Faith in Adoption

I am not faithless. I just need to split my faith on the two things that have made me the person I am today.

These two things while different are often paired. They have common goals of love and compassion. They are both based on trust.

Yet, they are used to destroy single mothers, single fathers, children and families.

In the beginning, I was innocent and comfortable. I sang the songs and recited the rules. I told the gleeful stories I was told to tell. My trust was blind.

As time went on and I grew up, I began to learn the truths behind these institutions of faith. I questioned the stories. I questioned the bureaucracy. I questioned myself.

I have learned to trust only those people I have taken the time to know. There are many in these institutions who represent the love and compassion that brought me to them. Then again, there are those who abuse the faith by using it to their own benefit … parsing words to confuse.

My faiths run parallel, but the institutions force them to intersect.

My first faith … faith in God and Jesus Christ.
While I grew up in a Christian home, my adoption did not come out of that faith. My parents did not adopt to add to the Christ counter. I am comfortable and confident in this faith, but oftentimes, you wouldn’t know this about me.

For example, an Atheist friend contacted me to see if I would be willing to participate in an ad campaign for Atheism. (They were looking to show a more racially diverse population.) I politely declined and let her know that I was a Christian. This came as a surprise to her. Rightly so, I do not post Christian posts, Bible verses or Christian memes.

There are many Christians who have failed my faith in keeping children and their biological parents apart, like the story of Philomena Lee. While American readers may think that Philomena’s story is only an overseas Catholic story, they are incorrect.

My fellow Lost Daughters sister had a similar instance with Catholic Charities in Connecticut. While she and her original father tried desperately to find one another, Catholic Charities continued to withhold information from her. Her father went to Catholic Charities and granted permission so that if his daughter came to find him, they could give her his contact information, but when she approached them to ask, they revealed nothing. She and her father later found one another through International Soundex Reunion Registry (ISRR).

This of course, leads me to my second faith.

My second faith … faith in adoption.
This faith is far more complicated for me. My childhood was wonderful, and I was well-loved by my adoptive family. If you have read my blog from the beginning, you know that in terms of my personal adoption narrative with my family, I feel blessed. My life from the time I was 13 months of age has given me experiences that I will treasure until I expire.

This faith has also given me a third family of adoptees, in which I have found joy and sorrow. They have opened my eyes to the many injustices around the world that continue to use children as pawns in the game of religious chess. In the minds of proselytizing Christians, these pawns represent the “irresponsible, sinful mothers,” the “lives that abortion would otherwise snuff,” and the “poverty that no child should suffer.” If the pawns make it across the board to the other side, they will become a revived “queen.”

But the queen is left wandering an empty board, wondering what her purpose is and who she was before. Is she the example of how a lost soul was saved by the promise of a better life? This is the tale told by the churches in Korea as they continue to build more baby boxes. Again, the people of the faith are tarnishing adoption.

These children with no record of their past will soon grow up and recognize the feeling. I liken it to the moment when Giselle in the movie Enchanted realizes her anger for the first time. That feeling of being alive without blinders.

The Road to Closure (Spoiler Alert)

The evening before the weekend adoption conference, this film played at the Minnesota Transracial Film Festival.

CLOSURE Trailer from Bryan Tucker on Vimeo.

In it, I followed adoptee Angela from Bellingham, Washington, to a town I know well, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Her journey is emotionally agonizing, yet beautiful. The filmmaker’s eye is keenly sensitive, yet honest.

Emotions pooled within me that I hadn’t known … a yearning, an aching for biological parents. I have spoken of my adoptive parents through much of this blog. But this night, I began to see the struggles and agonies of those whom adoptive children have left behind.

Angela is brave enough to confront these yearnings, as so many of my Lost Daughters’ sisters have. At 46, it seems futile for me to search … I think my parents could be long gone. But as this movie illustrated, it was bigger than Angela and her original parents. There were siblings, a grandmother, aunts, uncles, and others who wanted to know the lost sibling, granddaughter and niece.

Angela’s biological father also finds that he is not sterile as he had been told, and that in fact, he has a daughter! His delight is infectious. It reminded me of the delight in Haley’s father’s eyes on seeing her in China (Somewhere Between). I imagine the pain of these fathers and of Dusten Brown. It is not enough to recognize the loss of the original mother, but the pain and injustice to fathers who only want to love their children.

I also viewed a side of the adoption industry that troubled me. While I have read these things, to see them in action was agonizing. The agency in Angela’s original mother’s case revealed only scant, but troubling information about Angela’s biological sister’s “severe depression and possible multiple retardation,” reported in 1996, despite having the information about her whereabouts and adoptive family directly in front of her. The adoption agency worker in her Southern way carefully offered to contact “a worker at that office … to see if they have any way of contacting the other family.”

On the other hand, a touching, true testament to Angela’s adoptive mother’s love, was revealed. Every year, she had sent Angela’s birth mother a card with a letter chronicling Angela’s life. True love transcends all. But unfortunately, the adoption agency did not follow through and pass on these letters of love from one mother to another. In this film, Angela, her original mother and her adoptive mother share in the opening of this time capsule … so many years late in the opening.

Just as Angela’s adoptive mother had, my father and mother honestly shared all the information they had with me from a very early age. My parents respected me as an individual and loved me. I couldn’t ask for more … but then again, I just might need to ask the agency a few questions …

Children are not commodities.

This week has worn me down. Recent revelations in the media on adoptee re-homing, underground swapping and billboard advertisements filled my inbox.

My initial response was shock and horror, then raw anger. Once again, children are seen as commodities. They are advertised, bought and sold.

What keeps reoccurring is this underlying assumption that children are objects. They are selected, placed, advertised, re-homed, swapped and trafficked. They are the subject of lawsuits where a winner-take-all attitude reigns. And all of this takes money. Those with the funds can do as they please. Forget the young life that is being molded and shaped by these disruptive experiences.

I’m a birth mother. Some may argue that as a birth mother it is easier to love, but I think that if a person wants to be a parent, she can do so regardless of how her parenthood evolved. My adoptive parents are the perfect examples, and I learned so much from them.

For me, motherhood is about loving my children despite what they might say or what they might act out. My mother heard my teen voice angrily say, “I wish you had never adopted me!” I knew it would hurt her, and at that age, that was my goal. When I expressed my regret at having said this, my husband revealed his simultaneous “I wish I had never been born!”

For me, motherhood is respecting my children as they become their own individuals … even if it is counter to my individuality. Motherhood is also about supporting them until they are adults and eventually letting them go.

I will leave you with this lovely New Yorker story of a couple who loved their son unconditionally. More simply put, they felt what their son felt. These parents understood to the point of setting their own desires aside. They loved enough to support (both emotionally and financially) their son’s desire to return to his birth country and his original father.

The Baby Veronica case, re-homing and underground swapping are flooding the media. I am hopeful that this media attention will open up more constructive dialogue and lead to more substantive change.

The Rights of Baby Girl

In the months since the June decision by the Supreme Court, the fate of the Baby Girl, Veronica, has flooded my mind, my emails and my conversations.

So many bloggers have written their opinions, but one blogger, both a social worker in the adoption field and an adoptive parent, stood out. In her post, she poses this very poignant question:

“At what point do you do what is in a child’s best interest and sacrifice your own heart?”

The way I see it, our society is becoming more about what we have. For the adoptive parents, it is having the child, no matter what the risks to her well-being. I understand their pain in having had a baby and having it taken away. Birth mothers do this every time an adoption occurs. In this case, there were missteps, but the bottom line should be what is best for Veronica, not how can justice be served?

Media spots and the frenzy that comes with the coverage should not factor into a decision. Voices that say she would be “better off” with the adoptive parents assume that wealth is the key to happiness. That parents who could give her more could ease the hurt of separation from a father she has come to know is naive at best. And what is meant by “more”?

Love is not more money. Love is just as the blogger wrote … sacrifice. A sacrifice of self.

As this blogger points out there is added trauma in multiple moves to different families.

Baby Veronica has the right to be spared this trauma.