My essay about reunion has been published in “The Beacon,” the newsletter of the American Adoption Congress. Reunion, as we know, is a really big deal. Probably everyone involved in adopted has some fear about it. And of course after you reunite with your son or daughter, you might also meet their adoptive parents. The meetings and introductions might go on and on. Aunts, uncles, grandparents siblings. It’s a tsunami of emotion. I was super nervous about all of it. The title of the essay is “How the World Didn’t End and Nobody Died.” Here’s the link.
The target audience for the AAC is mostly adoptees, I think. And some birthparents too.
But I wrote this essay about reunion with adoptive parents in mind. I would especially like adoptive parents to know that reunion can go well. And that their pre-conceived notions of what birthmothers are like might not be true. So if you know some adoptive parents, maybe pass it on.
Keeping a big secret is as heavy and precarious as this boulder in this installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Senior Citizen Birthmother might seem like a contradiction in terms, but as the linked article points out, women who lost children during the Baby Scoop Era from 1945-1975 are now senior citizens.
I am senior citizen. I am a birthmother. And a grandmother. But, unlike the women most likely to attend this meeting, I am a birthmother who is reunited with her child. I imagine this meeting will probably draw mostly birthmothers (and maybe some birthfathers) who are not reunited.
Senior Citizen Birthmother! Imagine it. You lost your child 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 (!) years ago. You are still carrying this grief. Dragging the long tail of it with you decade after decade. You are lost. Lost to this baby that hasn’t been a baby for decades. And that “baby” is lost to you.
Keeping that in mind, I think this is a good perspective from which to frame a question about adoption. Let’s ask young women who are considering relinquishing children this question. Forty years from now, do you think you will still long for your child? How about in 50 years? In 60 years? 70? And how do you imagine this might impact your life?
Many years ago I relinquished my baby for adoption. This news story brought my choices (or lack of them) to mind.
A secret pregnancy in a Catholic town
It was 1970. I’d recently graduated from a Catholic high school in my home town–a town so Catholic there was no public high school or public grade school there. Underneath my cap and gown was a well kept secret. So well kept that no one knew that I was pregnant until later that summer–six weeks before the baby was born. I confided in my mother. We told my father and my boyfriend (the father of the baby) and not another soul.
I was fairly certain than I was damned. Yet when it came time to sign the adoption papers, I specified that I wanted my son to be adopted by a Catholic family.
A year or so afterwards I viewed my wishes for a Catholic boyhood for my son as evidence of a sort of Stockholm syndrome. I was a captive of Catholicism, hobbled by the constrained morality of my town and my church. So hobbled that I could not endure the shame and scandal of raising my son myself. Yet I handed him over to be indoctrinated with the same narrow-mindedness.
While it’s true that my son was adopted into a good and loving home, religion is no guarantee of that. And while there’s a bit more leeway in the Catholic Church these days, it seems that there won’t be enough for the mother of the child in the article linked to above. If she is identified, she will be lucky not to be charged with a crime. A church is not considered a safe place to leave an infant, according to the Minnesota Safe Haven Law. And thus, the woman has committed a crime.
What do we wish (pray) for?
Certainly I have the same wish that most readers of the story will have. I wish for the baby to be loved, to be safe, to be given the opportunities in life that everyone deserves. But I also think of the woman who felt so trapped by her circumstances, that she (or someone she had implored to help her) had to climb the Cathedral steps that winter night with the almost insurmountable task of leaving that baby behind. Picture that.
I also wish that the priest had spoken up for the mother. That he’d beseeched those hearing of the story to put themselves in the mother’s shoes. That he’d discussed how the Church has failed women and children like these over the decades. And how about pointing out that the Church has wrongly encouraged the throwing of stones at women in circumstances like hers. I wish he’d put out a plea for the mother to contact him. And when she did, he’d offered her support to help her raise her son.
“Meet your great-granddaughter,” my daughter-in-law said, gesturing lackadaisically toward the plastic doll in the infant seat on the couch. My 15-year–old granddaughter stood nearby, grinning sheepishly. She held her arm aloft, displaying the bracelet that must be swiped across a chip in the doll’s chest to prove that its needs have been met. “Talia” cries when she’s hungry, needs to be changed, or wants comforting. My granddaughter’s mothering skills will be rated. Her high school puts its trust in this robot, touted as a deterrent to teen pregnancy.
I had my doubts from the get-go.
Doesn’t everyone already know that babies are a lot of work?
I loved my dolls when I was a girl. I even wrapped our cat’s kittens in baby blankets, and pretended my brothers were my own babies. The Besty-Wetsy doll that was my favorite still lies in a cabinet, her soft arms and legs atrophied from age. Everyone in a Catholic community prior to birth control knew that babies were work. When I got pregnant as a 16-year-old, it wasn’t because I was ignorant of the care required of a baby. I got pregnant because I was ignorant about sex. I was ignorant about standing up for myself and what I wanted or didn’t want. No one talked about sex, or desire, or birth control. Or a girl having agency in any of those things.
In the 1960s in a town of 3000 Catholics where public schools did not exist, one’s expectations for honest and open discourse about sex were non-existent. I think the bar should be higher now. A lot higher. Birth control is readily available. Tens of thousands of women my age have lost babies to adoption. Mothers these days have sought to raise our children in a more open environment. We now have decades of data and experience to inform us on the subject of teen pregnancy. Four million babies were were adopted during the Baby Scoop. The girls and young women that gave birth to those babies didn’t know what they needed to know.
Sex education is the best teen pregnancy deterrent
As it turns out, my feelings about Talia the robot and the job she’s purportedly performing have been validated by a recent study, published in the medical journal, Lancet. That research has subsequently reported just about everywhere. Newsweek, citing Lancet, reports, “Over 1,000 girls aged between 13 to 15 years old across 57 schools in Western Australia who took part in the scheme were two times more likely to get pregnant by the age of 20 than those who attended standard sex education classes, Australian scientists found.” The kicker: Teen pregnancy rates are even higher in the U.S. than in Australia.
The good news is that teen birth rates are dropping. The rate in the U.S. is at a record low. The Pew Research Center reports that the reason is “Less sex, use of more effective contraception and more information about pregnancy prevention. Furthermore, among never-married teens who have had sex, 79% of girls and 84% of boys used a contraceptive method the first time they had sex.” Holy moly is what I say to that. That never could have happened in my 1970 Catholic life. In my mind, this is the heart of the matter. Education. Contraception. Preparation. Honest talk instead of noise from a robot.
I have an essay here. While there’s only one National Adoption Month each year, the topic never goes away and I always have something more to say. As a birthmother (and a grandmother,) I often feel that respectability and understanding are beyond my reach. People have strong opinions about adoption, strong impressions of what/who they think a birthmother is. Birthmothers and adoptive parents take sides and stand sharply opposed to one another much like we do in the arena of national politics. It’s hard to hold hands and sing kumbaya. Villains are real. Bad things happen. People do things for personal gain without considering the bigger picture. But every story is more complicated than we usually imagine. I respect Carrie Goldman’s efforts to share many points of view during National Adoption Month 2016 in her series 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days on the ChicagoNow website.
This photo of me was taken by my son’s birthfather a few months after our son was born.
In my morning scroll though Facebook, I stumbled across a post that had to do withThe Adoption Museum. The what? I said. The what? The Adoption Museum Project?! The initial exhibit back in May of 2013 had to do with birthmothers (yes, there was an ensuing controversy about the term) and I had no idea that the project existed or that the event occurred. I missed it.
In 2013 I was still adjusting to my first year as a caregiver. In May I was obsessing over my mother’s CPAP machine.All of that. My life as a caregiver, living with my mother, weekends with the man who loved me visiting us, doing what I could to support my younger daughter as she worked on her master’s degree. All of that seems so long ago as if the four of us here together in this house was a dream.
I suppose there are plenty of days that the memory of giving birth to my son and then giving him up resides in the background too. But some days the experience lives inside me close to the surface–not just his birth and the subsequent relinquishment or even the two decades of secrecy or the visceral memory of shame and grief. It’s that girl–the girl I was then. I was a different person then. The other big events–the deaths, divorces, estrangements– happened to the person I now know to be me. But that girl. That girl in the photo above. A visit from her is like time travel and space travel rolled into one. She’s an alien. And she is me.
Anyway, there are still ways to get involved and a newsletter you can subscribe to. They are open to feedback.
So I’m just shouting it out. And thinking about what feedback I’d like to provide–where to begin, actually. I am nothing but feedback when it comes to adoption.
Rendition of an ugly stepsister’s foot from the fairytale, Cinderella.
image from stargazer-gemini.deviantart.com
About Simone Biles’s birthmother
Here’s the link to a newspaper article about Simone Biles’s birthmother. I read it twice. And I also read another interview with her in the Huffington Post and in the New York Daily News–all based on an interview with her from TMZ. It’s worth a read. After you it, read the comments. If you can stand a foray into the meanness olympics.
So, here’s the deal. Shannon Biles says she’s glad she and her daughter are not estranged any longer, but their relationship is still fledgling.
And that she wished her dad hadn’t thrown her under the bus in a recent interview of his with the press. Also, she said she thought he was insensitive about the way he described her battle with addiction.
She admits that she took the loss of her children very badly. That she yelled at her father, and that she was hard-headed, and that she didn’t understand then why she couldn’t see her kids. But she says she understands it now. She admits that she wan’t able to care for them back then.
And she admits that she was an addict, and says that she’s been clean for nine years now.
She is raising her two youngest children herself. She has a job.
It seems pretty clear that Shannon Biles’ s children were in jeopardy. “In and out of foster care” is not a good thing. It worked out well, probably better than imagined. Simone’s grandfather and his wife legally adopted Simone and her sister and are now their mom and dad. Hooray for all that. Gold medals all around.
Stop the hate
While I understand the hunger of the media for a story and the curiosity of Olympic viewers and the general public about all this, I don’t understand the hate directed at Shannon Biles in the comments sections.
Shannon Biles was an addict. She lost custody of four children. That’s a clusterfuck of hurt for a lot of people, including innocent children. It’s personal disaster beyond measure. BUT this woman who lost her children and the respect of her father is now clean. She has turned her life around. In the olympics of her personal life, that’s pretty damn golden.
Birthmothers are human beings
Birthmothers/first mothers/bio mothers are human beings, deserving of compassion. We did what we did for a million reasons. Put on those shoes, haters. Try a little running and jumping in them, and when your feet are bloody, give thanks for your perfect life and your shiny veneer over your hate-filled soul. I have to try a little bit not to wish you ill, but I can do it. I wish you well. I wish for you understanding, and some personal peace, and an inclination for you to share that with the world instead of hate.
Above is a link to a news story that will break your heart. Or maybe just make you swear a blue streak. The judge’s refusal to unseal adoption records for mental health reasons is just plain cruel.
Thirty-some years ago I begged the agency that handled my son’s adoption to help me. Begged. And was I shown no mercy. I petitioned the court to no avail. No mercy there either. I had medical reasons for wanting to contact my 20-year-old son. Two of my doctors wrote letters on my behalf. I shared them with the agency and with the court. Nothing. The agency made excuses. The court claimed there was no record of the adoption.
That was then. And sadly, it’s also very now.
If you’re interested in a state-by state summary of the fight for unsealing adoption records go HERE.
Breaking the silence in adoption can be distressing. Silence,by Odillon Redon
Breaking the silence in adoption scares us. We don’t dare.
This story highlights the secrecy in adoption. And a secret weighs heavy on the heart. A secret can be found out if you’re not careful, so you mind your tongue. Look over your shoulder, scan the room for a face with a knowing look. All the while, your heart begs you to lift its burden by breaking the silence into a million pieces.
Not long ago I was having lunch with new friends when someone asked the ages of my children. The answer to this question always elicits raised eyebrows or a comment. “I had my son when I was a teenager,” I said. “He was given up for adoption, but I reconnected with him.” I always keep the answer short, but people want to know more. When I say that I searched for my son and found him, people think that I’m Nancy Drew, or that I’m super courageous, or a ballsy political activist. My answer is just, I had to.
And sometimes we feel we have to tell our stories. Here’s the link to Caitriona Palmer’s book.
Mother’s Day is a difficult day to be a birthmother. Here are 10 things to say to a birthmother on Mother’s Day.
The comfort of shared experience is a good gift for a birthmother on Mother’s Day—Available on Amazon .
1. I know you’re a mother, so I’m thinking of you.
2. Is there a way I can bring some comfort to you today?
3. Wanna talk about it?
4. Would you like to go for a walk, or out for some coffee, or maybe see a movie?
5 .Do you ever think of searching for your child? or How is your reunion going?
6. How do you think your life would be different if you’d kept your baby?
7. What would you do if your son/daughter contacted you?
8. What’s the hardest thing about Mother’s Day for you?
9. What do you think of Birth Mother’s Day? It seems kind of hard to celebrate, right? And do you even like the term birthmother? Do you prefer natural mother, bio mom, or what?
10. I really appreciate your friendship, and I want you to know I’m here for you.
Sunday is Mother’s Day. And there’s also the controversial Birthmother’s Day, “celebrated” the Saturday before Mother’s Day. This addition to the holiday calendar was initiated by a group of Birthmothers in 1990. Even though its heart is in the right place, it does not inspire balloons, flowers, cakes, or presents. If you know a woman who lost a child to adoption, reach out to her on Mother’s Day or the day before. Don’t let her spend the weekend unacknowledged.
