their own adoptee records under lock and key only accessing them for a fee and offering to facilitate reunions for several hundred dollars.  "Enlightened practice?"  I think not.

So there is my long way of saying that I am trying to write out my narrative but keep giving myself one million reasons not to.