Inspired
Aug 18, 2006 Adoption
I just got off the phone with Sharon Kaplan Roszia and I need to make an apology.
Deanna, I have to publicly apologize to you. I have been frustrated by some of your posts (on boards, on blogs) and last night I couldn’t figure out why I was getting so upset. Your situation is not mine and it has nothing to do with me so why was I getting so revved up about it? I realize that I’ve been projecting on to you and instead of seeing you making a decision for your family, I’ve been thinking about Jessica and about me and I’ve been coming at you with misplaced hurt. I’m sorry that I visited my frustrations on you. I’ve been a lousy advocate.
I feel so strongly that openness is what our kids deserve that I allow myself get angry when I see people throwing up barriers and I need to remember that most of us are doing the best we can. I know (and was reminded in this interview) that adoption professionals generally do a poor job of advocating for us — all members of the triad — and leave us to flounder around ourselves in the making of new families. I think my standards are sometimes unrealistically high for what I expect people to be able to take on emotionally. Instead of crabbing about adoptive parents, I ought to be crabbing about the adoption industry that tells us openness rocks and then abandons families once the papers (and the checks) are signed .
I really really really do want to encourage adoptive parents who have the possibility of openness to do some research as they make decisions about what right their child has to their first families. Since the support we get is often openness-ignorant, we’ll just need to build our own resources. We can do this like this:
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Tags: Madison, open adoption
Let it be known
Aug 17, 2006 Adoption
When I’m talking about openness in adoption I’m talking about domestic infant adoption. There is a huge discussion about openness in foster-to-adopt going on (the trend in public adoptions is also towards more openness) and I welcome discussion of it here by those in the know, however I don’t feel qualified to talk about it and so when I say “adoption,” I’m saying domestic infant adoption. When I’m talking about a first mom or a birth mom, I’m not talking about a woman whose parental rights were terminated for cause.
(That makes it sound simple but of course there are women who make adoption plans because their child will be taken from them and they choose to place “voluntarily” so they can have some measure of control over the outcome.)
I’ve got an interview to do in about 40 minutes about this very topic and just got an email response back from some other questions so there’s a lot whirling around in my head. What I can’t figure out is why I’m so damn sad thinking about this. I cried over an email I sent to KimKim and I cried talking about it with Brett over dinner.
More to come.
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Tags: wordpress
I’m just gonna let LisaV do the talking
Aug 17, 2006 Adoption
I do think there are times that it is emotionally or physically dangerous for a family to have contact with a birth family. BUT I think those same kinds of things would prohibit contact with a grandparent or aunt or uncle or anything else, not just first families. I am close to a case first hand. The child’s first mother says things that are damaging to the child and in front of the child.
I think many adoptive parents use “instability” as an excuse. To me every first mom is unstable at her time of placement- in some manner (financial, emotional, relationship) - but that may not be the story of her life. Yet some adoptive families take this intial instability and use it against a first mom. It seems ironic to me.
Yes yes yes! What she said, both paragraphs! (To see more of LisaV’s scintillating prose about all things including adoption you should go, of course, here.
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By the way
Aug 17, 2006 Blogging
For some reason I woke up this morning and had no email. This isn’t possible so I went and looked at my server and I see that all email is apparently bouncing back to people? I’m not sure but it looks like I’ve gotten notification that email sent via wordpress (comments and things) is bouncing so I’m assuming other stuff is, too. Please write me at dawnfriedman AT mac DOT com if you need to while I straighten this out. (That’s the address I use for work.)
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I couldn’t sleep last night
Aug 17, 2006 Adoption
I don’t know why really but I was getting myself all worked up about a blog post that isn’t mine, that has nothing to do with me or anyone I know. So I was awake and agitated by the substance of the post and then couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t figure out why I care so much.
Then I decided that it’s because it’s an issue of justice first and foremost for adoptees. And the reason it was upsetting me so much is that it’s injustice masked with love and that’s why it’s got me feeling so hopeless. It’s the “for your own good” type of adoption injustice that is most difficult to undo because it’s awfully hard to argue with people who are trying to protect their children.
So then I thought, I shouldn’t argue. I should stop arguing. Instead I’ll dig out some research and educated opinions from the professionals within the adoption community who have been specially focused on openness in the past twenty-odd years that it has become a central issue in adoption discussion. Because I have a hard time with preemptive protection (choosing little or no contact or very controlled contact with a first family based on what may seem to be valid but thus far unsubstantiated concerns). Of course, there are good reasons to limit or cut-off first family contact:
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