In the adoption community there are so many differing opinions to take into consideration and I'm not sure whose is most valuable, so I take them all and sort through each one. My personal opinions have shifted from one side of the spectrum to the other in the last 6 months. There are very strong women and men in both camps- we have pro adoption and anti adoption. We have adoptees and birth families that want records unsealed and adoption lawyers that want to keep them closed, family members we are afraid of hurting, and people that would've lived on this earth a little longer had they been given their medical history. We have adopted teens attempting suicide, and teen moms celebrating adoption. There are birthmothers that are pissed...so pissed because their children were ripped away from them without their consent, adoptive parents willing to give birthmothers a video tape of their child. There is open adoption, private adoption, children in foster care, international adoption, orphans, child trafficking... the layers are endless and because of it, people are left bleeding all over the world.
The adoptions I knew about were neat and tidy, they were packaged up in a pretty bow on a baby, making parents dreams come true-giving the impression that being adopted was a favor to the birthmother and that everyone's life was much better for her selfless decision. That's the myth but the truth isn't so comfortable. There's a dark side and sometimes it isn't revealed until your precious little baby gift becomes a really messed up teen. If any of those parents were willing to scratch the surface of their happy adoption story, they would find that lives were turned upside down and the process, from the other side, wasn't pretty and very likely, a corrupt acquistion. The modern day adoption industry is a multi billion dollar business and as I've said before, with numbers like that the folks on the adoption side will do just about anything to get that baby.
I had NO IDEA the magnitude of this, the scope of angry, lost adoptees and birthmothers that are screaming about the wrong-ness of it all, and they have every right to be angry. I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I don't fault my parents. I love my parents and I believe they did the best they could with the information they were given. They just didn't know any better when they adopted me in 1970, so naturally when I turned up pregnant, that was the simple solution I was given as well. I willingly chose adoption for my child. I wasn't given options, but I was confident with my decision. And I regret it. Often I hear these young, fresh birth (natural, first mothers- there's proper verbage to use in this community, you know) mothers that are so thrilled with their open adoption experience. They are loud and vocal, just like I was at that stage, and they want the world to know they had a baby and selflessly gave it up (surrendered, relinquished- proper verbage) for adoption. When I hear this, I just shake my head because they have NO IDEA how this loss will manifest itself in the future. Just wait.
Ironically, the deeper I dig into this black hole, the more clarity I have. I see it .. the wrong-ness that everyone is screaming about and I just wish I had known all of this sooner.
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