Tag Archives: closed adoption

Infertility, Open Adoption

To the Woman Who Longs to Be a Mom and Who Says “I Want a Closed Adoption”

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Hello, 30something woman on baby forums and infertility groups. May I call you Jessica? You don’t know me, but I was once where you were. I had finally met the man of my dreams, the guy I wanted to build a life with, the father of my future children. I felt so lucky!

Then after a few years of near-unbearable amounts of physical and emotional pain and expense, it became clear we could not make a baby. No way, no how. End of story. Not gonna happen. So WRONG. So unfair. So unlucky.

It was the most horrible thing I’d ever been through. It almost broke me. I was so deeply hurt. Angry. Jealous. Lost. Devastated. I couldn’t take much more. I wanted to be a mom. Was that so wrong? People do this effortlessly — even accidentally! — all the dang time.

Prefer to listen? A version of this post is excerpted
in Episode 209 of Adoption: The Long View.

Adopting After Infertility

Eventually, we set foot on the path of adoption. Surely after all we’d been through, the gods would bless us with an easy path. Surely we deserved something simple and doable. After all that bad luck, things had to even out, right? Please god, just bring us a baby. We will be the best parents ever. I promise promise promise.

Continue reading To the Woman Who Longs to Be a Mom and Who Says “I Want a Closed Adoption” →
Birth parent, Podcast

Clemencia Deleon: Truth-Telling & Emotional Intelligence in a Kinship Adoption

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You tell a small lie or you keep the truth out of something, and your intention is to go back and tell the truth. But then you forget, or you get comfortable in that missing truth part, and it just gets bigger and grows.

And so it was this energy that was accumulating. Nobody was saying anything about until I was like,
“I can’t do this anymore. I have to tell him.”

— Clemencia Deleon, birth mom in a kinship adoption —

Imagine you are 18 years old and parenting a 4 month old boy, a path you don’t feel prepared for or supported in at all. You have an older half-brother; he and his wife have been struggling to conceive. You end up placing your baby with them in what is agreed to be an open adoption.

But in practice, it’s not open. Sure you have contact at family get-togethers. You get to see him. But years later, his parents have declined to tell him that he was adopted and that you are his birth mom. As he grows older, you are pressed to either stay complicit with this lie of omission, or spill the beans without their permission.

In this new podcast episode of Adoption: The Long View, Clemencia Deleon tells her story of a kinship adoption gone wrong, her quest for emotional intelligence over the years, her moment of truth in finding her voice, and lessons learned to share with you.

Continue reading Clemencia Deleon: Truth-Telling & Emotional Intelligence in a Kinship Adoption →
Birth parent, Guest Post

Wrong Way Adoption: The Back Story (Part 2)

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In Part 1, Clemencia Deleon began to tell about her wrong way adoption, a kinship placement that was supposed to be open. Despite expectations and agreements, it remained unknown to her son that the woman he lived with but didn’t call “mom” was, in fact, his biological mom.

That was an untenable situation. One way or another, a living lie will resolve — with intention or without it. And there will be fallout.

Here’s how things unfolded for Clemencia, her son Kobe, and his parents — her half-brother and his wife.

People in kinship adoptions need a map, too. Or they may go the wrong way.
Continue reading Wrong Way Adoption: The Back Story (Part 2) →