Anger is just hurt disguised…

From the Family Preservation Blog

Excerpt from Adoption Reunion: Ecstasy or Agony? © Evelyn Robinson, 2009

Re-grief therapy and adoption

The process of re-grief therapy involves reworking, at a later time, a loss which had not been satisfactorily resolved. It has two goals; to understand why mourning was not completed in the past (operating on an intellectual level) and to help those affected to experience their grieving emotions in the present (operating on an emotional level). During the course of re-grief therapy people’s ‘frozen emotions are stimulated and reawakened’. As with regular grief therapy, the outcome of re-grief therapy is an increase in self-esteem and a decrease in guilt, as well as an increase in positive feelings about the lost person (Raphael, 1983, pp385-6).
I have chosen to apply re-grief therapy to reworking an adoption loss. In the case of adoption loss, I believe that, in order to understand the reasons why the mourning was not completed, it is important to understand first of all how and why the loss occurred. An informed exploration of the circumstances leading to the separation often results in the griever having more positive feelings about their adoption experience.

Exploring these issues can be instrumental in bringing the pain and grief to the surface and it can then be experienced. Pain is not necessarily a negative outcome and preventing people from experiencing pain is not always in their best interests. Pain is not always avoidable and it is sometimes necessary in order to produce something new. Childbirth, for example, is rarely accomplished without pain.

When people can understand the basis of their pain, they are in a better position to manage it. Patients would not feel confidence in a doctor, for example, who wrote a prescription for pain relief medication rather than first of all seeking the cause of the pain. Pain is a message that there is an area that needs attention. Experiencing the pain created by adoption separation can, in fact, be a way of creating a renewed sense of self.

Anger is a common response to a loss and frequently occurs with regard to adoption loss. Many people are angry that an adoption took place, but this does not necessarily mean that they are angry with any particular person. Re-grief therapy may cause suppressed anger to come to the surface. Anger can be destructive if it results in vindictiveness and cruel accusations. Anger can, however, be a productive and helpful emotion when it is understood and managed. It may be appropriate to talk to those involved in the adoption about one’s anger so that there is openness and honesty in those relationships. Telling someone about your anger is very different from expressing your anger towards that person.

Because adoption separation is a profound experience and because the emotions attached to it have often been buried for many years, re-grief therapy can itself be an emotionally traumatic process. It is wise therefore, to prepare oneself for such an undertaking and to remember that no matter how difficult it may seem, this process can lead to a personal recovery from the trauma of adoption separation. It takes courage to begin this process but the rewards can be great.

Happy Thanksgiving USA

If you look closely at this photograph you will see a thin gray line about half way up. That line is the far shore – the United States of America – upstate New York or more accurately northern New York state.

I hope everyone who lives south of me is having a great day and spending it with family – in all family’s variations – in a way that feels good.

I hope the dinner is wonderful.  I have been hungry for a week watching everyone cook for Thanksgiving on TV.

It feels to me, though we are in the midst of economic woes, that there is new optimism.   Maybe some things needed to be changed.

I hope all of you feel that way too.

A toast to a definition of family that includes everybody.  May that be a change we see someday soon too.

Peace

UM

P.S. You haven’t heard from me for a while because I wrote a play and I just submitted it to a playwriting competition.   Revisions, revisions, revisions.

This is what we’re up against my friends …

People like Heidi Hess Saxton.

Others have posted on this but here’s my two cents worth. I did make a comment on the article which was published and it appears to have gotten a response since I’m mentioned by [blogger] name – unsigned masterpiece.

It’s also now my sign in name at the CatholicExchange. That’s OK.

Here’s what I started to write about the article but then events kind of overtook me.

I have said the statement below was a reason being put forward to keep adoption records closed but, to tell the truth, I always wondered if it was propaganda for our side.  But, now I have read it in black and white, and on line.

Adoption records should not be opened because it will discourage future pregnant teens from giving up their children for adoption.

You can read it below for yourself. That and a lot of other twaddle about birth parents and adopted people.

Written with not much “Christian” love on a Catholic website.

You’ll find myths, stereotypes and half truths put forward in the name of correcting the biased information disseminated by Bastard Nation and other adoption rights advocates.

I left this comment:

This article is a throw back to another age. It contains so many stereotypes about adopted adults and birth parents.

I say, more in sorrow than in anger, that you do your readers a disservice by publishing things like this.

If I were to write a post on my blog that said that Catholics were misguided and brain-washed, I don’t think you would be too happy. Ms Hess Saxton has done the equivalent with respect to birth families, adoptees and I suspect some adopted parents.

It is always a mistake to assume one can extrapolate from the particular and personal to the general and the norm. [Ms Hess Saxton is an adoptive mother.]

If I did that, based on what I heard about my son’s adoptive experience after we were reunited, I would be making similar derogatory remarks to the ones Ms. Hess Saxton has made, only they would be about adoptive parents.

You state she is going to write another article, I think she is biased and should perhaps find another subject which she can approach with a little more objectivity.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond.

The editor then posted this:

It’s interesting that she does not view what Hess Saxton has written as personal attacks. I felt a little attacked as a birth mother. If I were an adopted person, I’d feel a little slagged.

I wonder what Jesus would say about all this? I wonder how He views Heidi’s “goodwill”?

I suspect He’s on to her.

Here’s the whole thing.

Peace – don’t let it ruin your day. Our time is coming.

UM

Anti-Adoption Advocates – How Should We Respond?

Now that the election is over, one of the most chilling prospects of the future administration is the president-elect’s determination to sign the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA). The implications of this — both financial and moral — are staggering, for it means our tax dollars may be used to snuff out the lives of millions of children. To be truly pro-life, then, is to seek ways to ensure that the need for abortion is eliminated, as far as we are able to do this.

Adoption gives those in crisis pregnancies an abortion alternative that saves the life of the child and relieves them of the unwanted responsibility of parenthood. Adoption also provides an opportunity for couples to have a child they might otherwise never have, and for the child to have a “forever family” that will love him or her for life.

With foster-adoption, children who have already been born — often to parents with such serious issues that the children may have been better off had the “adoption option” been chosen from the beginning — are given a second chance. Sadly, many of these children — especially those who are part of sibling group, have special needs, or are “older” (four or more) — must wait months and even years for a loving, permanent home. There are simply not enough suitable families willing to open their hearts this way.

The situation would be dire enough … Now grass roots, anti-adoption advocacy groups such as “Bastard Nation” and “Adoption: Legalized Ties” are seeking to discourage adoption, choosing rather to advocate for disgruntled adult adoptees and “natural parents,” including those whose children were taken from them because of abuse and neglect.

Anti-Adoption Advocates: Biased “Truth”

The dynamic of adoption is often described as a “triad,” with 3 sides representing the birth (or first) parents, adoptive parents, and adopted child. By and large, anti-adoption groups have vilified both adoptive parents and the agencies that mediate the placements.

Recently, however, the attack has expanded to birth parents as well: Under the “Unsealed Initiative,” adult adoptees and others are lobbying government agencies in New York and other states (successfully, in Toronto) to release sealed birth records in order to gain access to the identities of birth parents who may not desire contact, and who were promised anonymity upon relinquishment. In the minds of the adult adoptees, the “best interest of the child” trumps all — when in fact the “child” is no longer a child, but an adult whose “right to know” is no more important than the other party’s right to privacy.

This growing trend is even more alarming, given the unabashed pro-abortion stance of the Obama administration. Women in crisis pregnancies who are considering adoption may have second thoughts when faced with the very real possibility that their “past” may come knocking on their door twenty or thirty years hence, disrupting their lives with demands and recriminations. Unless the records are truly sealed with a “suite lock” — one that can be opened only by mutual consent — the real danger is that these “unwanted” children will simply be aborted.

Catholic Anti-Adoption Advocates

Recently I was appalled to discover that these “anti-adoption advocates” are making inroads even in Catholic publications. Last September the National Catholic Register ran this article (accessed through my EMN blog) by self-professed “anti-adoption advocate” Melinda Selmys, who writes about encountering teenage adoptees who were acting out — though the adoptive parents were “kind and loving people.”

Rather than consider the real possibility that the teens had been damaged by circumstances that led up to the adoption, or that adoption may indeed have been their best chance at a bright future, or that these kids were just like others teens who have difficulties making the transition into adulthood, Selmys concludes that the adoption itself was the true source of the problem. She writes:

The child … is not a tabula rasa on which anyone – parents, teachers, social workers, engineers of brave new worlds – can inscribe their glowing hopes for the future. … The child is created in the image and likeness of God, but it is also in the image and likeness of its parents. The people who hope to see evil eradicated from the world through increasing government intervention in the lives of children are going to be sorely disappointed. Children do not inherit their faults and failings merely by watching and imitating mom and dad. They inherit them on a much deeper level.

Healing the Wounded Heart

Now, much of what Ms. Selmys says sounds reasonable. Foster and adoptive parents are well aware that our children have challenges and issues originating with their “first families” — behavioral, mental, emotional, and medical among them. Sometimes it’s genetic. Other times challenges come from the child’s pre-adoptive environment, not a blank slate … a heart wounded by bad choices and negative impulses of broken people.

It is also true that no adoptive environment is “perfect” — just as no parent is perfect. Ideally, children thrive best when they are raised by their natural parents, joined for life in the sacrament of matrimony. Sadly, as a society we have fallen woefully short of this ideal, and the only question that remains is how to mitigate the damage inflicted on innocent young lives.

There are situations in which adoption is truly the best (though not perfect) choice: Children born to young teens (especially those who have neither the inner resources nor long-term support system necessary to parent); children of parents with unresolved substance abuse or domestic violence issues; and children of abusive and neglectful parents. In each of these cases, little wounded hearts heal best when they are no longer in close proximity to the source of the pain. Sadly, this can mean removing children from birth parents voluntarily or (when parents demonstrate neither the willingness nor the inclination to fix their own messes and put the children’s needs first) involuntarily.

Adoption gives children wounded by the choices of their first parents a second chance to heal. Granted, it does not completely shield the child from the consequences of her first parents’ choices. There is no way to shield the child entirely — that is the nature of sin. On the other hand, pressuring unwed teenage mothers (and other at-risk mothers) to keep their babies even when they are demonstrably not capable of parenting produces more difficulties than it resolves — down the line, when adoption is no longer a viable option.

Adoption, the “Pro-Life” Option

The sad reality is that the older the child, the smaller the pool of potential adoptive parents. In the U.S. today, more than 500,000 children are in need of temporary or permanent homes … the vast majority are part of larger sibling groups, special needs, or “older” (age four or more).

Because the pain of adoption is real, the adoption choice represents true self-sacrifice on all sides of the adoption triad: Birth parents put the best interests of the child ahead of their own needs, adoptive parents agree to invest themselves entirely in a young life they did not bring into the world. The child may also suffer in ways they cannot fully understand until they are much older — and may have difficulties accepting even then. And yet, when the choice is literally life and death, this kind of self-sacrifice is the pathway to hope … if we allow it.

Will these mothers come to regret their choice? Undoubtedly there will be times when they will wonder if they could have chosen differently. They may yearn to re-establish contact with that child — and should be able to leave the door open for this, should the child (ideally, with the blessings of the adoptive parent) seek her out. But as with many significant choices in life, once the choice is made we cannot see clearly “the road not taken”; because of the unknown variables that stem from that choice, it is illusory at best. We can only learn from our choices, and move on.

On the other hand, through adoption (even open adoption, in which the birth parents maintain a level of contact after the placement), a child is helped to make the most of their own natural giftings and eradicate the worst of their natural weaknesses. The birth parent is then able to tend to his or her needs without inflicting even greater damage on the innocent. And the adoptive parents are presented with an opportunity to invest their lives in a way that produces rich spiritual fruit in the life of parent and child alike.

In Search of the “Phantom Parent”

Books such as The Adoption Mystique, by anti-adoption advocate Joanne Wolf Small, MSW, remind us that some children never completely recover from the losses of adoption — no matter how much love and attention they are given. The sense of abandonment can run deep, and visions of “real” mom and dad can tantalize even the most outwardly accommodating child — especially those in the throes of adolescence and into young adulthood, when the natural desire to separate from Mom and Dad is most powerful, and the quest for identity strongest.

While the release of some information — such as medical histories — has objective value, and could be released without depriving the first parents of their right to privacy, it is imperative that the concerns of all three sides of the adoption triad be given equal weight. Birth parents have the right to remain anonymous (unless they choose to relinquish that right); adoptive parents have the right to raise their child without undue interference; the adopted child has the right to a safe and nurturing environment. The adult adopted child has the rights of any adult — but not access to the confidential records of other private citizens.

In the section entitled “Anti-Adoption Media Bias,” Ms. Small offers a revealing quote from “The San Francisco Examiner” (1999, February 22):

Anguish is everywhere in the adoption equation …. The birth mother … adoptive parents …. Adopted children haunted by phantom birth parents who, they may feel “abandoned” them – beings … they cannot know. Phantom limbs on the family tree (par 10).

At age eleven, my younger sister experienced phantom pains when her leg was amputated. The nerves at the amputation site, which connected the missing leg to the brain, did not immediately die. And yet, Chris did not let the amputation define her or limit her in any way, and in time these pains diminished. She became first a cheerleader, then a wife and mother. If she had chosen to concentrate on the pain — instead of healing — she would be a very different person today.

I realized just how complete the healing had been when, a few years ago, an over-zealous “street healer” offered to pray for her leg to grow back and she refused. “When I get to heaven, I’m going to get my leg back — and you better believe I’m looking forward to that. But right now, for whatever reason, this is God’s plan for me, and I’m going to accept it. I’m not going to feel sorry for myself — I’m going to live.”

Wise words that can be applied to many situations — including adoption. The “phantom pain” of adoption must be acknowledged — and yet, reunification may not always be possible or even desirable. The adopted child must recognize the reality of the adoption triad; each part of the triangle of birth parent/adoptive parent/adopted child has both rights and responsibilities, some of which cannot be assumed by the child until he or she becomes an adult.

It is in adulthood that many children — adopted and biological alike — discover something essential to their future happiness: Some things in life are chosen for us by the adults in our lives, based on the information at hand, which have both positive and negative repercussions. If we continue to blame our parents for those choices, we remain in a state of “arrested adolescence” and keep ourselves from realizing our God-given potential. This is true of adult children of adoption — and of many other children, too.

We cannot change history; we can only acknowledge and learn from it, grieve our losses, forgive those who have hurt us … and move forward. The loss adopted children experience is real — just as my sister’s loss was real. She had to work through those feelings; the loss was necessary if she was to survive. This is the story of adoption: a story of painful choices made in the present, in order to secure a better — and a living — future.

Heidi Hess Saxton is the author of “Raising Up Mommy” and founder of the Extraordinary Moms Network, an online resource for mothers of adopted, fostered, and special needs children. She and her husband foster-adopted their two children in 2002.

We’ll all agree about this one…

No matter what side of the adoption triangle you are on, adoptive parents, birth parents, adoptee, I think we will all have the same reaction to this one.

Through the Adoption News, abridged from a story originally filed in The New York Times by BENJAMIN WEISER

Two officials of New York City’s child-welfare agency and the fiscal director of a Brooklyn foster care agency have been charged with creating phantom adoptions in a scheme to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars intended for the care of children with disabilities or special needs, federal authorities said on Wednesday.

One of the two officials of the city agency was also charged with issuing government checks for work that was not performed in return for kickbacks. The senior Children’s Services official accused, Lethem Duncan, was the deputy director of the payments-services department, federal prosecutors said.

In the phony-adoption scheme, the officials said, Mr. Duncan worked with the second employee, Nigel Osarenkhoe, who they said used the agency’s computers to create false names and issue checks as if they were subsidies for real adoptions.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Osarenkhoe told Mr. Duncan that he had figured out a way to manipulate the agency’s computer system to cause adoption subsidy payments to be mailed to whomever he wanted.

“These defendants were driven by greed,” Michael Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan said, “and they placed their own self-interest above the well-being of the children served by A.C.S.”

The announcement of the charges came a day after the sentencing of Judith Leekin, who was convicted of fraud after she adopted 11 children under four aliases and collected $1.68 million in payments meant for the children’s care, which she used to support a lavish lifestyle. Ms. Leekin was sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison.

Prosecutors said that the phony-adoption scheme relied on cooperation from Stay Thompson, the fiscal director of the Brooklyn foster care agency, Concord Family Services, which they said had received more than $28 million in contracts for foster care and other services in recent years.

In that scheme, prosecutors said, Ms. Thompson received about $79,000 in illegal payments and agreed to share the proceeds evenly with Mr. Duncan and Mr. Osarenkhoe. Ms. Thompson was arrested on Tuesday.

The claims of problems involving money at Concord are not new. Late in 2006, its executive director resigned after an audit by the city comptroller’s office found that she had spent tens of thousands of dollars at luxury stores using the agency’s credit card. The director said at the time that the purchases were made to benefit foster children.

Reunion Raises Adoptive Parents’ Awareness

Below you will find a quote from The Experience of Adoptive Parents in Adoption Reunion Relationships: A Qualitative Study . The authors are Gabrielle A. Petta, MPsych, and Lyndall G. Steed, MPsych, PhD from Curtin University of Technology. The full cite is at the end.

It discusses how one result of adoption reunion is raised adoptive parent awareness of adoption practices.

It is interesting to note that at least one adoptive parent quoted in the study assumes that when those involved in adoption criticize the process, it is in fact the adoptive parents that are being painted as the villians. I don’t believe that this is accurate. To argue from the particular to the general, I don’t know anyone who feels that way. Particularly if we are talking about adoptions that took place 20 years or more ago. In those circumstances the adoptive parents were misled by the system as much as anybody else. There may be issues about how the child was raised if it was not a happy experience, but that is not the same thing. That is not the process, other than one might argue it speaks to selection and assessment.

People have issues with agencies who manipulate to get women to surrender their children these days when the impact of surrendering is better understood. People take issue with the fact that the first solution that is looked for does not involve the mother keeping her child because some prospective adoptive parents seem to have a sense of entitlement.

They were not as aware as back then (the far back then and the not-so-far back then) as we are today of what was going on with the mothers of their children.

Here is the quote:

Raising Awareness of Adoption Practices

Many participants found themselves revisiting their “naive understanding of what adoption was and what being an adoptive family was going to be like” when they first adopted, as one adoptive father put it. As this participant suggested, many adoptive parents did not understand adoption as being anything other than a form of creating a family. Hence, at reunion, when faced with their fear of losing their child, their struggle with entitlement, and the reawakening of earlier losses, many adoptive parents experienced a sense of despair and confusion but also an emerging awareness that they were, in fact, part of something much bigger than they initially believed. That is, although reprocessing of certain adoption issues continued at a personal level, approximately two thirds of our sample also found themselves becoming more cognizant of the contextual factors surrounding adoption practice at the time of adoption and currently.

Some participants suggested that they were ill prepared, if at all, for the issues they faced as adoptive parents—namely, the issues that emerged as their children negotiated identity in late adolescence and participated in reunion. Robinson (2000), in her discussion of adoption and loss, stated that in more recent times, both birth and adoptive parents consider that they were “duped by a legislative system which guaranteed adoption would provide the answer to their problems but did not address the core psychological issues that adoption could not resolve and which it is now seen to have created” (p. 162).

Certainly, this subgroup of participants would concur with this position.

In addition, participants found themselves questioning the messages about adoptive parents and the nature of adoption. As one mother expressed,

“Suddenly I become a stealer of babies. I did not steal anyone’s baby. I do not want to be and I do not deserve to be put in a position where I have to justify my relationship with my daughter. I did nothing wrong but to be cursed with infertility. I am not a bad person, and yet I am made to feel that wanting a child and loving her makes me a criminal.”

In writing on adoption ethics, Jordan (1997) argued that social discourse on adoptive parenting and the sanctioning of one parent as true or real (i.e., the birth parent as the real, natural parent) creates a win or lose contest with significant emotional consequences for adoptees, their adoptive parents, and birth parents. As suggested by the mother in the previous quote, no one actually wins this contest. Rather, setting up either party as good or bad only maintains the pain.
Generally, however, the majority of participants found themselves becoming more aware of issues to do with relinquishment, the sociopolitical context in which it occurred, and the personal issues faced by birth parents. However, the effect of this burgeoning awareness and empathy was not always greater resolution or clarity. In fact, many participants reported greater confusion and dissonance in trying to make sense of their own responses to the reunion process. (Emphasis added)

One participant described feeling “split.” She explained that she had experienced a surge of fear and anxiety and strongly questioned her role, contribution, and worth as a mother. She had been forced to face issues she thought she had “finished with.” Simultaneously, she found herself feeling compassion and empathy for birth families and facing their needs with the same interest with which she faced her own.

From:

The Experience of Adoptive Parents in Adoption Reunion Relationships: A Qualitative Study
Gabrielle A. Petta, MPsych, and Lyndall G. Steed, MPsych, PhD Curtin University of Technology
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry Copyright 2005 by the Educational Publishing Foundation
2005, Vol. 75, No. 2, 230 –241