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
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.
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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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Other Posts in the #flipthescript Series:
- 1: Why Are Adoptees Doing It?
- 2: Whose Script? Whose Voice?
- 3: Who is Best Placed to Talk About the Adoption Experience?
- 4: Someone Profited From My Adoption But It Wasn’t Me
- 5: Adopters: Want Trust? Give Truth.
- 6: Adoptee Rights Begin at Birth
- 7: Hold On
- 8: Adoptees Are In Reunion Whether They’re Searching or Not
- 9: The Healing Power of Open Adoption
- 10: I Guessed My Birth Mother’s Name
- 11: Abuse to Adoption to Addiction to Affirmation
- 12: A 1970s Adoption Story
- 13: Adoptee Healing & Hope
- 14: Adoption & Eating Disorders
- 15: In Adoption & Suicide