Tag Archives: flipthescript

As we close out November — National Adoption Awareness Month — I’ve turned this space over to adoptees, sharing a small portion of the highly successful #flipthescript movement. I can see that many, MANY of you are reading. But few of you are commenting, so I can’t quite tell how these posts are being received. I hope it’s with the spirit intended — to be helpful to all involved in adoption by adding in the less-often heard voice of the adopted person.

Some believe information is power and some believe ignorance is bliss. I suppose if you fall in the camp of the former, you’ve taken these last few #flipthescript posts for what they are — cautionary tales of how adoptions can feel to the adopted person (the guest posters have not generalized their experiences to all adopted people). And if you fall into the camp of the latter, you may feel provoked by these posts, worried that you’re participating in a social institution that’s not as glowy as you’d previously thought.

I think it’s healthy to periodically examine what we “know” to be true. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, when we know better we do better. A good reason to be open to alternative or uncomfortable points of view.

As you’ll see from today’s guest poster, it’s important for adoptees who have felt silenced for decades to raise their voices and be heard, if only to take back their one story.

Image: Tracy Hammond

Today’s #flipthescripter is JoAnne Bennett. JoAnne has spent the last 21 years trying to piece together an adoption journey that has too many twists and turns to count. Her blessings, on the other hand, include having raised three wonderful now-adult daughters alongside her supportive husband of almost 40 years. You can find her at her blog, Stories By JoAnne Bennett.

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I struggle to give myself permission to say out loud that I am angry. It’s not because I am supposed to be nice, or that I always try to find the good in everything. The truth is that this painful story is about my beginnings, and it’s messed up and wrong. Until now, all that once-little-girl in me could do was cry. Over the years, though, mad has replaced sad, and I no longer want to feel invisible and insignificant as an adoptee. I’m flipping the script.

Now that all the players in my under-the-table adoption placement are dead, I feel safe to say without fear of some kind of backlash, I’ve had to pay dearly for the losses; the roles each of you played underhandedly in my bogus adoption for whatever inexplicable reason that is still murky but was obviously criminal.

Whenever I share with others my disturbing story about my not-so-above-board adoption involving a dishonest judge and a conniving delivery doctor (and most likely other players as well) often I hear the words, “Someone profited from your adoption.”

Defensively, I say, “Well, it certainly was not me!” My adopting parents were in the process of adopting another newborn only two months older than me. His adoption appears not quite as sketchy as mine, but both of us had waivers typed slightly different and signed by the judge after-the-fact (fishy), curiously stating that it was not necessary to check the adoptive home we were being placed in.

The reason given for this legal short cut? Both my non-biological brother and I were supposed to be separately related by blood to someone in our adoptive family.

That is far from the truth.

People I’ve spoken with in the courts of this jurisdiction later said they have never seen anything like these two waivers, filed in the 1950s. My file is empty except for this mysterious waiver, according to the State of Nevada.

Many who hear my story think, Oh, my, this must have been a desperate young couple, not able to conceive a baby, for professionals to put their careers on the line to get them a baby at any cost.

Again, that was far from the truth. My adoptive parents already had a biological son and, in fact, were not emotionally fit to raise any children. I’ve always wondered, Did the judge and delivery doctor know what was the deep dark secret that would have prevented these adopters from parenting me had they obeyed the law?

Disappointingly, another professional did know that secret.

Years ago, I spoke with my childhood pediatrician and he said, almost proudly “I knew your adoptive father was an alcoholic. I had absolutely nothing to do with your adoption!”

But he didn’t stop it, even knowing the truth, that my adoptive father had a serious drinking problem and rage issues. The last time I saw my adoptive father was when I was 6. The police were taking him away on one dark, scary night for domestic violence fueled by his alcoholism. It was a terrifying night for a little girl who already felt sad and confused by the constant turmoil in our family. My verbally and emotionally abusive adoptive mother suffered from serious mental health issues, too.

In recent years, when I was searching for my birth father, I sent letters to many of the old-timers who still lived in the small mining town where I was conceived. I enclosed my phone number saying it was okay to call collect if they might have some information about his identity. I heard back from some of the kindest individuals; only one bitter woman called me collect.

She started our phone conversation by saying, “Now I know what that money your mother borrowed was for and she never repaid me!” Her insinuation was that she’d been the one who paid the hospital bills from my birth, which was downright insulting but probably not far from the truth. My birth mother was married to a man other than my birth father and already had three older children. She was in a bind in more ways than one.

When I hear sirens even today, sometimes for a quick second it triggers that dark, scary night when I was 6 and my abusive alcoholic adoptive father was taken away forever.

I am not about a pity-party for myself, but rather I want to be a voice for changing mind-sets. I believe there are many people still wearing blinders, much like my childhood pediatrician. As a society, who are we trying to fool, and why won’t we look behind the veils of secrecy? With adoption being a lucrative multi-billion dollar business, I am sure it wouldn’t be far from the truth to suggest there are many individuals and agencies still profiting off adoption.

The doctor who delivered me decided after he retired he would talk with me on the phone. Of course, he was evasive in answering any of my questions, no matter how non-threateningly I tried to present them. It’s what he said at the end of our brief conversation that left me speechless with anger. This man, who had played a major role in putting me in harm’s way as a newborn for his own personal gain, had the gall to ask me, “Have you had a good life?”

I can’t tell you how many times we adoptees have heard that being adopted is supposed to be a magic cure for being conceived in less-than-perfect circumstances. My hope is that even those who have no connection to adoption will start thinking about the consequences of people in power making decisions for the defenseless. Please understand that what happened to me still can and does happen now.

Flip the script and listen to us adoptees – the ones whose voices have been silenced by the powerful for decades. It’s time we are heard.

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JoAnne’s passions are writing and making a difference in young people’s lives. She contributed a chapter to the new book Dear Wonderful You, written by adult adoptees for adopted and fostered youth, and she’s proud to have an essay in an upcoming anthology, The Adoptee Survival Guide. Painfully transparent through her words, as an author her heartfelt desire is to reach others whose voices have been silenced by abuse and adoption issues.

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Thank you, dear readers, for opening yourself to these stories, for completing the #flipthescript circuit simply by listening.

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#flipthescript 3: Who is Most Qualified to Talk about the Experience of Adoption?

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See my last two #flipthescript posts for background on the phenomenon of the groundswell of adoptee voices emerging above the din during National Adoption Awareness Month.

Image: Tracy Hammond

As we close out November, I’m turning this space over to adoptees. You may not agree with everything that is said in these #flipthescript posts. You may even find parts of these posts hard to read. But I believe there is value in listening, in being willing to see a viewpoint different from your own.

Today’s #flipthescripter is Lucy Sheen. Made in Hong Kong and exported to the UK as a transracial adoptee, Lucy (nee
周麗端, Chau Lai-Tuenis) a dyslexic actor, published writer, filmmaker, trainer and transracial adoptee advocate. She blogs and loves Dim sum, Yorkshire puddings and tea.

Though Lucy speaks as a transracial adoptee, her experiences may be applicable, as well, to any transfamilied adoptee (which accounts for a vast majority of adoptees).

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What does Adoption Week in the UK mean to me, a transracial adoptee? Frankly, until this year, very little. For starters it’s just a week – wow, an entire week, we really pushed the boat out on this one didn’t we (read with a hint of sarcasm).

Across the pond our US cousins devote an entire month. “Ah, well,” I hear you say, “the US is a bigger country so it’s only natural they would devote more time.”

Big or small, adoption deserves more than just a paltry week or a month. It’s like asking me as a British East Asian to join in celebrations to mark the end of the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860). Or as a British East Asian Artist to support the odious and hideous theatre and media practice of Yellowface.

As an adoptee I’ve always felt (until this year) that I was being asked to join and celebrate a series of decisions and an extreme intervention that culturally, linguistically and racially displaced me. An act that stripped me of my true identity, that imprisoned me into a society and culture that made it abundantly clear they were not interested me or people who looked like me. The decisions surrounding my transracial adoption have had a life-long effect. The true legacy of adoption is the gift that keeps on giving. Its bequest goes far beyond the initial court orders. It is not something that can be camouflaged (for long). And it is not something that many in society want to hear about.

So what’s changed?

#flipthescript – that’s what has changed. The positive power of social media has taken hold, empowered, connected and united adoptees the world over to stand up and have their say.

After all who is most qualified to talk of the experience of adoption?
An academic, a theorist, a psychologist, a therapist, a childcare expert, a social worker?

Or would it make more common sense to tap into the knowledge, experience and unique insight that an adult adoptee has?

For me it’s a no-brainer, but here in the UK, unless you’re a trained social worker it’s very difficult to get onto such platforms or into the institutions and organisations that would benefit from hearing directly from the horse’s mouth. Of course there are always ways of getting around such administrative stumbling blocks and dead ends, but then the will has to be there, doesn’t it? Said institutions, organisations and not-for-profits have to value the words and experience of the adult adoptee. In my humble opinion not enough organisations even think about the adoptee beyond the childhood years. Then there are those adoptees for whom, I think the pain and trauma of actually accepting and taking on board what adoption truly means instead “wage war” with the adoptees who speak out.

So this year seeing the hashtag #flipthescript on twitter, facebook, google+, attached to videos, pictures and blogs was uplifting. I leave you with the film that Bryan Tucker made for the book Dear Wonderful You . . .

Each and every one of the authors is testament that as adoptees, they #flipthescript each day, every time they write, they speak, they breathe.

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Lucy Sheen contributed a chapter to the first volume of Adoption Therapy. I highly recommend this book to adoptive parents, psychotherapists, and adoption professionals (and I wrote the foreword to it).

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#flipthescript 2: Whose Script? Whose Voice?

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See my last post, #flipthescript 1, for background on the phenomenon of the groundswell of adoptee voices emerging above the din during National Adoption Awareness Month.

Image: Tracy Hammond

Today’s #flipthescripter is Jodi Haywood. Jodi is an international adoptee raised in a mostly-closed “relative adoption,” and a former delivery-truck-driver-turned-full-time author. When she’s not writing, researching, or studying adoption psychology, she’s training for marathons or just hanging out with her family.

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I’m sitting here listening to some music for inspiration: Extreme’s “III Sides To Every Story.” Not a coincidence.

According to adoption literature, there are three sides to the adoption “triad” — the adoptee, the birth or natural mother, and the adoptive mother or parents. The majority of adoption propaganda, however, is in favor of the adoptive parents, suggesting an imbalance of power. Advertisements show a smiling, beautiful, successful couple receiving the baby they’ve longed for, prayed for, and yes, in my view, paid for.

You won’t see what’s behind the photo: the fear and anxiety inside the tiny baby’s still-developing brain, wondering what happened to the mother who nurtured her for nine months, not understanding the relationship has been severed at the roots, or that these strangers expect to have the same relationship with her.

You won’t see the confusion in her young mind as she begins to understand that most mothers don’t give their babies up for adoption, most children don’t come to their families through an agency, and asking her friends where their parents “got” them can lead to humiliation and possibly the end of a friendship.

You won’t see her shame as she realizes the other side of having been “chosen” — that somebody else rejected or abandoned her first, leading her to wonder who will abandon her next. If she will ever be good enough for anyone to keep.

You won’t see the betrayal she feels if she doesn’t discover she’s adopted until she’s a teenager. Or in her 20s, or 30s, or maybe not until after her adoptive parents are dead and she is left to take her anger out on ghosts.

Maybe the advertisement shows the couple adopting a toddler, who has not only formed an attachment to her mother – and extended family – but is old enough to remember them and, once the photo is taken and the smiling masks come off, stubbornly refuses to call these strangers Mom or Dad.

If you only hear the adopters’ side, you’ll hear that she is their child, she is happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. The nice couple who adopted me when I was 3 said the very same things.

To a psychiatrist.

On my sixth birthday.

They took me to a psychiatrist because I wasn’t “bonding” with them. Because I often “switched off” and went into a “fantasy world” where they could not reach me. They were concerned that I “lacked empathy” and seemed restless, alternately flitting from one thing to another and concentrating on something so deeply that nothing and no one could get through to me.

They insisted it had nothing to do with my adoption or the family upheaval that led to it, even when the doctors suggested there might be a connection — very advanced thinking for that era.

They refused to allow me further visits with any psychiatrist or professional who tried to link my social anxieties or behavioral problems to growing up in an adoptive home.

They tried to force me to hold the mask in place and cooperate with their script: that I was fine, I was happy, I did not suffer from being adopted, I was grateful to them for taking me in when nobody else wanted me.

A year ago I read my mother’s script. My own mother, who had wanted to keep me, who asked the nice couple – who had begun adoption proceedings without her consent – to please return me to her. To consider some kind of shared custody arrangement, since my own father’s sister sought to adopt me.

By the time I’d discovered my mother’ side of the story, my adopting aunt — who had become my adoptive mother — was deceased and no longer writing any more of my script.

The smiling face drawn on the palm of the hand does not tell every side of the story. Like the tragic/comic theater masks, the back of the hand may be crying. Unfortunately, this is the side of adoption very few people see, or want to see.

The sight of an upraised hand, poised to strike, is a threatening gesture to those of us who have been “touched by adoption” in an abusive way. To us, celebrating adoption may mean celebrating abuse. Celebrating family separation, secrets, sealed birth records, and lies. Celebrating the lies and pretenses we have been forced to perpetuate.

Just because not every adoptee feels this way, doesn’t mean every adoptee doesn’t. And for those of us who do…

This is our side of the story. Our scripts, read in our voices.

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In addition to writing several young-adult novels, Jodi contributed to the Adoption Therapy anthology and the soon-to-be-published Adoptee Survival Guide, and is currently working on her chapter of the Adoption Therapy 2 project.

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Lavender Luz

Tag Archives: flipthescript

#flipthescript 4: Someone Profited From My Adoption But It Wasn’t Me

Other Posts in the #flipthescript Series:

#flipthescript 3: Who is Most Qualified to Talk about the Experience of Adoption?

Other Posts in the #flipthescript Series:

#flipthescript 2: Whose Script? Whose Voice?

Other Posts in the #flipthescript Series:

adoption, parenting, mindfulness, open adoption