Adoptee Path

Shock the Monkey - #FlipTheScript on #Adoption Day 8

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 17:31:00 +0000

I haven’t really written before about the falling out with my adoptive
family, and reading about yet another family buying into an “open adoption” and being shocked when it starts closing got my memory churning. This family thought adoption was best because they were worried they could not provide for the child. Like the quantity of possessions make for better parents. It’s a fallacy our society buys into each and every day. “Things” do not make someone more able or better to parent, love and dedication to your child does. As part of the #FlipTheScript movement I have written this post to follow the Day 8 prompt.

#FlipTheScript - Today's prompt Day 8:Talk about the assumption that adoptive parents are not only better than their children’s birth parents, but also better parents than others who are raising their own biological children.

“I don’t like you, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, but I cannot stand you”

      I can honestly say that my adoptive parents had no business adopting children. Not only were they not prepared to raise an adopted child, they had failed to deal with their own issues surrounding infertility and under laying relationship issues.

          While my adoptive family put on a face of normalcy, behind close doors the situation was puncutated with episodes abuse and neglect….. mostly directed at me by my adoptive mother.   Why did my adotpive mother hate me so much? Well she would not put it that way. To quote her directly “I don’t like you, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, but I cannot stand you”. Then she would often try shaming me that I didn’t have a close relationship with her, like she did with her own mother. From the time I was 11 until I was done with Highschool she would say these things to me weekly. The message I always heard was that I wasn’t good enough, and I need to be thankful for the family I had, show gratitude, and shut up and go with the program.   However, I am strong willed… I always have been. You cannot make me do anything I don’t want to do, and for my adoptive mother my resistance to comply with what ever she wanted, was met with verbal abuse, victim shaming, negelct, and physical abuse. I know what its like to be choked, to have your air supply cut off….the inability to make a sound. I was 11 when she choked me. She acted like it was an accident, but I know better. Her M.O. was to take away anthing that had any value to me…. Be it friends, college, art, or even my own husband…. If it had any value to me, she was out to ruin it, or take it away from me.

Shock the Monkey

          While I knew that my adoptive mother hated me, that she wanted to take away anything that had value to me…. I tried so hard to make the relationship work. Grattuide, adoptee loyalty were so ingrained into me … that I really felt like I had been a bad child who deserved the harsh teatment my adoptive mother dished out to me.   When my adoptive family turned on my husband, and my adotpive mother specifically attempted to force me to choose him or them, I walked away from them- and I’ve never loooked back. I was so shocked when she did this… I was also shocked when nearly my entire adotpive family turned their backs on me. Never once has anyone ever wanted to hear my side of what happened, and I know why…. Because my adoptive mother has potraied me as the that I really felt like I had been a bad child who deserved the harsh teatment my adoptive mother dished out to me.

It took me years to come to terms with it. For years I cried at how easily I was cast off. It took me five years to deal with it, another two years to find the courage to find my first families.

Through it all, this very hard road I’ve been on… you will find the adoption fallacy that adoptive parents are better than other parents, that they are someone more or better able to parent children. This is a Myth. Adoption cannot guarantee that at all. All they can guarantee is a different set of parents, and a different life- not quality.

          When I speak out about adoption from the perspective of an abused and neglected adoptee and the response is “you’ve just had a bad experience, not all adoptions are that way”, I am being dismissed and discounted with those 12 words powerful words. When we dismiss those adopted persons who didn’t have the idyllic home that societal adoption mythology holds to be true, those individuals are dismissed because they challenge the myth.

Road Rage

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 16:54:00 +0000

Recently I’ve been thinking about this event, and I thought write about it for my next blog installment. For those of who have been reading my blog, you’ll realize this is just par for the course of my childhood.

Road Rage

I was in the sixth grade and we were assigned to write our first research paper. I had never had such a large school project assigned to me before, and I hadn’t kept up with the assignment. We were to write about a country, create a visual project, then serve a dish from that country. The first due date in a series of deadlines was coming up for the project. We were to have a set number of note cards filled out with references and quotes. I hadn’t done any work on the project at all, I had only chosen my country. Now I know I’m not the only child in the world who has ever procrastinated on a school project, however how my adoptive mother reacted to this scenario is unique.

Over reaction and punishment

So the the first due date for the project was the next day. The teacher called my home and spoke to my mother about the project and stated that she felt that I might not have note cards ready for the due date the next day.

What I am about to recount, can best be described as two hours of terror.

Gathering Resources & References

After my adoptive mother hung up the phone, she came to me, with her rage just starting to bubble to the surface. She questions me on the school project and what I have done. I admit that I do not have the first part of the project started, the note cards that are due the next day. She starts yelling at me, and yelling at me… In retrospect I know I’m not the only child to ever do this… and it was the first time this had ever happened to me… and the last- because after the next two hours I ensured that I kept any due dates to myself, and never discussed if I was behind. I answered her honestly that ‘no’ I hadn’t done any work on the project… this was the last time I would ever give her a truthful answer if I felt the situation could spiral out of control.

My adoptive mother is now forced to actually “parent” me. She just assumes I’ll complete my homework without really taking anytime with me to discuss it, or participate in it. Her anger is growing, and she is getting angrier and angrier as each minute that passes because she will have to take me to the library and a travel agency to gather the materials I need for the research project…. And I have inconveniently forced her into a situation where she is must participate in being a parent.

She grabs my arm and hauls me to the car forcibly. Her hold is tight on me and she is hurting me. I start to cry, and she starts yelling at me to knock it off, or she will give me something really to cry about. It’s a veiled threat of beating me. I get into the passenger seat, and she speeds off to the library. She is driving like a maniac, speeding, making fast hard stops, swerving around other cars. All the while she is yelling at me in the car… venting her frustration on being forced to “parent” me.

We arrive at the Library and hit the card catalog to find the books we need. But instead of calming down as we work toward solving the problem, she is continuing to get angrier by the minute. I’ve stopped talking, or making any kind of sounds. I am scared out of mind at this point. I am in fear for my own safety, and I’m worried she is really going to try to hurt me badly. There had already been an incident before this where under the guise of hugging me from behind, she held her arm across my throat and cut off my air way…choking me. So I know what she was capable of.

She speeds off from the library to the travel agency, continuing her erratic driving and continues yelling at me. As we speed into the parking lot, she pulls into a handicap parking spot. She has never done this before, and I’m more than a little shocked by it. As we walk to the travel agency, her verbal barrage on me continues… She continues to get angrier by the moment. I’ve long since gone silent, I am so scared… I just want to get home and crawl into my closet.

We leave the travel agency with some brochures on Norway, and she continues her erratic driving home. Only this time she cuts off a woman who has decided she isn’t going to take my adoptive mother’s erratic driving. For several miles what can be best described as a full-on road rage incident unfolds. With each of them trying to cut of the other, each making sudden stops, flipping each other off, and increasing levels of rage being displayed. As I sat in the passenger seat I hung on to the door handle. I was so scared that I was beyond fear, and I was beyond panic, I was waiting for an accident to happen. My adoptive mother unleashed her anger on the other driver. The other driver lashed it right back at her.

I was 11 years old at the time, and I will never forget this as long as I live. The terror and lack of control that I felt. Wanting to break into tears, and the treat that she would give me something to cry about if I didn’t stop.

All this being caused over procrastinating on a school assignment for the first time. Forcing my adoptive mother to actually “parent” me.

I know what true terror caused at the hands of your caretaker feels like… As long as I live I will never forget it….

Xmas Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 03:19:00 +0000

Xmas Memories

Recently, I found myself thinking about an event that happened maybe 15 years ago. This was before an event that we call "The F@ckmass Event"and that is for another Xmas themed blog entry.

Why do you have 2 trees?

Back to my Xmas memory- This memory begins with my asking my adoptive mother why she had 2 Christmas trees in her house this one year.

So it beings with  my adoptive brother's girlfriend had a 5 year old boy, and they lived together. At the time I had met the girlfriend and young child before, and the child was a really cute little boy.
Flash forward to several weeks before Christmas. Adoptive mother goes tree shopping with my adoptive brother, and they pick a real tree out together for the apartment he shares with his girlfriend. This isn't a fake tree, this a cut live tree... you know the ones that loose needles like the second you bring them home, and you are hoping you don't burn your house down... yeah, one of those.
Back to the story:
I'm not clear on the exact details of what took place, but days before Christmas they break-up, and she asks him to leave on short notice. The adoptive parents help him move out since he has so little notice.   Now, my adoptive mother is telling me this story, about how they ran over with their SUV and started taking a few loads of belongs back to their house Then she looks at me with this look of glee in her eyes, smiling... she tells me how she looked at that tree she had helped her adoptive son buy... and proceeded to remove every ornament from it, and ever bit of tinsel, and leaving it all on the living room table.... she tells me like this is come great accomplishment.....like she has just cured cancer.... and then proceeds to tell me how she took the tree with her.... In the SUV.... back to her house...

“And with the child’s Christmas tree in hand- she walks out of the house – Just like the Grinch who stole Christmas on that cold and snowy night.”

She looks at me, smiling... she is so proud of herself. She thinks that she had just shown up this girlfriend who dared break-up with her adoptive son the week of Christmas.

I say to her "But what about the little boy? Did you even think about him coming home to find his Christmas Tree gone? How that is going to make him feel" Adoptive Mother is unmoved, and doesn't care. But to this day I am shocked by this. I mean these people are @assholes, but this takes it to a whole new level... Class A professional @ssholes!

And I know that little boy, a boy no more... has this really $hitty Christmas memory of the day he came home and a Grinch stole his Christmas tree.

And I think about how some people proclaim that adoptive parents are somehow better than other parents, because they adopted.... it's just insane logic... Adoptive parents are not super hero's, or angles... they are simply people who had the resources to ~~buy~~ adopt a child... or two.... plain and simple. The act doesn't make them any nicer, or special... in fact i'm convinced that adoption attracts an element of humanity that has no business raising children. My adoptive parents had no business being parents... that is for sure.

A War on Adoption? Opinion of an AP on #FlipTheScript

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:15:00 +0000

A War on Adoption? Opinion of an AP on #FlipTheScript

For those of you who might have missed it, Tracy Dee Whitt author of the blog lovin'adoptin' saw some of the #FlipTheScript tweets on twiter, then lost her $hit and wrote a blog post entitled “the war on National Adoption Month”. This latest installment of my blog is a response to Tracy and why she needs to educate herself.

Adoption is Beautiful! Dammit, don’t say otherwise!

The opening on her blog post states:
“Adoptees are “flipping the script” during National Adoption Month, sharing the other, unattractive side of adoption. It’s their right. I’m not an adoptee and can’t speak for them, but part of me doesn’t like seeing this opportunity of beauty turned into something that’s looked down upon” (Dee Witt, 2014).

So let me get this, the adoptee voice has been ignored and marginalized during the entire history of #NAAM, a campaign is developed by adoptees for adoptees to speak up and have our voices for the first time be heard during #NAAM and you are upset that we’ve tarnished the “beauty of adoption”?

Sure as an Adoptive Parent (AP) I can see that you find adoption “beautiful”. After all you get what you wanted, a child. And if you want to look at adoption in the highly simplistic way that you do, yes a child gets a new set of parents….. BUT the child is also losing a lot in the transaction. The adoptee loses more than the AP in this. It doesn’t matter if they come from a background of abuse or not, they lose:

1. Their identity
2. Their family
3. Their history
4. Their Culture
5. Medical background information

*and more

Like you said, you’re an AP and you have no idea what it’s like to be adopted… therefore, let us talk! You might learn something, and perhaps become a better AP!

Get your own month Adoptee, leave my beautiful #NAAM alone!

“I don’t want to belittle anyones experience, after all, it’s their own. I can’t speak as an adoptee. Maybe there should be separate months, one for National Adoption Month and a month for adoptees to share their feelings, like an Adoptee Awareness Month” (Dee Witt, 2014)

You just cannot make this stuff up, yes Tracy you said it. First off in one of my #FlipTheScript posts I used my time on a national adoption blog to discuss things in adoption that AP’s can change. This as an Adoptee, I know what needs to be changed. Things that are really hurtful but many AP’s are clueless about. To me that is what #FlipTheScript is about, addressing misconceptions and maybe affecting some positive change instead of flooding the media with old narratives and harmful misconceptions. Get our own awareness month? Nope, we aren’t going to do it. Because you cannot have a conversation about adoption without including us. Yes it’s been going on for years, but never again… we are here to stay!

An opportunity for education, but you don’t get it!

But instead you dig your hole deeper, and you write as a response on your blog that

“I don’t want adoption to be wrought with talk about how wrong it is, but the fact is, there is pain surrounding adoption. In most cases it isn’t in the adoption itself that causes pain, but in the events surrounding the adoption. Yet, there’s so much that is beautiful about adoption, and I feel it’s beginning to get lost in the muddle, in the anger, in the “political correctness.” Want to know what’s politically correct? (Dee Witt, 2014).

So let me understand this, you only want to focus on only the ‘positive’ aspects of adoption, and ignore everything else? You realize this is called DENIAL? Right? At this point I’m going to say in my opinion, you really have no business blogging about adoption in any way shape or form. This is exactly the kind of attitude that is harmful to adoptees! Rehashing old outdated narratives that have no bearing on reality! To illustrate my point, Dee Witt (2014) further writes:

“That’s why “flipping the script” on adoption day is so painful. The world is taking what is often a positive event and turning the tables, focusing on those who don’t feel it was a good thing for them”.

If anyone has ever wondered what we mean by the Adoption Industries “Kool-Aid” this is a great example above. We realize that while adoptees only make up roughly 3% of the population, but they have an increased risk of:

1. Depression*

2. Mental health issues*

3. Substance Abuse* (40-60% of those in treatment are….ADOPTEES)

4. Eating disorders*

5. Harm or Death by those they are living with*

(Edited 12/9/14 to add: This is by no means a complete list either, only the data points I was able to pull together quickly. We haven't even talked about Suicide or Learning Disabilities. On average adoptees carry a 4 times greater risk for everything listed above than their peers in the studies in the reference section. In some cases it is higher, but on average its a 4X higher risk factor than their peers in the study- As a data analyst I am making this generalization )

Imagine that, I’ve had #1, #4, and #5 – Wow don’t I feel all beautiful and lucky and grateful! And chances are if you are adopted, you will also be able to check off at least one of the 5 listed above too.

So you could focus on listening to what adoptees have to say, OH MY GOSH and maybe learn something… Like gee why we have these increased risks for so much! But instead…. Well you said it

“All the adult adoptees I’ve met and know personally are very happy, having been adopted, they aren’t searching for more meaning, and frankly, they’re grateful. I don’t expect my children to be grateful, but what if they are? Is that wrong?” (Dee Witt, 2014)

OH you did not just pull the Grateful card on us? Oh you did…. Please refer to #1 on my list.

I’m a member of the Triad, like it or not, and I’m talkin’

So what’s the big deal? In a nutshell, by only focusing on the “positive” aspects of adoption you are creating an unrealistic and harmful portrayal of adoption for all those PAP’s (Prospective Adoptive Parent’s) and AP’s. Why in the world would you not want PAP’s and AP’s to be better educated on the psychological and emotional impacts that adoption has on adopted children? Why would you want to continue the harmful adoption myths that adoption is nothing but positive rainbows and unicorns? Because simply this is what you do, writing about adoption. The gritty reality of adoption when it comes to adoptees isn’t very good for your readership.

So, as the backlash grew, and adoptees descended on her site, Dee Witt (2014) added the following statement to her blog

“National Adoption Month, as I thought I had stated clearly, but others seem to miss the point entirely, was created to find adoptive families for the children who need it. When the voices of adoptees sharing their negative (only referring to those negative ones, not all #flipthescript) is the only thing prospective adoptive parents hear, they may be scared from adoption. Hearing things like, you will never be their real family, my family is waiting for me in my country, I never felt at home with my adoptive family, doesn’t make people want to adopt. Those stories can be shared, there are truths that only adoptees can tell us adoptive parents, however a balanced perspective of adoption should be shared, as there are a plethora of both. If you’d like to hear more about adult adoptees views on this matter, see #flipthescript on Twitter”.

So, for #NAAM 2015 I suggest that WE adoptees, strap on our helmets on October 31, 2015 and prepare for battle, since now just by even bringing up the reality of adoption, and trying to effect change we are tarnishing the institution of Adoption in the opinion of Ms. Dee Witt. Because If Ms. Dee Witt thinks that by speaking we are declaring “…War on

National Adoption Month” well heck, give me my helmet and keyboard… I’m going in! And I bet my fellow members of the Bastard Nation are ready too-

Because you have just ensured that we will be even more determined to effect the change that is desperately needed within the adoption industry.

*References

Dee Witt, T. (2014, November 20). The war on National Adoption Month. Retrieved from http://lovinadoptin.com/2014/11/20/the-war-on-national-adoption-month/

Feigelman, PhD, W. (2005). Are Adoptees at Increased Risk. The American Association of Suicidology. Retrieved from http://www3.ncc.edu/Faculty/SOC/feigelb/adopsuicide.pdf

Festinger, T., Jaccard, J., Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research November 15, 2012. Volume 3, Issue 4, 280-295 ISSN 1948-822X DOI:10.5243/jsswr.2012.17

Hjern A, Lindblad F, Vinnerljung B. Suicide, psychiatric illness, and social maladjustment in intercountry adoptees in Sweden: a cohort study. Lancet. 2002; 360:443-448. - See more at: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/adoption-and-mental-illness#sthash.09wh3YBM.dpuf

Holden, NL. Adoption and eating disorders: a high-risk group?, Br J Psychiatry. 1991 Jun;158:829-33. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1873634

Juffer F, van Ijzendoorn MH. Behavior problems and mental health referrals of international adoptees: a meta-analysis. JAMA. 2005;293:2501-2515.

Kaplan, A. (2009). Adoption and Mental Illness. Psychiatric Times. Retrieved from http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/articles/adoption-and-mental-illness

Keyes MA, Sharma A, Elkins IJ, et al. The mental health of US adolescents adopted in infancy. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2008;162:419-425.

Kreider RM. Adopted Children and Stepchildren: 2000. US Census Bureau. Issued October 2003. www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-6.pdf. Accessed October 6, 2008.

Laidman, J. (2013, September 9). Adoptees 4 Times More Likely to Attempt Suicide. Retrieved from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/810625

National Council For Adoption. Adoption Factbook IV. Sterling, Va.: National Council For Adoption; 2007. 2.

Sigvardsson, PhD, S., Bohman, MD, M., Cloninger, MD, C., & Von Knorring, MD, A. (1983). An Adoption Study of Depressive Disorders and Substance Abuse. JAMA Psychiatry.

Stiffman, MD, MSPH, M., Schnitzer, PhD, P., Adam, MD, MSPH, P., Kruse, PhD, MSPH, R., & Ewigman, MD, MSPH, B. (2001, September 27). Household Composition and Risk of Fatal Child Maltreatment. Retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/4/615.abstract

Sunderland, P. (2011, January 1). Lecture on Adoption by Paul Sunderland. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3pX4C-mtiI

http://lavenderluz.com/2014/11/flipthescript-tracy-hammond.html

Dear Adoptive Parent #NAAM #Flipthescript

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 13:57:00 +0000

Dear Adoptive Parent #NAAM #Flipthescript

(screenshot published with permission of How Does it Feel to be Adopted FB group)

Just when I thought I was done with my #Flipthescript efforts, this gem came across my screen. So Adoptive Parent, this post is just for you.

Betrayal & Lies

Dear Adoptive Parent,

I realize that after you asked your question, that you had a hundred responses on this Facebook page all basically yelling at you. I know that you might have felt like you were being made into a villain. I’m sure you thought you might find some understanding from the adoptees on the Facebook page, and when you received such a raging backlash…maybe you thought denial would be the best method to deal with this…. and maybe you haven’t had this conversation with your daughter yet.

First, you have “carrot and sticked” your daughter all along with this promise of “when we get the money, we’ll get your records unsealed” when all along you know who her mother is. I’m sure you think this has been OK, a way to gage her interest in seeking her family… But. It. Isn’t. OK. It. Is. Far. From. OK.

Why it’s far from OK

So the crux is this. You’ve lied to her every day of her entire life. You’ve withheld information that is crucial to her, that is about HER- and NOT YOU.

The totality of what an adoptee loses because of adoption is something that you Adoptive Parent will never understand. Imagine if you will- that you find out you were switched at birth. You find this out today, you frantically call the people who are your biological family, only to find out that they are all DEAD. You never get a chance to meet them, to talk to them… You never get the chance to even start to form a relationship… you find they are so much like you, or really interesting people… people you’d like to know….. But this has all been STOLEN from you.

Being an adoptee is much like this. We don’t know “who we really are” and that can be a very hard thing. We also don’t know why we were surrendered for adoption, the stories of our origins. And no matter what the narrative is of our beginnings, good or bad… we all have a right to know this truth… the truth of us.

You do not have the RIGHT to keep this information from your daughter. This is not your RIGHT.

I know you fear that this will destroy your relationship with your daughter, and maybe you haven’t told her the truth yet- out of fear. That is the very reason I am writing this post… because I fear you haven’t told her yet.

OWN UP TO YOUR ACTIONS

You have to make this right, and you have to do it NOW.

WHY?

Because you’ve just robbed your daughter out of even starting a relationship with her family because of your own selfishness and insecurities. You don’t know who has died, who she’ll never be able to meet. And its every death of a relative… a relative she will never meet… never form a relationship with… this is what your lies and secrecy have taken from her.

Maybe she will be lucky, and no one has died yet. But in the very least you have robbed her of several years of being able to start a relationship with her family… because of your selfish actions and because of your own insecurities.

Will your relationship survive?

This is what you fear…. Who knows, but you did this… this was your doing. You know it’s wrong, otherwise you would have not posted the question on the Facebook page. Imagine for just one moment this was you…. How would you feel?

Action Steps

1.     Tell your daughter the truth- right now.
2.     Give her the funds and resources to find her family, and to visit them when she is ready.
3.     Stay out of the reunion- this isn’t about YOU.
4.     Get down on your knees and beg her for forgiveness.
5.     Hope that it isn’t too late… hope that no one has died.. that she hasn’t been robbed of the chance to meet a family member because of your lies and insecurities.
6.     Understand that if your relationship with your daughter doesn’t survive this, that it was your own actions that caused it. Back away gracefully… let her go.

Bouncing Doors and Other Strange Phenomenon

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 14:47:00 +0000

National Adoption Awareness Month

The summer is over, and the fall is upon us. My favorite month of October is now over

and the depressing month of November is here. I don’t like November for many reasons, but the chief reason is that it’s ‘National Adoption Awareness (NAAM) Month’. Seriously, if I was any more aware of my adoption, I’d be on billboards. This year for #NAAM, blogs and features by adoptees are being featured in an effort to #FlipTheScript and bring a spotlight to the other side of adoption- Adoptee voices.

My blog is a very honest, brutal look at the closed adoption and abuse was subjected to. I have no doubt that the abuse I suffered was primarily due to my being adopted, I do not believe that had I been the biological offspring of my adoptive parents that they would have subjected me to the abuse they did. My blog details what I think the cause of the adoption going south, that I wasn’t what they wanted. I was adopted during an era of “blank slate baby” theory and you can mold the baby into whatever you want. We now know that genetics play a much larger role in the formation of our personalities and abilities then once thought. So in honor of #NAAM I give you the next installment of this blog.

Bouncing Doors and Other Strange Phenomenon

I do not recall what the argument was about, all I do remember is my adoptive mother

yelling at me with such force, that it scared me and I ran from her in fear. I do know that I was 15 at the time, and this was before the Red Nightmare. As my adoptive mother yelled at me, she got up and walked towards me. She had rage in her eyes and she started to raise her arm. The fight or flight response kicked in, danger signals hit my brain and I ran for the only safe place I knew- my bedroom. As I ran up the stairs, I heard her yelling at me to come back. Then I heard her on the stairs behind me. I had just made it to my room, shut and locked the door. She was there at the door a moment later pounding on it, screaming to be let in. Soon she started trying to break it down. I heard my adoptive father pleading with her to stop, she did not.

The door started to bouncing on its hinges as she threw herself against the door over and over and over again. Fear coursed through me, I held the door knob and pushed myself against the door to keep it from breaking apart. The door bounced on its hinges, and I started to hear wood crack, I backed up and the door came flying open.

I stood there, not knowing what would happen next. My adoptive mother just staring at me. In a heartbeat she was on top of me, punching me.

She grabbed my hair, and yanked. I could not go anywhere, she had me. As she hit me with one hand, she gripped my hair with the other. My head jerked around as she punched me. I heard my adoptive father in the background begging her to stop, she did not. Something inside me snapped, and the fight or flight mechanism kicked in again. Adrenaline surged in my system, my first attempt at flight did not work. My body was telling me to fight. So I started to push her back, which didn’t work because she had my head by my hair. So I grabbed for the only thing I could, I grabbed her hair and pulled as hard as I could. She responded by punching me in the neck. And so there we were, my adoptive mother beating me, and me trying to fight back. My adoptive father, began to beg ‘US’ now to stop. In the end he finally pulled my adoptive mother off me. And as he did, she still grasped my hair tightly- pulling me with her. I cried out in pain as he pulled her away, she hanging on to those last locks of my hair, red faced, screaming, and in a complete rage, unwilling to end the physical confrontation.

Lessons learned

After this day, I learned that I wasn’t safe anywhere in that house. And when my adoptive

mother started to yell, I walked out the front door- and would keep walking. My goal was always to get to the train station, if I could get on a train I could get away from them. I kept a $20 dollar bill in my shoe under the insole, so I could always pay the train fare. My adoptive father would try to catch up with me in his pick-up, and bring me back to the house.

I made it on the train once, I made it to the end of the line. I ended up taking the first train back because I simply had no place to go.

It’s a pivotal moment in my life, because after this event- in a desperate attempt to gain some sort of control in my life, I stopped eating. This was the start of a 10 year struggle with bulimia. I was fully in the grips bulimia and anorexia when the Red Nightmare happened.

I wish I was adopted & You’ve just had a bad experience

These are two phrases I am sick of hearing when I recount my closed adoption and abusive experiences. They are both designed to shut down the adoptee voice and change the subject. Those who proclaim they “wish they were adopted” are fellow abuse survivors who clung onto an adoption fantasy as a way of surviving. They don’t want to hear that adoption isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. And those who discount me by saying “you’ve just had a bad experience” and not all adoptions are this way… are almost always adoptive parents, or the general public who is had led to believe that adoption is some kind of selfless act. They don’t want to hear the truth.

The truth is that children living with adults they are unrelated to are 8 times more likely to be killed in that home. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/4/615.abstract

So let's have an open honest conversation about adoption this month, instead of propaganda put out by adoption agencies. Because it's an effort to make more money with an increase in adoptions. I hate that I am ~~was~~ a commodity in the economic adoption model. I hate that #NAAM is nothing more than supply-chain management and free advertising for adoption agencies trying to increase profits.

"I deserve better" A Mother's day rememberance

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 15:50:00 +0000

Mother's Day remembrance

I cannot think of Mother's Day without this memory coming to the surface, the two are forever linked in my mind. Now some of you might be a little shocked by this story, I know everyone I've ever told it to has been. But for those of you who have been reading my blog will realized it's just 'par for the course' of my childhood.

New Friends, New School

After I had become 'damaged goods' and enrolled into special education, I was sent to a different school district in the next town over. The school was known for a good special education program, and it was

thought that I needed to be completely removed from the other children who had been harassing me at my former school. There were just two other girls in my new special education class, and we became fast friends in a class full of boys. I had never had so many friends as I did in this class, and I was able to settle in. I spent two years at this new school, and it was during this time when I was 10 or 11 that my Mother's Day remembrance takes place.

Sleep overs

I had spend a Saturday night sleeping over at one of my new friends house. With time I have lost when this exactly happened, but I'm fairly certain I was in the 6th grade so I was around 10 or 11 when this happened. Like most children, we don't keep track of specific holidays unless it has something in it for us. It's no great surprise that I wasn't aware that Mother's Day was the next day after my sleep over. Normally a parent will assist a child with procuring a gift or card for Mother's/Father's day, or at least help remind the child of this date. So Sunday afternoon, my friend's mother piles everyone in the car and we stop at Walgreen's on the way to dropping me off at home. My friend then says she is going to covertly buy her mother a card and gift while we are there, it's Mother's Day! Now I'm a little surprised to hear this, I wasn't aware. But one thing is that I do not have any money on me at all, and I'm not about to ask my friend or her Mother to loan me any money.... that isn't even a consideration in my mind. I start to devise a plan on what I'll do when I get home, and hope that I have enough time to make a gift for my Mother. After all I have no money at home, and I doubt I'll have enough time to procure a last minute gift for her, even if I can devise funds and transportation to a store when I get home.

Crafty Conceptions

When I'm dropped off, no one is home. However, my adoptive mother has left me a note declaring that it's Mother's Day in case I wasn't aware. If I had been older, I would have read the under currents of this note to realize I was already in trouble, because I simply wasn't there when Mother's Day started. But instead, I start looking for supplies to make a gift for my adoptive mother. I had decided that I would paint wooden plaque with a poem I had started to compose in my mind at Walgreen's. I'm sure I was inspired by all the Hallmark cards in the store. I rummage around in the garage, in the wood scrap pile looking for something suitable. I had envisioned something roughly the size of a sheet of paper, but the wood pile was mostly full of 2"x4" scraps. In the end I settle on a 2"x4" scrap that is about 12" long, and I know I can make it work. It has some rough edges, and I rummage around for sand paper and I sand down the rough edges.

Fruits of labor

Being a creative child, I start drafting out my concept. Using pencil I write the poem, draw where the flowers

will go, then mix the paints and start to decorate my 2"x4" length. Through trial and error, I realize that red lettering and border with white/red flowers and green vines/leaves will look the best for my project. I take my time, being careful to make this look as good as possible, hoping that my creative labors will transform this length of 2"x4" and please my adoptive Mother. Of course I make over-the-top declarations of 'how much I love" my adoptive mother on the wooden plaque. While the paint dries, I pull out construction paper and start making a card for her. I cut and create paper tulips, and glue them to the front of the card. I am really pleased with my efforts, and I'm sure that my adoptive Mother will appreciate my artistic labors.

A Crappy Piece of Wood

As I double check to make sure that the paint is dried on my plaque, and see if the glue is dried on my card, I hear my parents arrive home. I am really excited at how well my home made gifts have turned out. With not much time, and limited supplies I really feel like I've pulled off something special. I'm excited to give my home-made gift to my adoptive mother.

I come downstairs, find her and ask her to sit down while I go get my gift. I come back down with my card and gift which aren't wrapped, as I really didn't have any time to considering searching for wrapping paper. I had her the card first, then the gift once she is done reading it.

I'm not prepared at all for her reaction, and now as a 44 year old, I'm still shocked by it.
My adoptive Mother goes into a rage and starts yelling at me. I simply respond that I don't understand why she is upset, I have a gift for her. In my naive mind I think the only reason why a parent would be upset would be if you didn't have something to give them. But in this case my adoptive mother starts yelling at me that I "didn't plan" and it's obvious. I try to explain all my labors, but she says to me "I don't want this crappy piece of wood!" "I deserve better!" "I want a store bought gift, not some crap you've tried to make!"
She hits me a few times, and I start crying. I am really shocked by this outburst. She sends me to my room "so you can think about what you've done".

After the fact I wondered what I could have done differently, given that if I did have any money it was change. The other factor was transportation, I had a bicycle, but the nearest store where I could have bought a suitable gift was Walgreen's and it was 1 mile, one-way on a bicycle. I was doomed from the beginning.

Comfort in a closet

The small walk-in closet in my bedroom had long since become the place I went when I needed to find
comfort. I could hide completely in there and not been seen. I often wished so desperately that my mother would come rescue me from these people I was living with. I so desperately wanted her on this day, as I realized that these people who had adopted me really didn't care for, or love me. I felt unwanted and disposable, but unable to verbalize these complex feelings since I was only 10 or 11 at the time. But I knew the way I was being treated was wrong, and I knew that I did deserve better. As a child you don't understand what a closed adoption is, or that your mother has no idea where you are... or that she has been threatened with legal action if she ever tires to find her child in the TPR (termination of parental rights) paperwork she's signed. A chunk of my soul died this day, I would be lying if I said this hadn't left some emotional scars on me. Your first mother has already rejected you, now the 2nd one is rejecting you because of a hand-made gift.

You're making a big deal out of nothing

After this, I was very careful to ensure I had a proper store bought gift and card for my adoptive mother each Mother's day. In fact I never made her another hand made gift again. If I made something in school or at home, it was never given for a holiday... it was just something I brought home.
I made sure that each Mother's day / holiday / occasion going forward, and I took care to mention that it was a store bought gift and card, and inquired if she liked it, or if she wanted to return it. When she would chastise me for acting this way, I would bring up the home-made gift and her reaction to it. She would then tell me I was "making a big deal out of nothing" and to stop mentioning it. But it was a real concern on my part, would she punish me if my store bought gift and card were not to her liking? Would I be rejected again if it wasn't good enough?

As an adopted child, we realize our adoptive families/ homes are not guaranteed. We've already been given up by our first set of parents, what is to stop the 2nd set from doing the same? And now with the new practice of re-homing adoptees by adoptive parents, I have no doubt that my own adoptive mother would have done this to me if she'd been given the chance, I was never what she wanted in a child. I was never good enough for her, ever.

When you get married....

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 01:30:00 +0000

When you get married

While I was making $5 dollars and hour, struggling to pay for school, car repair bills, car

insurance, clothing, and my own expenses my adoptive mother in an effort to make my life even more difficult declared one day that “If you ever want us to PAY for YOUR wedding, then you need to start paying rent to live here”. I was 19 years old and struggling, I could barely afford gas money. I tried my best to explain that I just could not afford even $5 dollars a week, as I was just barely making it. I wondered if this was her effort to make me quit school. My adoptive mother wasn’t exactly a supportive person, and she would often make comments to under mind my self-esteem. She’d make comments like “you know you can’t do math, how are you going to take a Math class?” A narcissist is a master of manipulation, and she knew I had very low self-esteem to begin with. If you keep telling someone they aren’t smart enough, or good enough to do something… then eventually they start to believe it.

In the end I was told that since I could not afford to pay rent, they would not pay for my wedding as I was…. You guessed it….. “you are on your own” to pay for it. So what did I do when I did get married in 1998? I didn’t tell them, I decided that my adoptive parents didn’t deserve to attend. It wasn’t like we had any money to have any kind of wedding party. So we kept it simple, we were married by the Mayor of Montgomery Ohio and that was it. I chose not to tell them and my husband was “the boyfriend” for 8 years after we were married. I also knew that the inclusion of my adoptive parents would be a horrible mistake, as they would do everything in their power to destroy it.

A College Education part deux

My adoptive mother had struggled with breast cancer. I recall a conversation we had where she complimented me on never asking for help of any kind…ever. I told her that wasn’t entirely true, I had asked for help twice and been told “NO” twice. She asked if I resented them not helping me with school. I simply said that “because I don’t have a college education I will never make as much money as I could. Not having a college diploma decreases your income”. She started to cry and asked if she had been a “bad mother”. Everything in me wanted to scream “YES YES YES” but she was on chemotherapy, and just had surgery. I felt that if I were to tell the truth, it would be like kicking a dog when it was down. I told her what she wanted to hear, I said “No, you weren’t a bad mother”. But for the record, she was a HORRIBLE MOTHER!

An act of rebellion

Holding my Associates degree diploma

After my falling out with my adoptive family, I re-enrolled in school. It was almost like an act of rebellion. A college education was something that was important to me, and I wanted it desperately. But without support from my adoptive parents, it became impossible when I was younger. In the days before online classes, working full-time and taking a college class were very difficult to do. In 2007 I re-enrolled in college, partially an act of rebellion against what I was told “was a waste of time” and that “you aren’t smart enough” to do. It was also something important to me. Without the negative influence of my adoptive parents, I found the self-esteem needed to go back to school. It’s amazing how bad people can drag you down and eat way at your self-worth. I’ve been enrolled continuously in classes for over 7 years now, using my employer’s tuition reimbursement plan to pay for my education. I only get 5 thousand dollars a year, but I try to maximize my money by using a community college with an online program for some of the lower level classes I need and taking the upper level classes at the the University I’m enrolled with. School takes a lot of time, but it’s always been important to me and I make it work by taking 1 class at a time.

I’ll have just 7 classes left after the fall semester until I’ll have my degree. I finished an Associates degree in Business back in 2010. And with a little luck I should have my BS in Business Administration, with a minor in Human Resource Management next year or in early 2016. I have a 3.75 GPA, which isn’t bad for someone who was told they “weren’t smart enough for school”.

Some people find that holding others back is the only way they can feel good about themselves. Removing the negative influences in my life has been hard, but it was necessary so I can strive to achieve my goals. Adoption only provides a different family for a child, not a better one.

A College Education?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 16:35:00 +0000

A College Education?

The difficulty of a College education has been one of the more impactful events on my life in general. The after effect has been lasting. I think the majority of people will agree that those with a college degree will earn more than those without one. Obtaining a college education was something important to me, and without the support of family I found that it becomes incredibly difficult goal to reach.

When I was a junior in high school I received a scholarship and invitation to spend the summer studying at the Savannah School of Art in Georgia. I can remember how astounded I was when one of my art teachers handed me the school packet and check. The sum would cover summer tuition at the school I was told, however it did not cover the cost of room/board… that would be a cost that I would have to cover if I wanted to attend. I will never forget how my adoptive mother reacted to this offer I received. Now a ‘normal’ mother might be proud, happy, or excited…right? Well not my adoptive mother. Her response was this….”If you want to go to college, you are on your own… we’re not giving you one dime of our money… and don’t ask us to fill anything out either…we’re not helping you at all…. It’s a waste of time and money” She made it clear that this statement went for any college, not just art school. So I took my packet and check from the art school and put it in a box with my other important papers, it was just a keepsake… a memento….not an opportunity or future. So as my high school education started coming to an end, my classmates would ask me what I planned to do after graduation. With college now not an option, I said that I was planning to take a year off and work. It was hard having everyone else I knew making plans for school with supportive parents helping them… and me on my own. I didn’t even have a driver’s license or a car when I graduated high school. I had my part time job at the local library, but that was it.

Money and the Struggle

I had written before about how I had been forced to sign over my savings bonds to help

pay for my adoptive brothers first car. However, when it came to me I had been told I was “on my own” and I had to pay for my own car, and I would not be getting any help, or as my adoptive mother put it “not one dime”. So I’ve graduated, and if I even want to think about going to the local community college I needed a vehicle. So that summer I start working full time in this horrible small office as a receptionist. I still had my part-time job at the Library. I can recall when I had to go shopping so I could have a wardrobe for the receptionist job. I hated withdrawing money from my savings account to buy the clothing… this job only paid five dollars an hour. It was a horrible office, and the office manager didn’t like me. She set out to make my life as difficult as possible. It was a very small office with just four people in the office. I worked there for about 5 months before they decided they didn’t need a receptionist anymore. While I worked there, I finally got my driver’s license, but had to rely on my adoptive parents to pick me up and drop me off every day. Three days a week I went straight from one job to another, often with no dinner. I was still suffering from bulimia at this time, and not eating was normal. After I lost the receptionist job, I had a hard time finding another. I only had a high school education, with only five months of full time work on my resume. I struggled. My adoptive mother was upset that I didn’t have a full time job yet, and I would often be targeted by her because of it. My two friends were away at school, and I was alone. After several months of looking for another job, I was able to get a job at an answering service for five dollars an hour again. Because I had kept my part-time job at the library, I finally had enough money to buy a used car. My adoptive father picked out a ‘84 Ford Escort that I would buy. It turned out to be a bad car that at 5 years old, broke down all the time. I paid for the car in full out of my checking account, and paid for the registration and tax. My adoptive parents paid for the license plates because I had just spent every penny I had. They had gone to great lengths to help my adoptive brother buy his first car, and the help they gave me was minor in comparison. Had they wanted to, they could have made the situation easier on me… but they chose not to.

Community College

My higher education aspirations were modest in nature, I enrolled at the local Community College. When I had my meeting with the financial aid office, I found out that without my adoptive parent’s cooperation to help fill out financial aid paperwork, I could not apply for any kind of financial aid. I was told that I might qualify for a Pell Grant which was free from the government, but I would need my parents cooperation. I knew not to ask, I had already been told that “you are on your own, and don't ask us to fill anything out” and “it’s a waste of time and money”. So with modest funds and expectations, I enrolled in classes. When you only make five dollars and hour, and are paying for your own car insurance, repairs, gasoline, and clothing, coming up with money for tuition and books is incredibly difficult. Shortly after I had enrolled and started classes, my adoptive mother approached me one day. She was angry at me and I didn’t understand why. She said to me in her nastiness tone possible “Your father seems to think we should help pay for your books if you are paying for your classes”. I hadn’t asked for any help, I knew better. But this offer took be aback, of course I could use some help but I didn’t understand why she was telling me this in her nastiness tone possible. It’s one thing to have someone treat you like shit when you ask for help, another thing entirely to have someone treat you like shit offering a helping hand. While I could have desperately used the help, any help…. I was sick of my adoptive mother treating me like a piece of shit. I got angry and I said to her “I’m quite alright on my own, I don’t need your help” when in reality I needed all the help I could get. She had a surprised look on her face when I said this, I mirrored her shitty tone right back at her. I wasn’t her doorstep to walk on, and I wanted her to know it.

I was only able to make it three semesters before I just wasn’t able to financially afford school and a car. I had to find another job that paid more, the used car I had purchased broke down all the time and the bills were increasingly larger. I cried for weeks when I had to quit school, it was one of the saddest times in my life.

Asking for help

Adoptees in general are self-sufficient, at an early age we realize that we have to take care

of ourselves. For me asking for any kind of help is difficult, I will go down every avenue to solve a problem on my own before asking for any kind of help. Only twice in my life have I ever asked someone to help me financially. Both times I asked my adoptive parents to loan me $50 and then $40 dollars so I could cover a car repair bill when I was between paychecks. I said that I would pay them back when I was paid the next week. Both times I was told a resounding “NO”. I can honestly say that my adoptive parents never load me as much as a dollar for even a day. Imagine now needing your car to make it to work and school, but you have to pay the $300 dollar repair bill to get the car out of the repair shop and you are $40 short. You get up enough courage to finally for once in your life ask for financial help, a modest loan… and you hear “NO”, not because they didn’t have the money… but rather because they didn’t want to help. Now, if I had been the kind of child who was always asking for money or loans I could understand being told no. But this was the first time I had EVER in my life asked for a loan or financial help of any kind from them. In the end I wrote a check for more than I had in my checking account, knowing that I’d have to pay an overdraft fee. Just a few months later the car broke down again, and I was confronted with an even larger car repair bill, this time was $50 dollars short. I asked one more time for a loan just until I got paid. My adoptive mother actually laughed at me said “NO” and turned her back to me and walked away. I started crying to her turned back as she walked away from me. I really didn’t know what I was going to do this time. The overdraft fees had cost me a lot the last time, and I needed to figure out some other option. When I didn’t have a car, I would ask to borrow hers. She started to resent this and would tell me to “take the bus you cannot have my car” which is easier said than done. I can recall that it took me three hours by bus to make it to school and work one day. By car it was 30 minutes round trip. I ended up leaving my car at the repair shop for a few days until I got my paycheck and could cover the bill, taking the bus to school and work a few times and being “allowed” to borrow my adoptive mothers car after I explained that I’d have to walk 4 miles at 11pm at night to make it home after I was done working 2^nd shift at the answering service since the busses would not be running at that time of night.

Mixed Messages

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 14:46:00 +0000

I’ve heard people talk about something called ‘unconditional love’ but I seriously doubt that exists. I know that there are always conditions put on love. If my husband or I were to have an affair, that would be a condition and it would most likely end the marriage. Perhaps unconditional love is something that a parent has for a child, but it’s something I’ve never experienced and therefore I doubt it exits. During my childhood I received mixed messages from my adoptive mother. Often she would tell me that “I don't like you, it doesn't mean I don't love you, but I cannot stand you.” I don’t understand why a parent, even an adoptive parent would tell a child this repeatedly, but she did. I’ll never understand why she would say that to me, but she did at least once a week for years. At the same time she would chastise me for not ‘having a closer relationship’ with her, like it was my fault. How could I seriously want to have a ‘closer relationship’ with someone who openly disliked me so much, and openly abused and neglected me.

passive-AGGRESSIVE

Looking back I know understand, my adoptive mother is very much passive-aggressive. Those with a narcissistic personality will often display the character trait, my adoptive mother was just very blatant about it. Telling me she loved me but could not stand me in the same breath. I still cannot understand why she did this, and all it did do was make me want to stay away from her as much as possible.
It's a hard reality

They love the dogs more

When I was in my early 20’s, two of my girlfriends made an observation when we were out one night. I guess it was a bit like an intervention, because they were concerned. I’ll never forget what they said to me. We were at Glencoe beach which overlooks Lake Michigan, on warm summer night. I had attended the same high school with Kristen and Jenny, and they were my two closest friends at this time. I had known Kristen longer, we both worked at the public library together for several years. As we sat there high up on the scenic overlook on benches, they both tentatively started speaking. They had both observed my adoptive parents treatment of me for several years now, and had come to the conclusion that they didn’t care for me, let alone ‘love’ me. Simply put, Kristen said “You realize they love their dogs more than they love you. You get this, right?” It was an honest observation of my situation, and it was truthful. It’s a hard reality, you try to survive as best as you can with the situation you’ve been dealt, but hearing someone else tell you what you feel but never speak is hard.

I can recall telling my adoptive parents what my two close friends had said, I had hoped that my adoptive parents would maybe realize that they didn’t treat me very well and that others observed this. Maybe I hoped for some sort of introspection on their part, or maybe an apology. The actual response I received was this, without even looking up from the television my adoptive mother said half distracted “no we don’t” and that was it. Nothing more. Your adult daughter, obviously upset tells you that her best friends have observed that her ‘parents’ love their dogs more than they do her, and your adoptive parents response is a half distracted “no we don’t”, and nothing more. Not even a second thought as to how they treated me that would prompt others to make that observation.

Now years later, I can say honestly that yes, my adoptive parents liked and loved their dogs more than they ever did me. They took better care of them, they received regular medical care, and resources that I was never given.

Reality is hard, and never giving.
Adoption is like an arranged marriage, there are no guarantees that strangers will get along... even if one of them is an infant. Shared genetic connections give a shared commonality within a family, adoption eradicates this.

Tanning Beds and Fainting Spells

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 04:00:00 +0000

Recently I wrote about my 8 Months of Black Corduroy, and that brought to mind something that happened after the school year ended that summer. In my mind I’ve always linked these two events together, I think in part because one ended and the other began.

So I survived the Black Corduroy, and the dreaded school year was finally over. I would get a reprieve from the constant bullying that I suffered at school. My adoptive mother took an ad out in the local paper advertising me as a “12 year old mature” baby sitter for a dollar an hour. I got a few good leads on babysitting, but I also got at least one pervert who offering “modeling” jobs and wanted me to describe what I was wearing and was breathing heavy on the phone. I guess I should be glad that I didn’t end up in a dumpster somewhere because the normal sounding ones I took at face value that they were really looking for a babysitter and not did not have some other idea in mind. So I was slowly earning some money and stashing it away so I could ensure that I had more than one pair of pants for the next school year. It was a real concern for me, it made me a prime target at school. I should preface that my adoptive mother didn't ask me about taking out the ad, or if I wanted to work as a baby sitter.... She decided this on her own, and told me about it after the fact. She wanted me out of the house as much as possible, and she wanted me paying my own expenses.

The summer progressed and my adoptive mother brought me with her shopping one afternoon. She wasn’t shopping for me (foolish reader for thinking that) she only spent money on me when she had to. I don’t recall what she was looking for, but we were at Montgomery Wards. ~~That tells you how long ago that was since they went out of business.~~I stand corrected, they are indeed still in business. So I was tagging along with her and we were in the housewares area. As I walked past a glass shelf display of towels, my right arm brushes up against it. The shelve happened to have a large chip out of it when I

looked at it later. However, I felt a rough scratch as my arm made contact. I exclaimed “ouch”, to which my adoptive mother chided me for being a ‘baby’ and over reacting. As she was chastising me, I brought my right arm up because it felt more than just a scratch… I was sure the skin had been broken. With my adoptive mother looking over

my shoulder, I brought my arm up and I wasn't able to clearly digest what I was seeing. I saw a long gaping hole in my right arm about an inch long, no blood yet, just a long hole. I touched either side of the hole with my left hand, and the hole popped open to a larger gaping wound that had not only broken the skin, but it had cut down to the bone, scratching it and nicked a vein that ran across the bone. That vein would be an artery by the way. So I’m just staring at this sight, human flesh without any blood looks just like SPAM, no joking. So it was only a matter of seconds and the blood from the nicked artery started to fill the hole. Now my adoptive mother is looking with me at my arm, she is seeing what I’m seeing. This isn’t some run of the mill cut, this is a deep wound that has cut down to and scratched the bone.

An employee alerts the store manager and they take me in back, spray antiseptic and slap an oversized band aid on it. They say that they can either A) call an ambulance or B) I can go to my doctor and they will pay the bill. Adoptive mother opts for B and takes the forms and we head out of the store.

Now you know this isn’t going to end with what a “Normal” mother would do, otherwise it would not be one of my abuse and neglect stories. So we can all agree that a “Normal” mother would seek immediate medical attention…right? Because so far other than the loud “OUCH” I haven’t complained once about pain. In fact I have stated several time I have “NO PAIN” other than the initial scratch. I think anyone with an IQ higher than a potato understands that I’ve just suffered serious nerve damage with nerves being severed.

Bake & Bleed

So based on my report that I feel no pain, despite the fact that I have a deep wound that has

scratched the bone and has nicked the “vein I saw” my adoptive mother says this to me. “Well, I’ve got a tanning appointment and I don’t want to miss it. Can you just sit there while I tan? Then we’ll go to the doctor. You don’t really feel anything at all?” To which I answer “No, I do not feel anything”. She says to me as she is walking away “I sort of feel guilty”. Wow? You “sort of feel guilty?” But apparently not guilty enough because I spend the next 45 minutes sitting in a chair bleeding while she bakes.

But it gets better.

Once she is done with her super important tanning appointment, it’s now time to see to my medical needs… well sort of. We arrive at the family doctor and she finds out that they are fully booked and we will have to wait to see the doctor. The receptionist/assistant asks me to peel the band aid back and states that “Yes, she needs stitches, at least 1 or 2 should close it”. However, it will be at least a 40 minute wait to see the doctor. My Adoptive mother is looking at the clock on the doctor’s office wall and it’s nearly 3pm now, and she doesn’t want to wait, that is obvious. With a large sigh, she states to me more than asking, but telling me “Do you want Stitches?” I’m 12, I know she wants to hear NO… so I say NO. A “normal” mother would not let the decision of medical care be up to a child of 12. I think we can all agree that this was one situation where I really needed a “Parent” to make the correct decisions for me. So we stop at the pharmacy and she gets a box of butterfly bandages and large band aids. I had my little red purse with me, and I paid the cashier for my medical supplies. And that was the extent of the medical care I received. I guess I should be thankful that the store manager sprayed the antiseptic on the wound when he did, because the rest of my medical care consisted of two butterfly bandages and a band aid.

Nerve Damage

It’s too bad that I’m right handed, because those of us with an IQ higher than a potato know that I have nerve damage in my right arm/hand. I have areas in my arm and hand that I have no feeling in. My handwriting is horrible, I drop small objects a lot, and although I try my hardest to knit, I am unable to regulate tension. I have always wondered what if I had gotten proper medical care? would it have made a difference?

Oh but I left out the best part.

When we got back into the car after we were done at the pharmacy, my adoptive mother states “I need to lay down, I am feeling faint…. This has been all too much”. Even as a 12 year old I give her the “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” look. At which point she tells me she doesn’t handle medical “issues” very well, and she gets faint. I’m thinking you were laying down for 45 minutes in the tanning bed, couldn't you have had your ‘fainting’ spell then? So we sit in the car waiting for my adoptive mother be ‘recovered’ enough to drive home.

Many in the Adoption Industry state that adoption provides 'a better home' for a child. That is a very subjective theory. All adoption can do is guarantee 'a different home', with quality being a very subjective aspect that no one can predict.

Corduroy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 01:38:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my childhood. Not that I particularly want to rehash painful events, but because the totality of my experiences make up who I am. If I were to describe my childhood in a few words I would quote what a teacher once said “She is a very sad and lonely girl”. The fact that my adoptive parents were not exactly nurturing didn’t help matters. From about the age of 9 I knew I was on my own, when I became ‘damaged goods’ I feel they just lost interest in me. My adoptive mother was my chief tormentor, she systematically took away any friend I made and anything that was important to me. I understand now that she is a Narcissist, and it’s what they do… their modus operandi. My adoptive brother was the golden child in her eyes, the athlete. I was the heavy, dumpy, stupid, special education, damaged goods child that just didn’t get the time and resources that he did.

Grade school was horrible, but it didn’t prepare me for the hell that junior high turned out to be. I knew people could be cruel, but junior high was a whole other level. I had everything going against me, I was heavy, in special education, and not able to stand up for myself.

8 Months of Black Corduroy

The new school year shopping ritual was never a fun time for me. My adoptive mother who was

naturally thin, really didn't know where or how to shop for a child that was heavier than normal. It’s bad enough as an adult trying on endless clothing that doesn't fit you, but when you are 11 or 12 it’s an exercise in pure torture. Thus, I started my school year with 2 pairs of pants that were my clothing allotment for the rest of that year. Two pairs of corduroy pants, one brown and the other black. During the first 2 weeks of school, the brown corduroy pants got torn, and they were not salvageable. So a normal mother might take her child back out shopping, since your child is now down to one pair of pants…right? I mean that is what a “normal” mother would do…. But my adoptive mother wasn't normal…. When I showed her what happened, she flatly said ‘well tough luck’ that is what you have for the year, and don't ask me about this again. I wasn't a careless child when it came to things, and the pants getting torn was just a freak accident. They caught a sharp edge that was hidden.

So began my journey of wearing the same pair of pants every day for 8 months straight.

If they had been blue jeans, it might not have been that noticeable… but they were black corduroy, and well it becomes obvious that you've been wearing the same pants every day. Lunch time was the worst, and I took to hiding in the school library during my lunch period. It lasted for a few weeks before the librarian kicked me out. I then sought refuge in the last stall of the least used ladies bathroom. It was a ritual, instead of lunch I hid away in a bathroom. I’d occupy myself with finishing the homework I didn't do from the night before and pray that I’d get hit by a truck soon, anything to keep me from having to come back to school in the same pants day after day.

About 3 months in, the pants started to suffer from wear and tear. The fabric on the inner thighs was showing fatigue. Small holes developed after they gone through the washer and dryer, so I had to hand wash them in the sink and hang them to dry in my bedroom in an effort to lengthen their life. At the 6 month mark, say around March, the fabric was really becoming threadbare in areas. I spent hours trying to mend the pants, trying to find ways to patch and sew fabric that was rapidly deteriorating. Towards the end of the school year, my repairs were only lasting one day. I just accepted my dilemma that I only had the one pair of pants, I didn’t not bother asking again for a

replacement…. See I was damaged goods, and the resources of the family were put into more worthwhile members. Was my family so poor they could not afford to buy me clothing? No. My adoptive mother had her tanning appointments, hair coloring appointments, and she shopped as an activity. She was never without anything she wanted. Someone suggested that maybe she was unaware of the clothing situation, which I can kind of give a pass on… let’s say… and I’ll be generous… for the first 4 months of continuous wear. That still leaves you with another 4 months that she just neglected to notice, care, or really have an interest in the lack of clothing I had.

No, the honest truth is that my adoptive mother told me that I had that one pair of pants for the rest of the year and not to complain. That was what I had, and all I was getting. So I accepted my situation. It isn't easy being the target at school for bullies, and coming to school day after day in the same clothing was predicable in the level and kinds of abuse that would be directed at you. PE class was horrible, we had to change in an open group locker room that had no privacy. I was actually thankful when I fell down a staircase at school and fractured some toes. I was able to get into PE class for those with disabilities. Even after my foot healed, I just kept going to that PE class until toward the end of the year my Corduroy year my main special ed teacher realized I was still in the restricted PE class and forced me back into the mainstream PE class. I tried to re-injure my foot without success....the things we do when we are desperate.

At the time I was 12, and I didn't have enough of my own money to buy clothing, but I was hiding and saving any money I did get because two years earlier I had been forced to sign over my savings bonds to help pay for my adoptive brothers first car. I was told I’d get the money back, and I did 6 years later after I kept asking about it… I was told I was making a big deal out of nothing and it wasn't that much money. I don’t know what the amount was, I never counted the savings bonds when they made me sign them over at the bank. It would have been nice if my adoptive parents would have reciprocated when I bought my first car and made ‘a family effort’ to help me, but as you know I was ‘damaged goods’ and I actually didn't get a car until after I graduated high school. I worked full time as a receptionist, saving every dollar so I could eventually buy a used car… and that is a whole other blog entry.

After my corduroy year, I started baby sitting and saved my earnings so I could buy my own clothing… I never wanted to be forced to wear the same pair of pants for 8 months again. I never wore corduroy ever again, nor can I stand it to this day. What I am unable to wrap my head around to this day, is how my adoptive mother was able to see me day after day in the same pants and feel nothing.... not an ounce of empathy, sympathy, or common human decency. If she was teaching me a lesson to take better care of my clothing.... don't you think you could say the lesson was learned 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or at 10 weeks in? But 8 months? Only when you look at someone with a Narcissistic disorder can it even being to make sense.... the lack of empathy, or for that matter common decency. Like in my Red nightmare, a total and complete lack of accountability, empathy for how your actions impact others.

Adoptees have a tendency to be self-sufficient because we don’t trust people, especially those close to us… since our mothers abandoned us as infants.

We realize that no relationship, no matter how close is guaranteed, we are disposable.

The Color Red

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 04:28:00 +0000

The nightmare always starts the same. I’m in the bathroom, leaning over the sink. Watching

it turn red with my blood. The sharpness of stark white turning red are vivid. A combination of disbelief, anger, and the desire for

recrimination are the mix of emotions I feel. My face feels like an explosion of pain has hit me head on. I become aware of someone standing over me, to my side. As I look up, I see my adoptive mother… poised to hit me again… A look of rage is in her eyes, how dare I run way from her….. She is so close I can feel her breath on me…. I wake.

For decades I’ve had the same nightmare or a variation off it. I wish I could say that it was just a bad dream, but it’s an actual event that happened to me and I'm going to write about it for the first time. Like most people who have survived abuse, its an unwritten rule that you don't talk about it. Well (pardon my French) fuck that, I'll be 44 in a few days.

My red nightmare starts

I had fallen asleep reading in bed one night with the lights on. My adoptive brother had come home from a late night out. He opened my door seeing my lights were on. I was sound asleep. As he woke me, I was groggy and I rolled over on the book I was reading. He thought I was trying to hide the book I was reading, when I rolled over on it… laughable now I know, but I handed the book over… I wasn’t trying to hide anything… I fell back asleep quickly. Soon he had woken my adoptive mother, and now she didn’t like what I was reading.

I’m going back up slightly for context and clarity. I was put into special education at the age of 9 when my world fell apart. My junior year I walk into my special ed English class to find an ‘English as a second language’ class reading Moby Dick in comic book form. I asked to be moved to another English class, to find out this is all they offered, this is it when it comes to special ed English for a junior. I ask to be removed from special ed, and I’m told that it isn’t that easy and it will take time. I work an agreement out with the teacher, she will give me a reading list, and if I read and write a book report on each of the books on the list, I do not have to come to her class. I don’t recall the exact details of the agreement now, but I agree to read and report on so many books a month. If I hold up to my end of the agreement, I don’t have to be subjected to the comic book classics in her class. I’ve always been an avid reader, and even as a freshman my reading comprehension was at a college level, so this is actually a great arrangement for me. Looking back, I recall that nearly all the books on her list were by female authors. Pearl S. Buck, Daphne du Maurier, Mary Shelly, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Brontë, and Jane Austen are the authors I remember. The book list was by author, so I would read several books by the same author then move on to a new author.

So Daphne du Maurier was the next author I was working on, the book was the Jamaica Inn. The library at school only had the Jamaica Inn in a reader’s digest book compilation that was titled “Six Gothic Tales”

I’m not really sure what it was that set her off about the book. The cover art? The reviews on the back calling the tales inside “spine tingling”. It really doesn’t matter, when a Narcissist is angry, all logic is gone. My adoptive mother confronts me, it’s the middle of the night. I explain I’m reading it for English class, and this is the only way I could find the book in the school library. I’m accused of “lying”…etc..etc.. In the end I just simply tell my adoptive mother that “It’s late, call the teacher in the morning… you can confirm with her that it’s required reading… call the school library in the morning… you can confirm that this is the only format they have the book in”. Rather than back down and maybe admit she was wrong (something a Narcissist will never do) she declares that none of this maters, because I was going to read the other stories in this book! And I’m lying! What can I say to this? She has made up her mind, so I simply say “Call the teacher and the library in the morning, it’s late and I’m going back to bed”

Before I knew exactly what happened, my adoptive mother slugged me in the face with enough force that my head snapped back. (edited to add: I have since recalled that she called me "Ungrateful" as she hit me) I stood there, numb with pain and shock… holding my head at the sharp angle it rested in. The pain exploded across my face. I started to feel blood pouring from my nose, and I ran to the bathroom. I made it to the sink just in time for the blood to start streaming out of my nose and fill the sink. I watched the stark white sink turn red with long drips of my blood. As the shock of it set in, I became aware of my adoptive mother at my side… She had rage in her eyes, I could tell she wanted to hit me again… because how dare I run away from her. Then she saw the blood, and her body posture relaxed slightly… I could tell she wasn’t going to hit me again. Now all she wanted was for me to stop the blood, turn the water on… make it go away. Deep down I wanted to smear my red blood everywhere and on her. Slowly as the shock started to wear off, and as I watched the blood stream out I had this very clear thought. "I will never forgive you for this, I will never forgive you". Not that it mattered, because never once did she ever apologize to me over this, never once did she say she was sorry….or that she would never hit me again…. Never again did she mention this incident. If it were not for the fact that my adoptive brother witnessed this, I am positive that my adoptive mother would deny it ever happened. For the next 20 minutes they both stood in the bathroom doorway, giving suggestions on how to stop the nose bleed. I repeatedly begged them"to just go away, and leave me alone" but they did not. I know that if I would have tried to close the bathroom door on them, it would have precipitated more violence toward me- But at this moment in my life, I really just wanted them out of that small bathroom, and to be alone....but I was denied that.

At this time I had always feared her, but now I really feared for my safety when she was in a rage. There had already been a few ugly incidents between us in the previous months leading up to this. In one incident she broke my bedroom door down to get at me, and started hitting and pulling me around by my hair. The door frame still bears the scars of this event despite my efforts to repair it with spackle and paint in my early 20's.

At this time I was in the grips of bulimia, and flirting with anorexia when this happened- obviously I was struggling for some sense of control in my life. For the next week my nose would bleed on and off, I was sent to the school nurse several times over it. I had some facial bruises on the impact site that I tried to cover with makeup. The nurse asked me about this, and I had the opportunity to have CPS called…. But didn’t.

I felt like a powerless coward for not reporting her, but I realized that it was the only home I knew… and where would I go? I knew that I would be disowned the moment I really put my foot down and really stood up for myself…. This I always knew….

A former teacher and friend at the time also suggested calling CPS, but again I knew that I would be entering state care for good until I turned 18 if I did this…. It was an unspoken threat. She had already told me she had thought about taking me back to the adoption agency. Weekly she would tell me how much she disliked me. Had the re-homing trend with adoptees being going on then, I have no doubt that my adoptive mother would have done that to me.

In the end, I did finally stand up for myself at 36, twenty years after my Red nightmare started... But the imagery of the dream remains the same each time, the stark white sink turning red with long drips of my blood.

Why?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Jun 2014 13:55:00 +0000

"Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful" - The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE

I often find myself asking ‘Why’

I think like most adoptive parents, the people who adopted me started out with good intentions, a yearning to have a family that they could not conceive on their own. But the good intentions, at least for me, went awry. When I look back, I can pinpoint when it all changed for me. I

became damaged goods, and the way my adoptive parents treated me changed. Many adopted children will show the after effect of their adoption in different ways. For me, it started to show when I was 9. I started to have problems at school, I was the target of severe bullying. Unable to stand up for myself, or fight, it became a waking nightmare. I understand why I wasn’t able to stand up for myself, my parents had already been bullying me. Apparently they felt I talked too much as a child, and started to call me ‘motor mouth’ every time I spoke too much. I can recall being in the back of the car, in tears that I wasn’t allowed to express myself, and being bullied by my parents. It was so rampant, that even their “adult” friends joined in. (Many years later an old friend of theirs came by after an absence of a decade or more. Upon seeing me, a teenager at this point, the first words he spoke to me were “MOTOR MOUTH!” in greeting. Bullying was acceptable to my adoptive parents, and it is a life-long habit of theirs.) As a 9 year-old, school for me became about survival, long gone was learning. I was just trying to survive, and I shut down. Soon I fell behind in school, and found myself seeing school counselors and other “professionals” to figure out exactly what the issues was. I remember having my IQ tested, seeing a psychiatrist, ink blot tests, and pages of questionnaires in an effort to figure out what was wrong with me. In the end I was told that my adoption had nothing to do with my ‘issues’, but the experts did seem to feel that because I spent the first two months of my life in a commercial nursery that kept sterile conditions with the use of facemasks. That it was not adoption that affected me, but rather not seeing a full human face for the first two months of my life that affected me. I just like to interject here, what a complete cart of bullshit that is. So at the age of 9, I was misdiagnosed, and never received any help. Neatly because of the “experts” diagnosis, anything I felt or said was dismissed because the “experts” said……. I spent a lot of time curled up in my closet crying, trying to find comfort. I remember begging for my mother (biological) to come rescue me from this house, but she never came. I recall at 9, wanting to die. Trying to figure out how to hang myself with a belt in my closet. I wasn’t able to make it work, had the internet existed in the 70’s I would have been much more successful I’m sure.

My adoptive mother wasn’t exactly the best mother even in the best of times. And now I was ‘damaged goods’ in her eyes, and her parenting started to rapidly decline. She showed less interest in me, and I started to become love starved. I can recall making over-the-top declarations of how much I loved her, hoping that just once she would reciprocate….. but she never did.

Like many adopted children, as I got older I started to have abandonment fears. For an adopted child, the worst has already happened… you’ve already been abandoned by your mother. So waiting and watching for other adult care takers in your life to do the same, is a survival instinct. My fears presented when I was in public places with my parents, fear of getting lost from them. My adoptive mother felt the best way to deal with this, was to wait until they were in a parking lot…. And start running to the car, jump in, lock the doors, and drive off without me. In her warped narcissistic mind, she was teaching me a lesson for being to ‘clingy’. I can recall the feeling of helplessness watching them drive off without me. When I complained, my feelings were always dismissed, they came back after all… and how dare I be upset. Time and time again, I would watch my mother start walking faster, poke my father… and they would start running to the car in an effort to beat me to it. So many times I remember standing their knocking on the glass, begging to be let in…. wondering if they would drive off without me again.

In later years, she would decry that they only drove off without me once, and I was making a big deal of nothing. But at 9 I learned that they could do whatever they wanted to me, and I had to take it…. I had no voice…. Again I think she viewed me as ‘damaged goods’ and why not just treat me badly….

I think deep down she just wanted me to go away.