Important I think to be open and honest about these challenges but also not to lay all the blame at one door. As an adopted person the more severe crap was with the bios not the “being adopted” and the adopters. And before adopters heap blame on themselves for challenges their adopted child deals with such as depression remember biologically we come from stock that is statistically more likely to have had similar challenges. Doesn’t mean we aren’t and can’t be great but as one who has walked down this road as you have tho from different beginnings I’d urge focus on what helps acknowledging the pain but not letting it define. I leave you with a happy anecdote. Decades ago at a New Year’s Eve party of people who had almost all left home for career reasons the topic off missing “the folks” came up. Turned out about 1/5 of us were adopted which we discovered at the same time we found it was more that group that “wished the folks could materialize for a new years hug)
That is a lovely anecdote! Yes, I don’t mean to be wailing about it. It’s just a lot for a formerly vague person to confront. Thank you for your comment.
There is no legitimate study that shows relinquishing parents (or people who had their children stolen) have a higher rate of mental health issues *before the relinquishment happens* than those who don't relinquish.
If you haven't read The Meth Lunches, I highly recommend it. Lots of trauma, drama, and food along with stories of fostering and adoption. One of the few books I have read recently that kept me up at night, turning the pages to find out what happened next.
A moving and insightful post, Marjie. Thank you. I appreciate your responses to the comments below.
As one of the readers of the draft of your book, I want to clarify that you DID a great job on the book. It pulled me in and kept me there. It was provocative, entertaining, insightful, sad, and funny. That's great for an early draft. Keep at it because you have a lot to contribute to the discussion on adoption.
Your essay and the book make me think about adoption in a new way, one which I hadn't considered much before. Our experiences of the process and those 29 years have been different and I'm a little disappointed in myself that I haven't pondered the business and the process more thoughtfully.
I sent this post to my son. I hope we can discuss it.
Don't worry about your hair, lighting, and make up. Your voice, message, insight, and thoughtfulness far outweighed a few strands of displaced gray hairs.
And this is another example of how you write wonders in a very short time period. Congratulations. Abrazos y besos.
Thanks for your kind words. There's so much to learn and try to understand. We can't unring any bells. But maybe we can prevent new ones from ringing, and hear the ones that have already chimed more clearly.
Being neither an adoptive parent nor an adoptee I truly appreciate this intro to a problem I'd never thought about but now want to learn more. Beautiful writing.
This was eye opening and makes sense. The idea of spending this money on supporting the mothers makes even more sense.
The little I have read about forced adoptions from earlier decades horrified me, the knowledge of our Stolen Generations policy is abhorrent to me, but I had assumed that other adoptions weren’t quite as traumatic.
Of course I was wrong. Reading your piece made me sit up and think about all those assumptions.
All adoptions are traumatic, forced adoptions are still happening right now in 2024, "open" adoption is a legal falsehood, records are still sealed (ie closed), and Adoptees have a suicide attempt rate of 4xs the non-adopted population. Adoption should still horrify you, and everyone who learns the truth.
The only way to make it better is to abolish adoption. Are you willing to stand up and call for that? Adoptees were talking about this in the 90s, you just didn't actively seek out our voices because you wanted what you wanted. This is just another typical, self centering adopter narrative that does *nothing* to uplift ADOPTEE voices.
I understand that thinking, and I agree that I saw largely what I wanted to see. However in the internet age as we know it, it’s easy to forget how different information seeking was back then. I don’t know how old you are, but it’s literally impossible for people born post-google to comprehend life without easy information sharing and free access to non-curated information. I never heard anything about this at all in the 90s. I did try to find out as much information as I could. Most of it came from the agencies and “child welfare services” that I trusted to inform me.
Yes, I’m absolutely against adoption as it’s defined currently. I’m not against non-familial adults and children being united if there are no familial options.
That said, adoptees’ access to their own histories, original families, medical histories etc must be required, and reunification or unification with original family should be the goal always.
I also understand the bitterness and disdain some adoptees have for adoptive parents. There’s nothing I can do about that, just as there’s nothing I can change about the past.
I am hardly post google- I am much older than your adopted kids. If you want information that was available online, there were BBS postings, chatrooms, and livejournal. There were a number of books published by Adoptees. The Primal Wound was published in 1993- did you read it? How about talking to *actual adopted people* before you pursued adoption? How many adult Adoptees did you talk to? How many were international? How many were well into adulthood, had children of their own, and had truly confronted the losses adoption had caused them? My guess is zero on all counts. An agency that is in the business of getting your money is never going to tell you anything that might cancel the sale, so why would you trust them to tell you the whole truth? And finally, please don't trot out the "bitter Adoptee" trope; we're not bitter, we are righteously furious at everything taken from us and the societal narrative that teaches everyone, including APs like yourself, that any Adoptee who isn't a ball of overjoyous grattitude is disordered, mentally ill, or...just bitter. You are very late to the game here, and as someone in the learning phase of finally figuring out how damaging adoption is, your place is to listen and learn, not hold forth because you had your very, very late "aha!" moment and you feel like you need to tell the world. Stand against adoption and call for its abolishment. Uplift Adoptee voices. But stop acting like an authority, and stop telling your Adoptees story- it is *theirs* to tell in their time, in their way, when they choose.
I’m absolutely not here to argue with you. But I want to assure you of two things: I’m telling my story, not theirs, and not a word gets published without their OK and seeing it first.
I am an adopted person in reunion. Give her grace. It’s no secret that Adopted Parents are late to the “aha”, if ever. She’s telling her own journey in her own right, with love, compassion and respect plus a desire to educate herself on what many of us have known for a lifetime or some of us still in the fog. Adoptive parents are also in this wooly blanket covering the whole constellation’s eyes. Social beliefs have created lies to all of us which created the laws we have today. Pealing back the layers of generations of this mentality everywhere is not, if you noticed, happening overnight, yet it is slowly as the adoptees get loud and the triad hears. But there’s a long way to go. Adoptees need Adoptive parents like Marjie. With her voice and more like hers, as a collective, adoption as we have known it can transform. I’m hoping in my lifetime. We need to all walk together. Peace, love and light to you, my fellow adoptee.
Mary, Adoptee to Adoptee, look at the response she is getting, vs an Adoptee writing virtually the same thing. If I wrote that, my replies would be filled with "not all, denails, my best friend's neighbor's cousin adopted a child and she's so happy, you're a bitter Adoptee, how ungrateful" etc. We've all seen it. I am sick of AP voices being elevated over Adoptee voices, especially when some of us have been *screaming* for decades. I have been educating about the harms of adoption for 30 years, she just discovered this 5 minutes ago and is already acting like an expert. She has a platform, and she could be using it to raise awareness and uplift the voices of those who have had everything taken from them, instead she is centering herself in the narrative and trying to tell a story that isn't hers to share. APs need to unlearn that they are the center of everything. I will give grace to those who show they have earned it.
Important I think to be open and honest about these challenges but also not to lay all the blame at one door. As an adopted person the more severe crap was with the bios not the “being adopted” and the adopters. And before adopters heap blame on themselves for challenges their adopted child deals with such as depression remember biologically we come from stock that is statistically more likely to have had similar challenges. Doesn’t mean we aren’t and can’t be great but as one who has walked down this road as you have tho from different beginnings I’d urge focus on what helps acknowledging the pain but not letting it define. I leave you with a happy anecdote. Decades ago at a New Year’s Eve party of people who had almost all left home for career reasons the topic off missing “the folks” came up. Turned out about 1/5 of us were adopted which we discovered at the same time we found it was more that group that “wished the folks could materialize for a new years hug)
That is a lovely anecdote! Yes, I don’t mean to be wailing about it. It’s just a lot for a formerly vague person to confront. Thank you for your comment.
There is no legitimate study that shows relinquishing parents (or people who had their children stolen) have a higher rate of mental health issues *before the relinquishment happens* than those who don't relinquish.
I agree. I don’t believe I suggested such a thing. I’ll go look and correct it if I did.
Joy did.
If you haven't read The Meth Lunches, I highly recommend it. Lots of trauma, drama, and food along with stories of fostering and adoption. One of the few books I have read recently that kept me up at night, turning the pages to find out what happened next.
I haven’t! I’ll order it now.
A moving and insightful post, Marjie. Thank you. I appreciate your responses to the comments below.
As one of the readers of the draft of your book, I want to clarify that you DID a great job on the book. It pulled me in and kept me there. It was provocative, entertaining, insightful, sad, and funny. That's great for an early draft. Keep at it because you have a lot to contribute to the discussion on adoption.
Your essay and the book make me think about adoption in a new way, one which I hadn't considered much before. Our experiences of the process and those 29 years have been different and I'm a little disappointed in myself that I haven't pondered the business and the process more thoughtfully.
I sent this post to my son. I hope we can discuss it.
Don't worry about your hair, lighting, and make up. Your voice, message, insight, and thoughtfulness far outweighed a few strands of displaced gray hairs.
And this is another example of how you write wonders in a very short time period. Congratulations. Abrazos y besos.
Thanks for your kind words. There's so much to learn and try to understand. We can't unring any bells. But maybe we can prevent new ones from ringing, and hear the ones that have already chimed more clearly.
Here, here!
Being neither an adoptive parent nor an adoptee I truly appreciate this intro to a problem I'd never thought about but now want to learn more. Beautiful writing.
Same here. Very interested now.
Thanks. Though inadequate I fear. So much more to learn and write.
This was eye opening and makes sense. The idea of spending this money on supporting the mothers makes even more sense.
The little I have read about forced adoptions from earlier decades horrified me, the knowledge of our Stolen Generations policy is abhorrent to me, but I had assumed that other adoptions weren’t quite as traumatic.
Of course I was wrong. Reading your piece made me sit up and think about all those assumptions.
There’s a lot to relearn.
All adoptions are traumatic, forced adoptions are still happening right now in 2024, "open" adoption is a legal falsehood, records are still sealed (ie closed), and Adoptees have a suicide attempt rate of 4xs the non-adopted population. Adoption should still horrify you, and everyone who learns the truth.
Powerfully written, Marjie. Open and honest - thank you for sharing such a personal part of your life on this platform.
Thanks, friend.
The only way to make it better is to abolish adoption. Are you willing to stand up and call for that? Adoptees were talking about this in the 90s, you just didn't actively seek out our voices because you wanted what you wanted. This is just another typical, self centering adopter narrative that does *nothing* to uplift ADOPTEE voices.
I understand that thinking, and I agree that I saw largely what I wanted to see. However in the internet age as we know it, it’s easy to forget how different information seeking was back then. I don’t know how old you are, but it’s literally impossible for people born post-google to comprehend life without easy information sharing and free access to non-curated information. I never heard anything about this at all in the 90s. I did try to find out as much information as I could. Most of it came from the agencies and “child welfare services” that I trusted to inform me.
Yes, I’m absolutely against adoption as it’s defined currently. I’m not against non-familial adults and children being united if there are no familial options.
That said, adoptees’ access to their own histories, original families, medical histories etc must be required, and reunification or unification with original family should be the goal always.
I also understand the bitterness and disdain some adoptees have for adoptive parents. There’s nothing I can do about that, just as there’s nothing I can change about the past.
I can only learn and do better moving forward.
I am hardly post google- I am much older than your adopted kids. If you want information that was available online, there were BBS postings, chatrooms, and livejournal. There were a number of books published by Adoptees. The Primal Wound was published in 1993- did you read it? How about talking to *actual adopted people* before you pursued adoption? How many adult Adoptees did you talk to? How many were international? How many were well into adulthood, had children of their own, and had truly confronted the losses adoption had caused them? My guess is zero on all counts. An agency that is in the business of getting your money is never going to tell you anything that might cancel the sale, so why would you trust them to tell you the whole truth? And finally, please don't trot out the "bitter Adoptee" trope; we're not bitter, we are righteously furious at everything taken from us and the societal narrative that teaches everyone, including APs like yourself, that any Adoptee who isn't a ball of overjoyous grattitude is disordered, mentally ill, or...just bitter. You are very late to the game here, and as someone in the learning phase of finally figuring out how damaging adoption is, your place is to listen and learn, not hold forth because you had your very, very late "aha!" moment and you feel like you need to tell the world. Stand against adoption and call for its abolishment. Uplift Adoptee voices. But stop acting like an authority, and stop telling your Adoptees story- it is *theirs* to tell in their time, in their way, when they choose.
I’m absolutely not here to argue with you. But I want to assure you of two things: I’m telling my story, not theirs, and not a word gets published without their OK and seeing it first.
You're missing the point. THEIR reunion isn't YOUR story to tell. Again, this is your time to listen and learn, not try to teach.
I am an adopted person in reunion. Give her grace. It’s no secret that Adopted Parents are late to the “aha”, if ever. She’s telling her own journey in her own right, with love, compassion and respect plus a desire to educate herself on what many of us have known for a lifetime or some of us still in the fog. Adoptive parents are also in this wooly blanket covering the whole constellation’s eyes. Social beliefs have created lies to all of us which created the laws we have today. Pealing back the layers of generations of this mentality everywhere is not, if you noticed, happening overnight, yet it is slowly as the adoptees get loud and the triad hears. But there’s a long way to go. Adoptees need Adoptive parents like Marjie. With her voice and more like hers, as a collective, adoption as we have known it can transform. I’m hoping in my lifetime. We need to all walk together. Peace, love and light to you, my fellow adoptee.
Mary, Adoptee to Adoptee, look at the response she is getting, vs an Adoptee writing virtually the same thing. If I wrote that, my replies would be filled with "not all, denails, my best friend's neighbor's cousin adopted a child and she's so happy, you're a bitter Adoptee, how ungrateful" etc. We've all seen it. I am sick of AP voices being elevated over Adoptee voices, especially when some of us have been *screaming* for decades. I have been educating about the harms of adoption for 30 years, she just discovered this 5 minutes ago and is already acting like an expert. She has a platform, and she could be using it to raise awareness and uplift the voices of those who have had everything taken from them, instead she is centering herself in the narrative and trying to tell a story that isn't hers to share. APs need to unlearn that they are the center of everything. I will give grace to those who show they have earned it.