Author Archives: declemen

About declemen

Author, birthmother, advocate for adoption reform and other good things

The Search for My Son

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Haystack
Grain Haystacks at the End of Summer
by Claude Monet
The search for my son would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack without a very big piece of luck.

Nancy Drew, girl detective

From the beginning I knew I would search for my son. I never let go of the idea that I would find him, but I had absolutely no idea how I would do it. At first I imagined myself as Nancy Drew, the girl detective who would sleuth and sleuth and finally break the case. There was very little reality to this scenario since the adoption records were sealed, and I didn’t have a single clue. Some years later I imagined that serendipity or coincidence would allow us to meet. In a way, that’s how the search for my son began.

Two young mothers

I made friends with a mother of two little girls who were about the same age as my own daughters. One day at a park playgroup when the two of us were sitting away from the rest of the mothers, she told me, with tears in her eyes, that she had gotten pregnant as a teenager. But she had given that baby up for adoption. I stammered my way through my own confession about giving up my son. She told me she was going to search for her daughter and invited me to a Concerned United Birthparents support group meeting. At one of those meetings, I met a woman who told me she had some connections. She might be able to make arrangements with someone who could find my son. To this day I have no idea who this mysterious connection was. But he/she found my son two decades after I’d given him up.

A series of coincidences

I made a new friend two thousand miles from where I’d relinquished my son. She happened to be a birthmother, and the two of us happened to connect on that day in the park. She took me to a meeting where I met someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone. And that someone found my son.

A Birthmother in a Novel

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One of my granddaughters–the one my mother called “that little girl.”
When you give away a child, you also give away your grandchildren.

Izzie in Kate Atkinson’s “Life After Life”

The baby would be adopted as swiftly as possible. “A respectable German couple, unable to have their own child,” Adelaide said. Sylvie tried to imagine giving away a child. (“And will we never hear of it again?” she puzzled. “I certainly hope not,” Adelaide said.) Izzie was now packed off to a finishing school in Switzerland, even though it seemed she was already finished, in more ways than one.

from “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson

Reading from the birthmother’s perspective

Izzie, the shamed pregnant girl, in Atkinson’s book seemed to be a minor character in the beginning. She’s the sister-in-law of Sylvie, one of the main characters.  Now I’m a quarter of the  way through the book, and Izzie has reappeared, years later after giving up her child. I can’t wait to see how she is. Will people speak of the baby and her past? Will she? And is Adelaide, Izzie’s mother still alive? Has her attitude about Izzie and her baby changed? Will we meet the lost baby?

I always read from the birth mother’s perspective. It’s impossible not to.

My real-life story

In my own story, with my own parents, the baby was never mentioned again. After the birth of two subsequent children I couldn’t stand the silence. I couldn’t stand living my big lie–that I had two children, not three. I couldn’t stand my unacknowledged grief.

When I called my mother and told her I was going to search for my son, who was by then 20 years old. “You’re going to get hurt,” she said.

“I’m already hurt,” I said.

So I searched. And I found him. Many things have happened since then. My mom lives with me now. She’s gotten to know my son and his family. She’s still talking about how much she enjoyed “that little girl” who came to stay for a week this summer. My son’s daughter. To think we might never have known her. But that’s how adoption works. Grandmothers lose grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Babies are handed off to new parents and are never heard of again.

What People Say About Girls

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pregnant-teens-0315-changes
photo credit: www.metroactive.com
What would people say about this girl?

Monday breakfast at the marina

There are many opportunities to hear what people say about girls.

On Mondays, I often take myself out to breakfast with my computer and a couple of New Yorkers. I go to an outdoor cafe in a nearby marina–a low-key kind of place. Locals mostly since the place is not pretty enough to attract many tourists. I order the same thing every time–the vegetarian omelet, no toast, just some extra salsa with the potatoes. I’m boring that way.

Eavesdropping

It’s quiet there. People reading while they eat. Or just staring out at the water. I read or get caught up on my email. Sometimes I eavesdrop. Sometimes I try to tune people out– like today. The woman in the pink polo shirt was telling a long involved story about a flat tire on a rental car. She went on and on and on, not letting the couple she was telling the story to get a word in. I tuned her out. Lost the thread. And then I heard her say this: “She was a live wire, that girl. You know, the type that will either be pregnant at 16 or will really accomplish something.”

Wait. What?

Excuse me. Do you really believe those two things are mutually exclusive?

How about….

this?

Illegal Adoptions

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shamrock-
If you’re searching, I wish you luck. And if you don’t want to search, I wish you luck. No matter if you’re reunited–or not, I wish you luck.

What makes an adoption illegal

“Illegal adoptions arise in different ways, but one of the most controversial is when a child’s birth certificate falsely states that its adoptive parents are its birth parents. It’s believed this practice often followed the forced handover of children from unmarried mothers.” –IrishExaminer.com

Wait.

What?

Are all adoptions illegal?!?

Maybe I’m missing some finer point here, but I think amended birth certificates are commonplace here in the USA. Or at least that’s how it was done in 1970 when I gave my son up for adoption. He’ll be 44 in a few days, and his birth certificate makes no reference to his birth parents or adoption. Which is to say, his birth certificate is an amended birth certificate. It’s the only birth certificate he has access to. The parents listed on it are his adoptive parents. My name is not on the amended birth certificate.

If I hadn’t subverted the system, searched for him and found him, it would have required the luck o’ the Irish for the two of us to have met. What a weird world.

Here you go, if you’d like to read the whole article.

Australia Apologizes

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“Ophelia” by John Everett Millais

“Many mothers have died early due to stress related illnesses or committed suicide.”–Australian Senate Report on forced adoptions

A senate report

Thanks to a senate report, Australia has apologized for its forced adoptions.

“Forced adoptions have been a major issue in Australia. In 2013 their Prime Minister Julia Gillard offered a national apology to those affected by forced adoptions. The Australian Senate Enquiry Report found that babies of unmarried mothers were illegally taken by medical staff, social workers and religious persons, sometimes with the assistance of adoption agencies and other authorities, and adopted out to married couples.
Many of these adoptions occurred after the mothers were sent away by their families due to the social stigma associated with being pregnant and unmarried.
It was found that some women were drugged, others restrained, some forced to sign, signatures faked, no informed consent and few (if any) chose to give their children away.
This went on up to the 1970s. It is recognised that this has resulted in major issues for generations of families and for Australian society. Many mothers have died early due to stress related illnesses or committed suicide. Many who have survived do so suffering complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

from an article in The Southern Star newspaper

You can read the official information here.

U.S. birthmothers suffer PTSD

I believe all birthmothers suffer from PTSD. I’ve often wondered about general life outcomes for birthmothers from the era of secrecy in the  U.S. I’ve picked up small pieces of information here and there as I researched my memoir, but found nothing extensive. Certainly no government apology. No apology from the Catholic Church. Without a doubt, U.S. birthmothers have suffered PTSD too.

Sometimes it seems that we’re still the girls who are supposed to disappear.

Adoptive Parents

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cb14-73_adopted_children_graph-sm
Image from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that adoptive parents are educated.

Adoptive parents are educated!

“Adopted children are more likely to live in educated homes,” the headline says. The news has been making the rounds in publications large and small. Adoptive parents are educated!

For me, it was a *smacks self in forehead* moment. When I was trying to finish high school in the spring of 1970 while keeping my secret pregnancy, uh…welll…secret, the last thing I could imagine was somehow keeping my baby and going off to college. Adoptive parents have also been found to have higher incomes. That usually has something to do with education, right? Another forehead smack.

Of course the intent of this report is not to surprise us. Nor is it to overwhelm us with the obvious. It’s to gather data. If you’d like to read more adoption stats, you can see the full report here.

Mostly, I think of the personal angle rather than the statistics  when I see headlines like the one above. I think of a woman reading the paper over her morning coffee. A woman who gave away a child, believing that someone else could provide a better life. I think of the ache she might have in the pit of her stomach or the pull in her heart.

Baby Meets Mother

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Burger King baby has happy meal

 Okay, not a meal exactly–but chocolate! According to the article I read on the Internet, the attorney who made the arrangements for the young woman, known as the Burger King Baby, and her mother to meet, “had his staff prepare for the reunification with flowers, chocolates and boxes of tissues.”

My son and I had drinks

Shortly after my son and I met for the first time in a hotel lobby in downtown Los Angeles, I invited him into the bar for drinks. An hour or so later, we went out for Mexican food, and then to my house in Silver Lake for fruit and cookies and coffee.The kleenex part happened in the wee hours of the morning when I drove him back to the hotel and said good-night. I was crying so hard by the time he got out of the car that I kept turning on the windshield wipers, thinking it was raining.

Social media and searching

I am indescribably happy for this young woman and her mother. I share all of these searching posts on Facebook if I see them in time. This one resolved itself before I ran across it. Like many people, I have my complaints about Facebook, but searching for a family member lost through adoption is one of the best uses I can think of for social media.

Searching without social media

When I worked up the nerve to search for my son, Facebook didn’t exist. I wrote letters to the Iowa Department of Human Services and to the agency that handled the adoption. I filed an affidavit with the court saying that, if my son ever tried to locate me and managed to convince the court to unseal his adoption record (unlikely), I was willing to be found. Each of these campaigns was its own peculiar exercise in futility, the details of which I will not go into here.

Eventually, after months of searching the haystack without so much as a glimmer, I got a tip after a support group meeting. This woman knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, and if I delivered 2,000 in cash to her in a plain manila envelope, the someone at the end of the chain would find my son.Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, I got a phone call with his name, address, and phone number.

My son and I have eaten a lot of chocolate since then. I wish the same for the Ms. Deprill and her birthmother.

The injustice of sealed records

And I hope that the states who continue to maintain sealed adoption records, treating birthmothers and adopted adults as disenfranchised children will realize that reunion can and will happen without the states’ participation. Each Facebook reunion will give dozens more adoptees and birth parents the courage to post their own pleas. Everybody share!

The Anonymity of the Big City

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While the poem below is not actually about the secrets that birthmothers often harbor, there are many ideas and images in it that struck a chord with me. I took a lot of comfort in moving from my small Iowa town to Los Angeles a few years after my son was born. The farther away I got from the place of my transgression, the more likely it seemed to me that I could maintain my secret.
Move to the City  
 
live life as a stranger. Disappear
into frequent invention, depending
on the district, wherever you get off
the train. For a night, take the name
of the person who’d say yes to that
offer, that overture, the invitation to
kiss that mouth, sit on that lap. Assume
the name of whoever has the skill to
slip from the warm side of the sleeping
stranger, dress in the hallway of the
hotel. This is a city where people
know the price of everything, and
know that some of the best things
still come free. In one guise: shed
all that shame. In another: flaunt the
plumage you’ve never allowed
yourself to leverage. Danger will
always be outweighed by education,
even if conjured by a lie. Remember:
go home while it’s still dark. Don’t
invite anyone back. And, once inside,
take off the mask. These inventions
are the art of a kind of citizenship,
and they do not last. In the end, it
might mean nothing beyond further
fortifying the walls, crystallizing
the questioned, tested autonomy,
ratifying the fact that nothing will be
as secret, as satisfying, as the work
you do alone in your room.

Teen BirthRates Are Low

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Birthrates not meeting demand

 Teen birthrates are at historic lows, the Los Angeles Times proclaimed earlier this week. Time Magazine ran a similar article a couple of months ago, reflecting the same trend nationwide. My heart always takes a little leap when I spot headlines like these. I interpret this to mean that there are fewer girls cowering in some secret place, dreading their child’s birth. Fewer girls dreading the moment when they’ll place their child for adoption. But while this is most likely true, the demand for babies for adoption is still high.

Less sex, more b.c.

Teen birthrates reached their peak in 1991. And they have fallen every year since. According to several sources this decline is not due to more abortions, but fewer pregnancies. As to fewer pregnancies, it seems there are two reasons for that. Less sex. And more birth control. That ‘s a winning combination.

The peak of the wave

But it was during the late Baby Scoop era, 1970, that adoptions reached their all-time zenith of 175,000. Non-relative adoptions also hit a high in 1970 when 89,200 babies, including my son, were adopted by “unrelated petitioners.” 1970 was also the year of the highest percentage of adoptions (80%) completed by private agencies. My son and I hit the crest of a triple wave.

Supply exceeds demand

Unfortunately, a reduction in the baby supply (sounds a bit like a supply chain glitch, doesn’t it?) leads to abusive adoption practices. There might be fewer pregnant teens in your neighborhood, but that just means someone else is supplying the babies. In other words the faces and the places have changed, but there are still plenty of birthmothers walking around with empty arms.

photo credit: gail’sangle.net

Family Resemblances

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A strong family resemblance between me and my mom
as we watch pelicans dive into the marina a few years ago.

Mother/daughter resemblance

A substitute teacher, the mother of my regular teacher, taught this morning’s t’ai chi chih class. It was eerily wonderful to see the same tilt of the head, the same gesture overtake the fingers on a smaller set of hands, a similar look of joy on an older face.

Across 3 generations

This past week during the visit from my son and his family, my younger daughter and my son’s wife pointed out the family resemblances between my son, my older daughter, his oldest child, and me. It’s the way we walk, they said. Our basic body language.

This is not remarkable at all–unless you have been separated by adoption. When you meet your child for the first time when he’s 20, seeing those resemblances is a profound experience. It’s a reminder that you’ve been connected all along by genetics even though you had no idea where your child was. Even though you didn’t even know his name.

I see some of these resemblances in the next generation, too. In my role as grandmother it feels sometimes that I have been yanked backwards in time when I catch my older granddaughter out of the corner of my eye. Like some portal has been slit open and I’m slipping back a dozen years into my older daughter’s childhood. Once again, not remarkable at all. Unless I’d never found my son. In that case, I wouldn’t know that my granddaughter existed.

My granddaughter at age 11
My older daughter at age 25.

Adoptees and resemblances

The day I met my son for the first time, he told me what a shock it was to see the resemblance between us. It was weird to learn he was not unique, he said, as he always felt he was. Other adoptees have told me they have the sense of having “fallen to earth”—they feel alien, unconnected by the family resemblances that bind biological families. Biological families engage in a running commentary about who looks like Mom or Dad or a particular sibling, aunt, or uncle. The discussion extends beyond physical attributes too. In a biological family, talents, temperaments, and failings are all attributed to genetics without a second thought.

Eric Mueller, a Minneapolis based artist and an adoptee has a book called “Family Resemblance” which includes photos of family members with shared resemblances.