Adoption: Passion and Pain

If you are on my Facebook or know me personally you know that I am passionate about the topic of adoption.  I have the unique perspective of two points of view – as an adoptee & as a birth mother.  If you are a casual observer like a majority of the population, then you may know what adoption is but not realize all of the corruption and lies and other offenses in the adoption industry as a whole.

Superficially, adoption is a beautiful concept.  This concept is the general conception that couples unable to have children of their own “adopt” children of others who are unable to be parents – for whatever reason (voluntarily or forced to surrender a child for adoption).  If you’ve paid much attention to media, then you may also have heard about stories of reunions among adoptees & birth families.To the general population barely touched by adoption – this is what they know about adoption and it’s a beautiful thing.  However, this barely scratches the surface of adoption and everything involved with it including the widespread corruption.

This will be the beginning of a series of blog posts on adoption I’ve decided to include on my blog.  So, I am going to start at my beginning with my story.  It is only fair to give you my perspective to further your understanding of where I am coming from.

I am an adoptee.  My parents adopted me as an infant.  I have a younger brother who is also an adoptee (different birth family – whom he has found).   My parents are awesome, wonderful people.  I grew up in a wonderful home in a very comfortable life.  I had the opportunity to go on vacations and college and so forth.  I took years of music lessons (piano and flute) – grew up in a great school district, made great lifelong friends and so on.

However, there was something about my experience that just was not complete – and still is not.  I always felt like an alien from another planet.  I have found that many adoptees experience this feeling.  There is nothing that adoptive families do wrong – this is something engrained from the experience of being separated from birth families.  The event of separation registered in the subconscious.

I soon learned to become a “well-adjusted” adoptee and live my life in spite of this “alien” experience.

I decided with the support of my parents to try to find my birth family.  I started with traditional channels – the adoption agency.  They gave me a summary sheet with brief and vague info of my family.  For 15 years – every 5 years I checked back to see if there was anything new from my birth mother.  I received a total of 3 summary sheets from the agency – all with differing information including physical description, where she was from, and how old she was when she had me.

I discovered that the state of Texas Family Code gives adult adoptees the right to examine their files with the agency they were placed through – with last names, addresses, and phone numbers blacked out.  This is called “redacted” info.  This is also the only sure way to get non-conflicting information or mistakes due to interpretation by social worker completing the info summary sheets that the agency would rather give you.  Unless of course, the entire file is a lie – which happens more often than you might think.

The agency I was placed through was called Christian Haven when I was placed.  It is now known as High Plains Children’s Home.  This agency has refused me access to this file or redacted info.  They have refused to correct the differing info on my summary sheets and now refuse to even give out summary information because it might “enable a search.”  I am sorry, but that is NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!  You are responsible to state code and law.

So, when I learned that the agency had not registered me with the Voluntary Adoption Registry with the State of Texas (as they told me they had 8 years ago) – I registered with the state directly.  I have also asked the state to get involved to try to get the info that I am legally entitled to and being refused by the agency.  The agency is no longer involved in infant adoptions; but has other programs for children and receives money from the state for those.  So, they are still considered an “operating agency” and have not had to surrender the adoption files to the state.  If they were forced to do that, then I would have access to the redacted info.

After all the research and interviews I’ve done in the last 15-20 years that touch adoption in one way or another, it is my belief that the adoption agencies are not motivated by the sweet, feel good story that I began my blog post with that is the general concept of adoption that people believe.  I believe that adoption agencies including HPCH started out with ideal, good intentions.  But along the way once National Council for Adoption and money got involved, the agendas and motivations of the adoption industry changed.  The adoption industry is aware of mistakes they have made and things they started out believing that we now know are not true.  But they are unwilling to do anything about it including acknowledging it.  They are motivated by loss of credibility when their lies and cover-ups and corruption are all exposed.  Many of them claim “non-profit” status and feel that they will lose money when this is all exposed – which is the underlying motivator for everything done in the adoption industry today.

I tell everyone when I tell my story if they are donors to HPCH, they may want to re-think about where their money goes.  HPCH is not consistent in its practices.  They have told me they don’t do things like forward letters to birth mothers from adoptees – when I personally know adoptees also placed through HPCH that they have done this for.  They have also outright lied to adoptive families and birth mothers.  My family was told that my brother’s birth mother was from Louisiana.  She was told that he was placed with a family in Odessa.  Turns out – we’ve never lived more than hour away from his entire birth family (birth mom & dad families).  My parents were told when they adopted me that children are affected more by environment and nurturing than nature (dna/genetics).  The adoption industry never dreamed that a child might grow up and wonder where they come from.  And still today, the industry (and others who don’t understand it) tries to condemn adoptees like me for wondering such “nonsense” and just be grateful for the life they’ve had.  Well, excuse me – but I can be both grateful for my life AND be curious about where I come from.  HPCH has refused to help me but the director has told my parents that he is helping me and for me to be patient – that was back in October.  He has never told me he is helping me.  I believe he is financially motivated to tell my family that he is helping because I believe his relationship to my parents is purely financially motivated and nothing more.  So, of course he wants them to think he is helping me.

This intense desire to find my family only intensified when I had children and started experiencing serious health issues.  Most judges won’t open sealed records in adoption unless you are lying on your deathbed.  So, that is a dead end.  No pun intended.  I am considering hiring an attorney to help me get a judge to order HPCH to release the redacted file to me if the state is unsuccessful. My kids look like me.  I wonder how much I look like my birth mom or dad. I also don’t have any history to give them to help them on their way – medical, social, physical, etc.

As I’ve conducted interviews with families in reunion it becomes evident quickly that our DNA holds a lot more than we have even begun to realize – personality traits, core beliefs, talents, interests, etc.  I would call these threads that give us security, anchors, and connection to others (family, etc.) on the planet.  Many times we find our friends, mates, etc. due to common interests, etc.  This is a natural process.  Adoption severely interferes and causes great disconnect in this natural process.

This produces challenges instantly for an adoptee.  As with anything else in life, challenges can be met and overcome… So, it’s not to be used a crutch.  However, the industry is now aware of these issues and refuses to do anything to help correct something they once put wrong.  They also move to block any efforts to correct it any opportunity whether blocking an adoptee from their information or any legislative efforts to open records.

My next adoption-related post will contain my information for my search.  Maybe someone will happen across my post and know who my family is!  I have another story – as a birth mother – to add to this.  Also, I have touched on issues in this preliminary post that I will go more in depth into in future posts.