Author: AlyWho

October 6 is the anniversary of the day my world shifted on its axis. The day the eye doctor shifted the lens and suddenly the world looked so different, even though nothing had changed except the lens I was looking through. I was the same person, the world was the same world, but suddenly both the world and I were different in an essential way that I could not adequately describe. Still cannot adequately describe.

I feel like a commemoration should occur on this day, to mark the day I became different. It is like a birthday, because on this day I was born into a new me. Hopefully a more authentic me. But is that joyful? I never had much joy on my birthday. Being sandwiched between Christmas and New Year and largely ignored was an easy place to put the feelings of sadness I always have that might stem from my unhappy introduction to the world. I don’t even know what to call this day. Discovery Day? Everything-you-know-is-wrong Day? Everyone-you-knew-was-lying-to-you Day? Perhaps something less maudlin: New Me Day? Truth Day? Reality Day?

Do other LDAs have a name and a marking of this day?

Dear World,

Hi, it’s me again. Remember when I wrote about the likelihood of DNA testing outing a secret you were keeping, so it would be far better for everybody if you spilled the beans rather than having some random genetic relative accidentally out it for you? I hope you’ve done that, if you are the one keeping a secret. But now I want to talk to the rest of you – those that are not keeping a secret.

It may be that someone you are related to has been keeping a secret. If someone contacts you because you are linked genetically, please try to be kind. Even if you are shocked. Even if you are angry. Even if you are suspicious. Even if you find the whole thing boring or unimportant. DNA testing can reveal LDAs or NPEs (Non-Parental Event, where a person discovers that one parent -often the father- is not the one that raised them). People that have had a shocking discovery via DNA are often in a state of pain and distress and are frantically trying to sort out their new reality. They are often grappling with an essential betrayal of trust. Please do not add coldness or harshness to their grief. If they have reached out to you, it is because you can help them. You might have information they desperately need. Something that may seem inconsequential to you might be devastatingly important to them.

You might feel shocked and betrayed in turn. Maybe you don’t want to know you have a half-sibling. Or an unexpected aunt or nephew or cousin. It’s legitimate for you to have strong feelings about it but try not to take it out on the person. It’s far better to work with them and help them sort out reality – because it’s your reality too, after all.

It is your choice whether to try to help them or not. I hope you choose to help if you can, but whatever you choose, please at least respond, with as much kindness as you can muster. You can make the world a better place.

Love,

Me

Addendum:

These essays are written from my own LDA perspective, but it occurred to me that since getting skilled at unraveling DNA puzzles I have helped a number of ‘normal’ adoptees – those who have always known – to find their biological families through DNA. DNA testing is still relatively new, and many adoptees wait to utilize it for one reason or another. I can’t speak for those adoptees’ experiences but I am confident that my plea for kindness goes just as much for them too. Once they embark on that path, they are looking for answers. Please help if you can.

I was raised in a family of three children. The eldest child, David, was our adoptive parents’ only biological child. Our a-parents adopted the middle child, my brother Marc, five years after David was born, and then me two years after that. David died in 2009, our adoptive mother died in 2010, and our adoptive father died in 2014. We discovered the fact of our adoption in 2015 and now, in March of 2021, Marc has died from non-small cell lung cancer at only 57 years old. Now I am the only person alive who lived in the home in which I grew up, and no one but me knows the fullness of our lives or the details of what we learned post-discovery. As I was writing this journal and discovering Marc’s truths along with my own I was careful to keep his story to myself, figuring that it was his to tell if he chose. Now that he is gone I realize that I am the only one who knows his story, and if it is to be told it is mine to tell. I believe I shall, as I am able, because it is a story worth telling. Five years is hardly enough to situate oneself in a new reality, and I grieve for his newfound mother who lost him, found him, then lost him again. But I am profoundly grateful that they had those five years.

I started this post in 2016, the first Mother’s Day post discovery. Each year since, as Mother’s Day approached I have reviewed this post, made some edits…. and never actually posted it. Now I am going to do that – post my 3 years old thoughts jumbled with edits each year. I don’t suppose it is important to tease out what came when. Enjoy.

I am delighted by my mother. She is smart and sweet and a joy to be around.

My mother who raised me is dead, and is long past these remembrances, but I like to think that over the years I celebrated her and was joyful with her, every day but especially on her birthday and on Mother’s Day. I wish I could remember all the components of the ‘Atomic Cake’ our local bakery made that she loved on these special occasions. It was a strange mish-mosh of different types of cakes, whipped cream, pistachios, different kinds of fruit including maraschino cherries on the top, and other assorted things that I cannot recall. Sometimes instead I’d make her a German Chocolate cake in all its pecan coconut goodness.

I miss the simple pleasure of a lifetime’s knowledge of the little joys I could echo for my mother today…  but here it is Mother’s Day and I want to say to my biological mother: I feel, at least, the currents of our genetic ties move in me. I have only known you, consciously, for half a year (a year and a half, two years and a half, three years and a half) but it’s Mother’s Day and you’re my mother and I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate that. Truly celebrate it, even though I am only still learning all the little joys I can utilize and give you what little happiness they can! Because I am so much like you, and the ways I am like you make me happy and relieved. (I don’t think anyone who isn’t an LDA can even begin to grasp what that means.)

So I go to the store and I look at the cards and they talk about things that don’t work in my particular situation. I feel a pang of loss for the mother that raised me, accompanied now by a residual sting of deceit. Then I feel a pang of loss for the time when I didn’t know about the deceit. Ah, ignorance is bliss, is it not? No, not really… but it is at least a place one can reminisce about. Not ignorance about the reality of my adoption, but ignorance about the fact that I was deceived by people I trusted implicitly.

But back to the cards. Greeting cards have not generally worked for me. My adoptive father and I had what could be graciously described as a challenging relationship, so every year on Father’s Day I struggled to find a card that wasn’t entirely hypocritical or just plain inaccurate. But my adoptive mother and I enjoyed a good and close bond, one that pains me to recollect in the new perspective that underpinning our good relationship was an essential lie.

I choose a card for my biological mother that has a minimal inscription, and it strikes me that I often chose such a card for my adoptive father. But the feelings beneath the choice could not be more different. In my adoptive father’s case, hell to the NO he was not a guiding, supportive figure in my life. In my biological mother’s case, we have only just met.

We are years now beyond ‘only just met’ and of course neither of us can insert memories/guidance/support in the years we lost. But we have grown together, or perhaps simply grown to accept the bond between us as a simple indelible truth.

I have found an odd yearning – I wish the mother that raised me could know the mother that gave birth to me. I see us together in some fantasy plane – simply joined, layers of an atomic cake that might seem odd, but somehow  together form a delightful whole.

Out of the blue, an acquaintance told me a story today about his companion, who recently discovered via DNA test that the man who raised her was not her father. Even with DNA results her mother continued to deny the truth until she finally broke down and admitted that she’d had an affair with her husband’s brother. This is not a person I am close enough to to have confided my story – it was just relayed in the spirit of ‘check out this bizarre and hysterical story.’ As it turned out, his companion’s biological father was the adoptive brother of the man who raised her – possibly in a similar scenario where the two brothers were half-siblings. He made some effort to explain but it seemed he wasn’t clear on the details himself and anyway by then my stomach was in a knot. I asked him if she had anyone she could talk to about it, and described the Facebook LDA group as something available to her should she be interested. He said, ‘No, that’s ok, she’s fine with it.’ Maybe she is.

I am a person who loves solving puzzles. For obvious reasons, my current favorite sort of puzzle is utilizing DNA results and research to untangle questions about my (or anyone-I-might-be-helping’s) family tree. I write this as a foreword to this post as justification for my poking my nose where it probably does not belong.

In very early 2017, an extremely close match appeared in the DNA matches of myself, my mother, and my half-brother. Further investigation of shared matches indicated that the link was along my mother’s father’s line. This person appeared as a 1st cousin to my mother and a 2nd cousin to my half-brother and me. For those of you unfamiliar with DNA matches, that is extremely rare. I wrote earlier that I successfully (though, as it turned out, unnecessarily) triangulated the identity of my father from a 1st cousin match. It’s not that hard when the matches are that close.

The match’s family name was simply nowhere on any family tree associated to me, and moreover had a high percentage of a nationality that no one in my line possesses.

I immediately assumed that the match was an LDA (or about to be), but on further research I have come to the conclusion that the match’s father was the child of his mother (who is 100% the nationality that does not show up in my family genetics) and my maternal grandfather. Which would make the match’s father and my mother half-siblings.

I wrote earlier that I think people harboring uncomfortable secrets that might be revealed by DNA ought to reveal the truth before DNA outs them, but what if that truth is generations ago? Is it wrong to reach out to this 77 year old man and offer him the opportunity to know his half-siblings and other family? I vacillate between wanting to solve the puzzle and expose the truth, and worrying that this truth might be hurtful. I have little patience these days for the people harboring the lies, but what of the poor unsuspecting? What makes this situation particularly worrying is that I am likely about to create a new LD-. Not adopted, but quite probably a person who will have to grapple with the knowledge that the man who raised him was not his biological father after all.

I will likely send the polite, benign letter that I have composed to this gentleman, my probable uncle, but it will not be without worry.

The process of adoption involves the legal transfer of the guardianship of a minor child. In the United States, part of the formalization of the legal adoption is the creation of an ‘Amended Birth Certificate,’ or ABC, which is an official, certified document that shows the adoptive parents as the parents of the adopted child. The original birth certificate, or OBC, which shows the name of the biological mother and in some cases the biological father of the child, and all documentation from the adoption is then sealed by the court. In many cases this document is the only link an adopted person has to their biological family.

By the 1940s and 1950s, most states had adopted the practice of sealing adoption records from the public, largely in an effort to protect the adoptive family from the stigma of illegitimacy, which in many states was physically stamped on the birth certificates (Bastard Nation, “The History of Sealed Adoption Records in the United States.”).

As of this writing, only 9 states have changed their laws to allow the adult adoptee open, unrestricted access to their own original birth certificate. 19 states allow partial or restricted access, usually in the form of a “veto clause” whereby the biological parent(s) have the option to redact their names from the document and maintain their anonymity. In the remaining 22 states an adult adoptee has no access to their own information (American Adoption Congress).

Access to the original birth certificate is a basic human right. This right was formally described in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was signed on November 20, 1989 and effective September 2, 1990 (Wikipedia). The document specifically acknowledges in Articles 7 – 10 the right of the child to their identity, name, nationality, and family, and further admonishes states to restore any of these of which the child was deprived (Wikisource). Even though the United States was participatory in the drafting of the document, it is one of only three countries, including Somalia and Sudan, that have refused to ratify it. In the case of the U.S., this refusal is due to the restriction against life sentences and the death penalty for children, and because it would require a massive revision of currently accepted adoption practices in the U.S. (Musings of the Lame “United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.”). Nonetheless, the document proves that the right to one’s true identity and heritage is acknowledged nearly universally as a basic human right.

As our understanding of the genetic influence on certain diseases grows, it has become increasingly important to know and consider these factors in the course of health management. Family medical history is routinely gathered by healthcare providers. Even before the genetic markers were identified, the medical community has long acknowledged that certain diseases tend to run in families, and the presence of them in a patient’s family tree would warrant monitoring and testing with the understanding that early detection leads to better outcomes. Adoptees without access to their original birth certificate are disadvantaged by being unable to discover vital information about their genetic heritage.

The birth certificate is a vital document that is used for identification for a variety of purposes, including applying for a drivers’ license, a passport, and even some jobs. Fortunately, the Amended Birth Certificate is generally accepted for these uses, being indistinguishable from the Original Birth Certificate. However, since 9-11 the Homeland Security Act’s requirements for using a birth certificate as proof of U.S. Citizenship for passport applications include that the birth certificate must be signed by the registrar within one year after birth. For many adoptees, their adoption was not finalized until after that time and therefore their Amended Birth Certificate would not be valid for that purpose (Musings of the Lame “Adoptee Rights and Access to Their Original Birth Certificates.”).

Changing state legislation to allow adult adoptees access to their original birth certificate is notoriously difficult. Representative Sara Feigenholz of Illinois’ 12^th District first introduced this legislation in 1997. Fourteen years later, in 2011, HB5428 finally passed into law. Illinois is one of the states to have restricted access. The law allows birth parents to formally redact their name from the original birth certificate, and it also creates a medical information registry where family medical information can be shared anonymously. Such provisions are vehemently opposed by many adoptee rights groups, but have proven to make OBC access legislation more palatable to some legislators. The key opponents to open records legislation are representatives of the adoption industry. The arguments against open access fall into three basic categories:

1. Privacy of the biological mother. However, no evidence has ever been uncovered of a relinquishing mother being promised (or expecting) anonymity. The act of relinquishing a baby is generally due to economic or social pressures, not because the mother never wishes to have any contact with her child. In the state of Illinois, for example, of the 14,871 original birth certificates issued since the law was enacted in 2011, only 84 were issued with the identifying information removed – less than one percent (Feigenholz).
2. Negative impact on the willingness of mothers to relinquish their babies to adoption. As indicated by the facts in point 1, mothers do not expect or want to be forever separated from their children. In fact, the open adoption practices that are common today are shown to make the idea of relinquishment more appealing, where a mother can continue to have reports and pictures of – if not contact with – their relinquished child. This is often used as a selling point to encourage women to relinquish their babies.
3. An increase in abortion rate, due to women being unwilling to relinquish if they cannot be assured anonymity. Not only is this not borne out by the facts as detailed in numbers 1 and 2, in states where the OBC access has been granted the abortion rate has continued on the same downward trend it has been on since the 1980s (Musings of the Lame “Debunking OBC Access Myths and Fears.”).

As is often the case with coordinated resistance to certain kinds of legislation, corporate interests seem to be the driving force influencing legislators. Adoption is a multi-billion-dollar industry and their ‘customers’ – the adoptive parents – have the most reason to desire sealed records. They may fear interference by the biological family, desire a cleaner ‘break’ that allows them to start fresh with their newly formed family, and/or they may feel anxious about potential changes in their relationship with their adopted child if a successful search is initiated. On their behalf, powerful lobbying groups such as the National Council for Adoption pressure legislators to leave sealed records laws intact (Bastard Nation “Sealed Records and Adoption Reform: An Historical Perspective.”).

Some states attempt to resolve the situation with Confidential Intermediaries. These are given access to some, or all, of the adoption records, and when employed by any member of the adoption triad (birth family, adoptee, adoptive family) they can instigate a search for the desired party. If the party is found, the Confidential Intermediary instigates non-identifying communication between the parties, reading and redacting their correspondence as they deem appropriate, until such time as all parties agree to reveal identifying information. Unfortunately, in practice this arrangement is less than satisfactory. The process is very time consuming and dependent on the skills of the CI. In some states this is a paid service, and its cost can be prohibitive. Ultimately, it does a disservice to the idea that adults should be free to conduct their own affairs. As with every other kind of adult contact, if there is unwanted behavior there are stalking and harassment laws in place to protect an objecting party.

Altered Birth Certificates and sealed adoption records were contrivances to protect the adoptee and their adoptive family from the social stigmas of the early- to mid-20^th century surrounding unmarried mothers and their so-called ‘bastard’ children, who at that time were viewed as shameful and morally unfit, if not assumed to be mentally defective. Moreover, they allowed an infertile couple to build a family and pretend it was natural. In some cases, the adopting couple would go to such extremes as faking the wife’s pregnancy or moving to a new town where the truth of their adopted child was unknown. These laws did not take into consideration the rights of the adoptee, either in childhood or in adulthood.

As is appropriate, many choices are made for minor children, adoptees or not. It would appear that only the choice to adopt creates an immutable condition where the child never grows into a set of full adult rights. Even relinquishment does not engender this condition, because if a relinquished person is never adopted, their records are never sealed. It is only the choice to adopt that renders the adoptee forever a non-adult in the eyes of the government. There does not seem to be any compelling interest for the government to keep secret any records pertaining to an adult person that are desired. Indeed, it seems inarguable that it is in the state’s interest to promote the health, well-being, and basic human rights of its constituents. It is on these grounds that I argue that all states have a duty to allow unfettered access to the original birth certificates for any adoptee who requests it.

An Examination of the Late Discovery Adoptee Experience

The majority of adoptees are informed of their adoption in childhood. Many adoptive parents tell their adopted children in age-appropriate ways from very early childhood. “Late Discovery Adoptee” (commonly referred to as LDA) is a term used to refer to adopted individuals who did not discover their adoptee status until they were at least in their late teens or early adulthood. In some cases, the discovery did not happen until middle age or even beyond.

The LDA community is not well researched or understood. Discovering an adoption truth in adulthood is a jarring experience that can lead to debilitating depression, loss of identity, anger, and trust issues. It can disrupt existing relationships. It can occupy a disproportionate amount of focus and energy, leaving the individual with inadequate resources for their normal life’s pursuits. Many LDAs feel that their life has been entirely upended.

Late Discovery by its very nature means simultaneously discovering that people who were deeply trusted had been lying. In some cases they were lying by omission, but in others they were outright lying in response to direct questions from those who for whatever reason suspected they might have been adopted. In many (if not most) cases it is discovered that there was a far-reaching web of individuals that were aware of the adoption but agreed to or were coerced into maintaining the secret. The LDA can feel that they are the butt of a cruel joke, or the victim of a vast conspiracy. In some cases the adoptive parents are dead when the discovery is made, leaving the LDA with no good path for resolution.

Late Discovery means instantly learning about and then grappling with society’s expectations for adoptees, and even internally challenging those narratives that have been absorbed over a lifetime. In the midst of discovering and processing the shocking facts, the LDA must also respond to the reactions of the people in whom they confide. Oftentimes these reactions include some manner of defending the adoptive parents and adoption in general – for example, comments such as, “Your adoptive parents were your real parents. They didn’t tell you because they loved you and were trying to protect you.” This kind of commentary, while usually given in a spirit of kindness, is often hurtful and devaluing of the LDA’s experience, which leads to feelings of isolation.

Most adoptees feel some level of anxiety when making the decision to seek out their biological family. In LDAs this anxiety is often compounded, especially if the discovery happens later in life. The older the adoptee is the more likely it becomes that their biological parents are already dead. They may worry that if their adoption occurred many decades ago they would be unwelcome intrusions in the lives of their biological family. It may be difficult to discuss with their existing family. Their children may have varying reactions to the fact that they suddenly have ‘new’ grandparents. They may have adoptive siblings who also discovered their adoption at the same time, and everyone needs to absorb that they are not genetically related, that there are multiple sets of biological parents involved, and that the parents you thought you shared were not your biological parents at all.

In the course of writing this paper I conducted an informal survey that I offered to members of the closed LDA Facebook group of which I am a member. I have compiled their complete responses as an appendix. There were 35 responses. The age of discovery range of the respondents was 17 to 60. The average age of discovery was 38.8. The range of length of time since discovery of the respondents was 4 months to 40 years. The average length of time since discovery was 11 years. Of the 35 respondents, 34 have discovered that there was a wider web of individuals (beyond adoptive parents and immediate family) who were aware of their adoption and had been keeping the secret.

Here are a few excerpts from their responses to the question, “How did you feel when you discovered?”

• Lost, betrayed, hurt, alone. No words really to describe it. My parents have passed so I cannot question them. It’s just a really weird feeling.
• It was a seismic shift in my reality. I questioned who I was at my core. Every time I looked in the mirror, it was as though I saw a stranger’s reflection.
• Ashamed, sad, angry and a tiny bit relieved.
• Isolated, angry, resentful, sad, emotional, aggressive.
• Betrayed, numb, confused, lost, angry, bitter.
• FAKE! I suffer with trying to understand who I am. Betrayal, unworthy, anger, not good enough

Here are a few excerpts from their responses to the question, “Do you have anything you would like to say about being an LDA?”

• It’s hard. the feelings of betrayal of trust, the crisis of identity you struggle with, the way it colors every part of your life and relationships, the lies you remember, even if just by omission, the fact I gave false medical info my whole life and they LET ME! how people who are not LDA try to tell me how to feel, how to react, and that I was just being protected. You can protect a child from the hard truths of their past, and STILL tell them they were adopted! geez. lol
• I understand why it was so important to my mother. There was a stigma. But I would have loved to be able to thank my parents for choosing me.
• It’s a horrible, traumatic discovery that I don’t think I will ever fully recover from.
• Very difficult experience, roller coaster.
• It is abuse. It is criminal.
• It’s changed me. I have zero tolerance for dishonesty, I will only have serious conversations in person, I want every chance I can to assess what they are saying. I miss the closeness I had with my family pre-discovery but I am glad I know the truth. I’ve met my bio Dad Matthew & 2 sisters 1 brother.
• It has been earth shattering and no one should have to endure it. It rattled my basic sense of trust in people. After everything broke down, I’ve had to rebuild everything; identity, relationships, self-care, beliefs.

Overwhelming anecdotal evidence points to the LDA experience being acutely painful and confusing. In some ways the LDA has similar emotions to a typical adoptee, but their experience of these emotions is temporally compressed and much more intense. They have compounding threads of deception and betrayal, loss and grief that a typical adoptee does not experience, or experiences in a more abstract way over the course of their lifetime. Further study and the development of appropriate therapeutic models for the LDA community is warranted. It is quite possible that our society is on the cusp of a tremendous surge in the population of the LDA community, that we, as a society, are currently ill-equipped to support. There are two main reasons I believe a surge in the LDA population is imminent: the ‘Baby Scoop Era’ and the preponderance of DNA testing.

In the “Baby Scoop Era,” a period of time roughly defined as the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, an estimated 4 million babies were placed for adoption worldwide, with an estimated 2 million in the 1960s alone (Wikipedia). The prevailing harsh social condemnation of unwed mothers and their so-called ‘bastard’ babies coupled with a lack of sex education and available birth control led to an unprecedented number of babies being relinquished to adoption. Young women by the score were shunted off to maternity homes, often in cities far from their homes, to live out their pregnancies and deliver their babies in secrecy and relative anonymity. Concurrently, the post-WWII social fashion toward large families as an expression of patriotism and status led to an unprecedented demand for those babies (Fessler). The dual shame of illegitimacy and infertility was hidden by the practice of creating an Altered Birth Certificate upon adoption of the infant, and having the original records hidden and sealed under court order.

Because of the stigmas associated with illegitimacy and the prevailing notion of giving the baby a ‘clean slate,’ it can be surmised that a higher percentage of adoptive parents in the Baby Scoop Era chose to keep secret the adoption of their child – even from the adoptee themselves – than adoptive parents before or after this era. Given that the average age of adoptive parents is between 35 and 55, BSE adoptive parents would be approximately in their 80s and 90s in 2017. In other words, toward the ends of their lives. The death of an adoptive parent is often the precipitating event in the LDA’s discovery, whether it be a relative who feels relieved of the need for silence with the death of the adoptive parent, or the discovery of hidden paperwork or clues among the deceased adoptive parent’s belongings.

Additionally, there is the current, heavily promoted fashion of recreational DNA testing, which can inadvertently reveal that a person’s genetic makeup is radically different than what they were told, and can also lead them to unexpected genetic relatives.

Given these factors, it seems that the LDA population is likely to grow exponentially in the next two decades. I have not yet identified any organized effort to study and support this community. A steady stream of members finds and joins the private LDA group on Facebook, and they almost to a one arrive bewildered and shaken to their core with no idea where to turn for help.

After 6 months post-discovery I identified my own need for counseling support, and was unable to find any local therapists who had even heard of the category, let alone had any idea how to address it. My search encompassed all of Chicagoland – a major metropolitan area. The stock answer was, “They specialize in adoption issues.” But LDAs should not be lumped into the general adoptee population. From the moment of discovery, many LDAs enter into a condition of acute crisis that has a far-reaching impact on their lives and well-being. Their experience has some similarities to that of a typical adoptee, but in critical ways it is entirely different. The dearth of readily available information about their situation is distressing. Even within the traditional adoption support communities, the LDA is in a tiny minority and therefore something of a curiosity, rather than a place the LDA can find desperately needed support and guidance.

It is my sincere hope that by exploring the LDA experience I might inspire further study, which would hopefully lead to much-needed support for this very vulnerable population.

Works Cited
“Baby Scoop Era.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Scoop_Era. Accessed 4/22/2017
Fessler, Ann. The Girls Who Went Away, Penguin Books, 2006

One of the things, by definition, that the LDA never had to cope with was the practice of ‘Gotcha Day.’ In the adoption world, this is the day the adoptive parents celebrate the arrival of their adopted child. It is analogous to their birthday though I understand it is in addition to as opposed to instead of. The more I hear about this practice the more it disturbs me, for reasons that dovetail with my ongoing battle with The Narrative. I can only assume that this is the adoptive parents’ conscious effort to add more ‘special’ to their adopted child’s existence. For example, if they had biological children, the adopted child is meant to feel extra special since they get a birthday and  a ‘Gotcha Day.’

To me it feels forced. It feels like the adoptive parents demanding that the event of being adopted by them is a cause of celebration. Even the word ‘Gotcha’ denotes a level of possession I find irritating. We celebrate many non-natural events such as wedding anniversaries, but the missing factor here is consent. A wedding anniversary is two people celebrating the day they chose to form a marital union. The very essence of the celebration is the choice. Indeed some couples renew their marital vows in that same spirit.

Certainly in the case of infant adoption there was no consent on the part of the adoptee – and for that matter no ‘choice’ even on the part of adoptive parents. And at least for Baby Scoop Era babies, no choice on the part of the biological mother, either. It seems to me that the process generally involved the adoption agencies pairing adoptive parents and babies largely by ethnicity in an effort to allow them to lie to their adopted children and society at large. But even in this more enlightened age, with the promises of ‘open adoption’ the ‘Gotcha’ day is the day that you were forever separated from your biological kin, and in some cases your country and ethnicity. I can’t imagine that being a cause for celebration to the adoptee.

I’ve mentioned before my discomfort with the 11 weeks between my birth and placement in my adoptive home. I have spent a significant amount of energy chastising myself for that obsession. I tell myself that perhaps my fanciful adult mind is creating problems where none exist, assuming cognizance and motivation where there actually is only the need to be fed and to sleep as slow days foster the emergence of a consciousness. Perhaps.

I have been analyzing how each time in my life I have encountered a lack of support I respond with deeply hurt feelings and a grim acceptance, masked over with the appearance of indifference.  How difficult it is for me to even ask for help in the first place, and how bad it hurts if it is denied. How hard it is for me to tell someone they have hurt me – because I am afraid to face the additional, often greater hurt if they devalue my pain or don’t accept its legitimacy – or simply don’t care if they hurt me in the first place.

I experienced significant breaches of trust in my childhood, and the ensuing significant needs for protection and support went unmet. I sorted through the fallout from those experiences as an adult and felt they were largely resolved, but now it feels like everything has to be re-sorted with this new understanding of my beginnings. Emotional constructs formed in my gestation and immediate after-birth circumstances surely informed my reaction to experiences I had and surely continue to inform my experiences and reactions today. That infant-me, denied the one thing every iota of my being was programmed to require still exists in my psyche.

And what possibilities exist for my experience in those 11 weeks? Was I alone in a nursery, cared for by a series of nurses, left to cry? Was I lovingly cared for by a foster mother? Did I bond with my foster mother only to be removed from that nascent bond? How can I trust anyone, if either scenario was the beginning of my life? Have I ever really trusted anyone? Am I able to trust at all?

So here I am, a year passed. Angry toward the society and systems that caused this state of affairs – for myself and for my mother. I feel pity for her and my father… teenagers, leaves spun in the gale force of society’s expectations for how they were to resolve the problem of my existence, yet still a little angry that they did not resist. Angry and embarrassed that my existence itself was a problem. Angry that it was acceptable to take a newborn baby away from her mother and store her like so much merchandise for 11 weeks. Angry that no one stood up for my right to know the truth about myself.

I want to say to the world: I was hurt. That hurt me. That still hurts me today. That hurt me even before I knew what it was that was hurting me. But sadly I think the response from most of the world is (some combination of): It doesn’t really hurt you. It was really good for you, it was what was best for you. You were lucky to be chosen. You are an ungrateful wretch. 

Ouch. Is it any wonder we LDAs cling to one another?