To Veronica Capobianco on her 18th birthday

Poor Veronica Brown. 😥

Illicit Memories

Dear Veronica,

Whatever your adoptive parents have told you for the past fourteen years, I hope they have told you this:

You were loved, cherished, and wanted by your father. I don’t mean Matt Capobianco, even though you have grown up calling him “Daddy” and “Dad.” I mean Dusten Brown, the man who turned himself in for jail time rather than relinquish custody of you.

When you were four years old, the nation alternately cheered and wept, congratulating the Capobiancos or consoling the Browns. There were a lot of politics involved surrounding the people who decided what should happen to you, all the way to the Supreme Court.

I’m sure you know this already. You looked yourself up on the internet, or heard it from friends, or fended off unwelcome interviews from media representatives.

Maybe Melanie sat you down, when you were five and ten and fifteen, to tell you…

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Roots…

The Almost Daughter & More

You see the one that I am, not the one that I was.

But the one that I was is also still part of myself.

Jean Amery

I have been feeling a little ungrounded lately. For me, I need to connect with Mother Earth on a frequent basis to feel secure, to feel stable and present. When we are feeling off balance or scattered it’s important to “reground” ourselves.

What is that really? I used it here as a state of being, but what is it really? Again, for adoptee’s there is a much deeper meaning to the words “roots”. For those of us who have grown without roots its a place of non-existence. A place of frequent change. A place that may collapse at any minute.

Everyone needs grounding and roots in order to know themselves and become whole. Our body needs that energy connection to the earth to…

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[Reblog] Harlow Monkey’s Adoptee Model for Activism

Posted AUGUST 20, 2013

I recently had a conversation with another transracial adoptee who mentioned that many years ago she had tentatively attended some Korean adoptee social events but quickly felt she didn’t fit it. Part of it was a political view on their adoption – the division between those who felt they had good adoptive experiences and those who did not. The retreat lasted almost twenty years and now, this TRA is venturing out into the adult-adoptee world again.

I didn’t mention which “side” (i.e. the “good” or “bad” binary) this particular adoptee was on because it doesn’t matter – I’ve seen this dynamic happen in both directions. Those who consider their adoptions to have been really fulfilling often are very resentful of adoptees who critique adoption. And those that critique adoption are quick to dismiss other adoptees as “drinking the Kool-Aid” or being in denial.

Adoptees are like anyone else, human first. We are cliquish, and judgmental and so what? It’s frustrating that this is used against us by others to diminish and dismiss the crux of what our common message is – that it is OUR message, however messy and complex and contradictory it seems.

Read the rest over @ Harlow’s Monkey.

The Search for Family

Found mine through FB in 2009. However, now that they’ve changed it so we can’t see who’s in what school ‘n’ stuff like, I wouldn’t’ve found them except by chance. As it was, I happened on msis’s school and year just after they’d got on FB, and before FB changed.

I wish Lynne inordinate amounts of good luck. 😀

I was sad not to be able to find a button to ‘like’ this post, btw.

Revelations

I started my search for biological relatives. I sent 25 messages to strangers on Facebook who share my birth mother’s maiden name – Arvin.

I am hoping one of these strangers will offer clues about my birth mother, a woman I’ve never met. I wrote a nice, polite letter of introduction with the few facts I have about this woman – her name, place of birth, age when she had me.  So far, I’ve only heard back from one Arvin. She said birth mom is not related to anyone in her family and hinted at a possible family tie in Kentucky.  I am pursuing people in that state along with Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

So this is how searches go. You wait and wonder who will respond to your message. You check email and Facebook frequently. You try not to think about it too much.

Some adoptees post their photos…

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Synchronicity

The Almost Daughter & More

Is it wrong then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences…..but is it right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life.  For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Since finding my biological family I’ve given much thought and study to Energy, Synchronicity, fate and the life journey’s that bring us together.  Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity in his practice years ago inspired by a case he was working on.  Synchronicity is a concept about connection of two or more psycho-physic phenomena.  I know, that sounds like psycho babble for what we could easily call coincidences.  As they say, there are no “coincidences in life”.

There are many reasons for these synchronicity’s in life from Jung’s application of archetype or the constellation of an archetype. That is simply the connection…

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Adoption teaches

Adopted in the UK

Adoption is what you do when you can’t have kids.
Fostering is what you do when you want to help kids.

Those are two of the things I “learned” growing up as an adoptee.

I also picked up many other things too, but I’m writing about these things because they came up in my answer on one of the FB groups I’m in. The OP itself was about whether adoptees have their own kids (IF they can have their own kids) whilst still young, or whether they wait until they are older.

The following two quotes are the answers I gave within that group, and I’m sharing them here as an example of how the socialisation of adoptees happens.

{quote}
Caught at 17, had Daughter at 18. Then again, that was only ’cause me and her dad did an experiment based on the fact that I knew a’rents couldn’t have…

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Seeking Research Participants for a New Adoptee Study!

Post Adoption Charity

Please share and participate!

All three research partners involved in this study are adult adoptees.

{quote}
Seeking Research Participants!

Are you an adoptee?

If so, and you:

1. Were adopted before age one.
2. Were adopted by non-biological parents (neither parent was related to the child by blood)
Were told or discovered you were adopted at any age. We have a special interest in 3. those told after age 18.
4. Are willing to take a 25-minute online survey.

We are researchers who are studying adoption. The researchers are from Montclair State University and a group of independent researchers. We will ask you about your adoption history and your well-being. The information we learn will help us to improve research, training, practice surrounding adoption. For more information, contact:

Dr. Amanda Baden, Associate Professor, Counseling and Educational Leadership at Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ (973) 655-7336, badena@mail.montclair.edu.

To take the survey…

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Observations of Adopted Children

Lara Trace Hentz

 

It’s important to know what happens to adoptee’s minds – these doctors made these observations (below)

The book TWO WORLDS: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects offers a view inside our minds, too… Lara/Trace

 

1960| FANTASIES AND BEHAVIOUR OF THE ADOPTED CHILD;  Marshall D.Schechter. M.D., Beverly Hills California.

In his paper on the Observations of Adopted Children.

In a series of cases seen by him the percentage of adopted children was 13.3 as compared with the national average of 0.134. This indicates a hundredfold increase of patients in this category compared with what could be expected in the general population.

Toussieng (April 1958) of the out-patients and admissions service said that one third of all patients coming to the Menninger out patient clinic were adopted.

Schechter, goes on to say. The striking thing in most cases was that the feature of their adoptive status played a significant…

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Adoptee voices on Veronica…

A Girl Loses Her Father: Baby Veronica Adoption Finalized by South Carolina

For Veronica, who has been callously adopted against the wishes of her paternal family.

Life, Adopted

For Veronica
It is okay to feel confused.
It is okay to feel angry.
It is okay to feel resentful.
It is okay to feel betrayed.
It is okay to feel abandoned.
It is okay to feel disconnected.
It is okay to feel lost.
It is okay to feel like a pawn.
It is okay to feel that something was taken from you.
It is okay to feel you had no control.
It is okay to feel that your voice was silenced.
It is okay to feel that the system completely failed you.
All of these feelings are completely normal under the circumstances.
You are adopted. But you are not alone. You are not the only one.
Your fellow adoptees will be here when you need us.
We will listen.
We will understand.
We will support you.
We will lift you up.
We are your community.Was it you or…

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