My site, ehbabes.com, sponsored tonights Adoption Show featuring BJ Lifton and Sume Williams!

I am listening to it now. I burst into tears as I heard Michelle read our spnosor spot! Yippee!

Oh yeah, did I mention I am going to be on the show on the 4th of March!!!

Stay tuned!

Thank you to Michelle Edmunds and her team for providing us the opportunity to sponsor the show and promote our work!

"The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. "- Henri Bergson

Standing Corrected
My younger sister reminded me that in our house as a child it was common place to tell another sibling they were adopted. It was said with cruel intent, meaning “you were/are unwanted, you don’t belong, you should go away”. 

I actually wished I was adopted when I was a kid. I did not fit in with my family. I was different, odd, too vocal, green eyed where they had blue, I had an S name, they had a J name, they were passive, I was aggressive. I secretly wished I was adopted and that my real family would come take me away. How messed up is that? To me being adopted would have been a relief (again, cue baby brokers for prime incubating fodder).

So yeah, while I outside my house never said anything rude to others about being adopted, apparently inside we did. We did realize to some extent that there was something wrong with it, something bad and we used that presumed knowledge to hurt our other siblings.

As such, I stand corrected.

Fostering
I may have found the family that fostered my daughter before she went to her adoptive parents. I don’t know for sure but it seems highly likely. The pictures look similar, the clothes are identical. I won’t tell her of course. She doesn’t want to know about adoption. I will however hold the info and if she wants to know in the future, she and I can explore further for positive confirmation. 

This leaves me feeling oddly lightened, more clear.  Now that I may know the family that kept her when she left me, and the daughter of that family seems like a loving wonderful adoptee, I feel a bit well “okay” with it. Not that her fostering was ever right or the lies told me to me were right, but knowing more about her story, makes my pain less. Not sure if that makes sense. Its like filling in gaps, voids, the picture becomes clearer and there are less unknowns, less scary monsters in view. I can fill the holes in with truth versus blackness and fear.

Just Plain Old Wrong
In doing some additional research for my site and group list, I stumbled upon this not so lovely bit of news. Boils down to adoptive parents who adopted from one of the agencies in my network. The baby they received was apparently ill, defective, and they returned him and then sued the agency. This makes me ill. What? Adoptive parents only take perfect children? They think they get a money back guarantee on their purchase (apparently so)? Are written warranties given in adoption? Like cars? Is there a 7 year/70K mileage type of approach? 

Court of Appeals of Arkansas,
Division II.

June 1, 1994.

Page 604

[46 Ark.App. 59] Robert A. Newcomb, Little Rock, for appellant.

Kenneth R. Shemin, Sammie P. Strange, Jr., Little Rock, for appellees.

JENNINGS, Chief Judge.

Appellant, Friends of Children, Inc., is a nonprofit corporation doing business in the State of Arkansas. The appellees, Randall and Diane Marcus, are residents of Potomac, Maryland. In the fall of 1990 appellees contacted American Friends of Children, Inc., also a nonprofit corporation, seeking to adopt a child. The child that was ultimately delivered to the Marcuses was born May 23, 1991, in New York City, was moved to Washington, D.C., and was placed in foster care by American Friends of Children. The child was later transferred by American Friends of Children to Friends of Children and transported to the State of Arkansas.

On July 5, 1991, the Marcuses met with John Rushing, assistant executive director of Friends. They signed a Placement Agreement, the child was delivered to the Marcuses, and the parties immediately obtained an interlocutory decree of adoption in the Pulaski County Probate Court. Almost immediately, Mrs. Marcus noticed what she believed were signs that the child was not "normal" and "healthy".

Friends was notified and the child was examined by a series of physicians both
in Arkansas and in Washington, D.C. While, as the trial court pointed out, the evidence was in conflict, there was evidence that the child had a neurological impairment and might have cerebral palsy.

On August 15, 1991, an agreed order was entered in probate court dissolving the interlocutory decree of adoption. The order provided, in part:

Friends of Children is revested with the right to place said child for adoption. The claims either the petitioners or Friends of 

Page 605

Children may have against each other are not settled with this order.

In December 1991, the Marcuses filed suit against Friends seeking "rescission" and restitution of the $25,000.00 fee they had paid to adopt the child. The complaint alleged that the appellant [46 Ark.App. 60] had committed fraud by concealing certain medical information about the child.

In July of 1992, the child was placed for adoption once again and Friends collected a placement fee of $28,000.00 from the new adopting couple.

There was evidence at trial that the literature provided by the appellant stated that it placed for adoption "healthy white infants," and that the appellees were told that if the adoption did not go through their money…

I also recently met another adoptee who was given back. Aparents adopted to “save” their marriage and when they received a baby, two months later decided it wasn’t going to work and gave her back. They felt divorce was the answer and not adoption. What a nice service the agency and the baby provided there, huh? How did that measure up to marital counseling? (She was then adopted by another family.)

I find myself wondering why adoptive parents can give back a child that does not measure up to their standards yet mothers, natural grandparents (eg Stephanie Bennett, Alison Quets) cannot get their child back when there has been coercion, intimidation or worse.

Still another story from my agency archives. Twelve year old girl. Adopted as an infant again to “save” marriage. Twelve years into it, Adad dies. Amom gives the 12 year old over to the State citing “she never wanted the kid to begin with the adad did” and now that adad is dead, she doesn’t want her. Child becomes ward of state of GA.

How can people so easily justify giving children back to the state, to the agencies but not to the natural family?

"The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.” – Alexander Jablokov

Do children really view adopted children as freaks?

Do they tease adopted children?

Make fun of them? 

I was shocked to read this.

I never experienced this as a child and I had adopted friends. I also have never heard/seen my own children do this and they have adopted friends. My son was once afraid of an adopted Chinese girl. When I probed him on it I learned it had to do with the fact that she looked different not that she was adopted (“I don’t even know what adopted means, Ma”).

I suppose it can and does happen. Children are cruel.  My son has a very overweight girl in his 3rd grade class. He routinely tells me that he feels bad for Leah as the other kids make fun of her about her weight.

But for a child to taunt another child because they were adopted? Oh my.

Paula lived a few houses up from my childhood home. She and her brother were adopted and they lived with her amom and agramma. Adad had passed away when she was very young. I don’t know how or when I learned that Paula was adopted. I just knew. I don’t recall every finding it wrong or odd of freak-worthy. I do remember being curious about it. Wondering what she felt like, if she thought of her “real’ parents. But I never asked. That would be invasive, rude, no?

Mary lived down the street from us. Also, adopted, only child. Again, never occurred to me that she was any better, or worse, or different than I. Surely I knew they weren’t her real parents but I never made a connection to her being unwanted, bad, loser-ish, or a bastard. I didn’t think that way and was obviously never exposed to anything negative about adoption (too bad, that might have helped me years later).

I did however make this negative connection with my cousin – the bastard.

My oldest female cousin was conceived out of wedlock in the early 60s. My grandparents locked my aunt in a convent with the intent of giving the bastard child up for adoption. My aunt climbed out a window and went to her boyfriend’s home. Her boyfriends family took her in, they married, she gave birth to my cousin.

But, she was clearly treated differently. I remember as a very young child staring at her wondering what was wrong with her. Did she get less fingers because she was conceived out of wedlock? Less brains? Was something wrong with her physically?

I wondered why my grandfather called her a bastard. I wondered what it really meant and why everyone was so ashamed of her. I listened intently behind closed doors as the adults spoke in hushed tones about my cousin. I always felt bad for her but I knew not why. My grandfather isolated her. His second born grandchild – the bastard one.

I was never taught that there was anything wrong with being adopted. I was definitely taught – early and deeply – that unwed mothers and their bastard children were very wrong. (Is it any wonder I was prime fodder for the baby brokers many years later).

My grandfather was a bit of a prig. He was fine to me and my siblings (we weren’t bastards) but to others he was very difficult.  Staunch Irish Catholic from Brooklyn, he had his ways and views and if you disagreed, God help you.

My mother and my uncle were the only ones who deviated from the norm. They married outside their kind. My mother married a Polish guy and my uncle married a Puerto Rican woman.  Grampa kinda warmed to my dad. I guess. At least I don’t recall any obvious signs of dislike. Course my dad rarely went with us when we visited my grandparents. Maybe that was a sign. Grampa never accepted my “Spic” aunt.  He was cruel to her.

I remember being in awe of my aunt and my cousin. What was really wrong with them? What did they have (or not have) that made Grampa treat them that way and made all others leary to be around them? Was being a bastard and a Puerto Rican a contagious disease? Could I get it? If I spent too much time with my cousin, would be bad too?

I knew from the way the adults acted that the bastard thing was something wrong, bad, and I hurt for my cousin. She appeared normal to me. Why were they so mean to her? What had she done wrong?

As an adult, a mother of loss, I wonder who were the real freaks and bastards?

The individuals being called those names or those that were uttering them?