A link worth a look

The writing below is excellent,  better than anything I could hope to turn out.  It is, of course, adoption related.

Worth a look

Of 42 and Fish...

I got some good news today; my youngest brother and his girlfriend are engaged.  The wedding is in September of next year.  So, I already have an excuse to plan a trip out there then, not that I really need an excuse.  With this news comes the usual adoptee feeling of “great, another happy event/piece of news to make me sad.”  I don’t want to give the impression that I am not happy for my brother, I am very happy for him.  I am already looking forward to going to the wedding and celebrating with my people.  This will likely be an opportunity to meet some extended family I have only heard about and of course it will mean having everyone together.  Sounds great doesn’t it?  I am sure it will be.

So, why is there a “but?”  Well, there isn’t, however there is an “and.”  The “and” is what clubbed me over the head today; it is the same one that does it to me most of the time.  The “and” covers all the similar events I missed in the past.  I missed the engagements and weddings of both of my sisters (or all three of my sisters if one chooses to count the one I haven’t met on my biological father’s side- I can’t decide if I count her or not, she clearly doesn’t count me).  It also covers the awkwardness I always seem to feel because I don’t know people I should know.  I don’t mean just extended family (though of course they are part of it), but also the family I should have been with and should know much better than I do. 

I leave in a couple of days to spend Thanksgiving with them.  This is the first “major holiday” I will be spending with them.  I expect it will be one of many to come.  I hope that means it will eventually just be a happy time.  I don’t want to jinx it, but this is something that has been on my mind as the day approaches so perhaps writing about it will excise it to one extent of another.  I missed 42 of these (does it mean something that it is 42?  I don’t know where my towel is right at the moment after all).  I am thankful I won’t be missing 43 and also sad (there is that and again) that I missed the 42.  Of course that also translates to 42 Christmases (and it will be 43 this year, I won’t be there for Christmas), and 43 Easters, and countless birthdays. 

So happy events that make me sad.  It seems to be the theme of the night, again.  So long and thanks for all the fish, more to come; my sincerest apologies to Douglas Adams. 

Creed - With Arms Wide Open

Being "Chosen"

There is a great myth propagated by the adoption industry and supported by many adoptive parents that adoptees are somehow “special” because they are “chosen”.  I found myself wondering today if I might feel less bad about my experience as an adoptee if I actually had been chosen as opposed to being a single offering; take him or leave him.  Obviously that isn’t something I can find an answer to, but it is an interesting question.

There is a book called “The Chosen Baby” that is about adoption and is aimed at adopted children.  It was (and perhaps still is) recommend as a way to tell ones’ adopted child he or she is adopted.  I suppose it is possible that at some point in adoption’s past there we so many babies available for adoption that adopting parents had a choice of babies.  That was not the case when I was adopted in 1973 and it certainly isn’t the case now (I am speaking of infant adoptions, for older children there is likely some ability to choose).  The only choice my adoptive parents had was whether or not to say yes when I was offered.  Saying no was technically an option but they likely assumed (and would have been correct) that couples who turn down babies don’t get offered babies again.  They did not get to go to a home and pick out the “best” infant from a multitude; they were offered me and accepted.   They made no choice past “yes” or “no”.

Infants are given up for a myriad of justifications.  They all basically boil down to one reason though, we (the adoptees) were not as important to someone who would have been instrumental in keeping us with our natural families as some other concern.  In my case the people who should have had my best interests at heart but didn’t were my father and grandmother.  Other things were more important to them than I was.  They didn’t “love me so much they gave me away” (a justification we often hear from the adoption industry), instead they didn’t love me enough (or perhaps at all) to keep me.

So, was I or are any of us “chosen”?  No, that is simply a cover word used to deny reality.  The reality is that in order to be available for adoption the people who were supposed to care for us decided something else was more important.  The only choice made in relation to me was the choice to make “not being embarrassed” and “not being tied down” more important than me.  That is, unfortunately, the reality of adoption and adoptees live with it every day.  In many of us it creates lifelong feelings that we are not good enough or not worthy.  That is the reality behind being “chosen”.

The Verve Pipe - The Freshmen

Purchase or Person?

There have been a couple of interviews posted to AdopteesOn since mine.  I’ve listened to all the interviews there and all have had an impact on me in one way or another.  I’ve also heard a little bit of my story in each of them.  The more recent of them, as of this writing, was the second male interviewed, Davis.  His interview was very interesting and parts of it sounded very familiar.  However, he also recorded a reading of something he wrote earlier entitled “Am I blood or am I Water”.  I’m linking it here because I found it to be very powerful.  It also sounded very familiar.

It occurred to me after listening to Davis’ interview and reading that I have always felt like property rather than family when it came to my adoptive “family”.  Something was always wrong there.  It was more than just having a different sense of humor, a different way of looking at things, and not having physical features in common with them.  I never felt like a real member of the family, or any family.  It has taken me a long time to even start to figure some of this out and I have to provide special thanks to Davis and Haley Radke for helping bring it to my attention.

I’ve written before that I had a hard time, and still have a hard time, conceptualizing my birth.  I know logically I must have been born like everyone else.  My mom has told me the story, the story I didn’t have for 42 years, so I know it happened.  Even so, I spent the vast majority of my life feeling like I had just popped into existence at 3 ½ months.  Knowing how it began hasn’t helped that feeling to go away and I think that is part of the reason I always felt like property.  My adoptive mother was (and still is unfortunately) fond of saying that I “Cost $15”.  Given my inability to believe in my birth and constantly being told I was purchased by my adoptive mother I developed this feeling that I wasn’t a person but a purchase.  Purchases, unlike people, get returned or discarded if they don’t work out.  I never felt like I worked out in my adoptive “family”.  I also never felt like I had a family.  Go figure.

Davis can be found here:

Am I Blood or am I Water