The Declassified Adoptee

An Open Letter to Jon Stewart from a "Rape Baby"

2012-02-24T12:41:00.003-05:00

Mr. Stewart,

You and your colleague, Mr. Oliver, had a great segment on your show yesterday making fun of Presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, and his outrageous and radical beliefs. As evidenced on Twitter and around the web, people laughed along with you, a laugh that became so hysterically funny that Mr. Oliver broke character and you could barely contain yourself. You managed to squeeze out how Mr. Santorum wants women to have their "rapists' baby" in all the laughter. I had to stop laughing at this point.

And it's because I am my mother's "rape baby," Mr. Stewart.

It seems as though your intentions are to support a Pro-Choice stance and on the surface, that's great. But you need to understand what Pro-Choice means. Mr. Stewart, the joke you made yesterday was not really Pro-Choice. Pro-Choice means it is none of the public's business why or why not a woman has an abortion or any other health care procedure on her body. When we imply that a woman who has been raped specifically should have the right to an abortion, we are saying that she has a better reason to deserve autonomy and choice than another woman who may have conceived a different way. Abortion in the context of rape tends to be just more men deciding on behalf of women which conception circumstances better warrant a woman's right to autonomy than another circumstance.

Another thing that really stung is the fact that people forget that there are living, breathing people out there in the world who are the products of rape. Most people have never met one so I will introduce myself to you and everyone else. Hi, nice to meet you, my name is Amanda. I am a 26 year old wife, mother, student, and casemanager. My favorite color is blue and my favorite food is cheese. I am a real person with real feelings. What you meant to do was promote Pro-Choice and point out Santorum for the irrational radical that he is. And I get that. But what "rape baby" implies is not choice; it implies that there's something specifically awful about "rape babies." People think it must be awful to be me. I'd like to challenge that opinion.

Mr. Stewart, I would like for you to bring these points up on your show. There was a lot of laughter yesterday and it was, unintentionally, at the expense of people like me and our mothers. It is the least you can do.

Regards,

The Declassified Adoptee

Please also see my post about the Liberal media coverage of Santorum's rape/abortion comment.

I do not often ask people to share my blog entries but please share this one!

Watch the segment here:

The Daily Show
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Should you Critique an Adoptee's Narrative?

2012-02-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

Narrative sharing has become so incredibly important to so many populations. It is how we find catharsis by knowing other people share our perceptions and experiences. It is how history and legend are passed down from generation to generation; it embodies the pride of our ancestors and loved ones who have gone before. It is an important part of self-empowerment; to own your story, make it yours, and be able to tell it as you please. Adoptee narrative sharing has been a growing trend, likely inspired by activists who first shared and collected the adult adoptee narratives for adoptees of modern adoption. It's what we now refer to as "adoption stories" and they're told everywhere from books, blogs, person-to-person, church meetings, support groups, conferences, education panels, articles and magazines--you name it, there's probably been an adoption story told there.  Helpful research has even been done as well as inspired by collecting adoptee narratives. The challenges with narrative sharing are that people will often confront the adoptee's perception of their own story or may be offended by the opinion and conclusions an adoptee has drawn, even if the adoptee has only spoken about his or her own story. Sometimes people use narratives to debase the credibility of the adopted person. There are both pros and cons of narrative sharing but is it OK to critique an adoptee's narrative? It is one of those things that falls under adoption community etiquette that the community has yet to work out completely.

My Personal Views on Etiquette/Netiquette
My initial response to the question of critiquing an adoptee's narrative would probably be to say "no." I have seen it done too often in ways that I don't like. However, I don't know that this is realistic. On second thought, I would have to consider other factors. Where was it shared? What is the context of the sharing? Is the adoptee open to critique? Will the critique be helpful or hurtful and why does the person want to critique this adoptee's narrative? What is your affiliation to adoption, are you a member of the adoption community, and do you yourself know what it is like to be adopted?

The Negative-Self Narrative
One reason I might say something to someone about what they've shared is if I feel like they've drawn a negative conclusion about them self from their adoption narrative. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard an adoptee think of them self negatively because they were surrendered to adoption or rejected at reunion "I was just a baby, what did I do wrong that she didn't want me?" The truth and universality of the matter is, being surrendered and being adopted is not an adoptee's fault, it is not something an adoptee did wrong, and it does not make an adoptee a bad person (nor does it automatically make anyone else a bad person). This is something that is always true: being surrendered to adoption does not mean there was anything wrong with you.

The All-Inclusive Narrative
I might also make comment in regard to a narrative if it serves to imply how all others ought to feel or serves to be an example of how all other adoptees actually do feel. My biggest pet-peeve in this regard is the example where I have seen adoptees say "there's no issue with adoptees getting passports because I have mine!" Meanwhile I can probably name off the top of my head, right now, at least five adoptees I've met in person who have never had a passport and have never been able to travel outside of the country because they're adopted. Adoptee narratives being used this way are not always used directly by the adoptee whom the narrative belongs to either. Adoptee narratives often fall victim to ventriloquism where someones "brother's girl friend's hairdresser's son" is adopted and "feels x way or x way so, why don't you?" Sometimes people compare adoptee narratives to cancel one or the other out or to imply that the two adoptees would be bickering it out with each other if they were both there present for the conversation. I find the "token adoptee friend" conversations a little silly at this point.

Agency Narrative
When it is an agency-only narrative that someone has, I might ask the adoptee if they would like me to tell them some resources to get their records or reunite--if they are interested in learning more or having more proof of a complete picture. I might recommend some books or articles that they can use to have a better picture of adoption during their growing up years. Not to belittle them or expect them to change a view that they have but because I know this was really helpful to me.

Private/Support Group Narrative
What happens when someone doesn't like an adoptee's view and it isn't about the adoptee at all? When I shared in a support group meeting years ago that I had always feared rejection and I found it cathartic to hear that other adoptees have felt the same way, someone challenged my feelings by saying "but mothers don't abandon their children!" (I never said that they did) "They make loving and selfless 'adoption plans!'" Here I was, saying how I have felt growing up and being told that my feelings are wrong because they don't fit another person's feelings or perspective. Was the challenge to my narrative at this point really about me or was it about the person who was offering the challenge? Another case in point is when someone once griped at me because they noticed I refer to both my moms as "mom," only differentiate when it gets confusing in conversation, and never use the "birth" label. "Your adoptive mother is your ' real mom'!" I've been told. "She did all of the work in your life and your 'birth mother' didn't do anything!" This woman didn't know me or my mothers from Eve.  She had no knowledge of my life or upbringing and for all she knew, my adoptive mother could have been a disinterested and neglectful parent who didn't do any "hard work" at all (my adoptive mother is actually awesome but again, this woman didn't know that). Her response was based on stereotype. Her response was based on how my narrative was challenging how she preferred to view adoption with the original parent as the horrible, abandoning parent and the adoptive parent as the only true, "saving" parent--the only parent who could be called "mom" or loved by the adoptee (please note that I did not say all or even most adoptive parents are this way).

People-First
This is one big issue narratives present and it's a good one. Narratives present this excellent challenge to adoption stereotype and that is: there are a million and one ways to view adoption, not just one. To really love and care about people, your acceptance of their narrative and your validation of their feelings within their own experience is more important than a uniform, positive, pristine, overall view of adoption the institution. It's even more important than a uniform negative view of adoption the institution. I don't think adoption-the-institution is all that grand in its current state with laws and policies that are outdated, stigmatized, and anti-woman.  However, I am hard pressed to challenge the views of someone who weighs the impact of adoption differently than I do because of their different experience, especially when I benefited from a privilege that they may not have had within my adoption.

I have been taught to value narratives in my work. One professor I really admire once explained "Narrative Model" in professional practice as being used to encourage people to put aside what they have absorbed as their narrative from surrounding society (having a society-prescribed narrative is an issue facing oppressed and marginalized groups) and create their own that they feel is most truthful and fitting to themselves. What these theorists have found is that many people live with prescribed narratives and those around them are not often open or supportive of the person re-telling their own tale and thinking their own thoughts about their life.

"Those who do not have power

over the story that dominates their lives,

power to retell it,

deconstruct it,

joke about it,

and change it as time changes,

truly are powerless,

because they cannot think new thoughts.

--Solomon Rushdie

The Public Narrative

Narratives not shared in a small group/support, or personal/private setting but are public narratives are a whole different animal completely. Someone tells their public narrative--in public--for a reason. Whether it be to support adoption, support reform, support other individuals and groups, challenge stereotypes, engage in political discussion, teach history, or just share for sharing's sake, people usually tend to share narratives in public with a purpose in mind. I am certain the reason is never to be insulted or belittled in return, which is an unfortunate problem with public narratives. People ask me quite frequently "I'm adopted and I really want to blog--do you think I should?" I rarely ever answer this question with a "yes" or "no." I have found blogging personally helpful and empowering. However, putting your narrative and thoughts on the Internet and in public will mean people will comment and they will not always be nice. There's something about the relative anonymity of the internet that seems to particularly lead to people being nasty to one another. I have found things I have written and shared and links to my posts being discussed and scrutinized (as well as being spoken nicely about) everywhere from other blogs, to articles, to discussion forums. It is important to know your own sensitivity level about different topics and really think about what you do and don't want to share before starting to blog. I do not think it is reasonable to expect people that people will be cruel in return. Not because it isn't a reality but because people honestly shouldn't be cruel to you. However, when you put something out in public I do think it is reasonable to expect people to provide commentary or publicly respond to it. A journalist I was in contact with once wrote an article about Adoptee Rights which incurred an inordinate amount of anti-adoptee, anti-woman comments on it. I was worried she would never write another Adoptee Rights article again especially with all of the people claiming she didn't do her homework because "adoptees can too get passports!" She simply said to me (paraphrase): "this is the nature of publishing something. I have pretty thick skin."

The critique of the public adoptee narrative is an issue that was most recently brought up in the adopto-bloggosphere when Malinda, an adoptive mother and blogger at Adoption Talk, referenced and quoted an adoptee's narrative that was shared in the New York Times. Malinda included her own commentary in red which was largely based on the positives and negatives she saw in how the adoptee's adoptive parents responded to topics surrounding the adoptee's adoption, as described in the narrative. Some commenters agreed with Malinda. Some disagreed. Some felt she was being rude to the adoptee. Some felt she was being rude to the adoptive parents or that she was intending to be rude to all adoptive parents in how she evaluated the narrative. I defended Malinda. The blog entry did really step out into controversial territory by offering commentary on an adult adoptee's public narrative. However, my response was not one of offense. Why this is, is very simple (for me). I like Malinda. I have been reading her blog for a long time now. I know of her to be a great ally to adopted persons. I also know of her to be an ally to members of her own group--adoptive parents. I would not automatically read something she wrote as being nasty--to adoptees or to anyone. I believe she was trying to be helpful and evaluate, by use of a public narrative, what adoptive parents could learn or do in the future with their own children. These are all what I felt were very important variables to consider. If the adult adoptee whose narrative it is stumbled across Malinda's blog and voiced that she is offended, I would also validate her. It does not feel good to have your narrative evaluated or to have anyone say anything about your parents via your narrative. In fact, a lot of adoptees worry that in sharing their narratives people will automatically think badly of their parents. These are also really important things to consider.

I won't lie and say that I am always bubbling with rainbows and sunshine in response to the narratives of other adoptees. One time that I did comment on an adult adoptee journalist's public adoption narrative (a different one than the one Malinda referenced) was when she concluded that, had she been raised in her original family, she would have been poor, uneducated, of the wrong religion and political affiliation, so on and so forth. My response served not so much as to demand that change her own view of her life but to share my opinion that her public narrative could be voiced in a way that did not assert classism, sexism, and other prejudices against oppressed groups. This pos t was inspired by her article. I also wrote an open-letter to adult adoptee and American University professor, Kimberly Leighton, when I heard her share her own narrative of searching and reuniting while implying that other adult adoptees do not have the equal right, and that it was even unreasonable, for other adoptees to want to do the same. So I guess I cannot say "no" to not critiquing narratives because I already would have broken my own rule. Over all for me my own personal guidelines are simple, yet not to simple. To be kind, to be helpful, to be informative and truthful, to be supportive, and for it to be about the narrative sharer and not about me. These are all things I consider when it comes to responding and discussing another adoptee's narrative.

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."

-Sir Francis Bacon

Your thoughts? What do you think about critiquing an adoptee's narrative?

Photo credit: digitalart

"Social Wreckers"

2012-02-22T13:52:00.000-05:00

Oh, stereotypes

Someone once commented to me that they bet my sparring partners at my Hagannah class go "easy" on me because I'm "a girl." I had just started out in this class which, granted, if you've ever seen Hagannah done, is intimidating. I wanted to just say to the person "I'm out of shape and I've never done this fighting technique before but my gender, of all the more relevant challenges I have in this regard, is the reason why you think I won't be good at it? Really?" I somehow managed to survive the pain of natural childbirth and surgery that injured my facial nerve but doing combat fitness in a controlled atmosphere with friends is supposed to have me clutching my pearls and swooning from my delicate, female sensibilities? Needless to say, it does not feel good to be stereotyped, about anything; ever. So I get it when adoptive parents and original parents tell me they often feel stereotyped or painted with a single brush. I get it as a woman who deals with stereotypes all the time. I also get it from the perspective from my role as a Social Services provider and soon-to-graduate-as-a Social Worker. In the overall adoption community, there are people who have had both good and bad experiences with workers of a Social Services background. Because of this I tend to get one of three reactions when it comes to disclosing to the adoption community my chosen profession of Social Work 1) "Oh, ok, that's nice." 2) "How wonderful, you must want to go into adoption work to share the blessing you got through adoption! or 3) "Social Wreckers are [insert any number of why someone doesn't like Social Workers here]." Since I just recently had number three hurled at me not twenty-four hours ago, it reminded me that Social Work is something I've been wanting to address on my blog for a while now and keep forgetting. Rather than responding to the person who has decided I was deserving of a scathing comment solely based on their perception of the career path I have chosen, I will simply generally address the topic here.

First, what I will say to someone who had a Social Service professional somehow impact their life and it not be a good experience; I am very sorry that happened to you. It's not fair when bad things happen to people. It's not fair when vulnerable populations are not appropriately advocated for. I will not sit here and insult you in return. I will not try to explain away your reaction to disclosing my Social Work education on this blog as you having a "rare and bad experience" or say anything else that's nasty about you. That would simply not be a kind, helpful, or appropriate response. I am aware that in so many ways the Social Services field failed to protect women and children when it came to adoption both in the United States and abroad and that there's much work left to be done in making adoption as ethical as possible. With the work of so many feminists, researchers, and authors, we know this. There's even an apology for it in Australia. What happened to so many women and children in the Baby Scoop Era is not OK. I identify in a different way with having trouble with helping professionals when it comes to adoption. I do not feel like the post-adoption worker at my agency was very honest or helpful to me when I was trying to reunite. The worker that handled my and my mother's case through the government agency that ended up facilitating our reunion seemed to be suffering from some serious burn-out. Her disinterest and insensitivity burdened our reunion experience and it wasn't fair to us that her behavior had that impact. Not feeling well served or even hurt by someone who is supposed to be helping people is something I too can relate to.

Instead of being stereotyped, I will instead tell you who I am and what I do. I am a Social Work intern casemanager for an Information and Referral agency. What I do is use agency resources to provide basic needs assistance to individuals and families in emergency or chronic poverty. Yesterday, I spent the day assessing the needs of individuals and families in need of food and gave food to people who were hungry. I found accommodation for individuals with disabilities. I helped people find funds to heat their homes because they were cold. When I was a Social Services coordinator for a nursing home, I assessed the bio-psycho-social-spiritual-cultural needs of residents and worked with their families and employees of other disciplines to make sure their rights and needs are upheld. I helped people who wanted to go home get back home. I helped people who needed to stay make my facility into their home.

What I did not do and have never done is adoption work. What I do has nothing to do with adoption work. This is what I want people to understand about the Social Services and helping professions: it's not just about, or even in the majority about, adoption work.

What I won't do in this post is go into adoption work or child welfare work because those are stereotypes of both Social Services and Social Work. There's a poster on the wall in one of my Social Work buildings at school. On it are around just 50 of the possible job opportunities for the education we are about to graduate with. The graphic designer had the job titles form the shape of a cone with the job titles at the top being the largest and gradually getting smaller all the way down to the bottom of the cone. One of the last job titles mentioned and in the smallest and least legible text? Adoption work. Yes, Social Services professionals, including Social Work, are found in the adoption field, but it is a myth and stereotype that all Social Workers go to school for is to learn adoption and child welfare work and that all Social Workers work in adoption or that the Social Work profession was even started in order to facilitate adoptions. This is simply not true. Professional Social Work began with Women's Suffragist, Sociologist, and Philosopher, Jane Addams who founded community and group work to address poverty and homelessness. Social Work does indeed have a place in adoption history. Dr. Katrina Wegar writes about it in her book "Adoption, Identity, and Kinship"; I highly recommend reading it. Did you know that the founder of Adoptee Rights, the Mother of Adoptee Rights as she is called, was a Social Worker?

The reason I say "Social Services" professional is to point out that not every caseworker, child welfare worker, or adoption worker, or any other Social Services worker is a "Social Worker." According to the National Association of Social Workers, a Social Worker is someone who has graduated with a BSW, MSW, or DSW from an accredited school of Social Work. What would furthermore be helpful is if a general skill set would be expressly defined in regards to this profession with required licensing at the BSW level, just as it is for BSN nurses, engineers, land surveyors, and other professionals. I am not saying that someone who provides Social Services who does not have a BSW, MSW, or DSW is doing a bad job. But according to the NASW and the law in many states, they are not, legally, a "Social Worker." If you are being assisted by a Social Services or any other type of "helping" professional and feel as though it would benefit you to know their professional background and education, ask them. It is important for clients to know how your worker relates to you and from what perspective they may have gleaned from their experiences and education.

As this person included in their remark to me that Social Work is not a science, I will respectfully disagree. We learn the Social and Psychological sciences and required to be competent in them in order to graduate. On any given day a Social Worker could utilize the work of Freud, Jung, Erikson, Levinson, Gilligan, Bowen, Kohlberg, Maslow (the list goes on) or put into practice any number of widely accepted models: narrative model, social change model, generalist intervention model, strengths model---you get the picture. Our work is based on theoretical and empirically-tested methods. Graduating from a BSW/MSW/DSW is not a walk in the park nor is a program getting accredited.

There are many people who feel hurt in various ways by the way adoption has impacted their life. Though I have experienced significant healing, I too identify with this. The way my mother suffered for years not knowing where I was or if I was OK bothers me, both as her daughter and as a mother myself. The stereotypes and stigmatization I have dealt with as an adopted person have been very hurtful. What I do not want to do, however, is transfer that hurt to another human being or project how I have felt onto them. Having people misunderstand the helping professionals that they will no doubt come into contact with throughout their life (Social Workers are everywhere) would be me transferring my own pain. It is important to me that people understand the Social Work profession, that Social Workers in every field understand the diversities, strengths, and challenges of every population they serve, including adult adoptees, original parents, and adoptive parents. My fellow students are likely sick, at this point, of hearing me talk about how adult adoptees, original parents, and adoptive parents can be better served in any, ever, and all Social Services field. It is important to me that people be able to be able to receive the help and support they need. I will say this and I am sure people will get mad at me: I do not automatically think horribly of all adoption workers either. In fact many are reaching out to adult adoptees, original parents, and adoptive parents for education and information. They are open to making positive change in adoption, the NASW's code of ethics is consistent with Adoptee Rights and some NASW branches have voiced support for Adoptee Rights. Social Services professionals are power holders in many institutions. I can't make positive change within adoption the institution if I run screaming and cursing at every adoption worker or adoption Social Worker that asks me for my opinion or looks to adult adoptees (and other triad members) as the beacons of change.

My goal is to make change.

Read some great blogs of people whom (I am pretty sure) all have a Social Work background somewhere in their education:

What a Shink Thinks, Socialwrkr24/7, The Anywhere but Here Girl (I'm sorry, I know I am missing about a million other adoptee/o-parent/a-parent/ally blogs here but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head). Joanne Wolf Small, the author of The Adoption Mystique, is an MSW.

Photo credit: Ambro

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

2012-02-19T00:48:00.000-05:00

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.

Keith Ablow's Adultist, Adoptist, Disablist Slam on Adult Adoptees on Fox News...are you Kidding me?!

2012-02-17T15:25:00.000-05:00

I had not, until this time, thought it was even possible for a psychiatrist in this modern age to be so completely disablist and biased and portray such utter contempt for a population they have obtained a high level of education in order to serve. Dr. Keith Ablow and Fox News have certainly challenged my assumption with Dr. Ablow's recent scathing blow to an entire population of people, adult adoptees, in a recent segment on Fox News, using stereotypes of adoptees and of individuals with mental illness to do so. He delivered his remarks while "analyzing" Media Matters founder, David Brock. Despite the fact that Dr. Ablow openly admits that he has never had Mr. Brock as a patient, nor has he ever observed Mr. Brock in a clinical setting, he felt he could provide commentary on Mr Brock's mental state, in explanation of Mr. Brock's political positions, on National Television. What he provided was nothing more than a hateful rant filled with prejudice against multiple groups. Ablow stated:

He’s a dangerous man, because having followers and waging war… this isn’t accidental language. It’s about violence, destruction, and he feels destroyed in himself.......This is an adopted boy who needs to plumb the depths of his psyche. He was adopted. Many adopted children are tremendously well-adjusted, but for some reason, this man feels he’s unloved and unloveable, shunted to the side, and that’s the antidote he feels: unlimited power. Guess what? It never ever works.

Where do I even begin?

Dr. Ablow feels that Mr. Brock cannot be taken seriously because he diagnoses Mr. Brock as being mentally ill. Attempting to degrade someone else based on their ability and mental health status, especially when you have not even professionally observed them, is disablist. Diagnosing someone you don't know in order to libel, degrade, and debase them is also abusive behavior. The idea that individuals with mental or emotional issues can never be taken seriously, or are people that others should be afraid of, is a harmful and ignorant stereotype.

Dr. Ablow also asserted that Mr. Brock must be mentally ill because he is an "adopted boy." This is adoptism. What Dr. Ablow did not do was take the actions of one particular individual and apply it to that person. What he did was take one stereotype of a population Mr. Brock is a member of and say that stereotype, e.g. being "dangerous" and mentally ill, is true because Mr. Brock is a member of that group. Dr. Ablow's logic was simply stated: adoptees are irrational and dangerous, ergo, Mr. Brock is irrational and dangerous.

Dr. Ablow used Mr. Brock's adopted status to paint a picture of him as dangerous, irrational, unstable, and mentally ill; he also used adoption to portray Mr. Brock as a child or an "angsty" teenager by calling him an "adopted boy" and mentioning adult adoptees as a group as "adopted children." The idea that children can never be taken seriously and never have good ideas, as well as using that concept to degrade adults by comparing them to children, is adultist. It contributes ignorance to an already child-intolerant society.

I honestly have no opinion on Mr. Brock or his opinions. I don't know anything about the man and honestly don't care to. I am not here to defend him but I will defend myself. I am adopted and it's not OK to talk about adoptees this way on television--or anywhere for that matter. I am not often impressed by the drivel uttered by various characters on the Fox News Network but this one really takes the cake.

This blog is demanding an apology from Dr. Ablow and I agree. Adoptees, it's not OK for people to defame us on TV this way. Original and adoptive parents, it's not OK for people to talk about your children this way. Please, stand up with me. Stand up for what's right and write to Keith Ablow and Fox News today.

Can We Finally Let Adoptive Parents off the Hook?

2012-02-12T12:56:00.003-05:00

See my post at Lost Daughters, today.

Adoptee Rights Coalition - the Fight to obtain our Original Birth Certificates: Register to Attend the 2012 Adoptee Rights Demonst...

2012-02-06T19:09:00.000-05:00

Adoptee Rights Coalition - the Fight to obtain our Original Birth Certificates: Register to Attend the 2012 Adoptee Rights Demonst...: August 6th, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois Chicago...it's our kind of town! The 2012 Adoptee Rights Demonstration at the National Conference o...

Are you Adoption Competent?

2012-02-04T11:41:00.001-05:00

In more recent years, people have been asking "what is adoption competence?" and "how do I know if someone is adoption competent?" You would think we'd have a pretty good answer to this question by now seeing as the formalized institution of modern adoption in this country is over 100 years old. We can probably thank the "as if born to" and "blank slate" movements (coined by David Kirk as the "Denial of Difference" coping model) in mid-early adoption history for this. Since adoption was seen as being no different and presenting no more and no less challenges than being born into a biological family, it wasn't always acknowledged that there is a necessity for specific knowledge in adoption-related issues. People new to the concepts talked about on this blog may wince at the word "different." Please don't equate "different" with "bad." There's nothing wrong for being different from someone else. Also know, this isn't just exclusive to adoptees. Original parents, especially mothers, had their own version of it as they were told to "go home and forget" their babies. Adoptive parents too were often told that adopting a child was the perfect resolution to not being able to bear children. And when you're so busy not being different, no one asks you if you are OK during your experience of difference within society. No one can advocate for you if they don't know what you go through. This is perhaps no better typified by my adoption in 1985. My original mother surrendered me and went home; no counselling. My adoptive parents adopted me, were told "she might have some questions but that's about it" and went home; no counselling. This, from the largest adoption agency in the United States! So here we are, we're acknowledging difference and the strengths and challenges difference entails in adoption more than ever. So, we have to answer the question, what does adoption competence look like?

Adoption competence, to me, is split into at least two different categories. One would be for helping professionals, like therapists and Social Workers. The other would be for every day people and the adoption community itself. Adoption competence and competence in the culture of adoption. Adoption competence would entail a helping professional who not only is competent in the culture of adoption but is also specifically trained in helping members within the adoption community deal with adoption-related issues. I am not a therapist. I am not a mental or behavior health professional. So I won't talk about that one. What I want to share with you is a model that I have been trained to use to self-assess for cultural competence as well as assess where someone else may be at that I am working with.

It's Terry Cross' Model of Cultural Competence. I think it is a really eye opening model and love how those who taught it to me apply it to how society or an individual can view a variety of diversity issues from class, to race, to sexual orientation, to gender, so on and so forth. What I think is especially interesting is the fact that you can (or I personally feel it can be) apply it to society or an individual's understanding of the adoption community. What I love about using models like this is they add a little bit of objectivity. I could inflate my own self-importance and think that only I have all the answers and define "competence" in the culture of adoption as whatever it is I believe. But that's not realistic and I hardly have all the answers.

There are six levels in Cross' model.

The first level is called "Cultural Destructiveness." This is where someone thinks that a particular group's culture and differences are destructive and society would be better off if that group didn't exist or would assimilate to be "more like" another group or the dominant culture.

The second level is called "Cultural Incapacity." This is where someone lacks the skills to become more aware about culture. They do not question their pre-existing beliefs. They are paternalistic, feel superior, and demeaning towards others who are different than they are. They repeat stereotypes.

The third level is called "Cultural Blindness." This is where we get the phrase "colorblind" from. While someone may not actively hate or dislike a member of the diverse group, an individual at this level denies that there are any problems or issues within society that the diverse group may be adversely impacted by. This is the "everything is fine" and "most people I know in this group are happy, what's wrong with you?" and "you're just an angry [insert name of diverse group membership here] person" or "I have a friend who is [insert diversity here] and he/she is fine." They are proud of being ignorant to issues of diversity but their ignorance leaves them unable to acknowledge the fact that if you're proud you can overlook or "ignore" something, you've labeled that something as negative or undesirable by default. If you don't view diversity as bad or negative, why are you proud of being able to ignore diversity? This is the question this person fails to ask his or herself.

The fourth level is called "Pre-Competence." This is where an individual starts to become aware of the issues surrounding culture and diverse communities and understands, on some basic level, that the issues are due to the way society, a dominant group, or the main group a sub-group belongs to, treats that group. This person may struggle becoming competent because they are not yet open enough to learning more and hearing what others have to say or they may not have information available to them.

The fifth level is called "Basic Cultural Competence." This is where someone appreciates, accepts, and welcomes difference. Someone at this stage is aware of the challenges surrounding diverse groups and does what they can to listen, be supportive and help. This person acknowledges their own privileges. This person does what they can to communicate with members in groups of which they are not members and encourages open and honest communication between groups. This person seeks opinions and advice from as many members of as many groups as they can, realizing that with difference also comes strength and that strength benefits everyone.

The sixth level is called "Advanced Cultural Competence." This last stage is where someone goes a step further and starts working to educate others about issues facing diverse groups. This person becomes an active advocate, speaks out about the issues, and works to give others a voice. This person dedicates considerable time to learning about issues of diversity and makes it a mission to share what they have learned with others.

Applying this to adoption at first may be tricky because adoption is an institution, not a person. People already walk around with this institution up on a pedestal that no one can so much as point out one issue about without people getting their shorts in a bunch, as if adoption the institution is some anthropopathic entity. Adoption is not anthropopathic. We should critique and reform the institution because it impacts real people who do have feelings. And it's the people within adoption, the community and the various sub-communities, who society and the individual should work to be culturally competent in regard. Does the general public understand the various strengths and challenges that come with being a member of the adoption community or are we all just a bunch of freaks to them (level two)? Do they really take the time to understand our advocacy issues or do they take the stereotypes and actively work against progress and reform based on misinformation about the adoption community (level one)? Do they think we're all pretty nice people but that "adoption is so different now" and "everything is wonderful" (level three)? Or do most people understand something more or go so far as to help or become an ally?

Does one sub-group or individual within adoption competently understand the culture of another sub-group within adoption?

Things I ask myself when it comes to self-assessing for cultural competence: (1) how do I feel and why? (2) am I part of the problem? (3) am I aware of all of the issues? (4) am I willing to stop, listen, and become aware? (5) am I being fair and kind and treating others the way I want to be treated? (6) what can I do today to spread awareness and promote communication, real, open, honest, communication between my group and another person's group, groups in general, or between sub-groups?

If I can ask anything for an individual, society, my community (adoption) and my sub-group(s) within my community is for people to take one viewpoint they have, whether it be about the way they judge and categorize adoptees based on the opinions we have, to the way people view those conceived through rape or incest, to pre-conceived notions about why amending and sealing is in place, to how you view the role of adoptees in their family and society and ask yourself six very basic questions. Is any given belief I have a stereotype? Am I helping or hurting? Is everything really wonderful or is it wonderful to me because I haven't been paying attention or have been ignoring what people are saying? Am I willing to learn more? What can I do to learn more and accept and accommodate a variety of adoptee thoughts and opinions?......

Am I willing to become an ally?

Photo credit: digitalart

We're Everywhere!!!!

2012-02-02T20:20:00.002-05:00

I have a million and one (OK, maybe five) entries on this blog in draft form waiting to be finished. I've been wanting to post something but, as I am back out in the field again, I am so incredibly tired and lacking the motivation needed to finish them right now. I am hoping the weekend will rejuvenate me.

What I will share with you is something cool that happened today (with a new friend, not a client. I don't talk about my clients on my blog).

I mentioned to someone today that I'm adopted. We were talking about family stuff and I could sense it was about to get confusing what with all my various parents entering into the conversation and all. I don't always get into the "I'm adopted" conversation with people, unless they ask. For some reason, I felt like I could tell her.

Then she told me, she's adopted too.

When it's just two adoptees around, these conversations always seem to go the same way. Who adopted you? Are you reunited? How do you feel about it? Do other people in your life try to understand your feelings or tell you you're ridiculous? Yeah, we know we're not ridiculous; it's nice to find another adoptee out there to remind you of that. I'm glad you told me you were adopted; it's nice not to be alone in the world.

It was like talking to an old friend.

Is This Really Ethical? An Open Letter to American University Professor, Prof. Kimberly Leighton

2012-01-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

Professor Leighton,

Let me first start off by saying how glad I am that I could address this blog entry to you. I am glad that the show that I am about to reference had an adult adoptee there to speak, even if I didn't agree with what you had to say, because the public should be asking us about these issues. I am also glad that I am able to see adoptees doing so well; you are a testimony to that. So many people have a skewed view of adoptees (I guess the fears about adoptees "disrupting" people's lives if records are opened is evidence of that), having smart, insightful, knowledgeable adoptees in the public eye is an important thing. After reading another blogger talk about your recent NPR interview with Diane Rehm, I went to Ms. Rehm's website and viewed the transcript of the show. That is why I am writing you this letter today because you talk about ethics and I care about ethics, and because we're both adopted. As a student, I look at professors whom I consider my role models each and ever single day; I tend to think of all professors as having something to teach me. If any one of my professors had the same viewpoints and said the same things you said in the interview, the following letter is exactly what I would say to them (my readers interested in the NPR discussion can join it here).

It is important, foremost, to start a discussion with an understanding of why and how records are sealed. Records were sealed in the United States on the foundation of hiding illegal adoption. Georiga Tann pioneered this effort and all of her 5,000 adoptions were illegal. She was the first adoption worker to convince the vital statistics office of her state (TN) to seal the birth certificates of the adoptees of her adoptions. Alabama was the first state to legalize this (and they've since become 100% open treating adoptees equally). This movement to seal original birth certificates spread throughout the country based on two main things (1) hiding the illegitimate birth of the adopted person by sealing the record and issuing a new one making it appear they had been born to married parents and (2) changing the identity of the adoptee so that the original family, who was stereotyped as neurotic and deviant, could not find and interfere with the new family. Sealed records were not always kept from adopted persons; that was a second movement across the United States heralded by adoptive parents who wanted to control what their sons and daughters could or could not know about themselves.

Because non-traditional family forms, such as adoptive families, were not as widely accepted "back in the day" as they are now, this amending and sealing allowed adoptive families to hide the adoption from the prying eyes of the public. It also allowed the adoptive family to hide their infertility which is culturally more important than people may realize. In some families and cultures, women are permitted no other identity than "mother" and women who do not reproduce are considered not to have "done their job." Some of the original arguments surrounding records access were not about "birth mothers," believe it or not. In fact, people were quite preoccupied about the psychological harm it would cause adoptive mothers should they ever have to "deal with" the event of their adult sons and daughters finding out information about their original families.

I honestly couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction, isn't it? No truer is that than the tale of American adoption history.

Ethical issues with amending and sealing I've discussed so far:

hiding illegal adoptions by changing an adoptee's identity.
bastard-shaming.
infertility-shaming.
sexism and paternalism.
perpetuation of the biological nuclear family as the superior family form by hiding "deviant" origins and creating fictitious "amended" documents to promote this notion.
lying.
classism (illegal and unethical adoptions typically target impoverished mothers and fathers).

What happens is, a child is surrendered but the information is not sealed yet. It's not sealed until the adoption is finalized which could be months or years after the surrender takes place. When the adoption takes place, an adoptee's name is typically changed, their original identity is sealed, and they take on a new name and identity within a new family (and if the adoption is dissolved and the adoptee "re-homed" their information becomes unsealed). This is the important point here: the adoptee's identity is changed and sealed. People make the mistake of believing that the change and sealing of the adoptee's identity was to provide "promises" of "confidentiality" to surrendering parents. It wasn't. It doesn't serve that purpose. It was never intended to serve that purpose. If it was, wouldn't they change and seal the identity of the original family? My name was not changed so that I couldn't find her. It was changed so that she could not find me.

What is confidentiality on a small planet filled with human beings who move about it far and wide? Can you really promise one person they'll never encounter another? To do so, what honestly would that entail?

It's a small world. Many adoptees grow up near their original relatives. They go to the same schools, vacation at the same spots, get stationed at the same military bases, and even work together as co-workers. How can we truly provide confidentiality to original families in such a small world? Is there an ankle bracelet an adoptee could wear that would sound when an original family member was within 100 feet so they could know they aren't to go near? Should they get clearance before they go somewhere to make sure an original family member wouldn't be there? Perhaps adoptees should be confined at home so we don't take those chances at all? If you think all of that sounds ridiculous, I feel the same way about the idea of treating adoption like a witness protection program to begin with.
The name of my original family is written in every molecule of my body. To say I cannot ever discover my relatives or ancestors is to rob me of important choice and autonomy over my own body. Shall adoptees be barred from genetic testing of any kind to avoid that they might discover their own families of origin? Are the chromosomes that make up my body the legal property of someone else? Is my body the property of someone else?
We all have basic freedoms. To say that an original family can be truly promised confidentiality is to say that adoptees cannot enjoy basic freedoms. Can I no longer ask a neighbor for a cup of sugar in case she's related to me? Should the phone company skip my house during their anual delivery of phone books? Should we automatically put priori restraining orders on all adoptees (Tennessee basically already does this) so that who they can talk to is restricted for no other crime than being adopted? What rights of mine do I have to give up to make sure that "confidentiality" is always a sure thing for someone else? What again am I being punished for?

Here are the ethical issues I want to point out. This is what secrecy in adoption presents:

Institutionalized discrimination. Discrimination against adopted people who want to access the same document about themselves that all others receive, without question, regardless of family drama. It is our decree of adoption that seals our records; not our family circumstances.
The subsequent discrimination. Discrimination against adopted people where many do not have equal access to driver's licenses, security clearances for employment, passports, and as it stands with some pending bills and movements in this country, they could lose the right to vote as well as run for public office, all because they do not have equal or easy access to their own identifying documents that others receive.
Enabling of lying. Amending and sealing has allowed many adoptees to be lied to about their origins.
Robbing of autonomy and self-ownership. Secrecy in adoption means an adoptee cannot so much as politely ask for medical information from family members. This means they may be receiving unnecessary testing or procedures as the doctor does not have the applicable information to go on.
Where is the personhood? If we cannot own our own DNA and if we cannot know of our own identities and origins, all to allegedly kowtow to another person, how does that speak for the personhood of the adopted person?
Adultism. Why is it the child, who will grow to be an adult, who has to be the one who has to (allegedly) kowtow to others in the triad in order for the adults involved to (allegedly) be happy? Is it really ethical to consider the (alleged) wants of the adults involved over the voiceless child?
Perpetual adultism. Why is it the adult adoptee, who had "promises" (allegedly) made on their behalf as a voiceless child, who had no say in the matter of what would happen to their own identity, the one who has to continue under the (alleged) "agreement" made by those adults?
Adoptism. What is it about adoption that causes an adoptee to be so fundamentally flawed that we need to be fearful of an adoptee knowing their own original identity?
Sexism/Paternalism. What is it about being an original parent that is so inherently shameful that we need laws specifically designed for adoption to hide who they are in relation to the adoptee?
Racism. Adoptees all over the globe are stripped of their cultural ties and identities. Many adoptees of color have paperwork claiming they are the race of their adoptive parents (usually White) or that they were born to White parents. Many adoptees cannot even tell you what race they are. They will be expected to fill out their race or ethnicity on forms throughout their lives and may even be subjected to racism for the color of their skin but cannot themselves know their culture or race of origin.
Denial of the limitations of confidentiality. All helping professionals know that there are limits to confidentiality. Confidentiality is a fundamental value in my profession; I know all about it. I've taken so many classes on HIPAA, for instance, I could probably teach them myself. However, confidentiality has limits and all helping professionals are required to disclose this. For example, if a client is going to harm someone, the professional has a legal obligation to report it and warn the person who is going to be harmed. If someone is going to do something dangerous, the professional must report it. Duty to Warm, Duty to Report, Duty to Protect--the list goes on and on. There are limitations to confidentiality and these limitations are seen as necessary, good and moral. Why can't this issue be seen acknowledged as what it is: another limitation to confidentiality? Why can't we say "taking away the identity of a voiceless child is wrong, sorry, we can't do it?" Where is the Duty to Protect the best interests of a voiceless child?
Anti-feminism. Remember, many adoptees are women too. Placing one woman and her (alleged) desires as being more important than the rights and autonomy of the adopted woman is just as sexist and paternalistic as placing a woman's needs as inferior to a man's. Feminism does not place women on a heirarchy and create special rights for one at the expense of the equality of another. Women "owning" other women, or their children, is not a feminist value. Some people believe we "expand" the rights of women with unplanned pregnancies by (allegedly) making adoption more attractive by (allegedly) offering the option of "confidentiality." Is it really fair to "expand" the options for adoption while restricting the rights of the woman who is going to be adopted?
Disablism. The idea that all adoptees want their records because they are mentally unstable and are searching for another person to "fix" themselves and can automatically be assumed to do so in a manner that is harmful and inappropriate, is disablism. It's unfair to individuals with disabilities to use mental illness as an insult in that way. It's unfair to treat adoptees who first and foremost want equality as though the restoration of the Civil Right of equal rights and protection under the law makes them "maladjusted." Back to adoptism, what is it about being adopted that makes someone think I can't be responsible and behave myself like any other person?
Stereotyping. Why is it always "the adoptee wants their birth certificate so that they can 'bang down' their mother's door?" Why can it never be "the adoptee wants their birth certificate because they want it. Perhaps they may also discreetly and politely call their mother to say hello one day, IF they can even use the OBC to find her to begin with"? It is all in the words one chooses and the way they decide to portray adoptees. When we get right down to it, it is nearly impossible and uncommon for someone to say why adoptees should not have access to birth certificates without using a stereotype.

In summary, we have a variety of ethical issues that amending and sealing presents such as: taking the basic freedoms of citizenship away from adoptees, adoptees unable to obtain every day documents and information that allow them to move about the country and the world, inequality, institutional discrimination, adultism, perpetual voicelessness and childhood, unrealistic and inappropriate disclosure of confidentiality, history of illegal adoption, paternalism, sexism, bastard-shaming, infertility-shaming, non-traditional family-shaming, denial of full personhood, racism, denial of autonomy, denial of self-ownership, original family-shaming, lysing, and, probably most importantly, never allowing an adoptee to become an influential and respected member of the "triad," to name just a few. When we weigh all of these things, plus the fact that amending and sealing was not designed or intended to promise original families "confidentiality," why does the scale always tip in "favor" of providing "confidentiality" to original families and rarely (except in 8 states) tip in favor of justice and equality for adoptees? Why?

I keep thinking about what ethical code there could be that would cause anyone, or us as a society to say "to promise away the identity of an voiceless child and hold that child to an (alleged) agreement made on their behalf for their entire life, even into adulthood, without their consent for the (alleged) sake of adults involved" is ethical, is moral, or is the superior option. I can't think of one. Most religions would say truth is a primary justice. If we view it as a secondary justice, is there not one thing on the list in the paragraph above to take it's place as primary to urge the opening of records as ethical and moral just the same?

Granted, I am not as educated as you are and my Philosophy class (Bioethics to be exact) was years ago. But I brainstormed the moral codes I've kept in my back pocket all these years any way. Surely with less than two percent of mothers having any preference for any sort of "anonymity" in regards to birth records this issue does not fall under the "most amount of good for greatest amount of people." If anything it's "the most amount of good for the least amount of people at the expense of the largest amount of people." Perhaps it falls under Consequentialism, because so many adoptees do so well we can say "oh, it's not that bad, they turned out OK." But Consequentialism isn't ethical; Consequentialism simply writes off unethical things because someone managed to turn out OK despite the challenges, lack of privileges, inequality, and hardships in their lives. Consequentialism turns resiliency, which is a near inexplicable phenomena of human ability, into a bad, condemning factor. And granted, Resiliency Theory speaks to this phenomena of the ability of human beings, and the human brain, to "bounce back" from all manner of adversity. What resiliency theory does not suggest, however, is that it is OK to persist in allowing people to experience unfairness and inequality because they have a good chance, considering all of their strengths, to "get over it." "Getting over" something that doesn't "seem so bad" does not make whatever it is ethical.

We cannot say that negotiating the identity, right, and autonomy of a child who has no voice, for the rest of their lives, is the moral and right thing to do. Because it simply isn't.

(Adding this paragraph 01/30/2012 after reading the transcript again). Professor Leighton, you and I are adoptees of privilege. Not only because of the color of our skin and because we have had the opportunity to obtain education and advancement in life, but because we searched and were able to find. We are self-actualized people who have all of the clues to connect the dots to identity that the non-adopted (typically) have. It is our responsibility never to look down on another adoptee who is still looking for clues and piecing together what is "identity." We cannot stereotype them as searching for something "more" or a "story" or assume they will open a "Pandora's box." We cannot judge them for doing exactly as you and I have and for wanting what you and I want. You and I have to acknowledge for other adoptees what we have found helpful for ourselves. We cannot get lost in our privileges and leave our brothers and sisters behind.

I'm going to give you an official invitation to the Adoptee Rights Demonstration. I hope to see you there.

Warm Regards,

The Declassified Adoptee

PS.
Other resources you may be interested in:

(Declassified Adoptee) Are Adoption and Surrogacy Feminist?
(Declassified Adoptee) Feministe asks Some Questions on Adoption and Feminism
(Declassified Adoptee) Why my [Amended] Birth Certificate is a Lie
(Declassified Adoptee) The Disablist Nature of Anti-Rights, Anti-Narrative Arguments
Carp, E. (2007). Does Opening Adoption Records Have an Adverse Social Impact? Some Lessons from the U.S., Great Britain, and Australia, 1953-2007. Adoption Quarterly, 10(3/4), 29-52.
Carp, E. (2001). Sealed Adoption Records in Historical Perspective. Adoption Quarterly, 5(2), 59-62
Samuels, Elizabeth J., How Adoption in America Grew Secret; Birth Records Weren't Closed for the Reasons You Might Think (October 21, 2001). Washington Post, p. B.05, Sunday, October 21, 2001. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1282262
Samuels, Elizabeth J., The Idea of Adoption: An Inquiry into the History of Adult Adoptee Access to Birth Records (2001). Rutgers Law Review, Vol. 53, p. 367, 2001. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=275730
Adoption, Identity, and Kinship: the Debate Over Sealed Birth Records by Sociologist and adult adoptee, Dr. Katrina Wegar

Don't forget to check out my blog rolls for the voices of other adult adoptees, original parents, adoptive parents, fostered adults, and donor offspring.

Get Your Hands off me: why Abortion Access is just a Small Part of What "Choice" is really about

2012-01-28T19:30:00.003-05:00

Have you ever heard this phrase: "abortion activists [meaning pro-choice folks] only want women to choose one option and that's abortion!" There are people who genuinely believe that "pro-choice" is the opposite of "pro-life" where they equate "pro-life" with carrying to term and "pro-choice" with "never carrying to term." I have a fairly plausible idea that this assumption is derived from the fact that "choice" and "pro-life" are argued together as an exclusive dichotomy. "Pro-choicers" fall into arguing for abortion and defending abortion which may send the message that individuals who are pro-choice like and prefer abortion over any other option. It is easy to fall into this well-worn path of argument because of the rampant misinformation about abortion and women's health care that is often found in "pro-life" pregnancy resources; people fall into this argument of exclusivity because they try to correct the misinformation. The extreme detriment of falling into this well-worn path of arguing over the "choice" vs." no choice" dichotomy surrounding unwanted pregnancy is that no one is focusing on or educating about the bigger picture that the "choice" part of this debate comes from. Many pro-choicers themselves do not understand the larger picture of choice which is why it is important to talk about it.

In this post, I wrote something many of you commented on or asked about:

Choice, in my mind, is simple. The right to choose describes a basic human right known as "autonomy" or "consent." Women, as fully human, autonomous, equal human beings, should have control and say at all times over their own bodies. A fetus cannot thrive without her body nor can its growth be supported without her welfare. A fetus and a woman cannot have personhood at the same time because when it comes right down to it, for a fetus to be a person a woman must be rendered nothing more than a biological vessel that serves to support its welfare and has rights secondary to the needs of the fetus. Care cannot be administered to a fetus without first someone touching a woman's body. To say that a woman cannot have control over her own body at all times, even if pregnant, is to say that women are not autonomous and have no right to give or revoke consent to be touched by others. It means others get to make decisions for her body in order to sustain the welfare of her pregnancy, such as forcing a woman to go on bed rest or denying a woman's right to refuse medical care while pregnant. A woman's right to choose means she has a right, not only to be in control of decisions regarding her own body at all times, but also in control of decisions regarding her body that may impact the welfare of her pregnancy; abortion included. I am not pro-choice because I believe abortion is a wonderful thing or a preferable or easy choice. I am pro-choice because I believe women are people and because the value of obtaining consent when it comes to touching a woman's body is extremely important to me.

To make an addendum to this, I'll point out that people say "oh well, a woman can have an abortion if she is going to die without one," and really, there goes the whole "personhood" argument right out the window. If the fetus is a person, what is it about the change in the mother's medical condition that erases that personhood where suddenly, abortion is now magically OK? Then on the other hand, if she is disallowed the abortion, then she and the fetus she is supporting will both die. That hardly follows the "respecting life" rhetoric. In fact, that, no better exemplified by the passing of the recent "Let Women Die" bill, sounds like nothing more than a cruel, punitive jab at a human being for the crime of having a uterus. What about a woman who discovers an aggressive cancer in her body while pregnant? Who wants to be the one to decide if she must die or risk her pregnancy trying to fight it? "Oh, well I would let her fight her cancer" some might say. But what about the "personhood" of the fetus? Personhood is not circumstantial--either you are a person or you are not. Either the woman is a person or the fetus is, both cannot be. And if one really "respects life" they will allow a woman to make her own decisions and acknowledge that a woman's life belongs in her own hands, not the hands of some politician.

Continuing on with my new blog topic, autonomy and consent are two basic human rights that make the difference between being respected as an individual who has sole ownership over your own body and being seen as everyone else's property. Abortion is one such area where some say that being pregnant is one circumstance where a woman should lose the ability to choose what happens to her own body. If the continuing of a pregnancy becomes more important than what a woman wants for herself, then what consent is there really needed to touch a woman's body to continue a pregnancy at any and all costs, per someone else's discretion? "Choice" is not about seeing abortion as superior than any other option. Choice is about acknowledging that we are first and foremost dealing with the woman's body when it comes to pregnancy and that she alone is the best person to make decisions for what happens to her own body. Stepping back from the picture even further, this plays into a larger theme of autonomy and consent that makes the abortion debate just one part of the over-all picture. When you understand how society views a woman's body, you understand why choice is so easy for people to second-guess or write off completely.

A few prime examples of women-as-society's-chew-toys:

Wanting women to have permission from a doctor or partner, to have to wait 24 hours after a consultation, or experience an ultrasound before being able to consent to an abortion.
Random strangers feeling perfectly entitled to walk up to a pregnant woman and rub her belly.
Random strangers feeling perfectly entitled to walk up and stroke a woman's hair (this is an issue especially for Black women).
Sexual harassment issues in the workplace where women have their shoulder's squeezed or massaged without their consent by a co-worker or superior.
Random strangers placing their hands on a woman at a club because she's dancing so she must be "asking for it."
The concept that "there is no such thing as rape when you're married" when husbands/partners force themselves on their wives without consent.
The unratified ERA.
The exotification of women of color.
The over-representation of the scantily-clad, uber-"feminine," damsel in distress in all of media.
The horrible phenomena where professionals delivering babies feel perfectly entitled to carry out medical procedures in labor and delivery, like adding medications to the IV drip, injecting a woman directly, or performing an episiotomy without a woman's consent.
The forced (and often uninformed) sterilization of many women throughout history, namely women of color and underprivileged women.
The idea that single, expectant mothers who live under the poverty line have something to "provide" to someone else who is more deserving.

The list goes on.

I have seen the double standard too many times. For men, it is perfectly acceptable to be reserved and stoic. What a leader! However, for a woman to say she does not like to be touched or to not appreciate an endearing squeeze on the arm? She's a "bitch." When I was 17 years old, I was called a "bitch" by an older male co-worker because I told him it was not appropriate to walk up and jokingly tickle a woman he did not know up the sleeve of her scrubs (I was a nursing student at one point). Apparently being a woman who is not willing to be everyone's scratching post doesn't make you popular. I have heard people describe women, who do not acquiesce to another's desire to touch them, "who take themselves too seriously," over and over and over again this way. Hugging, embrace, and kissing, these are all very important part of relationships, closeness, and togetherness with others. However, there is a difference between what is culturally appropriate, given a specific culture, and what understanding you already have with a friend or family member about what types of touching is appropriate, and the over-all general idea that it's OK to pet a random woman like a cat in some way or exploit her body in a print-ad.

Choice, consent, and autonomy is not just about reference for women's bodies and equality in how women are treated. These concepts are not just about choosing abortion; it involves a woman's right to make healthy decisions for her body that positively impact her pregnancy, should she choose, too. I think a lot of people may find it hard to believe that the view of women as incapable of making their own decisions and this idea that women do not own their own bodies does not translate into sustaining a healthy pregnancy either. However, this fact is very true.

For example, a woman who had a Cesarean delivery for one pregnancy and wants to try a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean) for the delivery of her next pregnancy may have difficulty finding a doctor who will comply. I have had several friends who wanted to attempt a VBAC whose doctors told them that they would drop them as patients unless they agreed to schedule a C-section instead. One friend of mine, with a normal, healthy pregnancy, was turned down for her VBAC nearly one dozen times. There are both risks and benefits associated with VBAC. The risk is a 2% change that the uterine wall could rupture where the incision from the first C-section was made. The benefits are the benefits generally associated with vaginal birth. It's a woman's right to weigh the risks and benefits and decide for herself whether or not she would like to be subjected to invasive surgery to delivery her baby; too often this right is not respected by doctors.

Another example would be a woman's diet and ingestion of pre-natal vitamins. Many doctors will recommend that all women of child bearing age, pregnant or not, take a once-daily pre-natal vitamin. However, another school of thought questions the benefits of these vitamins and their necessity, especially if a woman already has an excellent diet. This is one instance where many women go against conventional wisdom, so to speak, and make their own choice for what they feel is right for them. Since it may go against doctor's recommendation and, according to him/her not be good for the fetus, should we take away a woman's right to decide not to put the pills into her body?

One more example, mentioning again the phenomena of women reporting the instance of receiving procedures they did not consent to during labor and delivery. A woman, whose body is respected as her own, has a right to make decisions as to what happens to her body during labor and delivery, including requesting perineal massage instead of an episiotomy and what medications she is or is not administered. I had this experience with the birth of my children. With my most recent birth, I felt that the monitors were painful and distressing (and my delivery was progressing just fine, I saw no need for them). I was denied the right to refuse monitors as the nurse took it upon herself to place them on my body despite my wishes. Just as with abortion, this is an instance in child birth where someone thought they knew better than I did and proceed to make a decision for me and my body without my consent. This is unacceptable.

I don't know what it is about being a woman that makes people think we're so incompetent to make our own decisions, especially when we're pregnant. I don't live another woman's life, I only life my own. I would not want to be told what to do with my own body and I can hardly tell another woman what to do with her's. The bottom line is, choice is about so much more than just the abortion debate. Until a woman's body is respected as her own and sole discretion is left to her as to what does or does not touch or happen to her body, our mothers, sisters, daughters, and granddaughters will not be equal, respected, and protected members of society.

I trust women. Do you? Join the Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women

Living in Fat Shame Culture and Learning to Love my "Fat" Photos Anyway

2012-01-28T10:39:00.000-05:00

My first anniversary. The ol' "hide my body
behind my husband and the dog and then
crop the photo" routine.

Have you ever been in that place where the sight of a camera sends you diving underneath the nearest table or reaching for your napkin to hold in front of your face? If you're like me, you've shuddered at the loud suggestion of "group shot!" and then carefully positioned your body behind two people on either side of you. Or maybe you've got a special pose reserved for when you can't get out of being in a picture: turn, slightly sideways, shoulder forward, and your nearest accessory (an oversized clutch will do) held at your hip to draw the eye away from the thighs and midsection and to the clutch and shoulders instead. If you put your hands on your hips and make sure the negative space between your arms and your waist can be seen in the photo, you nearly guarantee yourself a slimmer appearance in the shot. I am a pro at feeling-fat-in-front-of-a-camera 101.

Considering my experience as a peculiarly grotesque (tongue-in-cheek) child and how I then vowed to never let my appearance cause me to be ridiculed again, I was once sensitive about having my picture taken. I have a body I haven't particularly liked seeing in photographs, until recently. I can thank my children for that.

I have always been sensitive about my weight, even when I was skinny. This is because, at 5'10, I weighed more than the other girls. It did not matter how slim, trim, and in-shape I was and appeared, the extra 3-5 inches I usually had on my female peers meant I had an additional 15-25lbs on them too. How I felt about my body only worsened throughout the years. First, there was college where I wasn't working out 5-6 days a week and exercising (basketball practice) four hours per day. Instead, I was sitting and studying--a lot. I also was eating a lot of nachos with chili from the college cafeteria--oh my gosh was it good and comforting. I remember looking at the photos of my one year wedding anniversary and being shocked "oh my goodness, that's just not me." I wanted to hide the photos somewhere where they would never see the light of day. But my husband loved them. I settled for choosing to display only shots where the majority of my body wasn't showing.

Then later, being pregnant three times, two to-term pregnancies both with babies over 9lbs each, really changed my body. My husband insisted on accompanying me to every pre-natal appointment with my first pregnancy. After a while, when my doctor would ask me my weight I would write it on a piece of paper and slide it face-down across the counter to her like you see in those dramatic movies where two parties are discussing a high-stakes deal involving lots of money. After my first son was born, I had never weighed so much in my entire life. Eating right and breast feeding helped me drop over 70lbs in the first four months. However, the weight loss stopped there and I was still pretty heavy.

I learned to instruct people who insisted on taking photos of me with my new baby on how to photograph me. For instance, I'd forbid someone to photograph me if they were sitting and I was standing; it's not flattering to the thighs. And watch that harsh flash, it enhances double-chin like you wouldn't believe. I spent most of my time behind the camera taking photos and not being in them. I soon realized that my baby was going to look back on these pictures and wonder where his mommy was and why she didn't want to be in any pictures. I know that I love looking back at pictures of my parents when I was younger. I have several pictures of my original mother too and I like to look at them and think of what I what age I was and what I was doing when one photo or another of hers was taken. How do I answer the question "what did you look like when I was little mom? Where are the pictures of you?" when my kids ask me?

This is where I decided I needed to change my line of thinking. I do not want my children to grow up surrounded by fat shame culture without me acting as a role model on how women's bodies (anyones body) should be respected and acknowledged as beautiful regardless of the size. It was OK to want to be healthy and lose weight. It was not OK for me to acquiesce to fat shame culture and hide myself from being captured in memories at special times because I was ashamed of what my body looked like. I want to be in the pictures with my children; I want them to know their mother is proud of who she is, not ashamed, and for them not to feel that another person's body is shameful either because I went first and set a good example.

Now of course, I am also a photography lover which I never became more passionate about than when my parents bought me a DSLR camera. I bring the thing everywhere with me and my friends (usually) appreciate that many of their events when they could not afford to hire a photographer could have some nice photo memories because I was there with my camera glued to my face. Here's where I started noticing other people dive under the table, hold napkins and menus in front of their faces, awkwardly hide their bodies in group photos, and don a peculiar stance to minimize their waist and thighs in photos. The host wants to remember that their guests shared this special time with them at their wedding, shower, or party and people are all but climbing inside the center piece arrangements trying to hide from the photographer.

Here's where I also started scratching my head because it's always the most gorgeous person that wants to hide behind the napkin. It's always someone with a body issue I had not so much as noticed existed that's sensitive about it and is trying to hide it in front of the camera. Standing behind my camera photographing family and friends, I do not see love handles or round bellies. I don't see blemishes or the fact that you don't think your teeth are cute. I see the magnificent way you tilt your head back when you laugh or how your nose crinkles just a bit when you smile. I saw intent look on your face when someone you admire was telling you a story. I saw how your aunt's eyes lit up when you touched her hand and told her it was good to see her again.

Of course, there are always people who generally won't like having their picture taken. Also, people taking pictures need to be mindful of someones preferences as well as respectful of their privacy when taking photographs. But for me, I have come to realize that hiding because I am critical of myself isn't worth it. What is worth it is making memories for my sons and my loved ones. People are not looking for my flaws, like I am, just as I am not looking for flaws when I photograph people I care about. As someone who has been struggling with my weight for years now, one liberating, shame-releasing phrase is something I've been learning to say more and more...

"Hi, can I give you my camera for a second so you can take a picture of me with my sons?"

My Dashed Ivy League Dreams

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

I was talking about education with someone the other day; we were discussing our long term goals. I am continuing my education as a Social Work major now; I have to get my BSW in Social Work as the minimum requirement in my state to hold the title of "Social Worker." My goal is really to complete an MSW. My friend asked me what graduate schools I was applying to. I casually started to comment that I had looked into programs, listing the names of schools as I talked. When I got to the name of an Ivy League school that I have a good change of getting into, my friend proceeded to sit there and laugh right in my face. I mean, it was an enormous guffaw launched across the table in my direction. Nice.

"What?!" I said. "I have a good chance of getting into their advanced standing program to complete my Master's in a year!" She shook her head "you could never in a billion years pay for that." I felt insulted, not really by her, but at what causes a great education to be so far out of reach to the point that someone would laugh in my face for even considering it.

I understand the concept of working hard and getting a reward because you did so. However, when it comes to something as fundamental as knowledge, I wince to see it commodified. Especially at the expense of young college kids who feel pressured to go to college, have no idea what they want to do, and pick a major whose course load looks appealing only to find out there's not much you can do with that particular degree once you graduate. The college has made money though, and the new graduate is now swimming in debt. Indeed, to be able to better yourself in order to "move up in the world" means you have to have the tools to do so. Education is one such tool. How easy is it to better yourself when the tool you need to do so with is out of your reach? People will say, you don't need an education to make it in this world [insert inspirational story of one person you met one time who didn't go to college and did awesomely here]. It's true, you do not need an education to make it in the world. However, it certainly helps and it certainly disenfranchises some people, who with their passions and skill sets, need an education as a requirement to enter into the field they would be most skilled at and thus benefit the community around them immensely.

My dad's story is one of the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" kind. His mom left when he was two years old. He spent a good deal of time being raised by his grandmother. He got good grades in school and was a happy kid though there wasn't much money for anything. When he graduated high school, there was no money for college. So he enlisted in the military and did well. In addition to his hard work, his privileges as a White, heterosexual, Christian, male who does not have any disabilities more than likely helped as well. He met my mom and they got married. Work was often hard to find. I remember when I was little, my mom would work evenings at a local store that was a bit like today's Wal-Mart. My dad was (and still is) a Licensed Professional Land Surveyor. He has worked so hard and done so well, he is literally one of the best in his field, that he and my mom have made a nice life for themselves.

You see, he was made for surveying. He is mathematically brilliant. The man can tell you the volume by a mile-high pile of gravel just by walking around it, measuring a few things, and scribbling on a notepad. He enjoys being outdoors. He is good with electronics. I swear there is nothing about land surveying my dad does not know. He is the guy you hire when you want it done well, you want it done right, and you want it done well and right the first time it is done.

However, if my dad were a young twenty-something coming out of the military right now, he would not be able to be a Professional Land Surveyor. The laws have changed and you must have a minimum of a Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university in a land surveying curriculum in order to be licensed. You cannot practice or call yourself a "Land Surveyor" without being licensed.

Where would my parents be now if my dad could not have followed his dreams and passions into a field that is beyond perfect for him had a specific education been necessary and not within reach? I do not even want to think about it. Maybe he would have ended up in a job he did not like and did not enjoy where advancement did not come easy. I don't even want to think about it. It makes me worry about my kids future and education; what will be available to them? College tuition calculators that average out how much you need to be saving per month to pay for your kids' college when they hit 18 make scary predictions.

Another friend encouraged me to feel jaded by my lack of ability to pay for school, let alone the school that I would like to go to. She said because I do not fall into any other minority group than being a woman (being adopted doesn't count as a minority group to most people), no one will ever help me go to school or give me a break despite the fact that college is still a struggle. I encouraged her to realize that we have never been turned down for employment or a place to live because of the color of our skin. Anywhere we go our religion is more than likely accepted and common place. We've never gone hungry or without a roof over our heads without a day in our lives. We both have been blessed with good health. Both she and I benefit from unearned privilege that has made meeting our needs possible, even if we aren't eligible at times for help reaching for the stars.

So, I won't be attending that Ivy League university. The program I need costs more than twice the amount that one at another perfectly good college costs. As much as I'd love to follow my life long dream (OK, maybe not life long but something I've aspired to since I was 16), I can't get into a mountain of debt that I'd still be paying off by the time I need to start paying for my kids' education. One of the main reasons I am going back to school is to increase my earning potential so that I can increase our likelihood of being able to send our kids to college. Going to this university would be counter-productive to that goal.

But one can still dream, I suppose.

Photo credit: Naypong

Santorum on Rape and Abortion: you Might be Surprised About What I Have to Say About the Presidential Candidate's Most Recent Gum Flapping

2012-01-25T14:56:00.002-05:00

I know you'd expect me to write a blog entry that rakes Santorum across the coals for his recent disclosure that he wanted to constitutionalize the personhood of a fetus and take away a woman's right to choose. To be honest with you, I cannot decide who I am more irritated at: Santorum for his viewpoints or the liberal media for the disrespectful way they are reporting on his viewpoints.

I cannot let the way many liberal media outlets have treated this issue go without comment on my blog simply because I tend to have very liberal viewpoints myself. I am tired of the thoughtless rhetoric coming from all sides in this Presidential campaign. Of course, not all political statements, conservative or liberal, are "rhetoric" where information is simply regurgitated but not supported by thoughtfulness, compassion, or sound information but rather stereotype, bias, and emotion. Consequentially, I have absolutely no appreciation for liberal rhetoric where someone boasts very liberal viewpoints but fails to have investigated, questioned, and made consistent their own ideology and thus becomes ignorant to various groups as a result. Abortion is one issue where I will especially take both liberals and conservative as well a pro-choice and pro-life statements to task for their ignorance toward women and other commonly associated groups, adoptees, original mothers, and victims of rape. In an effort to trash Santorum, various media outlets have thrown women, victims of rape, and individuals conceived from rape absolutely under the bus to do so. This is horrendously shameful and I am completely appalled by it.

To understand why I am angry, you must understand what the question "you don't support abortion even in the case of rape and incest?!" implies. Abortion debates typically go the same way. Someone asks someone else for their views on abortion to which the other person, if pro-life, replies with their view that abortion is wrong. Then the pro-life person is typically asked to clarify if they mean it is wrong under all circumstances or just some. Then the pro-life person responds "yes, I believe that the fetus has personhood and that it is wrong to abort it." Here's where the next line enters "even in the case of rape or incest!?" If the person who is pro-life responds "yes, even in the case of rape and incest, abortion is wrong" they've just condemned a woman who is pregnant against her will to carry her "rapist's baby." There may be a good deal of pearl clutching and gasping in astonishment at their opinion. However, I dislike both opinions and especially what the "rape and incest" viewpoint implies. There are three general problems or implications here, especially evidenced in the media, when this topic comes up.

What's wrong with asking "you think it's wrong, even if a woman was raped?!"

It implies that there are some circumstances under which it is perfectly OK to allow, as well as disallow, a woman to have autonomy and choice over her own body, depending on definable sets of circumstances that are pre-determined by people other than the woman herself.
It frames child birth as a punishment to be doled out by whomever deems themselves fit. Saying that a woman should not be forced to carry a pregnancy because she did not conceive through consensual sex implies then that those with pregnancies that did result from consensual sex can or should be punished. This viewpoint is disrespectful to all women.
It asserts that individuals born of rape or that women who have conceived from rape who choose to carry to term and give birth have something to be ashamed of.

So here is where I will give Mr. Santorum some credit; he's consistent. He believes that fetuses are people and that they should fall under the protections enjoyed by any other human being in the United States (I'll refrain from commenting in detail on the irony of the lack of consistency of applying equal personhood to already-born people in multiple diverse groups, such as the LGBTQ community). To him, because a fetus is a person, he feels no circumstance (such as rape) erases that personhood (I know, the irony, the irony!) or that "person's" right to live. There is no flip-flopping for him where he falls into the category of "well, the fetus has rights but not if the mother was raped." Thinks about it: when someone says "a fetus is a person and should not be aborted....oh, except in the case of rape or incest," someone may be attempting to sit on the fence, please both sides, and avoid that gasping-in-disgust-pearl-clutching response from others. But what they also just did by saying so is state that already born people, who actually really are people, are not "really people" if they were conceived from rape or incest.

I was conceived from rape. I assure you that I am indeed a person.

This is the issue with the media outlets. They are having an absolute field day with his statements by making ignorant and offensive statements and implications (such as the three I pointed out) of their own. The Daily Mail is one such offender. The title of their article on this topic states "Rick Santorum says rape victims should 'make the best of a bad situation' if they get pregnant and give birth to the 'gift from God." This article headline is not saying "Santorum is wrong because he disagrees with a woman's right to choose." This statement, clarifying directly that they are referring to someone after they were born, mockingly calls that person conceived from rape a "gift from God." If you want to say that women should have say over their own bodies in all circumstances, fine, I agree with you. Mocking real, born, people who were conceived from rape is offensive and unacceptable.

I made three comments on the above referenced article. One in response to an existing conversation in the comments section on Ryan Bomberger and two letting the Daily Mail know (quite politely, actually) that as someone who was conceived from rape, I found the title of the article offensive and belittling. In an effort to assert their own rhetoric above the dignity of real people, they chose to censor out the viewpoint of a person their words insulted, and declined to post those two comments. The third comment I made, which did not include any critique of their method of reporting this issue and did not include any of my perspective as a person conceived from rape, was the only comment of mine that made it through their moderation. What a shameful abandonment of true liberal values.

CNN was honestly no better. My first issue, of course, is that Piers Morgan asked the "even in rape or incest?" question to begin with. That was a huge eye-roller for me. However, what is more-so offensive is the caption that CNN has under this video that says "Rick Santorum says that even a child conceived through rape is a 'gift' and that life must be protected." Here we have the same problem again. CNN does not refer to a woman's right to autonomy over her body. They directly say the word "child" and mockingly call that child who was conceived from rape a "gift." They do not say "a woman has the right to choose to end her pregnancy" instead they paint a child who was born as some shameful, horrible thing that no person would ever want. Rape is horrible and pregnancy from rape is not "God's will" nor a "gift from God." But CNN did not say "pregnancy." They said "child." They mockingly implied that some children are worthless beings outside of the realm of God's love and acceptance based on their conception circumstances.

What Santorum did was say that the fetus, whom he believes is a person, is a gift from God. What CNN did was mockingly state that actual children who are the products of rape are not gifts from God. Quite honestly, which statement is really more deplorable? I believe God loves me but I do not believe he orchestrated my mother's rape just to bring me into this world. I do not believe he causes bad things to happen to people. As a person I am blessed by God but I do not for a minute believe my mother's trauma was God's doing. CNN could have went in this direction but they didn't. They were too busy victim-blaming and painting victims and children as monsters.

On a side note, in case you are wondering, I will explain who Ryan Bomberger is and why he was mentioned by commenters in at least one article. He is an adult adoptee who was conceived from rape who says he "should have been aborted" because of the conception circumstances that he has been made aware of via his agency narrative. It is unfortunate that Mr. Bomberger allows himself and his mother to be stereotyped in this way. I am unsure if he advertises himself as "should have been aborted" because he really believes so or because his catchy campaign benefits not only his political projects (he is behind the billboards featuring faces of Black children, labeling them as an "endangered species" as well as behind Mississippi's recent "personhood" initiative). Or perhaps, it is to benefit the enormous adoption agency he is the marketing director of; I'm simply not sure. Seeing as Mr. Bomberger does not desire to reunite and speak with his first mother, we will never really know what her thought process was or if she ever did consider abortion (nor is it any of our, or his, business what her thought process was).

The mistake that many liberals and pro-choicers alike fall into is defending access to abortion services based on the argument "what if she just doesn't want a baby right now?" A subsequent mistake is to then describe horrible circumstances one might envision not wanting to parent under, such as rape, incest, or having a child with a serious illness or disability, as reasons why a woman might not "want a child" and might want to have an abortion. They fail to recognize that not only does this line of thinking fall into multiple realms of prejudices (e.g. disablism, classism) but it fails to acknowledge and uphold what choice is about.

Choice, in my mind, is simple. The right to choose describes a basic human right known as "autonomy" or "consent." Women, as fully human, autonomous, equal human beings, should have control and say at all times over their own bodies. A fetus cannot thrive without her body nor can its growth be supported without her welfare. A fetus and a woman cannot have personhood at the same time because when it comes right down to it, for a fetus to be a person a woman must be rendered nothing more than a biological vessel that serves to support its welfare and has rights secondary to the needs of the fetus. Care cannot be administered to a fetus without first someone touching a woman's body. To say that a woman cannot have control over her own body at all times, even if pregnant, is to say that women are not autonomous and have no right to give or revoke consent to be touched by others. It means others get to make decisions for her body in order to sustain the welfare of her pregnancy, such as forcing a woman to go on bed rest or denying a woman's right to refuse medical care while pregnant. A woman's right to choose means she has a right, not only to be in control of decisions regarding her own body at all times, but also in control of decisions regarding her body that may impact the welfare of her pregnancy; abortion included. I am not pro-choice because I believe abortion is a wonderful thing or a preferable or easy choice. I am pro-choice because I believe women are people and because the value of obtaining consent when it comes to touching a woman's body is extremely important to me.

This is precisely what these media outlets need to be pointing out but they aren't. Instead, they choose what is only a different form of anti-woman, anti-choice rhetoric conveniently disguised as liberal values. I have no more respect for what they are doing and how they are treating women like my mother and I, than I do for Santorum's anti-choice, anti-autonomy, anti-woman claptrap.

Anti-Firefighter Mentality: Simple Truths from a Firefighter's Wife

2012-01-24T00:04:00.000-05:00

Us at Matt's academy graduation.

I was home with my children one afternoon while my husband was at work. We were outside playing when suddenly the quiet of the afternoon in our small town was broken with the sound of sirens on emergency vehicles sounding the alarm. There must have been a fire or serious accident to have that many vehicles and sirens going, I thought to myself. My toddler interrupts my thoughts; he recognizes the sounds of the sirens too. "Is that daddy," he asks me. "I don't know, it could be daddy," I replied. He works part-time locally in a neighboring town that sometimes helps cover emergency services where we live. "He's going to come home, right mommy?" my son asks casually. My son's question is so nonchalant because he literally means to ask if his daddy is on his way home or not. He doesn't see the irony in his words because he is not yet old enough to understand how dangerous daddy's job really is. "Yeah, buddy," I reply. "He always comes home." Considering the dangerous nature of my husband's job and the fact that he and so many of his co-workers serve so willingly and gladly, the politics surrounding agencies that provide emergency services recently have been infuriating to me.

Some recent online news articles, and the negative comments made on them, have left me frustrated and infuriated. I see politicians making poor choices for fire departments for selfish political gain.  Yet then it is convenient to blame the fire department and fire unions for budgeting problems after bickering over something as small as a 1% pay increase so the firefighters can afford to feed their families. It seems so unfortunately easy for this to be done when you consider that there are so many people who have a bad perception of fire services to begin with.   In the media people complain that fire services are a waste of money--something they do not want their tax dollars to go toward. Yet in an article on a subscription-based fire service, the firefighters were personally blamed and vilified for the lack of available services (subscription-based services allow community members to refuse to contribute financially to the fire department in return for agreeing to opt out of receiving services. Though firefighters often want to respond to the fires anyway, they may be threatened with the loss of their jobs, their livelihoods, if they do so). The perceptions of firefighters and how these perceptions are used impacts my husband, his safety, our livelihood, and our precious community. I will use every platform I have to combat this misconception--my blog is no exception.

Firefighters are lazy underachievers who get paid taxpayer dollars to sit around all day and watch TV and sleep in recliners. There aren't very many fires any more, fire departments are a waste of money, and firefighters are just taking advantage.

Firefighters are not lazy or under-achieving

Firefighters are highly skilled professionals. In addition to requiring that firefighters demonstrate physical fitness, maintain detailed knowledge of the streets and major buildings within a city or community, master complicated equipment and vehicles, and be educated in fire science, many fire departments also require that firefighters double as Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). This means not only meeting the EMT requirements for a local community or city but the national requirements as well--the national EMT test is no walk in the park. Can you imagine being skilled as a caretaker and nurturer as a medical professional but also having to have the bravery and skills to run into burning buildings? Can you imagine being drawn to the physical work of firefighting but also needing to possess the gentleness and medical knowledge of an EMT? How common do you think it is that those two qualities of both caretaker and what I would certainly dare to call the qualify of a warrior, in the personality of the same individual? Competent firefighter/EMTs are not your everyday people.

I am a nurturer. I know for a fact that I could do the EMT part of the job. My first two years in college were in nursing school, I have been employed as an Emergency Department Technician, and I have ridden in ambulances. But I will tell you I know without a doubt that I could not do the job of a firefighter/EMT because I do not have what it takes to fight fires. I cannot walk into a room so hot that the tops of my ears immediately singe and my helmet starts melting. I do not have what it takes to scale the side of a building using a hook and some window ledges to save someone. Memorizing building layouts, maps, and backstreets and having to safely navigate to an emergency in a matter of minutes in an enormous, expensive, vehicle? I'd be lost. It takes someone really special to do this job.

Firefighters are highly knowledgeable professionals. In addition to all of the knowledge and skills required to be a firefighter and an EMT, many firefighters are also college students or college graduates. Many firefighters are also paramedics. Firefighters in larger cities are required to attend and pass fire academies and training exams. They also may encourage and reward firefighters for achieving higher education by giving them additional points for having a college degree or serving in the military. Many of my husband's peers are veterans or reserve military personnel.

Firefighters do not "sit around" all day

Busy, busy, busy.  Washington D.C. is one particular fire department which seems to always be under attack in the local media. One firehouse in the District of Colombia, lovingly nicknamed "The House of Pain," averages about 700 calls per month and in 2009, they totaled nearly 10,000 (that's an average of nearly 27 per day, folks. That's no less than one emergency responded to per hour). Officially reported fire calls are hard to come by but in a big city fire department, I wouldn't at all feel like I was exaggerating to say that an average of 15-20 calls per fire station per day was accurate.

There's more to firefighting than you think. Being a firefighter not only entails firefighting responsibilities as well as emergency service responsibilities, often times firefighters inspect buildings, provide CPR and first aid training to the community, install and provide smoke detectors for free, inspect fire hydrants, provide protection and rescue to various waterfronts, as well as provide staffing to things like sports and entertainment events.

"First Responder" means more than you think. We live in a society that really doesn't take care of our vulnerable populations as well as we think we do. Sitting in nice, comfortable homes, we don't see the things that firefighters and EMTs see or see what they do and never get credit for. The lack of access to affordable health care and, lets face it, accessible health care and health education means overflow in emergency rooms and that emergency personnel are very busy. One fire department I know of sends a firefighter to carry a child with a disability up the stairs of his home twice a day just so that he can sleep in his own bed. His mother's insurance did not cover a private medical company to come do this and no one would help her...except the firefighters. Additionally, people get sick, they get scared, they are tired or desperate or without resources--they may call 911 for things you and I think are silly. In fact, a great deal of fire/EMS calls fall into this category. Fire, EMS, and police are there for these individuals in their time of need. Fire, police, and EMS have fallen into this "catch all" category that is literally holding our society together in some ways, to the point that some emergency services are now hiring EMS social workers to alleviate some of this burden.

Firefighters are not "living it up" on our tax dollars

Health risks. The longer a firefighter stays in duty, their risk of developing a fatal cancer grows. A recent study (2006) discovered that firefighters who have been on the job for many years were at significant risk for cancers such as brain cancer, kidney cancer, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, colon cancer, bladder cancer and Leukemia.  Continuing on this career track year after year increases the risk of mortality among firefighters from these illnesses. Firefighters are also at risk for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Ever thought about how stressful it is to work long hours, be alarmed constantly by loud bells and sirens, and not always have time for a healthy meal? Firefighters are also at an increased risk of Cardiovascular disease (CVD). CVD is the leading cause of on-duty firefighter fatalities. Firefighters are at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals, bio-hazardous substances, and hearing loss. I have not even covered the cap of the iceberg as far as illnesses go--you get the idea. Firefighters and EMTs put themselves at significant health risk to save the lives of others, they deserve every benefit they receive and then some.

Let's talk about pay. Firefighters who work in large cities are often not paid enough to live within the cities they serve. Firefighters who are required to live within city limits may struggle to find a safe neighborhood with a good school district that they can afford, especially if they do not benefit from coupled or married privilege with an additional income earner in the household. Despite this obvious catch-22, many news sources and even political leaders love to demonize and humiliate firefighters who have to commute to work. It is an enormously hot political topic surrounding our community. These politicians secure votes by blaming the fire department for not being 100% staffed by residents and claiming that commuting firefighters are selfishly removing employment and money from local residents. People cheer along with them and develop a poor image of Fire and EMS services, cheering "reformation" of these departments heralded by this prospective political leader. These politicians and bureaucrats conveniently forget to mention that fire departments often have to recruit far and wide in order to find enough of the needed specialized help to fill their enormous staffing needs--and that there are already often programs in place to help locals obtain the necessary education and skills to apply for the job. They also forget to mention that they don't pay firefighters enough to live within the city, nor do they intend to.  Reporters in one neighboring city of mine have all but stalked firefighters, videotaping them and violating their privacy and the privacy of their spouses and children, outside of their homes to report on their residency. The starting pay for a Philadelphia firefighter is about $40,000. In Baltimore, starting pay is about $33,000. For FDNY it's almost $40,000 starting pay. Yet firefighters are expected to find affordable homes in safe neighborhoods with good school districts within the limits of major cities?

Newsflash to the politicians, firefighters do not drive 2-4 hours to work because being paid pennies for dangerous work in the name of "robbing" the local residents of employment and job opportunities is just oh-so-much-fun. Even the meanest people I've met in my life weren't that dedicated to making other people miserable. They do it because the larger cities, that they can't always afford to live in, offered them a job and it's a job that allows them to use a specific skill set in a way that is useful and beneficial to others. No conspiracy involved, I promise.

Family life.  Long shifts, inadequate pay that leads to needing overtime or more jobs, stress and danger on the job, and illness have lead to higher divorce rates among couples in the firefighter community. One source went as far as to say that firefighters are three times more likely than non-firefighters to get divorced. If you think being a firefighter is a tough job (and it is), try being married to one.  Long hours and working on holidays means that spouses and families have to adapt. It is no easy talk watching your partner experience having his (or her) hearing destroyed, his/her sleep constantly disturbed, and knowing that every time they go to work they could be exposed to any number of dangers or health risks.

An interdependent community that's not looking to "take advantage" of anyone. In the almost 10 years that I have had the privilege of having a firefighter as a life partner, I have witnessed the most amazing displays of concern for others that I have ever seen. I have personally witnessed my husband and his friends, many who weren't even on duty at the time, bring a friend whose heart had stopped back to life. One afternoon, my husband jumped right in and saved the life of a child on a call that wasn't even his when a co-worker went down on the job.  I have seen firefighters travel over a hundred miles to attend the funeral of a fallen brother or sister they had never met out of respect. I have seen my husband's peers donate their sick time to an ill firefighter in need and take collections out of their own pockets to give to the family. I have seen them use their days off to make repairs to the home of a hospitalized firefighter and attend to his or her family. I have seen firefighters work extra shifts for no compensation so that a firefighter missing work for a serious illness could have their shifts covered and receive a paycheck. Selfish people hoarding your tax money (and you know I don't speak about anyone that way)? I think not.

Why treat public servants this way?

Perfection
Of course, no fire department, no firefighter, is perfect. Continued changes and improvements are needed as times change and people's needs change. I have long since critiqued the patriarchal aspects of our 9-5 world and work week. Businesses and places of employment tend to be open and operate at times that are not convenient for individuals with child care responsibilities. Often times this translates to men working, women staying home, people rearranging their lives to fit into a routine that doesn't entirely fit their needs, and children end up in daycare. I see jobs that provide 24 hour service (especially those traditionally male dominated), like firefighting, as a perfect opportunity to trail blaze the way for the formation of convenient schedules that benefit women and families that both serve the public and employees who have child care responsibilities. The continued reduction of occupational segregation in professions like firefighting is something I look forward to seeing--yet one heatedly debated topic is firefighter schedules and many people believe in the 9-5 schedule for a firefighter or something similar such as a series of 12 hour shifts. The lack of understanding of what firefighters (and those in like professions) need is an enormous blockade to this change.

What I want you to understand
The fact of the matter is, my husband and his co-workers, through their occupation are at risk for hearing loss, mental and physical health problems, heart disease, exposure to toxic chemicals and bio hazardous materials, injury, and a host of other issues, which places their families at risk of divorce or losing them, all to work to save people they have never so much as met. They deserve good pay and good benefits--why that ever comes into question is beyond me. If I could implore anything of anyone reading this, it would be to stand up for what's right for your community fire department. Support them, find out their needs, bring them a plate of cookies from time to time, and call politicians out on using our women and men who serve us daily as pawns. Their safety is that important, and so is yours.

References:
GAGLIANO, A. (2009). What Every Firefighter's Spouse Should Know. Fire Engineering,162(12), 89-92.

Del Ben, K. S., Scotti, J. R., Yi-Chuen, C., & Fortson, B. L. (2006). Prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in firefighters. Work & Stress, 20(1), 37-48.

Soteriades, E., Smith, D., Tsismenakis, A., Baur, D., & Kales, S. (2011). Cardiovascular disease in US firefighters: a systematic review.Cardiology In Review, 19(4), 202-215.

Youakim, S2006). Risk of Cancer Among Firefighters: A Quantitative Review of Selected Malignancies. Archives Of Environmental & Occupational Health, 61(5), 223-231.

So, my Friend Wants to Adopt a Baby.....

2012-01-22T00:56:00.000-05:00

On occasion, people ask me "how can I adopt?" A lot of people hear I work with "Adoptee Rights," and not understanding the term, assume that "Adoptee Rights" means advocating for expanded rights of people who want to adopt, like advocating for bigger tax credits or other laws that favor adoption in some way (yep, even with "adoptee" in the title people make that assumption). People who know I am adopted and also know that I had fertility problems either want to know how I finally managed to get pregnant or they want me to give them some tip on how to adopt or some reassurance that everything about adoption will be wonderful. I was stunned for a moment when I got an email from a good friend, who doesn't have a direct adoption connection but follows this blog and is supportive of me just because she's awesome, asking for advice on how to adopt a baby. My usual mini-speech about adoption ethics that I would usually give to someone did not apply in this situation. Believe it or not, I had no idea what to tell her.

The [Usual] Mini-Speech

When someone asks me for my opinion on adopting, I tell them how I honestly feel. I tell them I feel it is most important to look into foster care adoptions. Yes, there are mothers who, even if offered proper support, do not want to parent infants whom they desire to place through an agency. However, these infants are not going to go without a home as there are more than enough people waiting to adopt an infant. In fact, the ratio of adoptions that may occur to waiting prospective parents is so unbalanced that often times it takes great marketing efforts on the behalf of the adoption facilitator to try to find expectant parents who would be willing to place their baby for adoption. People will get mad at me for not being supportive of the private, infant adoption system. I am not judgmental of others who disagree but I personally do not I don't like the system; I do not like where this particular system is right now socially, legally, and practice-wise. I think the more pressure there is on this part of the industry for adoptions to take place, the more pressure there is for law and practice to facilitate adoption to stay in business than to explore alternatives to adoption. Therefore, I am not interested in contributing to it by sending even more applicants its way when people ask me for advice. If people want to know what I, personally, support, I tell them to look into the public foster care system. Not that that system is perfect either; I would hope the more people who desired to adopt from foster care the more people could demand changes to make things better. I didn't forget inter-country adoption, I just honestly do not get into that with people.

Guardianship vs. Adoption

I do not usually get into the whole guardianship vs. adoption argument when people ask me about adoption because I do not like the legal implications of either option. There are instances where guardianship is workable. However, as an adoptee, I can tell you that I am happy to be the legal daughter of my adoptive parents. They have raised me since I was nearly 5 months old. It would have and still would feel uncomfortable for me to have simply been their "ward." I don't like that and I don't think that would have been in my best interest in my particular type of adoption. I also do not see anything reasonable about the fact that adoption legally erases an adoptee's relatedness to their original family, amends and seals the related records in an attempt to legally alter history, allows adoptees in some cases to be defenselessly lied to with little way of discovering that fact, and then makes it something akin to an Olympic feat to try to get information. I do not like that I am no longer legally related to my original family or that my information was sealed. I think it's ridiculous and as you know, I wasted no time and spared no expense unsealing it all as soon as I figured out how to do it and plan to eventually change my legal name to include my original surnames. Names that are mine and never should have been taken from me to begin with.

There needs to be some balance between these extremes. A child's history and relatedness to their biological family should not have to be erased in order for them to be loved and care for by another family if that ends up being necessary. A child should not be robbed of the ability of legal relatedness to their nurturing parents simply because they are not biologically related. Why we cannot legally acknowledge a broad spectrum of parents as per what is best for each individual child is beyond me. I know people wonder about inheritance and would complain about an adoptee having their hands in too many "pots" so to speak taking away money from one parent or the other's "real kids." I've heard people say it both in the general population and even legislators concerned about it; people worry that the adoptee is going to take someones money or that the adoptee's money isn't going to go to the 'most deserving' family member (in the case a parent would inherit from a deceased adoptee). I say, good grief, inheritance seems like an awfully insignificant issue to overcome and work out in the overall effort of improving the rights of adopted children. At any rate, this is why I don't get into the whole guardianship vs. adoption thing--I think people should do whichever they think suits the situation and hand and fight tooth and nail for every shred of documentation that belongs to the adoptee so that the adoptee can have it some day. Everyone impacted by adoption should join the Adoptee Rights movement to fix these laws so we don't have to have these arguments for decades to come.

The Background

What's basically happening here, is that my friend, who I'll call "Jane," needs to know how to adopt or become the guardian of her cousin's baby. The baby's father is in prison and is disinterested in parenting, the expectant mother apparently has some drug issues and also says she does not want to parent. She already has an older child whom her own mother is raising. Unfortunately, the grandmother is stretched too thin to take in this new baby. Jane's first preference and priority is for her cousin to get her act together and parent her soon-to-be born baby as well as her other child. However, Jane can't force her cousin to accept help she doesn't want nor has she been able to convince her to consider making a parenting plan. At the same time, Jane does not want to lose this baby from the family which is why she is stepping up to offer to adopt or become a permanent legal guardian. I can anticipate that some people would say to this "why does anything need to be legal or official, why can't the baby just live with Jane?" That may be one option. Remember, this issue isn't about putting the goal of adopting first, it is about trying to figure out what's best for the individual child first. That being said, if Jane is going to end up the child's sole caretaker, she needs the legal ability to make decisions for the child. Also, her cousin is set on not parenting and wants to make arrangements for her baby to be adopted. Jane feels she should be informed now about how to make adoption/guardianship arrangements and acknowledge her cousin's wishes than watch her cousin arrange an adoption outside of the family with someone else.

Here's Where I Have no Clue

So she asks me, where to go, who to ask, and what do to. A lawyer? An agency? I had no clue. The reality of these issues is, there are always people out there who (as I already said), even if given the resources, do not want to parent. Or they make the decision while pregnant not anticipating how they might feel after the baby is born or the fact that they may change their mind after the baby is born. As much as I don't like adoption agencies, I would hope in these instances that these mothers would go to a remotely ethical agency. I think doing so would increase the likelihood that they would be exposed to competent counselling as well as resources to help them plan out all of their options (and I say "plan" as an actual-helping-professional-term, not in the mushy PAL "adoption plan" sense). Social Workers (unfortunately, not all adoption workers are necessarily "Social Workers") are well trained in the intervention planning process. What ought to be happening is that a worker helps a client discover their problems, translate the problems into needs, take the needs and create goals, identify objectives to go with that goal (describe how each goal can be accomplished in detail) and weigh the pros and cons of several possible plans (attempting to keep an expectant mother focused single-mindedly on adoption as her only plan is an absolutely unacceptable planning process) that best address the issues and goals at hand. In the case that an expectant mother absolutely wants to consider adoption, it would be very important to me that she work with someone who excels in implementing the intervention planning process and who applies it to adoption in a way that is ethical and beneficial to her and her baby.

However, does an agency really apply in this case? A lawyer? Can they arrange something on their own? Do foster-to-adoption laws apply? And who in the world can they ask? (Pennsylvania law would be applying here). My friend's situation is an example of what we talk about: the child's right (per UNICEF) to be raised by his or her own biological family members when the parents are unable or unwilling to parent and I have no idea how to tell my friend how in the world this happens.

Help!

Photo credit: graur razvan ionut

Made With Love

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

I was walking my house the other day thinking about all of the creative things I'd like to be able to do but am not even remotely good at but how fortunate I am to benefit from the talents of people who are good at those things. Namely sewing. The person who has that kind of patience is my hero. I'm sharing some pictures with you of things other people made for me with love. I thought today might be a nice day for a picture post (don't forget to click "read more" to see the rest of the post!)

Tier curtains sewn by my mother in law.

Panel curtains sewn by my mother in law.

My friend, Diana, sewed the black and white purse.

Diana also made the cover to my Kindle.

Diana also made this necklace (Diana can do anything).

W's blanket made by my a-mom.

Baby quilt made for my kids by my a-aunt. The blue fabric was saved from her son's quilt she made when he was a baby. That means the blue fabric is like a million (or 22) years old.

The blue knitted (crocheted??) baby sweater made by my o-great grandmother ("o" means "original" btw).
I told that story here.

My friend Autumn made allll of these earrings. She = awesome.

My mother in law embroidered this blanket for my kids.

My a-grandmother (she's adopted too) made this quilt for my kids.

M's quilt made by my a-mom.

My mother in law made me this pillow.

One of the twin necklaces I had made, one for me, one for my o-mom.

My o-mom bought this bag from Diana to give to me.

The quilt my sister in law made for my kids.

Mommy, why do you Wear Make up? Early Lessons for my Preschooler (and me!) on Women and Beauty

2012-01-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

I woke up one morning, pulled myself out of the warmth of my bed, and threw the curtains back letting the sun stream in my bedroom heralding the start of a brand new day. I start my morning routine which consists of a mad dash about the second floor of my home getting a shower, dressed, and what few chores I can done before my kids wake up. Once awake, it becomes all about getting them fed and ready for the day. One morning while my kids were playing happily on the floor in my oldest sons' bedroom, I went the next room over (mine) and decided to actually put on some makeup that day. Of course, I nearly stab myself in the eye with the mascara when I am startled by a small but unexpected voice behind me.

"Mommy, what's that?"

I turned to see my three-year-old watching me intently.

"It's makeup," I replied.

"What's make-up?" he asked.

"It's something I sometimes put on my face."

"Why do you wear make up, mommy?" he finally asks.

Here's where I have an entire conversation about what I want to say, in about five seconds time, in my head. I don't know why the importance of the answer dawned on me that morning, or any morning for that matter seeing as I am not in the least bit a morning person and usually require at least one cup of coffee before doing any critical thinking. However, the recent scenario where my son asked me about age (OK, not so much, I accidentaly made it about age) coming to memory make me wince to myself. I completely did not say what I wanted to say the last time he asked me something important.

I had groaned sitting down into a chair. It was the first Wednesday of December I remember; this because the first Tuesday of every month is one of my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes and I am always hurting the next day. One of my instructor's (who, by the way, is an awesome person) favorite ~~torture~~ warm-up exercises consists of us laying flat on our stomachs and pulling ourselves across the studio by our elbows. Works the core, don't you know. The next day as I painfully lowered myself into my chair for breakfast, I responded to my son's question by saying:

"Because I'm old."

I really regret saying that because I do not want him to associate being an older adult (which I'm not one) or growing older with something painful or negative. Health complications can be common among older adults as the body ages; it is important to be sensitive to that. However, it is equally important not to make an automatic assumption determining that someone who is an older adult must have health issues or is physically limited in some way because that is a stereotype. This is an association I did not want to teach my son. My son makes associations really easily and is not easily unconvinced of something he's learned. For instance, because the Sprout network insists on playing Nicole Johnson's diabetes cookbook commercials every single commercial break possible, he now associates diabetes (which is heavily represented in our family) with "rich chocolate cake." I have told him that having diabetes means you need to eat very healthy and not too much sugar to stay healthy and that his great grandma and grammy both have diabetes and work very hard to eat right and stay healthy. He's not convinced; he's seen pictures of cake.

Thanks Sprout.

This is why I paused for a moment with the makeup question and reminded myself: I am responsible for teaching this little boy, who will one day grow into a man, about how to view and treat women. It's important for me to teach him our family's values when it comes to women, physical appearance, and beauty. So really, what should I say here that reflects that?

So saying "to make mommy pretty was off the table."

Why? Because I am already pretty, all women are. I need to ask myself why it is that I am wearing make up. Is it to hide something, to conform to someone elses standard of beauty, or because I like to wear it? And if it is not to conform to some beauty standard or to hide behind it, my answer to my son needs to reflect that. Mommy is not hiding behind her make up. Mommy is beautiful; all people are beautiful. This is also why I did not want to genderize my answer. Because if wearing make up is about doing something you just want to do, and not about conforming to laid-out female standards of beauty, that means make up isn't just for girls. Men do wear make up; perhaps not anywhere near as prevalent as women do. I thought of all of the human characters on the TV shows he watches; they all, men and women alike, wear make up to ward off the glare from the lights and camera.

I dislike that he is already learning that things are assigned to boys and girls, not by what they like, but by the gender identity they've been assigned. The recent Lego debate is no better example of this. Boys' toys are bold and adventurous. Girls' toys are frilly and demure. My son has learned that things are not for him based on whether or not it is pink or blue, which makes me sad, because he loved the color pink. We visit our local fire station often where they have pink hats for girls and black hats for boys and I would all but bare my teeth at anyone who tried to change my son's mind the times he would request the pink hat instead of the black one. I don't even like that they have one hat for girls and one hat for boys to begin with. My husband defends this saying that having a pink firefighting hat at the fire station increases the ambient belonging of women in a predominantly or stereotypically male environment. If both hats were intended to be for anyone who wants one, I might agree. But that's not the fact. The fact is, the pink hats are reserved for girls. The black hats, that look more realistically like firefighting hats (I have never seen a real, pink firefighting helmet complete with a shield on it that pictures a dainty dalmatian wearing pearls and a bow) are for the boys.

The day he told me he wasn't allowed to like pink any more, because pink is for girls, I wanted to cry. No matter how many times I've told him he is allowed to like whatever he wants to like or even when I pointed out that his Poppy has a pink dress shirt he wears to church, he won't be convinced otherwise. Needless to say, genderizing make up and concern for one's appearance about issues being unique to girls is not a road I wanted to go down.

So, now I want to tell you that I sat down with him and had a thoughtful conversation with him where he learned more than I did and that I walked away a proud, beaming mother congratulating myself on a job well done educating the next generation of young men on women's beauty, self-esteem, and appearance. I want to tell you that I will be writing into parenting magazines everywhere describing the perfect lesson to teach children on these topics. Instead, it went a little more like this:

"I put it on my face because I want to. Sometimes adults wear make up and sometimes they don't. It is just another part of my clothes for the day."

"Oh, OK" he replied before returning to the enormous bulldozer he had parked in the hallway.

*sigh*

Photo credit: mistermong

STOP SOPA/PIPA!

2012-01-18T00:26:00.000-05:00

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Movin' On Up (Again!)

2012-01-17T22:05:00.002-05:00

Orange Belt!

Is Adoption ALL you Ever Think About? (Some New Stuff)

2012-01-16T00:25:00.000-05:00

As you know, I think it is vital for people to be able to listen to the voices of adult adoptees, especially when it comes to adoption issues. Adoption culture has spent so long telling everyone that being adopted "is the same as" being a biological child. In some regards, it is the same. We are full and equal members of our families and because of that equality, there should be no problem embracing and discussing the differences that adoptees bring to the world and their families. Silence about adoption issues should not be the ticket to being seen and treated equally as a member of your adoptive family. Because of this culture of adoption, people haven't been going to adult adoptees for their responses on adoption-and-similar issues as much as they should have. I think people get a glimpse of the importance when they participate in ventriloquism ("my sister's friend's cousin is adopted and she thinks/feels/says....."). They're acknowledging that an adoptee is probably the best source for an issue which is why they've responded as if they can speak for one. However, they fail to follow through and let the adoptee speak for themselves or ask the adoptee what they feel.

It has long been one of the ever-evolving missions of this blog to be just one more adoptee providing responses on adoption and a variety of political issues. I want people to be reading our blogs, asking for adoptee commentary, and asking for adoptee participation where it would be vitally important. I am always thinking of new ways to draw people to the adoptee community and to rally with us as allies and as friends. People have said that more people will listen if adoptees voice their opinions only in certain ways. This may be true as the saying goes, you get more flies with honey than vinegar. However, there just seems to be something awfully unjust about asking the only people who can tell you what an experience is like to offer up that precious information, often information that evokes strong emotion and is hard to share, only if it is perfectly packaged in the way the listener wants to receive it.

On the other hand, one thing that I have been wondering that might be a barrier, at least for my blog, is the fact that most of my posts are directly adoption-related. Someone not necessarily impacted by adoption may come here for an article or two that I've written about a current event but end up not following along because they do not identify with anything else here. So they do not follow and they don't get to have regular access or exposure to the writings of someone who identifies as being adopted. Perhaps there are adult adoptees out there who are at the stage in their life where they've worked out adoption issues and they don't want to think about adoption or being adopted all the time. They might like to follow along with someone who identifies as adopted, someone they therefore identify with, and hear about other things that adopted person is doing. Perhaps people are puzzled or put-off by the largely adoption-only content on this blog wondering if that's all I ever think of.

Well, I will clear at least one thing up there: adoption is not all I ever think about. In fact, I spend most of my day doing four things: studying, chasing after my children, being delightfully happy that adoption is not ruining my day, and looking for chocolate. It's true. I'm fortunate to have a world renowned Chocolatier down the street from me who believes in leaving no chocolate craving unaddressed and who will open his little boutique up for you at any hour of the day or night.

MMMM....CHOCOLATE!

I think one misconception of a lot of adoption blogs, no matter what "triad" member is penning them, is that this is all the person ever thinks about. After all, that's the only part of them, their online presence, that readers get to see. You can have a blog about almost any topic such as feminism, parenting, cooking, product testing, photography, crafting, healthy living, or shopping and I don't think people assume that the person who pens a cooking blog or a shopping blog is just unhealthily consumed with cooking or shopping. However, I do think that many people make this assumption about adoption authors because of the stereotypes of mental health against every triad member (and the stereotypes for each of us are different but pervasive). I wish more people had a different and better understanding of adoption bloggers. This blog being mostly about adoption does not represent an imbalance in my life where I am consumed with the topic. This blog was never intended to represent a written form of my day-to-day life; just the adopted part of my life. I work out what adoption-related things that come to mind here, for my own benefit and the benefit of others, so that my life can be balanced.

I will not say that being adopted is never hard or that things are always perfect. But I have less of a need to work out concepts that I have interest in and more of a desire to talk about topics other people are interested in hearing about (which is why I asked for input). It's why you've seen me give commentary on more current and political events lately. I am not criticizing those that write about adoption-only (obviously), I am just trying to keep my blog current with my ever-evolving goals. I would like to draw more people here for a variety of reasons so that they can, as a result, learn more about adult adoptees and adoption, in the process. What I think I would like to start doing more is writing about more general life issues; things a broader variety of people can also identify with and things that adoptees who might want to hear from an adoptee but not necessarily about adoption all-the-time would want to read (and non-adopted triad members are welcome too, of course). I'd like to talk more about life and parenting (without embarrassing the heck out of my sons by being too personal, of course), my quest to not ~~abhor~~ dislike cooking so much, and my love of art and crafting.

And of course, I'll still blog about adoption. This will always be an adoption blog. People should understand that this blog is written by an American, reunited-private-domestic-infant-same race-agency adult adoptee, wife, mother, Social Work student, Christian Universalist, unapologetic humanist and feminist, crafter, photographer, fire/police/EMS family member, horrible cook (so on and so forth) and that every part of my identity is in everything I write whether I expressly or specifically detail it out or not.

For blog entries that include general life topics with no specific adoption comparison, see my new Life Stuff tag.

PS. In case you're wondering, no, no one emailed me asking "is adoption all you ever think about?" Most everyone who has ever written me has been very nice. I used it as a title because people do often say this to (usually) adoptee and original mother bloggers (maybe AP bloggers too, I have no idea) and I thought it would be an ironic title.

What's the Right Answer When it Comes to Veronica Rose and other Custody Cases?

2012-01-15T00:07:00.000-05:00

I have been asked several times to comment on custody cases that (usually) involve fathers whose children were surrendered to adoption by their mother and who want to regain their right to parent their child. People have asked what I think should happen in cases such as the Veronica Rose and Emma Wyatt. There are so many of these custody cases out there, they are hard for me to follow and I honestly do not have enough information to make an opinion case by case. I have gone "on the record," so to speak, by voicing support for parents, such as Carla Moquin, in the past. However, with limited time and resources to do any digging (and already being spread so thin with the activities I am already involved in), it is hard to decipher what is going on in these cases when all I see is what is in the media.
The typical media response has been to create an emotional frenzy pitting the stereotype of the unfit-abandoning-biological-deadbeat-father who may be at further disadvantage due to biases about class and race, against well-to-do adoptive parents who are often portrayed as "taking a child in" when no one else "wanted it." I do not make the mistake of falling for these stereotypes. So, I will try to give my opinion on these cases generally-speaking.

Additional problems
The issue in many of these cases is that a child often grows older and older with all of these appeals, meaning they develop more of an attachment to and memories with the parents who are raising them. As these trials progress not only does the validity of the adoption and the petitioning parent's rights come into question but so does the age of the child and whether or not the child would be harmed by a change of custody. We should not allow this to happen with these lengthy appeal processes where parents professing to want what is best for the child stall and stall. Instead of simply sticking to the issues at hand, we waste time considering things like whether or not the father is a super nice guy and if we like him or not.  What I want to know is: did he assert his right to parent in the appropriate time frame? Did he revoke his consent to the termination of his rights in the appropriate time frame? If not, was it fraud, state-skipping (more legalized-fraud), lack of information, or duress that lead to this happening? Prove these things, hammer them out, and if his rights were wrongfully terminated, let him parent. If he was fully informed, did not want to parent and had adequate time to make that decision, and changed his mind three years down the road, I don't think a child should be uprooted.  You know that I support the concept of multiple parenting rights for multiple parents instead of just one "father" and one "mother" as well as not erasing an adopted child's connection and relatedness to their original family. It would benefit children whose parents need help raising them to not be severed from their family ties but have several parenting figures working together to meet their needs. But unfortunately, that's not how our system works and my opinion has to be based on what is already in place.

I don't care if a father has five bedroom single-family home with two car garage or if he lives in a small apartment. I don't care if he was fired from his last job. I don't care if he smoked for twelve years and is trying to quit. I don't care what anyone has to say about his ethnicity or his participation and identification within a particular diverse group (e.g. the people who say "ICWA shouldn't count because the father doesn't "act Indian" enough. Um, excuse me?). Either a parent is fit and has rights within the law or they don't. Period. These appeals, feet dragging and vilifying of a father's race, culture, and sociodemographics leaving the children involved in these cases growing older and older when custody changes is unacceptable.

*note the examples of fathers I gave here do not pertain to any specific case.

What about the child?
I do believe that it is stressful for a baby to be separated from the only nurturer he or she has ever known, including a newborn who spent nine months being nurtured by the mother who carried him or her (people who disagree are entitled to disagree and I'm not going to argue about it).  This does not mean that being in a home where you are not wanted is a superior option to being separated from a parent that does not want to raise you. This means that when a mother wants to parent and can be helped to do so, she should be. Biological fathers too. This should become the primary focus rather than the misleading rhetoric of "selflessness" in adoption, so that she and her baby do not have to experience this separation unnecessarily.

However, because I believe this, I cannot then say that a child who has developed an attachment and memories with a nurturing parent over the course of years won't experience any stress or pain simply because they are being returned to their biological family. Leaving a caregiver is stressful; period.  In these cases where a child grows older and older and is returned to their biological family, we absolutely cannot lose sensitivity to that child and all they have lost and have been through. In these cases where the child has grown older and older because of appeals and feet dragging (especially when the original father or other petitioning original family member is perfectly fit and well within their rights) the courts must take into account the welfare of a child who would be raised in a home that dragged its feet to prevent the ability of an original family to stay in-tact and to prevent a child losing that family.

This is not to say that this is the case with every single custody battle like this. I know of a biological extended family who is battling the original father for custody because they truly believe he is not fit to parent and have very valid reasons for believing so. I cannot paint every case involving these issues with the same brush.

Perhaps in some cases, what is best is joint custody or at least visitation, for the parents who raised a child for the first several years of his or her life--only if it is in that child's best interest. Not because it would benefit them but because of benefits it may have to the child. This might not be a popular idea but I, at the age of 26 years old, still remember being two and three and I definitely remember being five and older. Very vividly in many cases. I know that I loved my parents who were raising me at those ages. I really did, I loved them to bits. If a child wants to maintain a connection with familiar faces and it would benefit them to do so, let them.

Are tribes abusing ICWA?
I have to say, I find the very accusation that tribes are abusing ICWA infuriating. What is perhaps more so infuriating is that, from what it appears on the various Facebook pages contesting the return of Veronica to her biological father, it's a bunch of mostly White people sitting around moaning about how our government should overturn a policy meant to protect people of color from genocide! Have people so quickly forgotten why we have ICWA in the first place? Our nation has a long history of the abuse and genocide of the first nations of this continent. Treaty after broken treaty. Forced assimilation in boarding schools where children were not only stripped of their culture but emotionally, psychologically, physically, and sexually abused and tormented--severely so if they dared to utter their native tongue or original names. The Indian Adoption Projects removed children from their homes and tribes and placed them in White homes for no reason other than the color of their skin and their family's government-induced state of poverty. They lost their culture, their families, their roots, their land, their parents: and the tribes were impacted by the loss of their next generation. In modern day, we have a disproportionate number of First Nations children in the foster care system, in White foster homes, in culturally incompetent environments, despite ICWA.

It's a shame people have come to bad mouth ICWA. We cannot, as a country, become so silly in love with the idea of adoption that we stop protecting vulnerable populations.

But the mother chose adoption and chose the parents!
People want to know why the court should be able to overturn an adoption that a mother wanted because of the father's wishes, or in this case, the father's wishes and ICWA. There are four really important things here I think people should keep in mind (1) this is adoption, not health care or abortion, (2) fathers are equal to mothers as parents, (3) it is the basic human right of every child to be with biological family if and whenever possible, (4) it is also the basic human right of every child to have a loving and nurturing home.

This is adoption, not abortion or health care. A woman should have the unquestionable right to make decisions for herself and her body while pregnant. Too often we carry this over in adoption and treat her child like a piece of property speaking as though laws and children's rights provisions do not have to be followed if a mother "chooses" not to follow them. In adoption, it is a good thing for mothers and fathers who do not want to parent or cannot parent to choose the adopting parents (I say this despite the fact that I loathe pre-birth matching). Adoption involves a lifelong connection between two families and it is important for original parents to choose people they feel serve their child's best interest and who they can maintain a connection with because a child has a right to have that connection. However, I don't think it's OK to circumvent the law or children's rights in this process. It should not be anyone's right to choose to cut out a perfectly fit father from a child's life. It is likewise not OK for one parent to get to decide-away the parent's parenting rights. It's not OK to choose to circumvent a law meant to preserve a child's culture, heritage, and family. It should not be a choice to take away a child's legal relatedness from their father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters, and cousins (unfortunately, this is what happens in adoption even if a mother doesn't want it to or the adoption does truly need to take place).

I cannot be convinced that in the case of ICWA being circumvented that not one couple or parent or extended family member could be found that has tribal connections or roots, to foster or adopt First Nations children who absolutely cannot be parented by their original families or who were voluntarily relinquished. My own adoptive mother is 1/4 Iroquois for goodness sake and I'm not even of First Nations decent. We need to reform the system and start making choices in the best interest of children, not what's politically or financially most convenient or lucrative.

The stereotypes that mothers are solely responsible for their babies and fathers have no responsibility was well ingrained in the 40's through 70's when women "got themselves pregnant," were penalized and humiliated and father's were legally and socially encouraged to run for the hills taking no responsibility (not that all fathers did that, of course). We've come to view and treat mothers as if they are a child's only family member which is a disservice to mothers, children, fathers and extended family members.

Only when the big adoption taboo is involved do we vilify fathers who want to stand up and take responsibility for the children they've helped create.

People have said "mothers need to have the right to be the sole decision-maker for a child because if a father is involved and she doesn't want him to be, she would just have an abortion." That's probably one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read, first of all (well, maybe not so ridiculous because people were responding to Oregon's HB 2904 last year said something similar. They said it was a mother's right to choose to waive protections set in place to ensure children did not experience adoption loss needlessly because of their parents' duress). I honestly am so sorry that people view pregnant women so poorly that so many truly believe that the only way for a woman to make health care decisions is to fail to protect children once they are born and preserve the rights of fathers (and also grandparents and extended families) to nurture their own children.

Reforms are needed
Like I said, wrongful termination of rights, lengthy court battles, and appeal after appeal so that families are held in limbo and a child's future is unknown should simply not be happening. This is an enormous indicator that adoption should be federally regulated. Whether arguing "small government, family law, or contract law, naysayers of the federal regulation of adoption say this needs to be a private matter between families. Well it isn't. Adoption is big business. A failure to address these issues on a federal level is a failure of our government to set ethical guidelines and standards and acknowledge the universal human rights of adopted children. Either a father has a right to raise his child or he doesn't. Either a child has a right to family preservation as first consideration or they don't. Being a father or child that lives in Utah instead of California, New Jersey, or any other state, does not change your humanity or your entitlement to human rights and ethical treatment. It is unacceptable that father's rights and consent to adoption laws differ from state to state, or that the differences in law are used to circumvent and confuse men who want to parent the children they've helped create. It is unacceptable that mandatory disclosure laws on adoption policies and procedures do not exist in all states. It is unacceptable that some states do not allow adoptees to access original documentation about themselves. It is unacceptable that someones human rights are upheld differently from one state to the next.

We need a de-profitized, regulated, de-privatized (or heavily regulated), well thought-out, well researched, heavily overseen adoption system that follows the same basic guidelines, principles, and protections in every single state. There needs to be a clear federal understanding what parenting rights are, how parenting rights are voluntarily or involuntarily terminated, what constitutes fraud and an overturn of termination, and directions for a speedy appeal process. Who has rights to parent in place of the mother or father if both have terminated their rights, such as tribal members, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins needs to be determined. Whether or not the father of a child that is about to be adopted was properly notified or informed, whether or not he acted appropriately, and whether or not his rights were upheld should not be guess work. If a mother relinquished under a false understanding, it is fraud. If a parent wrongfully loses their right to parent their child, it is fraud. What is the guess work here? We've failed our families as a country to leave this to guess work or a conflict in law between states! And, if we de-profitized adoption we'd remove any motivation there is for adoption facilitators to push forward with adoption and lobbyists to push for adoption laws that put adoption before families.

"Every child has the right to know and be cared for by his or her own parents, whenever possible. UNICEF believes that families needing support to care for their children should receive it." --UNICEF

Photo credit: Salvatore Vuono

Did Romney Pressure a Mother to Surrender her Baby to Adoption?

2012-01-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

Religious influence and pressures in adoption are real. Now two authors are alleging in a book about Presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, that he participated in pressuring a mother to surrender her baby to adoption or else be ex-communicated from the church, in the post-scoop era. When you tell a religious woman her choice is to give a baby a "better life" or basically to go to hell, how much of a choice does that sound like?

Part of the story of mother, Peggie Hayes:

"But while Hayes considered Romney a friend, he was also her bishop—which meant it was his job to pass along sometimes-harsh church counsel. The tension between the two relationships came to the forefront one day when he came over to her apartment, and encouraged her to turn her son over to the church’s adoption agency when he was born. (The church’s position is that if a happy marriage between parents of a newborn seems unlikely, adoption is preferable to single parenting.)

Hayes was offended by the suggestion, and told Romney she would never give up her son. But, according to Hayes, Romney told her, 'Well, this is what the church wants you to do, and if you don’t, then you could be excommunicated for failing to follow the leadership of the church.'" (source)

I remember browsing an agency website one time and seeing the phrase "do you know a 'birth mother'? Invite her to your Bible study group, pray with her, let her know that God forgives." To any random person, this might have been a little irritating. However, if you grew up in a very religious environment, you might have seen a whole different meaning. It means that being pregnant out of wedlock when you can't afford a baby is a big, fat, huge sin. When you make someone feel sinful, you're telling them their transgression was not only against their fellow person but against God. Transgressing against God to a religious person is a big deal. We're talking heaven and hell here, an entire afterlife. When I see something like that, I see manipulation. I see exactly how I would have felt had I gotten pregnant in high school or in my early 20's before I got married.

This is one big reason why I do not support candidates who want to incorporate religious values into law and practice. I do not want to be forced to live by anyone else's nor should anyone be forced to live by mine.

Should Romney be President, what would be in store for adoption in the United States?

Kevin Ost-Vollmers from Land of Gazillion Adoptees Lets me Pick his Brain (First.Vlog.Ever. Part II)

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

Watch my interview above with Kevin Ost-Vollmers from Land of Gazillion Adoptees--woot!

(and don't forget to check out his interview with me at his blog).

PS. this is my 500th post on this blog!

Online Privacy: the Very True Confessions of a Bullied Girl who Escaped the Clutches of Social Media

2012-01-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

**At work or kids-near-the-computer profanity warning **

I was sitting at my computer desk staring blankly at Facebook when the word "WHORE!" catches my eye from the side of my screen. That's right, that annoying little feed to the right-hand side of the Facebook page that lets you know what people are doing on Facebook every minute of every day is suddenly lit up with profanity. A young family member of mine, being featured in the feed by Facebook, was busy typing to her friends on Facebook and having them type back to her; they were fighting. "Facebook fighting," they called it. Someone called someone else a "whore." Someone else was a "slut." Someone accused someone else of going some other embarrassing thing. Someone made jokes about some girl being fat.

I clicked out of Facebook at that point unwilling to see more of the high school fight unfold and I thanked God, I seriously thanked God, that Facebook, blogs, and social media did not exist (especially in this capacity) when I was growing up. These days it is so easy to make one comment or post one picture and have it spread like wildfire or have someone find it and turn it into an embarrassing situation. It would have only made it easier for the bullies to bully me when I was growing up.

I was a bullied girl.

I rarely talk about it and have been trying to type, erase, delete, re-type, re-erase, re-delete this entry for nearly as long as this blog has been going, trying to find the right way to share this part of my narrative in a way that would be most helpful to others. It's hard to write about because no one wants to admit there was a time in their life when they weren't liked or that something about them was so disliked that their peers made it into a hurtful spectacle. No one now would believe that bullying ever happened to me, not if you've known me for my teen and adult years. By the time I was seventeen, I had played soccer and also first base for the softball team. I did drama and was in vocal ensemble. I even sang the main solo for the church's Christmas cantata year after year. I was captain of the volleyball team one year until they replaced it with field hockey and then I played for the field hockey team. I had traveled internationally and made friends far and wide. I was captain of the basketball team two of the four years that I had played. I shattered at least four league records, was All-Star, All-Conference, First-String two years in a row. I was captain of the All-Star team my junior year and lead them to victory scoring into the "triple-doubles" myself with over 20 points, 20 rebounds, and an ungodly amount of blocks. I had a full-ride scholarship to a college with a top basketball team whose head coach I had trained with during the summers. I had a tight-knit group of very close friends, there were about ten of us who were "best friends." I was always dating someone because it proved I was pretty. I was always working so that I could always have the nicest things. Name brands, makeup, accessories, gadgets, and perfectly manicured nails. I was an honor roll student and generally liked by my teachers and peers. No one who knew me then or has known me now would think that there was a time when I was disliked and teased and that would have been all well and good to me in my high school years because I was bent on making myself as perfect as possible in every single way.

Because I told myself would never, ever let myself be teased like that again.

Ms. Perfect. Age 17

I had a wonderful experience in elementary school. Middle school was a different story. Fourth through sixth grades were like hell to me. What was I teased for? For being ugly. I was so absolutely hideous to everyone around me that not one day in those two years did my appearance escape comment. Of course, I wasn't actually ugly. Looking back on my pictures, I was a sweet thing with wide chestnut eyes, golden brown hair that fell into a soft bob around my face, and elusive dimples that marked either side of a shy smile. But this didn't matter. It became popular at my school for kids to think I was ugly. It all started one day when someone was trying to be funny and poke fun at me for no particular reason. But whatever it was they said was catchy, it had some particular sticking point, and those who overheard thought it was hilarious. They probably thought my upset reaction was hilarious and well worth their time poking fun at me.

Me, age 9, hideous, right?!

"Oh no, she's looking at me! Shield your eyes or you'll turn to stone!"

So it continued, for two years. Two years that escalated into joking far beyond my appearance and into anything that anyone could pick up on and launch an assault. My intelligence. My family. My clothes. You name it, anything. I went to a private school and our uniforms were supposed to "level the playing field" between students--but they didn't. I suppose I didn't get the memo the day that Hush Puppy shoes became popular and I never thought I would live down the ridicule when I stepped on the bus and someone recognized that my shoes were from Payless. Though I was never tormented specifically because I am adopted, the fact that I am adoptee did not escape their jeers. One boy called my original mother a "teenage slut" and said I would be "just like her." Another girl made fun of me for being an "orphan." In her prejudiced world, it was proof that I was a worthless and uncouth pauper someone was kind enough to rescue economically but could never be redeemed socially. Teachers weren't much help and the principal was bewildered. My parents were outraged and did what they could.

I cried a lot. A whole lot.

The bullying stopped in 7th grade about as abruptly as it started. It was almost as if those entire two years had never existed and only a few of the people ever came to me and formally apologized--yes, some actually did. This experience is far, far behind me but the issue of bullying is always near and dear to my heart. I try to think of what I can do, as a member of society, to help end bullying in schools and help both the bullies (I believe most people who bully others once felt helpless and bullied themselves) and those who were bullied. As a mother who uses the Internet quite a lot, I keep in mind that what I post on my blog, my networking sites, and write to people in emails is forever. Does this or that about my child really need to be shared? And although this is mostly-about-the-adoption-topic blog, this isn't something I am expressly concerned about for adoptive parents, original parents, or even adoptees as parents when it comes to adoption-related narratives and privacy and our children. This is important for every single parent out there who uses the Internet or whose children may use the Internet some day.

The extent my sons care about this issue right now is my oldest getting irritated when I'm blogging because he wants to use one of his apps or visit one of his preschool websites to watch a 45 second Fireman Sam clip for the 5,000th time. But I don't think of my adorable little three year old as he is now when I think about what I write on the Internet. Because, again, what I post here is forever.

I think about when my boys will be seven and nervous that their friends won't think they're cool if they're too scared to stay the whole night, at their very first sleepover.

I think about when they're nine and I'll have to hear for the first time "mom, can you please not kiss me goodbye in front of my friends any more?"

I think about when they're embarking on their teen years and I make the ultimate parent faux pas by accidentally telling someone they're crushing on "sorry, he can't come to the phone right now, he's in the bathroom and is going to be a while," and have to deal with silent treatment for the rest of the evening.

I think about the teen-young-adults they'll be who will roll their eyes, sigh, and say "mooom!" when I bawl at absolutely every single event in their lives: their sixteenth birthdays, their eighteenth, when they get their license, when they get an award, when they go to their first prom, when they graduate, when they go off to college, the entire car ride home from dropping them off at college....

I think about the amazing young men I will have raised who will go out and make their way in the world as interdependent parts of our community and society, who can go back and read every single thing I have ever written about them.

There are things we might think to share that seem reasonable enough. Like a (to us) no-brainer political or social point of view that we wholeheartedly believe and want to share with others that an experience our children had brought us to accept. Or, a funny photo or stressful story we'd like to share because we think others will appreciate it and lend us support. These things seem reasonable. Like when it seemed reasonable to my mother to shirk off my worries about a outfit she bought me for 5th grade picture day because I just knew the kids would have a field day of joking about it. The outfit was pretty (OK, even as an adult, it still isn't my taste) and the kids should not have cared that it wasn't the particular fad and instead appreciated it because it looked nice on me. It was a matching top and skirt in a faded, cotton pink that my mother had purchased from a local boutique. It had a gentle pattern of small blossoms covering the fabric and a bib-collar of delicate off-white lace that gently graced my shoulders. My shoulder-length hair was half-down, half pulled back in an understated bow made entirely of off-white, pearly beads. But the fact of the matter is: they didn't appreciate the outfit. They didn't care. Wearing pink was not cool and the lace thing just sent them over the top. I didn't fit in, I stuck out like a sore thumb in an atmosphere that already wasn't accepting of me.

Me, age 12

Yes, there are things that should seem reasonable to do or share, reasonable to an adult. But in the end, which was really more important? The principle of the matter where I should have been proud to have a pretty outfit and the kids were at fault for being so shallow, fickle and cruel? Or the fact that I was teased over it for probably two weeks after the pictures were taken, for two weeks after the pictures came back in, and then probably again when it was forever immortalized in the yearbook at the close of the school year? The principle didn't matter. Me being the "bigger person" and wearing a nice outfit even though it wasn't popular and those kids being the ones "in the wrong" didn't matter. The outfit mattered. Being pointed out as different because it was more important for me to wear the skirt and top than just blend in with the crowd mattered. Being relentlessly (which is no exaggeration) teased is what mattered. To me.

Now don't say "see, her parents did make all kinds of mistakes!" First of all, I don't know if I would say the outfit incident was her fault or call it a "mistake." It just is what it is. It also wasn't a "mistake" exclusive to adoptive parenting that, if hadn't been made, meant I would have grown up and not developed any of the opinions on adoption that I have now. This was a "all parents are liable to end up doing something like this" kind of "mistake."

I will never shirk off the issue of bullying the way I see some people do. "Kids will be kids" is no excuse to allow one child to make another child miserable. This is not something that is "part of growing up" or something that is acceptable to leave unaddressed. I will never be age 9 again. I will never be age 10 or age 11 again. I will never get to do those years over. Letting both the bully and the victim persist in pain is unacceptable. Productively working on the issue of bullying is the responsibility of every single parent.

I wholeheartedly believe that when it comes to issues of the Internet and bullying that children in oppressed and vulnerable populations are even more at risk. Like the young Black girl who was mocked on her teacher's Facebook page for her hairstyle. Or the many cases where the Internet has been used for students to bully fellow peers for being gay. Adoptees too may be vulnerable when it comes to this sort of thing because, you have to remember, there are stereotypes and stigmas associated with being adopted and people are so curious about adoption, our origins, and our stories. When you share pictures, personal details, and the adoption narrative in a way that is identifying, their peers in the future may see it and find it. And they may not be kind about it. While it is important to embrace adoption differences and enter into discussion of adoption, there is a balance. A healthy balance between being open and making it into something potentially embarrassing. If my parents had had an adoption blog and shared my conception circumstances in an identifying way, for instance, I would have been mortified. Had my parents made it sound like my adoption was some God-driven charity project they had embarked on where they "rescued" me from squalor..oh my goodness, oh.my.goodness. Had my peers found it; I cannot even imagine. Did I mention I went to a Christian school with Christian peers and teachers? That I grew up in a predominantly Christian and religious community? Do not think that being surrounded by people who follow a God who commands them to love and accept means that bullying will never happen. I learned about contradictions very early. Like how we all stood there at school chapel services and nodded in agreement that God calls us to love everyone; everyone except Amanda, I guess.

I choose to tell my story now, as well as some of those sensitive circumstances; as an adult because it is my story to tell. I am aware that people may have obnoxious reactions or say something unkind in return and sharing it and dealing with that reaction is my decision as an adult to make. It is also my original mother's decision and I do not share anything about her (or my parents) or the parts of our story that combine both of us that I do not think she would want shared. And yes, my parents and my original mother do share things themselves with others as participants in my adoption narrative with narratives of their own. I respect their rights to tell their parts of the story and they respect my privacy by not sharing things I do not want shared. All my parents respect the adult they help shape.

Me, age 5, with my mom.

This post was almost two years in the making and I did not want to post it equally as badly as I did want to post it. The hesitation wasn't just about being uncomfortable sharing something personal about my life that I am not particularly proud of. It was because I have a lot of friends, family members, and people I don't know well but generally just like who blog and utilize social media and who include information about their children when they do so. I like these people; I do not want to hurt their feelings when my definition of what "respecting privacy" means when it comes to sharing online may differ from theirs and I did not want them to think that I am sitting here behind my computer screen on the high horse of judgement. I'm really not (and none of these people I'm fond of portray their kids as charity projects or share uber-embarassing stuff, in case you're wondering). I too utilize blogging and social media to help my family keep in touch with people we love and being mindful of what I post and share about my kids is in my consideration daily. The recent topics on privacy in the bloggosphere, the courage of other bloggers, like Joy, to say how they feel about online privacy even though not everyone agrees or follows the same rules, has turned this post from drafted to published. I know not everyone will agree with me and I did not write this because I expect everyone to. But I realize now that my experience can at least be helpful to those willing to read. Please take from it what helps you.

Warm Regards,

A former bullied girl

PS. OK, so "WHORE" isn't really profanity. But I couldn't put "don't read this at work or near your kids because I say 'WHORE' and 'slut' in this post!" in the little warning blurb I gave because it would have defeated the purpose of the warning :-)