Second-class citizen?

Second-class citizen?
Letters to the Editor
12/30/2009
http://www.times-standard.com/letters/ci_14092609

All I wanted for Christmas was my civil rights back. (That didn't happen.)

California's adopted citizens are discriminated against and denied the simple
human right to look at their own birth certificates -- a right all others take
for granted.

The multibillion-dollar adoption industry perpetrates the myth that mothers who
relinquished their children were promised anonymity. This is a lie.

For the very small minority who do not seek contact, just say no. If that
doesn't work, there are sufficient laws to protect anyone from unwanted contact.
Adoptees and their original families need no special, additional protection from
one another. What they need is equality and a return of their civil rights that
have been denied to them since the 1940s.

California, get on track. Stop discriminating against people for having been
adopted. Let these adults decide who they want in their lives and who they
don't. Family genealogy and interactions between adults -- or not -- are
personal choices, and should not be legal issues.

Amended birth certificates (issued to all adoptees) are falsified "legal"
documents listing the adoptive parents as the biological parents. This is
discrimination against people who, as children, were adopted without their
consent and without legal representation.

I cannot trace my lineage, thanks to the state of California. I don't even know
my ethnicity, thanks to the state of California. I pay my taxes, yet I am
treated like a second-class citizen in the state of California.

Mara Rigge

Open Adoption Not "Enforceable"

© Photographer: Eric1513 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Grandmother turned away after agreeing to adoption
By Kathleen Allen
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | 12.27.2009

It took 74 years for Lyn Tornabene to build a life she treasured. It took a year for her to lose it all.
In late 2004, her only child died unexpectedly. Wendy, a 37-year-old single mother, left behind a 2-year-old son.
Less than three months later, Tornabene's husband, Frank, died after a long struggle with pulmonary fibrosis.
Wendy had not made arrangements for what should happen to her son in the event of her death. A father had never been in the boy's life. And Tornabene decided that at age 74, she couldn't raise him.
So in August 2005, the grandson she adored — her only remaining connection to her husband and daughter — was adopted by longtime family friends of Tornabene, now 79, and her daughter. It was an open adoption, and Tornabene understood that she would be part of her grandson's new family.
By the end of the year, however, misunderstandings and miscommunications soured the relationship. The boy's new family limited visits to once a month for a few hours; they canceled mediation that the lawyers had agreed on; and they eventually cut off contact altogether.
This is Tornabene's story of how she lost it all, and what she learned along the way. By speaking out, she says, she hopes others can escape the heartbreak that consumes her.
•••
On Nov. 19, 2004, Tornabene and her daughter planned to visit preschools.
Wendy didn't answer her door. Her car was in the driveway, and the front door was locked.
Tornabene started to panic. She called a family friend to see if she had heard from Wendy. She hadn't but rushed over to be with Tornabene. Rural Metro broke into the house.
"She was dead," says Tornabene, the grief rising from deep in her chest with great, gulping sobs. Her grandson "was in his high chair, watching TV. He turned around and said, 'Hey, baby,' which was his new thing."
Lyn held the boy, then handed him to the friend, who offered to watch him while Lyn went home to break the news to her husband. Despite their age difference, the women had been friends for years — Tornabene says she considered her a second daughter. When Wendy moved to Tucson, the two also became close.
The night Wendy died, the friend and her husband came over and said they wanted to adopt the boy. The Tornabenes weren't ready to make that decision, but they did agree that the boy should stay at the couple's house for the time being. He knew and loved them and their children. He would be comfortable there.
Ten days later, the cause of Wendy's death was determined: Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, usually defined as cardiac death of an apparently healthy young person.
"Frank used to sit in that room there, howling at night," Tornabene says, pointing to a small, book-packed library in her elegant, art-filled home. "We both howled a lot. There's no way to deal with it. There's no way."
The boy stayed with the family friends through the holidays, as Frank's illness progressed. They brought him back after the new year.
"I don't remember very much from that time," Tornabene says. "I remember sitting here a lot; I remember people coming and going — and I remember giving away her clothes.
"We had put her house on the market. Frank didn't want anything out of it. We sold her car. . . . Wendy had a lot of life insurance, a house and a car. So suddenly there was an estate for (the boy). I had to become guardian or custodian or something."
Then, in early February, Frank succumbed to his lung disease.
"There were all sorts of legal things going on all the time, and after Frank died, it got so complicated. And so terrifying," says Tornabene.
"Maybe I would die and leave (my grandson) and he would be a foster child. I wanted to adopt him. I had gone to court to become his legal guardian — whatever it was I could be — and the lawyer said, 'You're too old to adopt him. They'll never let you do it. I'll try if you want, but it will take a long time.' And I was afraid I would die, as everybody was dying, and (he) would be left alone.
"I had nannies here 24/7 so that if anything ever happened, he would be taken care of."
Adoption seemed the right thing to do. People from around the country — cousins, friends, strangers — expressed interest. But Wendy had wanted her son brought up in the West. And the couple who had been helping so much were good friends — the woman had been with Wendy in the delivery room.
Tornabene would place her grandson in a loving family that lived close by. She would be able to see him, and shower him with her love.
Adoption proceedings began.
•••
Under Arizona law, when a child is placed for adoption, the parental rights of both birth parents are severed.
"They cannot make decisions for the child, no legal rights, no physical custody," says Patricia "Pogo" Overmeyer, a Tucson attorney specializing in family law who was not involved in Tornabene's case.
What goes for the birth parents goes for the birth grandparents. But where parents may have some recourse — for instance, including visitation privileges in the adoption papers — grandparents do not.
"The grandparents become, legally, strangers to the child," says Tucson attorney Ann Haralambie, a certified family law specialist who also was not involved in this case.
Tornabene had her usual lawyer — who hadn't done an adoption in some time — represent her. She trusted him, and she didn't ask many questions.
She admits to her naivete, and curses it.
•••
It felt like everything was happening fast.
"I signed the documents," she says. "But I didn't know that I was giving up my legal rights — I had no idea."
Tornabene had a visitation agreement drawn up, but it was never signed — her attorney told her it wouldn't hold up in court.
That wasn't really a concern. They all got along so well. In August, right before the adoption, Tornabene and the adoptive family went together to Coronado in the San Diego area. The Star is not naming Tornabene's grandson or his family to protect the child's privacy. They declined to comment for this story.
"There was an understanding from the beginning that I would be part of the family," Tornabene says. "In a lot of our e-mail exchanges, I was called 'Grandma Lyn.' "
On the early August day that her grandson legally joined another family, a photo shows everyone — including Tornabene — smiling. It looked like one big, happy family.
•••
When school started in September, the boy's mother would drive him there, and Tornabene or the nanny she retained would pick him up.
He would stay at his grandmother's house until his mother got home from work. Tornabene still feared she would die while caring for her grandson, so a nanny was always at the ready.
Soon, things started to change.
For starters, the boy's mother admitted to being uncomfortable with the nannies Tornabene continued to employ.
"There was a lot of hazy stuff, and it began to decline," Tornabene says.
"I was grieving beyond measure. I don't think I was ever easy to get along with on any of these matters. I know I wasn't."
Tornabene asked her lawyer to initiate mediation with her grandson's parents. Lawyers for both parties agreed, but the parents canceled.
"I just wanted to know what I could do — what was I doing wrong?" says Tornabene.
The final blowup, she says, came when she got a call from her grandson's school. He was running a high fever, and they couldn't reach the baby-sitter, who was staying with the children while their parents were out of town.
By the time Tornabene reached the school, her grandson's fever had hit 105. She wrapped him up in a blanket and rushed him to the doctor.
"When I got there, there were four calls from (his mother) saying I should take him home directly from the doctor's office," says Tornabene.
But she had a sick child who she felt needed her attention. So instead of taking him to his home, she took him to hers.
His mother called several times. He needs his own bed, Tornabene remembers her saying. "He's so sick, and he's asleep," she says she retorted.
Things got ugly.
"Finally I said, 'Why don't you call the sheriff,' and hung up," she says. "When he woke up he was feeling so much better and his fever was down. The nanny took him home. But that incident really did it."
Looking back, Tornabene recognizes that she escalated a damaged relationship into an all-out feud.
"I had just lost my daughter and my husband," she says. "I didn't react the way I would under normal circumstances."
Lawyers got involved. At one point, the boy's parents agreed to supervised visits at a neutral site — two hours once a month.
A report by the supervisor from an August 2007 visit — their first — speaks of the bond between Tornabene and her grandson:
"... Gave each other a lot of hugs and kisses .... Talked to each other. ... Child sat on grandmother's lap and put his arms around her neck as she read to him . ... Made music together. ... Danced around the playroom. ... When it was time (to go), child said, 'Are you sad? Are you mad at me?' He laid his head on grandmother's chest; he hugged her again and again. ...He asked a lot of questions: 'Will we do this again? When will I get to visit you again?' ... Told grandmother he loved her, he put his arms on grandmother's shoulders and around her neck and he touched her eyes."
After two more visits, the parents stopped them without an explanation, she says. She later learned from their lawyer that his parents said he came home upset from their visits.
More lawyers. Tornabene tried to reverse the adoption but says she decided it was not the best thing for her grandson. When she felt his parents were saying untruths about her, she sued them for slander. The suit was later dropped.
"I didn't want money," she says. "I wanted to see my grandson."
Several of the lawyers Tornabene contacted to get visitation rights dismissed her once they realized she had signed the adoption papers.
Finally, Tucson attorney Susan Ames-Light agreed to take her case, arguing in court papers that the adoption order "failed to terminate the Grandmother's right either as a Grandmother or guardian, and only terminated the rights of the mother, who was already deceased."
Just moments into the 2008 hearing the judge turned to her. "I'm sorry for you, Mrs. Tornabene," she remembers him saying. "You have no legal rights."
•••
While her grandson's new parents declined to speak to the Star for this story, some of their complaints were documented by one of Tornabene's lawyers after he spoke with the boy's mother.
In the mother's view, the lawyer's letter to Tornabene said, "you have spread comments and rumors about them that (she) feels are very hurtful."
Among them were comments that the boy's parents had spent all his money, "e-mails that say 'if you don't do this, I'll get you,'" and the incident that ended with Tornabene telling the mother to call the sheriff.
Other complaints included the perception that Tornabene favored her grandson over his new siblings, and that he had come home upset after visits with her. "She has to run the show, and she is mean," the mother told the attorney. "She made all the wrong moves."
•••
What could have prevented so much pain?
"This is a perfect case for family mediation," family law attorney Haralambie says.
"I would say take a deep breath, apologize to the longstanding friend and say, 'This was a tough time for me. Can we back up and renegotiate this?' "
The issue is close to Haralambie's heart — she was adopted as a child.
"As an adoptee myself, I know there is a real desire on the part of many adoptees to have some kind of contact with or knowledge about the birth family," she says. "Adoptive parents who do not support that, and who actively subvert that, risk tremendous alienation of their children, especially as they get older."
She always gives would-be adoptive parents the same advice: "A birth family is not a threat to you — your relationship with your child is based on your relationship with your child."
Keeping a child and a grandparent apart could "have a long-term impact on a child," says Tucson psychologist Thomas Brunner, an expert on the developmental needs of children and adolescents. The degree of the negative effect, he says, depends on the strength of the bond.
Maxine Ijams understands the fear adoptive families may feel. She is a retired clinical psychologist who did her dissertation on the adjustment of children adopted in infancy and has adopted four children herself.
"When the adoptions were final, it was such a relief," she says of her own experience. "I knew from the beginning that the possibility of them being taken away from us was there. Every time the doorbell rang, I had an anguish and a fear it was the birth parent, who didn't want to go through with it."
But there's a danger, Ijams says, when an adopted child is denied contact with or knowledge of the birth family.
"Research shows that children at a very young age have emotional memories," she says. "The adoptive parents stand to lose in the long run. A child can grow up loving the adoptive parents but resenting not being able to see the grandmother. And if she dies, look at the resentment there."
She agrees with Haralambie — what's needed in cases like this isn't lawyers, but communication.
"I used to tell clients when they came in with things that were not going right that they first have to recognize, define their problem. And then ask themselves, 'What is my part in this problem? What am I contributing to the problem? Then what can I do about it, and am I willing to do it?' Then, do something."
•••
Tornabene has seen her grandson twice in the last two years, both times by accident.
The last time, a few months ago, he was at a grocery store with his mother.
"He planted his feet," she remembers. "He stood up and looked me in the face, and raised his hand. He stood his ground and looked at me with all the love in the world."
She dreams that someday she will be allowed to embrace her grandson again. But she isn't hopeful.
In the meantime, she wants other grandparents to learn from her mistakes.
"You had better be informed," she says. "In a moment, somebody dies and everything changes, and maybe you'll be lucky and go through life the way grandparents should.
"You're not safe, Grandma, Grandpa. The law's not on your side should anything happen to your child. You will have no advocacy at all."
But, she says, maybe, just maybe, things can change if enough people speak up.
"The point is to sound the alarm and to find compassionate people who have some power, legislative and otherwise," she says.
"I want to get grandparents' rights talked about, and get it fixed. I don't expect it will happen in time for me to see my grandson, but I want other people who are caring and loving and honoring their roles as grandparents to not be in my position."
Contact reporter Kathleen Allen at kallen@azstarnet.com or 573-4128.

Man Meets Family at 46

Man meets family at 46
Adopted California man tracks down biological brothers for holiday reunion

By ERIN MILLS
The East Oregonian

Don Carroll has been spending his holidays in the usual way, eating and playing games with his family in Hermiston. But this year is a bit different - Carroll just met his family a week ago.

After a successful search for his biological family through WARM, the Washington Adoption Reunion Movement, Carroll hopped a plane Monday from California to meet two full brothers, a half brother, two half sisters and assorted nephews, nieces and other relatives.

Carroll always knew he was adopted, he said, but he decided to seek out his biological family several months after his mother died. His father had died years earlier, and he has not seen his sister, who also was adopted, for several years.

"I was both excited and nervous," he said of meeting his brothers, Richard and Rob Meeks, at the Pasco airport. "Really, it was the culmination of a life-long dream... it was just - big grin."

Once they saw each each other, there was no doubt: the brothers all have the same height and athletic build, the same gray-green eyes, the same easy-going sense of humor.

"I felt a little for him, because we didn't want to overwhelm him," Rob said. "But, immediately, from shaking hands, we were able to start joking and hanging out."

Meeting their long-lost brother was a surprise, but not wholly unexpected for the Meeks brothers. Their mother, Sherryle, had spoken of her oldest son and attempted to find him. She registered with several national organizations that connect adopted children with their birth parents. In her memoirs, she described Don's birth in a home for unwed mothers in Spokane, Wash., 46 years ago, when she was 16 years old.

"In mid-May, I gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy, my firstborn," she wrote. "I loved him and I wanted him and somehow hoped a miracle would provide a way for me to keep this wonderful child and provide for him a home and family which he so deserved."

Carroll said one of the reasons he wanted to seek out his family was to reassure his mother he had had a happy childhood with good parents. Sherryle, though, died of cancer last year.

It was Jim Meeks, Sherryle's second husband, who heard first from Carroll's WARM caseworker. With photos of a young Don in hand, which bore an uncanny resemblance to Richard and Rob's childhood photos, he called them up and said, "You boys need to come over to the house."

"He showed us these photos and I said, 'Oh, that's me - no, that's Rob - no, who is that?'" Richard remembered. "When he told us my first feeling was kind of, well, it's about time."

Richard wondered whether Don would resemble the family in any way besides looks - after all, he said, a different family raised Don in a different lifestyle.

"But, in this case, he just fits," Richard said.

The brothers even have similar jobs. Don is a fireman, Michael is a police officer in Stayton and Rob helps run a training academy for corrections officers for the Oregon Youth Authority. Richard is the odd man out: He works for Pendleton Grain Growers.

All the brothers have the same slightly perverse sense of humor, said Carmen Robbins, Richard's fiance.

"When Don flew into Pasco, Richard and Rob called him and said, 'We're in Seattle, where are you?'...They were just yanking his chain," she said.

The Meeks brothers said they have plans to visit Carroll in California this summer, maybe sooner.

"What's really cool is to have him here during the holidays," said Greg McKeever, Sherryle's brother. "It's a present you can't buy."

"It's been great," Carroll said. "I think I hit the jackpot."

Fly Away Children

© Photographer: Orla | Agency: Dreamstime.com

"Fly Away Children"
Broadcast: 09/2009
Reporter: Andrew Geoghegan
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2686908.htm

Since Angelina Jolie adopted her daughter Zahara in 2005, the number of Americans adopting Ethiopian children has quadrupled.

A pop-media obsession with celebrities adopting children in Africa has resulted in a queue of adopting foreigners dealing with opportunistic adoption agents in operating in a regulatory vaccuum. In Ethiopia - and beyond - its creating a heartbreaking mess.

International adoptions may seem like an ideal solution to the dreadful deprivation among the young in Ethiopia and the often impossible circumstances confronting parents trying to feed and raise their children.

The reality though, is far from ideal.

Some adopting parents suspect or discover the new child they’ve taken in is not an orphan as they’d been assured. The child may also have a litany of health problems that has been covered up by corrupt officials.

Also many ‘relinquishing’ Ethiopian parents or carers may have been duped into giving up their children through a heartless process called ‘harvesting’ and can’t hope to re-establish contact with them.

Ethiopia has 5 million orphans needing homes and the United States has millions of homes needing babies. Africa Correspondent Andrew Geoghegan and producer Mary Ann Jolley, discover it’s not a simple mathematical equation or zero sum game. There are virtually no government regulations or policing of the process. Many international adoption agencies flashing Christian credentials are taking advantage of the situation. Corruption, fraud and deception are rife.

Foreign Correspondent follows a Florida couple in their mid fifties as they travel to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to pick up their three adopted children, aged three, four and six. It’s a gut wrenching moment when they meet the birth mother who has come to the orphanage to say a final goodbye to her children. This transaction appears above board but it’s all too common for Ethiopian parents to give up their children for international adoption after being coerced by adoption agencies.

Foreign Correspondent investigates the activities of one of the biggest American agencies operating in Ethiopia. In a remote village in the country’s south, the agency openly recruits children with parents. Each child offered for adoption is then filmed for a DVD catalogue which in turn is shipped out to potential adoptive parents.

A world away in California a mother of one - looking for a brother for her son - chooses from a CWA DVD catalogue. The agency’s sales pitch promised a healthy, abandoned child, but that could not have been further from the truth. Her story is tragic and disturbing and exposes the callousness of the profit oriented international adoption business

A group of grieving mothers who have given up their children for international adoption gather at an orphanage to tell their stories. All claim they were told by adoption agencies they would receive regular information about the whereabouts and wellbeing of their children, but have heard nothing.

It’s a thought-provoking edition of Foreign Correspondent and a must watch for anyone considering adopting a child from another country or who has celebrated the apparent social consciousness of Hollywood A-listers.

An Adoptee's Christmas Wish

Thank you to Wraith at "Ramblings of a Shadow" for posting this amazing sentiment!

"Twas the night before Christmas
one wish in my heart
to be reunited
with one long apart
the agencies say no
the governments too
but all i ask for
is the same rights as you.
To know my past,
my blood, and my birth
to know my story
in all of it’s worth.
So this night I do wish
and hope for a sign
that one day I will know
the truth that is mine."

Guatamala: A Baby Factory No Longer?

By Ezra Fieser — Special to GlobalPost
Published: December 23, 2009 06:35 ET

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — When the adoption business was booming here, American couples came by the thousands.

They flocked to the dozens of privately run children’s homes or to lawyers’ offices to adopt Guatemalan babies. They paid upward of $30,000, fueling an industry worth more than $100 million annually by conservative estimates. They stayed in towering city hotels that dedicated entire floors to adoptive parents and they rented rooms stocked with diapers and baby creams.

At the height of the trade, 4,728 children — or one in every 100 live Guatemalan births — were bound for a foreign country and a new family. Guatemala was the world’s largest per capita source of adoptions and second in total numbers only to China, a vastly more populated country.

It all came to a screeching halt in the final days of 2007 when the government took control of the system from the lawyers and adoption agencies that had run it. They imposed a two-year moratorium on international adoptions and promised to investigate the allegedly widespread baby thefts and coercion of birth mothers.

Two years later, the country is set to re-open the doors to international adoptions, but government officials vow it will look nothing like it used to. Instead of nearly 5,000 children a year being sent to foreign couples, some 150 will be available. They won’t be the healthy infants of years past. They will be older children or those with disabilities. And it won’t cost $30,000 or anything near it. Although they’ve not officially decided, officials say the process could be free.

Once the shame of the adoption trade, Guatemala is now being lauded as a potential model for other Latin American countries. But prospective parents aren't always happy that their options for adoption have diminished. There are 900 families, many from the U.S., who were promised children under Guatemala's old system and have spent two years in limbo waiting to see if the adoptions will ever be cleared.

“We were a baby factory,” said Marilys Barrientos de Estrada, a director of the governmental agency created to oversee the process. “That’s how the international community saw us and that’s what we were. For a price, you could get a very, very young baby, younger than almost anywhere else in the world, and take that baby home in a few months, more quickly than most places.”

Human rights groups decried the Guatemalan process as one of the world’s worst examples of the adoption business gone haywire. A few birth mothers had reported their children stolen or being tricked into signing away their babies. In July, 2008, Ana Escobar, a resident of a poor Guatemala City neighborhood, was reunited with her daughter a year after she reported the baby stolen. DNA testing proved the child, Esther, was living with a family in the U.S. After years of ugly rumor, it was the first proven case and officials hailed it as justification for their reforms.

Now those same international observers who’d criticized the former system are throwing their support behind the country.

“What Guatemala has done has been a huge success,” said Justo Solorzano, a child protection with UNICEF in Guatemala. “It broke the cycle of corruption. It stopped the violation of human rights.”

UNICEF had urged the government to pass its new law and to bring its standards in line with those set forth under the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, which declares countries should first try to place children in country, ideally with family members, before seeking a foreign adoption.

So far, that’s exactly what’s happening in Guatemala. Key to the new system’s success has been the willingness of Guatemalan families to adopt children that would have formerly been made available to foreign families.

More than 500 families have signed up to adopt a child. Only 400 or so children have been deemed "adoptable" by judges, meaning demand outpaces supply. The government recently launched a publicity campaign aimed at attracting more Guatemalan families to the process. The campaign, centered on the Mendoza family, which last year adopted an abandoned girl, Carmen, is expected to attract as many as 2,000 families a year.

“People said Guatemalans don’t want to adopt, and they certainly don’t want to adopt other Guatemalans. This breaks that myth,” Solorzano said. “Guatemalans did want to adopt. They just couldn’t compete financially with Americans.”

Yet, as the country sets to make its children again available to foreign families, it faces criticism by adoptive parents, directors of children’s homes and international observers who say that in seeking reforms the country threw the baby out with the bathwater.

“I was appalled by the moratorium put in place under pressure from UNICEF and the U.S. and I’m appalled by the new law,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, faculty director at Harvard Law’s Child Advocacy Program and an advocate for international adoptions. “These were 5,000 children that were being released and given an opportunity. Now we go to a few hundred? I wonder what UNICEF is thinking it’s doing.”

Most agree that foreign adoption provides enormous opportunities to children of impoverished countries, such as Guatemala, which has one of the world’s worst rates of chronic malnutrition for children under 5. But many believe those children should be kept in their countries and in their cultures.

The changes in Guatemala underscore a worldwide drop in international adoptions. After a steady increase since the end of World War II, foreign adoptions to the United States peaked in 2004 at 22,884 children. In fiscal year 2009, U.S. parents, according to State Department statistics, adopted 12,753 children — a drop of 45 percent from 2004 levels and the fewest since 1996.

“UNICEF’s anti-international adoption position has intensified with the rise in international adoptions in recent years. They have focused on countries with the most adoptions, suggesting that numbers signals that there is something wrong,” Bartholet said.

In Guatemala, directors of children’s homes say the changes have put more pressure on their services. They’ve been converted from homes for children awaiting adoption to institutions where children are growing up. But paying for that care has come entirely at the expense of the homes, which formerly used adoption fees to keep their operations running.

“It costs $40,000 monthly to run this place and the fees from adoptions were covering the costs of the staff, food for the children, specialists, and nearly everything else,” said Nancy Bailey, owner of Semillas de Amor, a home that has placed 500 adoptions over the years, mostly to U.S. parents at a cost of about $18,000 each. “Now we’re relying on donations. We don’t have any money left.”

Among the 35 children at Semillas de Amor, roughly half are awaiting their adoptions to U.S. families to be finalized. Those children were some of the 3,033 adoptions left dangling when the new law took hold. Although authorities ruled those cases could proceed under the rules of the old system, 900 families are still waiting for children.

Merry Christmas

Colorado Court Pulls Back Curtain

When Patricia Dukeman started trying to find her biological parents, Ronald Reagan lived in the White House, Michael Jackson's "Beat It" was record of the year, and the Supreme Court decided it was OK for us to use those new VCR things to tape TV shows.

In the 25 years since, Dukeman, 48, has spent a lot of money and learned a lot about Colorado adoption laws.

Yet, she's still searching.

That's partly bad luck. Like a small but significant number of adoptees, she fought long and hard to get her birth certificate, only to discover the information on it is false.

It's also because access to adoption records in Colorado is governed by a patchwork of laws stitched together through years of changing attitudes and knee-jerk reactions.

"It's a complex mix of emotions, politics and money. And rights," said Richard Uhrlaub, co-director of Adoptees in Search — the Colorado Triad Connection.

In April, however, a landmark Colorado Court of Appeals decision unlocked the vault for thousands of adults determined to learn their biological heritage.

The court ruled that, contrary to a widely enforced interpretation, adoptees do not have to hire a confidential intermediary to access their records — as long as they were born between 1951 and 1967, the years that happened to be covered in the particular law the court ruled on.

The ruling also opens up adoption files themselves, which are in the custody of the state Department of Human Services. Those files often contain clues as to why a mother gave up a baby for adoption.

"We have information about why they thought about that, about the reasoning for going through that process," said Sharen Ford, who oversees those records.

Since July, more than 500 people adopted here got their original birth certificates from the health department, an unprecedented number.

However, anyone adopted on June 30, 1951, or earlier, or after July 1, 1967,

Jeff Hannasch, at his Peyton home, looks through stacks of adoption paperwork he has collected over the years. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)must still petition a court and show "good cause" to open the sealed records.

What constitutes good cause varies, Uhrlaub said.

"In one jurisdiction, you could be near death, and they wouldn't open your records.

In still other courtrooms, "just the fact that you've wandered the maze and managed to show up with something in hand is good cause," he said.

Fear of upending lives

Hovering over the process is a belief among some that opening decades-old secrets will not only violate trusts but upend lives and destroy families.

Jeff Hannasch, whose petition prompted the Court of Appeals decision, didn't set out to destroy anything or to change Colorado law.

Growing up outside Colorado Springs, Hannasch, 44, said he always felt set apart from his adopted family. "I didn't look like anybody. I didn't act like anybody. It was very obvious."

To him, maybe. But to many scientists of the time, that would have been nonsense. In 1965, when Hannasch was born, the assumption was that babies were blank slates, tiny flesh-and-blood sponges waiting to absorb what their environment offered.

By the time Hannasch's children were born, genetic tendencies had been identified for everything from heart disease to daredevil behavior; nature eclipsed nurture in child-development theories.

"Things changed when I had kids of my own," said Hannasch, whose kids are 7 and 11.

"I realized adoption doesn't stop with me," he said.

He wanted information but didn't want an intermediary — one reason his petition to get his records was rejected.

That intermediary, most of the time, is Colorado Confidential Intermediary Services.

Since 1990, the nonprofit hasn't been the only option for adult adoptees seeking their records, but it was pretty close.

"Nobody's required to (hire CCIS), but in terms of the best chance they have, I think we're it," said Leslie Zetterstrom, chief intermediary.

For $775, CCIS will search for one biological relative, usually a birth mother. Additional searches are $200 each.

The concept, Zetterstrom said, is partly a recognition that opening old records also may open old wounds.

"We are the buffer," she said.

That's not how Dukeman sees it.

"I'm an adult. I feel like this information was held for ransom," she said.

That is also the way Hannasch saw it.

When his petition to access his records was denied by an El Paso County magistrate, Hannasch said a court clerk told him, " 'Sir, it is this court's duty to protect the rights of your birth parents.' I said, 'Really? And who's protecting my rights?' "

Shame spurred secrecy

Dukeman and Hannasch are among millions born in the decades after World War II, part of a shadowy underside to the nation's exuberant baby boom: children born in maternity homes that were, in reality, hideouts where women, mostly unmarried and mostly young and in shame, could have their babies secretly then surrender them through transactions forever sealed.

But those babies grew up in generations that rolled collective eyes at social stigmas and never learned to take no for an answer. Legions of them demanded to know who they are and where they came from.

Dukeman, who now lives in Florida, battled to get birth documents not because she doesn't love the parents who raised her.

"I had a great childhood, a wonderful life," she said.

But there are questions about who she is that no one can answer. "I have been unable to obtain my own history, my roots."

She did get tidbits: Her birth mother was 16, a student in Adams County, when Dukeman was born. And she was born at Denver's Fairhaven Maternity Home, which operated from 1915 to 1966.

This past spring, after the appeals-court ruling, Dukeman got her birth certificate — only to learn the birth mother's name it bore was false.

That happens occasionally, Zetterstrom said, especially with private maternity homes, and especially with Fairhaven.

When maternity homes closed, they were supposed to give their records to the state, but not all did.

Fairhaven's records are held by a family member of the operators, Zetterstrom said. "She felt that her family mandate had been put on her to protect the women."

That person was unfazed, Zetterstrom said, by the suggestion that some of the women might want to be found.

In the 3,568 searches it conducted through 2008, CCIS found a biological family member in all but 117 of those.

Of those family members still living, 70 percent agreed to be contacted by the adoptee.

Dukeman is one of the 117 non-success stories.

So she scans faces of a certain age for a resemblance and wonders whether her father went to Vietnam. And she frets that time is running out.

"If I have to, I will go through . . . every yearbook for Adams County schools until I find something."

Roots Unknown

Oklahoma Couple Want to Return Troubled Adopted Son

Oklahoma Couple Want to Return Troubled Adopted Son to State
11-year-old is Violent Towards Other Children, Has Killed Animals and Runs Away Regularly, Parents Say

By RYAN OWENS and SUZAN CLARKE
Dec. 21, 2009
(click on the title of post above to be linked directly to this Good Morning America/ABC news segment/video)

Melissa and Tony Wescott are afraid of their son. They're so afraid of the boy they adopted that they're trying to have Oklahoma law changed so that they can return him to the state's care.

"He tried to burn our home down. The note said, 'I'm sorry you had to die,'" Melissa Wescott told "Good Morning America."

She said she and her husband have found butcher knives under his mattress and lights hidden in his bedroom.

The Wescotts' 11-year-old son has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital in Tulsa, Okla., for nearly a year. But now doctors say he's not a danger to himself or anyone else, and the boy is scheduled to be released from the hospital next month.

Despite the doctors' opinion, the Wescotts say they are so afraid of having him back home that Melissa plans to stay awake at nights while her husband sleeps.


Adopted Son Diagnosed with Several Mental Health Disorders
The trouble started shortly after the couple -- who couldn't have children of their own -- adopted the boy in 2007. His behavioral problems became so severe that he needed inpatient care.

Within a year of the adoption, the Wescotts told the Tulsa World, the child was diagnosed with reactive detachment disorder, disruptive behavior disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome.

The parents said the boy became violent toward other children and nonresponsive to adults, hurt and killed animals and ran away regularly, requiring help from police.

So they're trying to return him to the care of the state's Department of Human Services, but the state says adoptive parents should be treated no different from birth parents.

Adoptive Parents Treated the Same as Biological Ones, State Says
"A parent is a parent," Karen Poteet, who runs the state's post-adoption program, said. "It doesn't matter where the child came from."

Poteet says all parents are warned that the children they are adopting were abused or neglected and that the symptoms of that treatment could manifest themselves years later.

Poteet, who adopted two sisters in 2001, knows that all too well.

"My children were abused from the moment of conception because their birth mother chose to drink the entire pregnancy. That's no fault of my children," she said.

But the Wescotts say their son needs more care than they can provide. They are afraid to let him back into their home. If they don't, though, they could face felony child abandonment charges.

"It's not like we are trying to return an itchy sweater," said Melissa Wescott, who said she loved her son "unequivocally."

She said she believes loving him means letting him go.

Poteet said the last thing adoptive children need is to be rejected by another family, although that's rare.

Groups Tries to Change Law
There are 11,0000 children in Oklahoma's adoption system. This year, only 13 adoptions have been dissolved -- an expensive and lengthy legal process that's similar to a divorce.

The Wescotts can't afford it, so they're trying to have the law changed.

The Wescotts are part of a group seeking changes in state law that would allow adoptive parents to return custody of foster children to the state in certain circumstances.

"If a family can show that they have exhausted every resource ... every opportunity they can ... to save their families and this is what they're left with, then I think they should have this as an option," said Tina Cox of the Adoptive Parent Support Group. "No one should be held hostage in their own homes."

Adoption Issues Being Studied by Task Force
A Oklahoma legislative task force is evaluating issues involving adoptions of children in state custody.

Advocates of changing the law say adoptive parents should not be punished if their children have major disabilities that were not known or disclosed ahead of time.

"We knew what we could handle and what we couldn't," Melissa Wescott said, adding that they requested a child who wasn't "violent or acting out sexually."

DHS disclosure documents call the child "well-behaved" and "polite and well mannered." He is described as "respectful toward authority" and "makes friends easily." The papers say he has no "significant behavioral problems which would be considered abnormal for a child his age."

Poteet said adopted children have to have people who will stand up for them.

"If we don't do it, who's going to do it?" she said.

Such a heated issue here, but the bottom line is one of disclosure or lack thereof. This couple was not given full disclosure of the child's issues and was even told it was "normal adjustment" when they approached DHS with concerns before finalization. The OK "Swift Adoption" program (the name alone raises concern) has more than doubled the number of children adopted because of the financial incentives offered by the federal government for each adoption finalized. This entire financially driven adoption system in America sets a climate for gross conflict of interest and unethical policies which fail to protect the very children it claims to serve.
Misdeeds can be hidden behind archaic "sealed records" statutes which fail to protect any party in adoption other than the industry itself, which happens to make up 95% of the task force which recommends the laws.
The adoption industry fails to acknowledge or provide adoptive parents with important books like "The Primal Wound" which explains the traumatic severing of a child's early bond with the mother and how it creates life-long issues. They want to pretend a child is either "normal" (will have no issues with being adopted), or completely "blame" the child's biological heritage or parents. This is abusive to all adoptees because it is a "black and white" approach to a very complex trauma and so disrespectful of the reality of an adoptee. DHS as well as every other adoption broker should be required by law to provide full disclosure of the documented research now available in neonatology and the life-long damage done to children by separation from their mothers; as well as damage done through "sealed records" laws which amend a child's very identity and reality without acknowledging how it affects the adoptee. Adoption is a business in human lives and the voices not heard in these "contracts" are the voices of adoptees.

PTSD & Brain Function

Brain Imaging Shows Kids' PTSD Symptoms Linked to Poor Hippocampus Function

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2009) — Psychological trauma leaves a trail of
damage in a child's brain, say scientists at the Stanford University School of
Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Their new study gives the
first direct evidence that children with symptoms of post-traumatic stress
suffer poor function of the hippocampus, a brain structure that stores and
retrieves memories. The research helps explain why traumatized children behave as
they do and could improve treatments for these kids.

"The brain doesn't divide between biology and psychology," said Packard
Children's child psychiatrist Victor Carrion, MD, the primary author of the new
research. "We can use the knowledge we get from understanding brain
function to improve the psychology of the individual and vice versa."

Extreme stressors can
make children isolate themselves from family and friends, feel disconnected
from reality, experience intrusive thoughts about the trauma and struggle in
school. "Post-traumatic stress is not only about the traumatic memories; it
really affects daily living," said Carrion, who is an associate professor of
child and adolescent psychiatry at the School of Medicine and director of
Stanford's early life stress research program. The research will be published
online Dec. 8 in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology.

The findings could be an important step toward better monitoring of PTSD
treatments, which include psychotherapy techniques such as teaching relaxation
exercises, helping children to construct a cohesive story about the
traumatic event and helping them learn to cope with reminders of the trauma. Right
now, psychologists assess such treatments by looking for improvements in
symptoms, but that's a problem because the symptoms can fluctuate from day to
day. "That method has the disadvantage that we don't know what's happening at
the neural level," Carrion said.

To observe how kids' brains work after trauma, Carrion's team used
functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare 16 young people who had PTSD
symptoms with a control group of 11 normal youths. The scientists scanned the
brains of the 10- to 17-year-old subjects during a simple test of verbal memory.
Subjects read a list of words, then saw a similar list with new words
added, and were asked which terms were present on the original list.

The hippocampus worked equally well in stressed and control subjects when
the word list was first introduced. However, subjects with PTSD symptoms made
more errors on the recall part of the test and showed less hippocampus
activity than control subjects doing the same task.

Subjects with the worst hippocampus function were also most likely to
experience a specific set of PTSD symptoms: Such impairment of the hippocampus
was strongly correlated with "avoidance and numbing" symptoms of PTSD,
including difficulty remembering the trauma, feeling cut off from others and lack
of emotion.

Parents and other caregivers may find the new discoveries useful as they
tend to traumatized children, Carrion said, particularly when children respond
to trauma by withdrawing from people who are trying to help. Parents may
sometimes misinterpret this behavior as a child's attempt to retaliate, when
it actually represents an overload of the brain's normal mechanism for
handling fear. "When parents understand that PTSD is real, they don't take it as
personally," he said. "They become more available to their kids. That's good
because the kids need them."

In the future, physicians and scientists may be able to use fMRI scans of
the hippocampus to identify children who are at high risk of PTSD after mass
catastrophes, added Carrion, who has consulted on response teams for natural
disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the February 2009 wildfires in
southeastern Australia. However, larger studies of brain activity in pediatric
PTSD are still needed to give a more detailed understanding of the disorder.

It's already clear that untreated PTSD can interfere with a child's normal
brain development and increase the risk of other psychiatric conditions such
as depression and substance abuse, Carrion concluded. "Early intervention
is critical for children with post-traumatic stress," he said.

* I had a really hard time last night at a family gathering and then got up this morning and read this listed on a "Conciously Parenting" sight. I'm feeling so guilty. But coping better than I would have a few years ago.
I wish I would have read this article and quote yesterday. Maybe it would have helped.

"I found that many of his rages and misbehaviors were triggered by expectations he was not capable of fulfilling."

This statement resonates with me big time. I wonder how many of our difficulties are the result of this.

Walkin' in a Sensory Wonderland

© Photographer: Lorettaphoto | Agency: Dreamstime.com

No, I don't discipline my son like I should. I let him pretty much do anything he wants to do if it doesn't involve harm. He runs our household but the joy of having him makes it feel like a small sacrifice, not big, for my husband and I. He has sensory issues and has to have a routine to relieve anxiety.

He isn't just a brat. But I sure hate having to explain that.

We spent the whole day getting ready for company tonight. And that is not often. He was excited. So excited he didn't take a nap. He got anxious and demanding when we tried to move some furniture around to make sure we'd have enough seating in the living room. We had to move it back and do it when he was distracted.

Finally, they came. My first mother's family, whom I dearly love. They have made me feel completely one of them from day one of our reunion. In so many ways. And we are so alike. Amazingly alike. I commented to one of my friends just this week how I felt like I had "found home" at my Aunt Patty's house and would "hang out" there often just to drink in the feeling. It was healing and wonderful.

But I still have this "perfection" thing going on, which I hate. And it beat me up tonight so bad. See, my son was my son. And because I felt like I had to be perfect tonight, I probably downright terrified him trying to get him to "obey." He was so excited and literally could not calm himself down, so he just kept getting more and more hyper and out of control. Instead of me keeping my own head and doing the sensible thing like take him for a drive or something logical, I blew up at him to try to get him to stop a meltdown.

I broke so many rules of motherhood for a sensory-challenged child. And I'm smarter than that. That is why I am sitting here bawling. Not only did I scare my child and attempted a wrestling match that I knew I couldn't win, but I also felt like I made a fool of myself in front of my family. True, it was in another room, but my husband told me later they could hear a lot. Even in the midst of it, I was thinking in my head how disappointed I was in myself for allowing the pressure to get to me, and that I was ruining this get-together for everyone, including my son, who I so want to have happy memories.

But see, I'm so scared of people "judging" him and me as a mother. I'm so scared that people just think he is a brat that won't obey, and I'm a spoiling mother. And I can't find the right balance. Especially in high-stress situations. I was so humiliated after my showing out (the intensity pretty much matched my son's meltdown, so sad, especially since he never sees me like that and it scared him), that I refused to go back out to the living room for quite a while. I made my son take a bath because I knew that was the only relaxing place he would drink his Pediasure and calm down. And it gave me a good excuse to avoid the embarrassment, at least for awhile. I am so hard on myself. Even though my husband kept coming in trying to get me to let him "take over" so I could go visit, I continued to say "no". Though I knew I'd eventually have to face everyone again.

I guess it is true that the fear of something is worse than the actual experience. Once I got Andrew to drink his Pediasure (I'm literally the only one who can make him eat/drink when he is disregulated), I faced the music and joined the then quiet living room of family. I could tell they felt bad for me. And that made it worse.

This is where I weep. Not there, but here, as I write (I have to get it out some how). My family understands because they are like me. They may have done the same thing and so they care about how hard I am on myself and try to make me feel at ease. And it works. Within minutes we are back to having fun, and I'm so thankful. The rest of the evening was saved. Andrew calmed down after our heated talk and warm bath and full tummy. And he was able to interact and play with his aunt, uncles, and cousins. They tolerated his extreme hyperness (did I mention rough play) and the ice was broken. The last hour of the visit was like "old times" ~ playing Win Lose or Draw, singing carols to the guitar, and just laughing. And my son has his family. He has his beloved Grandma (my adoptive Mom), AND his extended family by birth. Even through these experiences, we're all still here and still making family memories.

I'm so embarrassed by my behavior tonight. I got angry. And my son didn't even understand why, because he wasn't able to regulate himself. Why did I let the pressure overshadow my logic? I grew up trying so hard to be perfect. I couldn't express anger or behavior that was less than expected. I'm sure there are many opinions as to "why" that was. I think a large part was adoption. I was expected to fill a role that wasn't myself. So I played the part. It has been so hard emotionally to allow myself the freedom to be real. Even when those around me want me to be.

Lord, help me. And help my family. Help me continue to learn what family and love and being real is all about. Thank you for tonight. And for mercy.
Please bless my family and help them as they go home. Give them peace.
Thank you for the noises of laughter and play I hear in the next room right now. It makes it all worth it. I love you.

Ultimate Reunion

I once heard a sermon by Pastor Dick Bernal in San Francisco which opened my eyes as an adoptee. He shared that in the original Greek texts of the Bible that the words "adopted as God's children" in the book of Romans and others, could be more accurately translated as "reunited" as God's children. The prodigal son in scripture was not his Father's "adopted son", but his own flesh and blood. He ran to embrace his child who had been gone for years.

It is a beautiful comfort to know God is my true Father and I am his child. There is no need for Him to "adopt" me as we think of adoption in today's society, because I actually came from Him to begin with. So many things in this world work to separate us from the pure knowledge of God's unconditional love for us as our Father ("Abba" means Daddy) God. I'm so thankful He runs to reunite with me.

"...I will never leave you, nor forsake you." God
(Joshua 1:5)

"The Primal Wound" Book Tour

                                    © Photographer: De-kay | Agency: Dreamstime.com

The Open Adoption Examiner is hosting an online "book tour" of "The Primal Wound" by Nancy Newton Verrier, a forerunner adoptive parent and psychologist. I've really enjoyed reading the questions/responses submitted by other bloggers and learn so much from them. Thank you for the opportunity to participate and learn! Here are some thoughts about the questions below:

There are a great deal of behavioral issues that Verrier attributes to the Primal Wound of being separated from ones birthmother and subsequently adopted. These range from acting out and testing the adoptive parents, to becoming detached, to future inabilities to maintain healthy relationships as an adult. To the adoptees, I'm curious if you identified with any of these traits. Further, if you answered "yes", do you think your adoptive parents would agree that you have these traits as well?

Let's see...ummm...yes, yes, and yes. As a child I hid feelings of differentness and insecurity, all the while putting on a smiling face to convince others and myself that I was "special" and "chosen" and therefore, almost superior to other kids. I HAD to make straight A's, be the teacher's pet, and make everybody like me, because inside, I didn't feel likeable. So I tried really hard. I said, "I love you" ALOT and made my Mom home-made cards for every conceivable holiday, always portraying the same message ~ "I'm so glad I have the BEST Mom in the whole wide world." Looking back I realize it was my way of not only trying to convince myself that I was perfectly happy being adopted, but also defending against my Mom's insecurities being my "Mother", loyally protecting her & myself.

I was the compliant adoptee for sure! The last thing I wanted was to "stick out" or be noticed in a crowd, because I didn't feel worthy of it. Yet, my Mom was SO proud of me, that she would make sure we were noticed. It truly humiliated me and caused me to go deeper into my shell. A shell which confounded my adoptive family. They couldn't understand the painful shyness (and did I mention, control) either. Yes, they would completely agree and I'm sure have much more to say than I. I just wish they had been given this book years ago, as I think it would have helped them understand my behavior a little better.

Becoming aware of these issues within myself is helping me become a better person, friend, daughter, spouse, and mother. Because my son deals with attachment issues of his own, my healing journey has provided the gift of "insight" into him, and will hopefully help him on his. I can allow him the freedom to rage and question and control, without the fear of being unaccepted, because I have walked through my own "ugliness" and learned to (a little better) accept myself.

It's hard to "admit" unsavory personality traits and relationship struggles because that brings up even more shame. The last thing I ever want is to "unknowingly" hurt those I love, or even knowingly do so through behavior that feels beyond my control. That's why I am so thankful for books that truly validate and educate, because they are a key that has the potential to unlock healing.

I still "numb out" and feel detached during times of stress. As a child I'd have reoccuring dreams where I'd be flying, feeling like my body and spirit was not grounded ~ searching for what? I did not know. But searching all the time. Restless.

Oh, and relationships. The same "detachment" can describe my relationships. Even my marriage of 19 years, as well as with long-time friends. I am the queen of "push/pull", always longing to feel close, but getting flighty and distracted when things get too close emotionally. Feeling alone alot, but it is getting better.

Even as an adult, before I read books like "The Primal Wound", I couldn't figure out WHY I was "the way I was". I remember going to a class at my church entitled "Boundaries" (great book by Cloud & Townsend) and discussing in the group how I "felt like a fake" but didn't know why. I didn't understand myself at all. All I got from the others, including the facilitator (interestingly enough, she was a social worker who worked for an adoption agency) was "your not fake, why would you feel that way?" I couldn't answer that. And felt even more isolated.

It wasn't until years after my "reunion" that I finally found some answers as to why I exhibited such contradictory emotions and perplexing behavior. On the outside, I seemed to have everything. An adoptive family who loved me immensely AND a first family who embraced me immediately. I remember telling others that I was "doubly blessed" because I had gained so much and lost nothing. Yet inside I fought feelings of extreme sadness that I couldn't explain. Why couldn't I just be happy, like my demeanor implied?

Then I happened across an "adoptee support group" on the web. I had NEVER known another adoptee, nor ever thought of myself as one, really. I had certainly NEVER thought of myself as an "orphan". It was like a slap in the face. I HAD a family. Yet I found myself weeping for days, literally. For the first time, I found books like "The Primal Wound" and felt validated, normal ~ what a huge relief. (Even through the intense crying and pain that made me feel like I was going to die.) It was like I "woke up" and became REAL. Thank God for books like "The Primal Wound", which finally put words to feelings that couldn't be explained. Truly pre-verbal. And so misunderstood.

I SO identify with the "false self" that Verrier describes. I mean, why wouldn't I feel "false" when my very birth certificate is false. We reap what we sow, even in adoption law. Which is sad. The only way my existence was validated or worthy was through a new identity, family, and "self" created to fill that role. My new "self" couldn't grieve the loss of my own mother or the "self" I was as connected to her. Because my adoption was a win-win situation that was joyously celebrated. What else was I to do? But create a "false self" that personified this new life, and deny that part within me that felt confused, undone, and unworthy. Or at least try.

"...the human child requires a period of a year after birth..to attain the degree of maturity that characterizes the young of most other mammals at birth...an uninterrupted continuum of being within the matrix of the mother is necessary in order for the infant to experience a rightness or wholeness of self from which to begin his separation or individuation process. The continuity and quality of this primal relationship is crucial, because it may set the tone for all subsequent relationships....the loss of the mother disallows the achievement of basic trust, the first milestone in the healthy development of a human being."

It is so hard to read or write about the question posed above. Not only do I identity with what is written, but I can see this so clearly in my own son. He was born three months premature, weighed 1.4 pounds, and was separated from me, alone, in a NICU incubator for four months. Emotions well up in me every time I take myself back to those days. The pain of leaving him there was almost too hard to bear. I could not only relate to his sense of complete and utter aloneness, nothingness, longing, but I could also relate to what my first mother must have felt with empty arms, and such strong hormones crying out to embrace and protect the one whom she carried and bonded with as her own flesh.

When I finally got to bring him home, I would hold and rock him close for hours on end, crying through whispered prayers for God to somehow heal his pain and help him feel secure in my love and His. As a toddler, he would anxiously resist touch and hugs; everything had to be on his terms. He is still very controlling and "jumpy", but is finally exhibiting improved affect and sensory regulation and even spontaneous joy.

My son will be five years old in just a few weeks and his latest milestone brings complete joy to my heart, just like every milestone has up till now. His new favorite word is "Why?" and it is like music to my ears. Interestingly, as his language has increased, his anxieties have become more clear. Not only did he endure early separation from his Mother, along with a premature nervous system, but he has also had four surgeries in his four years of life. This year is our first with no surgeries. Thank you, Jesus!

"Are the nurses coming today, Momma?" "Why did the nurses 'poke' me, Momma?"

No matter how much explaining I do, he seems to always come back with this:

"But Why?"

Me: "You had to come out of Mommy's tummy early and I'm so sorry, Honey. I wish you could have lived in Mommy's tummy longer. The doctors had to give you medicine to make you feel better. I'm so sorry they had to 'poke' you. Were you scared?" Yes, he was scared.

"But Jesus healed us and we got to be together again. I'm so glad we are together now..." This conversation has been repeated numerous times, because Andrew asks to hear it over and over. I think it is his way of trying to process his early experiences. And maybe his way of reaching out in trust, the trust he has had to work so hard to build, even with me, his own Mother. Tears.

He's learning about birthdays and "celebration", and loves his favorite video of the baby dinosaur being "born" out of the egg. So he comes over to me and says, "I want to be born, Mommy." We'll "act out" his birth over & over again. He'll hide his little head under my shirt on my stomach while I gush over how very much I love him. Then he POPS out and says "I'm born!" ~ we clap and cheer and sing "Happy Birthday". He loves it. Again, and again.

"Mommy, will you always take care of me?" is another sentence I hear a lot. "Yes, Honey, I love you and will always take care of you." All this is so good to hear, because I know he is building trust and feeling more secure. The insecure attachment is lessening, and he isn't quite as anxious when we go new places. The frustration and anger towards himself is lessening too. He still sometimes prefers my husband over me, though, which is a heartbreaking confession. It is usually when I have been away for awhile. When I come back, he still sometimes screams for me to "go away, Mommy" and our reunions (even after short separations) are very distraught with negativity. But even those are getting better. He's becoming a "Mommy's boy", and I'm so happy, not only for myself, but more for him. It means he is learning to trust!

Another interesting behavior I see in my son, which makes me completely identify with "The Primal Wound" is his misuse of pronouns. He gets them all mixed up, especially when talking to me. He will call me "I" and himself "you". And alot of the time it is simply "we". Like his little mind and spirit can't distinguish between himself and me, his Mother. When he was younger, if I got upset or cried or even shed one tear, he would literally come undone. He looked to me for his "ok-ness" and if I wasn't "ok" he was at a complete loss in total panic. I could see it all over his face, as he frantically wiped my tears away while holding in his own. He still won't hardly cry. Ever. He's the "bravest" child I've ever seen, but I so wish he didn't have to be. My Mom says "he's independent, just like you used to be."

It reminds me of my "pre-awakening" days versus "post-awakening" regarding my true "self". Before, I tried to "appear" confident, overly "useful", and "strong". It was easier to focus on helping others (all the while hiding behind a little bit of hidden judgement) than to look within (too painful) and work on myself. It wasn't until I allowed the fearful, abandoned child in me to "wake up" and feel, that I became extremely vulnerable. But, not only did I finally acknowledge overwhelming grief; walking through it also enabled me to truly feel and embrace the joy and the love in my life. With both my families. Another benefit has been the ability to feel deeper compassion for myself and others.

Almost nothing, however, has been more healing for me than having my own child. He is my only "flesh & blood" relative I have the privilege of living life with in a natural family relationship. I find that he is the only person I can totally "let go" emotionally with and embrace with abandon. I don't find myself "pulling back" like I do with other people, even those who I am close to. I think we are both helping each other, actually, learn to trust nature and fold ourselves into each other, the way a mother/child relationship is intended at birth. That may sound strange, but I am learning that which I lost and never experienced, and I'm so thankful. Not that I don't still battle fear of loss. It overshadows everything. But I'll never give up contending for wholeness, for healing.

My son just woke up from a four hour nap. He is very active, more so than most kids. But he also needs alot of sleep, which he sometimes fights. He seems always on alert, needing extra reassurances and expending a lot of energy dealing with these anxieties. As an adoptee, I'm completely exhausted just writing this post. So I know a touch of how he feels.

"A recurring message throughout the book is that adoption should be in the best interest of the child and not the adults, something that I think very few people would argue against. But should the adoptees feelings always trump everyone else's in the triad, even when that adoptee is a grown up?"

If the above question was hard to address, this one is even harder, especially just coming down from watching 48 Hours last night, "The Lost Children." Until adoption becomes what it is intended to be, adoptee's feelings are not only disrespected, but their rights are too. Completely.

The very reason we even need books like "The Primal Wound" is because of the unethical and abusive practices against humans we call "adoption" in America. If even the medical field of neonatology recognizes and changes their practices based on knowledge now readily available and accepted regarding the "primal" damage done to humans infants by early separation from their mothers, then adoptees should not have to spend one more minute having to defend themselves or their right to own their history, feelings, or experience.

We should not have to wince every time we see mind-boggling "advertisements" recruiting pregnant mothers. Friends, adoption is a business, with HUMAN-BEINGS being bought and sold as products. "Owned". It's run by the principles of "supply & demand" and rakes in billions of dollars every year. All the while, adoption agencies and attorneys ("professionals") FAIL their "clients" by dismissing "The Primal Wound" as being unfounded and extreme. Something is wrong with this picture. Why is there so much "controversy" about this theory? Because it threatens the business, the abuse, the laws. As it should.

Until adoption does not involve ONE PENNY exchanged for the transfer of a human-being; until "Dear Burfmother (incubator), give ME "the" baby (no worries, I promise you can still see it) Letters" are deemed illegal (marketing for infants); until adoption is considered a last resort and not touted as "just another way to build a family", and mothers and children are encouraged and supported to remain together, instead of recruited for "options counseling" by agencies whose "business" it is to procure "available" children for their clients (PAP's) ~ adoption is unethical.

Individual states deem it "financially unfeasible" to even keep an accurate count of adoptions, making adoption the largest "unregulated" business in America. DA's hands are tied when attempting to fully investigate complaints, because attorneys and agencies are legally permitted to hide misdeeds and coercion through handy "sealed records" statutes.

Until there are no longer "amended" (falsified) Certificates of Live Birth or "sealed records" and EVERY adult adoptee is guaranteed the same right as all American citizens to their original (and accurate) birth certificate ~ "adoption" is just another word for child-trafficking.

I so hope for change, and am thankful for people like Nancy Verrier who had the courage to not only acknowledge the issue, but also to write a classic. A book which finally validates millions of "adaptees". It has helped us find our voices and has brought some much needed healing. We deserve better. We deserve our truth, our history, our records, as well as our feelings, without being dictated "how to" process or explain our adoptions through politically-correct "positive" adoption language. More questions we need to be asking are "Who does adoption truly serve?" and "Exactly whose records are they?"

To continue to the next leg of this book tour, please visit the main list at The Open Adoption Examiner.
http://www.examiner.com/x-13701-open-adoption-examiner%7etopic444333-book-tour?selstate=topcat#breadcrumb

ABC's "Find My Family"

How refreshing!

FINALLY ~ Prime-time reality focused on adoptees AND doesn’t dictate to us “how to” think, feel, process or "label" our adoption experience. It refuses to put us in the box of “political correctness” and “positive adoption language” which denies our reality. KUDOS!

Child-Trafficking & Adoption?

An Oklahoma judge will decide the punishment for a family accused of abusing an adopted Liberian girl.

Andee Verlon Tyler, 51, and his wife, Penny Tyler, 46, along with their son, Ashton Malachi Tyler, 20, on Wednesday pleaded no contest and waived their right to a preliminary hearing in Major County District Court.

The two elder Tylers face felony child abuse charges for the alleged abuse of their adopted 11-year-old Liberian daughter. Ashton Tyler is accused of sexually assaulting his adopted sister and is charged with rape by instrumentation.

The Tylers’ daughter, NathaniaTyler, 21, also was accused in the case. She pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor count of assault and battery.

The girl [read innocent victim], now 13, has been living out of state with relatives [what relatives? others related to the beasts who perpetrated these inhuman crimes?].

Haworth declined to say if her four Liberian sisters, also adopted by the Tylers, remained in their adoptive parents’ home. [You gotta be kidding!!]

The five sisters were adopted in 2005 from a Liberian orphanage operated by the West African Children Support Network, The Oklahoman found.

Assistant DA Haworth said the outcome of the criminal case could affect a pending deprived juvenile case being battled over the girls in family court.

"Obviously, if their parents are incarcerated, something will happen to the girls,” Haworth said, adding there would be no custody change until the criminal case is resolved.

An officer with a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter claims the girl and her sisters, ranging from 5 to 15, are victims of a child slavery scam.

Angela Molette, president of the Garfield County NAACP, compiled a 28-page report and alleges the children are part of an international child trafficking operation where Americans buy children to turn into slaves.

Molette alleges the Tylers paid $30,000 to $40,000 for the children, and got financial help from their church for the adoption.

*Any monetary exchange for a human-being is unethical, in even "legitimate" adoption.

Reunion Marks End of Adoption Saga

Reunion Marks End of Adoption Saga
02 Dec 2009
Les Smith

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Later this week, a unique family reunion will add a joyful ending to a story which began 72 years ago at an infamous Memphis adoption agency. It also puts the spotlight back on a woman whose actions to personally change the lives of thousands of adopted children became motivated by her own greed.

She was the politically shrewd daughter of a Mississippi judge. But, in one of the darkest chapters in Memphis history, for over a quarter of a century beginning in 1924, Georgia Tann, as the revered Executive Secretary of the now infamous Tennessee Childrens' Home Society adoption agency, wielded unparalleled power.

History would record Tann sadistically altered the lives and fates of thousands of defenseless babies and desperate unwed mothers who turned to her for help while unwittingly staring at the face of pure evil.

As a Tann adoptee in 1937, Devy Bruch counts herself among the lucky to have survived, when as a weeks-old newborn, she was taken from her unsuspecting mother who had been driven to Memphis and placed in Tann's care by her brother.

Bruch, who now lives in Texas, reflects, "She had to sign the surrender papers when she was in the throes of childbirth under sedation. And was told when she came to, she had a baby boy who had died. So, that she would not search, I suppose. I'm the baby boy that died."

Yet, for decades, Tann maintained a national reputation as a highly regarded child advocate while at the same time covertly, with the alleged knowledge of a collaborative juvenile court judge, lawyers and police, she conducted her lucrative "Black Market Babies" operation.

Her agency adoptions, many of which were legitimate, brought her in contact with Hollywood stars such as Joan Crawford. Two of her four children came directly from Tann's agency as dramatically portrayed in the film "Mommie Dearest."

While Burch's adoption to a successful family in Pennsylvania proved to be a dream come true for her, others of the over 5,000 babies Tann had a hand in adopting weren't so lucky.

Burch relates, "A lot of Georgia Tann's babies didn't live or died right after they were placed. Many with pedophiles and she didn't care about the family. She only cared about their ability to pay her exorbitant fee which was $2,000 a baby plus expenses."

Burch continues, "She appeared to be very compassionate. In fact, my adopted father was sending her $25 every Christmas time because he thought that her work was so worthwhile and he wanted to contribute to her."

Tann would die of cancer in 1950, just weeks before an investigation would eventually expose her entire operation. But, years later, Tann's "babies" still search to find the truth about their heritages.

Burch, with the help of her daughter's research, can again count herself among the lucky. In just two days, she will travel from Texas to finally be reunited for the first time with her 66-year old sister in Memphis.

An excited Burch says, "I feel very strongly that each of us will be able to add so much to the other's life."

Years after details of the scandal emerged, a critic once said of Georgia Tann, "she thought she knew better than God."

But, in the end, Devy Bruch's reunion proves He's very much still in charge.

*Georgia Tann is the "mastermind" behind the idea of "sealed records" that states adopted into law. These "sealed records" were not enacted to protect the identity of first mothers, because they did not ask for it. They were enacted to protect the newly formed adoptive family. However, they create a climate for conflict of interest and unethical practices. It is past due time for all states to restore the unconditional rights of all adult adoptees to obtain their obc's. An adoptive mother, Barbara Bisanzt Raymond, wrote a book about Georgia Tann called "The Baby Thief", which details her life and adoption history.

Adoptees can find mom, not dad

© Photographer: Robif | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Adoptees can find mom, but not dad
Searches are stymied by blacked-out records
December 10, 2009
Nicole Baute/The Star

When Ontario opened its adoption records on June 1, adult adoptees yearning for information about their birth parents applied in droves.

But as the replies came back, it became clear something was missing: the names of their fathers.

Out of all 250,000 Ontario adoption registrations, less than 10 per cent have fathers' names on them, according to the Ministry of Government Services.

Ruth Rideout was devastated by the omission.

The 61-year-old adoptee received her statement of birth in October and found the father's section of the form blank, with a line drawn through it.

"He is half of my biological makeup and I need to know if there are any illnesses, conditions," she says.

Rideout's birth mother recently died, at 81. Although she has since met her birth mother's family, they do not know who her father was.

It turns out legislation prohibited her mother from naming him.

Until the mid-1980s, an unmarried woman could not put her baby's father's name on the statement of birth unless she and the father made a statutory declaration that he be named, according to the Vital Statistics Act. The child was "illegitimate," a word that was not removed from the act until 1981.

But when unmarried women filled out the father's section anyway, it seems the information was removed – whited out, blacked out or covered up.

A Waterloo man, John S., who did not want his last name published, received his statement of birth from 1955. The information on the "husband" side of the form was blacked out, line by line. An accompanying letter from ServiceOntario explains that his father's information was removed because, in 1955, the Vital Statistics Act did not allow it to be included.

Mothers interviewed by the Star say they remember putting the names of their children's fathers on birth registration forms they filled out in hospitals many years ago. In some cases, the fathers were present at the time of birth, or signed a declaration of paternity and other identifying documents during the adoption process.

Now, they feel betrayed.

Karen Lynn distinctly remembers writing her son's father's name on his birth registration in the hospital in 1963, when she was 19. She recalls fussing over how to spell his second middle name – was it Lawrence or Laurence? She settled on Lawrence.

Lynn is the president of the Canadian Council of Natural Mothers and a member of the coordinating committee for the Coalition for Open Adoption Records. She says she expected many fathers' names to be missing from records, because unmarried women were discouraged from naming them.

But she was shocked to learn, as records trickled in, that names had been removed.

Lynn reunited with her son in 1999, but for her this is a matter of principle. "You expect that the document you signed is going to be kept intact," she says.

Michael Prue, the community and social services critic for the Ontario NDP, says unmarried women were told not to name a father. "Young women were discouraged, and it was because of shame and everything else," he says. Summing up the attitude then, he says: "You're not married, the child doesn't have a father, leave that blank."

Yes, he says, some names could have been scratched out. "Some people 30 or 40 or 50 years ago may have thought that was the right thing to do. A lot has changed."

Leslie Wagner received a copy of her son's statement of live birth, which she filled out at the Toronto Western Hospital in June 1982. The record is in her 17-year-old handwriting, but it appears to have been doctored: the father section looks like it has been replaced with a blank version of the same section.

Catherine Cunningham (her maiden name) says her son's father was by her side in the hospital in November 1981. She was sure he was named on the birth registration – and he later signed an acknowledgment of parentage with the Ministry of Community and Social Services. But his name isn't on the statement of birth. "Should my son request his original birth certificate, his first instinct will be that I did not know who his father was, which is unsettling to say the least, and completely not true," she says.

As far as they know, none of the people in this story has been affected by a nondisclosure veto.

The mothers have questions about their records. "Who altered them?" Wagner asks. "We still haven't got a clear answer around who had the authority to alter that."

Adoptees such as Rideout will have a difficult time finding their fathers if their mothers cannot or will not help them – or if they have changed their names or died.

Rideout says staff at Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region have confirmed in emails that her father's name is on three of their documents, but say they cannot share it with her.

She knows her father was a German Canadian Lutheran truck driver from the Kitchener area and that he would be 84 if he is still alive today. Without his name, she will have a hard time finding him.

Valerie Andrews is executive director of Origins Canada, a support group for people separated by adoption. She says the missing fathers illustrate how poorly mothers were treated in the past. "I think it shows quite clearly that the so-called `unwed mother' was someone without rights (or) status in our society," she says.

Today, a father does not have to make a statutory declaration to be included on the statement of birth, but he and the mother have to sign the form. So even today, if the father is not involved at birth, his name will not be on his child's records.

Lynn realizes there are concerns about men being held financially liable for children they did not father. But today, a simple DNA test can determine paternity, she points out. She finds the assumption that women would lie about or not know who fathered their baby insulting.

"Are we trying to protect the 0.1 per cent of men who may have been accused and they aren't the father, or are we trying to serve the best interests of the child?"

Lynn says fathers' rights have also been violated. If a father of a child given up for adoption is not listed on the statement of birth, he probably won't be able to see the file. "They can apply, but they won't get it, because they weren't named."