Where am I now?

I went to see my Doctor yesterday...my Psychiatrist...He is being deployed to Iraq and I will not see him now till November...the longest period of time of absence since last year when he went too. He wondered where I was now since arriving in his office in 2009.

He was with me every step of the way on the journey that Michael and I had...he listened to my fears about Michael's passing...he listened to my anger...he listened without passing judgement. He was told about Gerard before I reunited with him...I was reminded that the first meeting (an emergency meeting) with him after reconnecting with Gerard I walked into his office and said THIS IS BIG...this is REALLY BIG!  And he was there to listen as my 17 year old "shadow" emerged.

After reuniting with Gerard I can honestly say that I am feeling so much better about everything...about life...about love...about connection. By allowing the "shadow" side of my life (which as it turns out was mostly about the adoption) have its say...have its moments of grief...screaming...fear...I have found different ways to integrate her. Is she gone? No...but she has a room now. A room where she can let her voice be heard...but also a room that I can send her to if she is starting to throw a tantrum! It use to be that I would shove her aside...push her down...ignore her and what she choose to do to me was torture me even more. She would silently send anxiety my way...depression...a lack of worth...because I would not acknowledge her. She has now been validated...she has been given the ticket to ride this roller coaster of life with me...as a companion of sorts...as long as she comes along to show me something important...as long as she minds her good manners...as long as she knows when to go to her room!

Now, I am very much aware that I have given her a persona...I have made her into a 3rd person...but she has been with me for 43 years...she is part of me...but she has also been ignored and pushed and shoved and covered up for all those years. Now as I come to a better place because of reuniting with Gerard I can see that she never really meant me any harm...the truth is had I acknowledged her sooner she might not have wreaked as much havoc with me. But hindsight being 20/20 as they say I guess my wiser self felt it was better not to confront her issues...better to let sleeping dogs lie...better to "get on with my life" (as I was told so many years ago). I know now that had I been honest...had I had the courage...had I been a "deeper" person perhaps I could of spared myself some heartache.

But I am a firm believer that we get to the things we are suppose to get to exactly at the right time... I am a firm believer that everything has a season...I am a firm believer that I am the sum total of my experiences (both good and not so good).

So, where am I now?

I am exactly where I am suppose to be...doing exactly what I am suppose to be doing...surround by exactly the right people.

I am feeling HAPPY and BLESSED!

Psychiatrist...

I have gone to see Psychiatrists off and on since I was 24 years old. They never could really pinpoint why I was always so "depressed". Many of them wanted to go back and review my childhood...blame my parents in some way...others told me it was a hormonal thing...one actually went so far as to tell me that I was making things up in my head. But the one thing that I NEVER brought up was that I had entrusted Gerard to the adoption system. I never exposed my self totally and honestly.

In 2008 I started to see a wonderful new Doctor when my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My life was going to change from being a wife to being a caregiver...from being a caregiver to being a widow in three and a half short years. Dr. B helped me get through my different stages of grief before my husband passed...while my husband was sick and after he passed. Little did I know then that he would be helping me with much more than that.

For the first time I actually told someone (a professional) that I had entrusted my son to adoption when I had just turned 18 years old. This "secret" came out in a session that exposed that I was holding others at arms length...only letting them in so close before setting up a barrier that they would have to really work very hard to get up to..get past...get over. There were those who I allowed (after they proved themselves to me) over but most only got up to it. Once I exposed myself I on a road of healing...once I started on this road to healing I started to confront my past.

But it was not until May of 2012, when I was reunited with Gerard that I really started my inner work. I began to see my past with new perspectives...I began to see patterns...to feel my losses and define my feelings. I suddenly realized what a profound affect entrusting Gerard had on my life.
I think that the fact that I had held on to a "secret" for so long certainly made those patterns repetitive...What I have realized is that I bought in to the preconceived notion of birth mothers that so many people have. The idea that our children were "mistakes"...that we were "tainted and bad people" because we had children "out of wedlock"..."illegitimate children"...that certainly WE were not capable of raising to be fine upstanding productive adults.   

I know that this is NOT true...I have forgiven myself...I have forgiven the 18 year old girl...I have let her cry and grief her loss...I have let her have a voice that finally was loud and clear...I have realized that there is no easy solution to such a complicated situation. I do know that there is a strength in the maternal emotion that neither time nor "secrets" can break. 

I continue to see Dr. B....a little less frequently these days...but as I heal I know that "secrets" do not help anyone grow...I have been doing inner soul searching for years...and this was one subject that I never addressed...Today, I am feeling better and happier than I have since I was a young girl...I am getting past the past...I am growing.

to know or not to know...

I remember when I was in the 5th grade, Mr. Thomas, was my teacher at #16 school. He was an Englishman who was teaching in America. We were studying ancestry. We were told to ask our parents where our ancestors came from. When I asked, my Mother promptly told me...We are Americans...you tell him that! So, back I went the next day and listened as everyone in the class was telling their ancestries ...Irish...English...German...and when it came to my turn I said American...No, he told me..you must be mistaken, you have to be more than that...well, that is what my Mother said to tell you was my reply. (there was laughter in the class room...was it because I said that is what my mother said to tell you or was it because I did not have an answer?) You need to ask her again he told me...home I went and said where are our ancestors from? My Mother once again said America...Now, I suppose in the 5th grade I was smart enough to go back to school and tell Mr. Thomas anything I wanted...who would know the difference...I marched into the class with my head held high went up to Mr. Thomas and said very clearly...My Mother said that we are Americans...I was born in America...She was born in America as was her mother, her grandmother and her great grandmother...as was my fathers family...So my ancestors are from America...he did not ask me again. So what is my ancestry? Really I have very little idea...I do know that there is some English...some Irish...a little Lithuanian ...and Cherokee...a mixed breed...a mongrel of sorts! I learned some of it over the years from my grandmothers...

Now imagine that you are adopted and you have no idea what your ancestry is, and you have no one to ask. (Even if you got the answer that your ancestors were from America!)  Would it bother you? Would you want to know? Would it make a difference in any way?

While I was visiting my son, I asked him why he choose to search.  He said he was not really curious till he was around 18 and became more curious as he got older. Who did he look like? Who were the people he got his eyes and height from...who did he get his love of art or his way of thinking from...was he curious about ancestry...just to a certain degree...but it came down to more about finding another person that he looked like and who he was like in different ways.

I know a great many people who have gone to get lengths to explore their family tree. I am not one of those people, but I do understand it to a certain degree. Knowing where we descended from is a curiosity to me, but not a make it or break it deal in any way. I am who I am not because of my ancestry but because of the sum total of my life so far. I believe that is the same for Gerard, but that is only my opinion. And I believe that we all have the right to know our ancestry and to be able to search it out if it is important to us. But to do so, we have to know our parents names...and perhaps even their parents names. Adoption erases that and so there is no way to find out unless you are reunited.

So, just how important is ancestry to you? And do you have the names of your parents so that you can do that searching?

Here in New York State all records are sealed and an adoptee is not allowed this information. And once again our ADOPTION RIGHTS bill did not make the floor to be voted on this year...but there is always next year. Our voices just need to get louder!

Equal Rights...

This article is fairly long...but POWERFUL!

The Last – and Least Recognized – Americans Denied Equal Rights

by Mirah Riben / June 18th, 2013

Prejudice may not … be the basis for differential treatment under the law” even if it does not rise from “malice or hostile malice.
— President Obama’s Administration, 28, 2013

All Americans have a right to “equal protection” under the law. Yet one class of people are so marginalized they are not even recognized as a discriminated against minority. The least known or even thought of in a discussion of civil rights are adopted persons.
We do not think about adoptees in this way because adoption is viewed as a social good that serves babies and children. Laws regarding adoption seem to have ignored the fact that adopted children become adult citizens who vote, serve their nation, pay taxes, marry and do everything all other citizens do, yet remain infantilized under the law, denied full equal status with their non-adopted peers in regard to access to their own original and true birth certificate.
Comprising an estimated two percent of the population, adopted persons are a discriminated minority with laws that apply only to them while denying them the same rights as non-adopted persons. No others – not even convicted felons – are denied access to their own birth certificates.
While all other American citizens can research their genealogy generations back, exposing long held “dirty” secrets, more than forty states disallow adopted persons knowing the names of their mother and father. These restrictive provisions prejudicially distinguish adoptees, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that “no state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
After 30 years of unsuccessful attempts to reverse laws in New Jersey that deny adoptee rights, on June 13, 2013, Senator Diane Allen, NJ, introduced yet another bill in committee that would allow the state’s adopted adults to receive their birth certificate upon request. The Senator stated: “It’s a civil rights issue and it’s appalling to me we treat people this poorly. We have made them a separate class, an inferior class, because they were adopted.”
Adoptees’ denial of equal access to their birth certificate causes them disadvantage and creates potential harm to them and their offspring by disallowing them the means to acquire updated family medical history as well as putting them at risk of unknowingly committing incest.
Yet, as of this writing, only seven American states grant adult adoptees unrestricted access to their own original birth certificates (OBC) that all other citizens take for granted. Each time an adoption occurs in the United States, including step-parent adoption, the adopted person’s true and accurate record of their birth, their OBC, is sealed from them even though it is the record of their birth. This authentic document is replaced with a new certificate of “birth” with falsified data that changes the name of the individual without their request or knowledge, and identifies the adoptive parents as the parents “of birth.”
If you or I falsify vital records or identification, it’s a crime, yet every state other than Alaska and Kansas commit such state fraud, issuing a totally new birth certificate – often years after the birth took place. Called “amended” certificates, but with nothing indicating that they are not original or have been altered in any way, they can, and often do, also change the date and place of birth, and even the race of the individual.
The History
Sealing adoption records is a relatively recent development in our nation’s history. Prior to 1940, all parties to adoption had access to birth certificates and adoption-related court documents, with adoption agencies assisting separated relatives to locate one another. In the mid-twentieth century, states began to enact statutes that severed the legal bond between the birth parents and the child.
Professor Elizabeth Samuels, University of Baltimore, School of Law, attributes adoption records closure to post-World War II societal attitudes that labeled “unwed” mothers as socially deviant sinners and the children born to them “illegitimate.” Adoption by married couples served to eradicate this “impure” past.
Other historians believe the well-intentions argument for secrecy in adoption to be more of a smoke screen. Instead they point to lack of transparency as serving adoption practitioners. American adoption history, in fact. shows that unscrupulous baby brokers such as Georgia Tann and Bessie Bernard, a Brooklyn housewife, part of a baby-peddling ring in the 1940′s, pushed for secrecy in adoption to protect their methods of obtaining children for profit.
Tann, charged with stealing 5,000 children from their families, provided children for high paying clientele including celebrities, judges and politicians who gratefully helped by destroying and covering up records, as well as pushing for sealed records to become the standard of practice. Barbara Bisantz Raymond, author of The Baby Thief says that Georgia Tann “…began falsifying adoptees’ birth certificates in 1928. She did so to cover her crimes, but claimed that it spared the shame of being known to have been adopted — and, often, born outside wedlock.” She ran her fraudulent adoption ring for decades because “saving children” resonates with the public, and sealed birth records virtually guarantees little or no accountability.
The 1940s and 50s was a time when shame and secrecy extended to infertility. Thus, sealing of adoption records served well the only fee-paying party to the transaction. Adoption was able to be presented to prospective adopters, who had fears about the idea, as a way to have a child that would be the same “as if” the child were born into their family. Social workers routinely instructed adopters not to reveal the truth of adoption as it might cause the child to feel less a part of the family. “Amended” birth certificates made it all possible. As a result, many adults born and adopted then were never told that they were adopted. The only “birth” certificate they have provides no indication of the document having been amended leaving them in the dark, giving false medical history and exposing them to unknowingly committing incest.
Most find out eventually and if they are lucky, find a sub group within the adoption community known as Late Discovery Adoptees (LDA) where they can get support to deal with having everything they have believed to be true taken from them; their lives turned upside down. Some experience shock, others feel a sense of confirmation; many feel betrayed to learn that their extended families knew and conspired in the conspiracy of silence
All of this lying and secret keeping occurred despite child welfare experts of the 1950s recommending that OBCs remain available to adult adoptees. Initially, most states sealed adoption records from the public, or all persons except the adoptee. By 1960, 28 of the 48 then-existing states created legislation obliterating the adopted child’s past by sealing his original birth certificate from the adoptee himself.
Pennsylvania sealed their adoption records in 1984 and Alabama did so in 1991. By 1990, only three states allowed adult adoptees to see their original authentic birth records on demand – and by 1998 only Kansas and Alaska, which never sealed adoption records, still allowed unconditional access. State by state description of access and restrictions is available on the American Adoption Congress website.
All the while, a grassroots movement was forming to oppose these restrictive and prejudicial laws. Jean Paton (aka Ruthena Hill Kittsona) social worker, and author of Orphan Voyage, herself twice adopted, began writing and speaking out for adoptees’ right to equality in 1949. Not long after Paton began her fight on the West Coast, Florence Fisher founded the Adoptee Liberation Movement (ALMA) in New York. During the 1970s local search and support groups organized across the country and flourish today online
As a result of this modest grassroots adoptees rights movement, a small handful of states have restored adoptees rights, many with limited access and provisions such as age limits, or veto rights for parents of birth that do not apply to non-adopted citizens. Such conditions maintain inequality.
For and Against
In 1978 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) commissioned a panel of adoption professionals to draft model legislation as a guide for states to reform their adoption laws. Released in 1980, the Draft Model State Adoption Act recommended that all adoptees be given free access to their OBC at the age of majority. This has yet to occur.
The prestigious adoption think tank, The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute concludes that, “Barring adopted adults from access to their OBCs wrongly denies them a right enjoyed by all others in our country, and is not in their best interests for personal and medical reasons. Alternatives such as mutual consent registries are ineffective … [and] the vast majority of birthmothers don’t want to be anonymous to [their] children…”
The Institute recommends all states unseal original birth certificates for all adult adoptees, retroactively and prospectively, and states with restrictive access amend those limitations. The American Adoption Congress (AAC) likewise supports full unrestricted access for adoptees as does Bastard Nation, the Adoptee Rights Coalition and dozens of state adoptee rights organizations.
The HEW model state adoption act spawned backlash in the form of new lobbyists for the mega billion dollar adoption industry such as the National Council for Adoption (NCFA), who in turn formed alliances with Catholics, Mormons, and Evangelical Christians to keep adoptions secretive. Paid to keep adoption agencies and practitioners – which operate more lucratively under the veil of secrecy – in business, they claim publically to be concerned for protecting the rights of mothers to remain anonymous. However, such protection was never a reason for sealing the records.
State records reveal birth certificates were sealed to protect the adoptive family from interference by birth families, exposure to embarrassment, or blackmail. Protection of the confidentiality of birthparents was never mentioned as a concern or reason to seal the records.
Adoption occurs in two steps. First, there must be obtained, voluntarily or involuntarily, a relinquishment of parents rights by the parents of birth. It is not until adoption, not relinquishment, that adoption records are sealed. Parents who have relinquished their rights to a child are not party to the adoption proceedings and not notified when, or even if, an adoption takes place. If a relinquished child remains in foster care, if the adoption is never filed or finalized properly, or the child dies before such an event takes place, the record of his original birth remains open to the public. Thus, relinquishing parents could never have been given promises of secrecy.
There might be an assumption of confidentiality from public knowledge of the birth and surrender of rights, but not anonymity from their own flesh and blood. No one has a “right” to anonymity, or the protection of a secret and it is impossible to guarantee either. In today’s Internet world, anyone can be found and any secret revealed. Adoptees are reunited every day, despite sealed birth certificates, and are welcomed 90% of the time. Many birth mothers support the rights of adoptees. In 1998 Oregon, mothers who relinquished took out a full page advertisement denouncing claims they were promised anonymity, helping to pass initiative Measure 58 allowing adoptees unrestricted access in that state.
Mothers who fear being discovered can change their name, or, if found, simply tell their child to leave them alone. Sufficient laws exist to protect us all from harassment, stalking and unwanted contact. Specific laws that apply only to adopted persons and their original parents are unnecessary and treat adoptees as assumed guilty or dangerous and their mothers and fathers in need of special protections that apply to no other adults.
Adoptee rights are opposed by the Right-to-Life movement and Catholic adoption agencies because of an unsubstantiated belief that, if the secrecy were removed, women would choose abortion over placing their child for adoption. The fact is that in states that have granted adoptees equal access to their OBC, there has been no increase in abortions or decrease in adoption placements, and the vast majority of mothers who relinquish children for adoption today request open adoption with ongoing communication between birth and adoptive families.
Others opposing adoptees’ right to access, astonishingly including some state chapters of the ACLU which is split on the issue. In some states they side with protecting the alleged “rights” of relinquishing parents likely to serving their attorney members whose livelihoods are derived from adoption as well as members who seek to adopt and prefer no “intrusion” in their lives by natural parents. Their fears, while understandable, deny the civil rights of their children. In other states ACLU has come out in favor of lifting the restrictions and creating equality for adoptees.
Equality for All
Gays, long denied rights because their status was thought to be a lifestyle choice, are being granted marriage equality state by state, in large part because they are out-of-the-closet in large numbers and in public positions, marching and demanding their equality while adoptees remain for the most part invisible and silent.
Adoptees – who certainly had no part whatsoever in choices made about their adopted status – remain largely unseen and unheard of as a civil rights movement. Not faced with the violence the LGBT community is subjected to, makes it easier to passively accept their denial of rights. Many have internalized societal edicts that demand their gratitude. They are told that their natural curiosity, and even their need for updated family medical history, is a slap in the face to those who raised them. Their fear of hurting their adopters and the possibility of being rejected or abandoned – again – often results in waiting until adoptive parents have died to search, or doing so in secret and even some who search and reunite are reluctant to speak out for adoptee rights lest they appear to “bite the hand that feeds them.” With no intent or malice on the part of adoptive parents, some adoptees have compared their experience to those who suffer Stockholm Syndrome.
Yet adoptees, together with adoptive and birth parents, have been fighting their oppression and as a result, as of this writing seven states – Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Rhode Island – allow adopted persons unrestricted access to their original unaltered birth records. Another small handful of states have granted limited access, and the fight continues in the remainder of states.
Secret keeping in adoption no longer serves the best interests of children. It instead serves a mega-billion dollar entrepreneurial industry that caters to the demand for children for adoption by those willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars per child. State legislators need to see past the smoke and mirrors presented by industry paid lobbyists and reverse these draconian policies and regulations. In addtion, the federal government needs to deem it unconstitutional for states to discriminate against adoptees, and unlawful to continue to falsify birth certificates in a day and age that no longer stigmatizes children born to single moms.
How can we as a nation continue to allow these injustices? How can we promote adoption as a loving option when each adoption that goes forth condemns yet another citizen to discrimination, maintaining them as second-class citizens, forever infantilized and under suspicion of causing harm for having been born? How can we pledge our allegiance to a nation that does not provide liberty and justice for all of its citizens equally?
Jean Paton, founder of the adoptee rights movement, wrote: “Here… is a possibility for freedom or for slavery that perhaps has been overlooked. . . “

Mirah Riben is an activist/author/lecturer. Read other articles by Mirah, or visit Mirah's website.

This article was posted on Tuesday, June 18th, 2013 at 8:00am and is filed under Children.

- See more at: http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/the-last-and-least-recognized-americans-denied-equal-rights/#sthash.apNNRZmh.dpuf

making new memories...

"A memory is a photograph taken by the heart to make a special moment last forever."

~ Unknown

I am off to make some new memories with my son and his family...Getting on a plane to go visit for 9 days!! I am so excited for this trip (I have not been in their company for almost 9 weeks, the longest seperation we have had since out reuniting)...I will be there to celebrate my grand daughters graduation from 8th grade along with her Confirmation. A very special moment that my heart can photograph.

I am so blessed to be able to celebrate these "forever" things with them...just over a year ago that would not have been possible. I cherish the memory of my first embrace with my son when we reunited...I remember conversations we have had...I now get to see my grandchildren grow up (grandchildren that I never knew I had!) 

I am growing more and more each day with gratitude for the bounty of my life...I am humbled by the magnitude of my existence...I think about this extraordinary year and I am filled with the joy from the memories we have made together...I am filled with love knowing that I will now be able to keep these memories forever and that there are many more to make.

I am off line now for the time I am with them...that time is precious and I want to be present for every moment of it...for every new memory we are about to make.   

Are we all the same?...

"We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. ~Bill Watterson Recently someone suggested that I read a book about adoption...more specifically about adoptees. The book is titled: The PRIMAL WOUND...Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Newton Verrier    I was curious so I ordered it off of Amazon...and I immediately started reading. There are four separate chapters broken down into 16 different sub chapters....222 pages...3 glossary pages...a reference page, suggested reading and of course the about the author page...231 total pages.   This is not a book review...these are my opinions only, but it seems as if my thoughts have been repeating a pattern...as well as this book did for me. This book along with a few others that I have read "lump" all adoptees into the group of having a deep wound from being adopted. It suggests that all adoptees whether the they choose to admit this or not still have it. There has been a lot of conversation about "what does a little baby know anyhow". I will readily admit that when I was pregnant for Gerard, although the first part of that pregnancy was stressful I did love being pregnant. I loved the feel of him growing within me...I would wrap my arms around him and hold him...I would sing to him and do silly dances...I would talk to him and read books to him...OK....So he likes to sing songs and has one for most situations...he likes to do silly little dances and is not embarrassed to do them in public places...he likes to read...and when I wrapped my arms around him when we were reunited it felt natural and right. I also will readily admit that when I was pregnant for my other two children I did the same thing...however...they get embarrassed by me and always have been (especially as children, they would do that eye rolling thing...and go to another isle so no one would know they were with me) when I sing to the music in the store or dance in the isle! Neither of them likes to read...We do have that hugging that we love to do...Hummmmm...3 different children...2 I raised and 1 I did not....go figure! These books somehow seem to suggest that ALL adoptees need to be "healed" in some sort of way. I suggest that we as humans all need to be healed in some sort of way.  I am not suggesting that some adoptees do not have a wound that needs to be healed...I am not suggesting that adoption hasn't played a part in my life (obviously I have written here about it) What I am suggesting: is there one person who can say that they do not hold onto something from their life that has left a hole in their heart? Something that needs to be "healed". These books also suggest that if the adoptee says that they do not have this "wound" that they are fooling themselves...they have a false sense of self and must dig deeper in order to heal. I suggest that if one must "dig" deeper than perhaps there is nothing to dig for...that one has already come to terms, or acceptance in some way and has made "peace" with whatever it is that needed to heal that "wound". We are all responsible for our own happiness...and I will happily not read anymore of these books...I think that in 2011 when I made peace with myself in a small way by saying that I might not meet my son in my life time...I believe I was beginning to let go of the patterns that I had held on to for so long...in 2012 upon reuniting...those patterns resurfaced for me to be acknowledged and let go of....Gerard seems to just flow with life...If he has a "primal wound" I have not seen it...He is grateful to ALL his parents for the part they have played in his wonderful life... Neither of us are either passive or unfulfilled...neither of us were that way before we reunited...Since meeting I do believe that we each know more about ourselves...and we each are just that much happier... We as human beings we ARE responsible for our own happiness... What makes you happy today?