Posts Tagged ‘reunions’

“For Just a Day”—An Adoptee’s Wish for a Deeper Awareness of Adoption Pain

Sunday, October 19th, 2014

Adoptee, Daryn Watson was compelled to pen this poem after learning the news that a fellow adoptee had recently ended her own life. He movingly reveals some of the realities of many adoption reunions after the initial tears of joy have been swept away.

 

For Just A Day

 

For just a day

I wish my pain would go away

 

For just a day

I wish I could say

I knew what it felt like

To fit into a family

Without feeling like I had to earn my approval

 

For just a day

I wish I didn’t fear second rejections

From the woman who gave me away

And who gives me her rationalizations

 

For just a day

I wish I could say

The words “birth” or “bio” mother

Without them being such a bother

 

For just a day

My hopes of my siblings to say

“How are you doing?”

Let’s plan a visit in May

 

For just a day

I want to convey

The angst I feel in my life

That causes me much strife

Without being judged or condemned

Day after day, all over again

 

For just a day

I hope for the news

That we won’t hear of a blindside

Of another adoptee committing suicide

 

For just a day

I want to segway

Into our own truth

That was formed in our early youth

 

For just a day

I wish the adoption industry

Would stop trying to betray

Adoptees from finding their history

 

For just a day

We hope lawmakers would join the fray

By stop making us feel ignored

And give us our identity records

 

For just a day

I wish couples wouldn’t pay

Tons of money to fulfill their heart

While ripping other families forever apart

 

For just a day

I wish I truly fit in

With the people around me

Without losing connections again

 

For just a day

I desire inner peace to stay

Without the rumblings of emotional famine

Or feeling overwhelming grief at random

 

For just a day

I wish I wasn’t cast away

To live my life in a twister

Without my natural brother or sister

 

For just a day

We wouldn’t have to pray

That our feelings aren’t swept under the rug

Or that we don’t abuse alcohol or an antidepressant drug

 

For just a day

I want my birth mother to acknowledge and say

“I’m sorry I abandoned you” with her voice

“And I didn’t give YOU a choice.”

 

For just a day

I wish my pain would go away

 

October 8, 2014

 

I wrote this poem soon after I heard the troubling news of a fellow adoptee taking her own life.  Although I did not know this person, I knew that she had been reunited with her birth family. Upon learning about her tragic decision to end her pain, the phrase— for just a day—kept running through my mind. I finally succumbed to that inner mantra and put my feelings and words to paper.

In the 19 years since I reunited with my own birth family, my emotions have run the entire gamut from feeling elated, to feeling completely rejected and abandoned again. Reunions and the adoption pain that follows them can be hard, complex, and confusing to say the least.

Society usually sees the happy reunion story during its initial honeymoon stage. Those moments are almost always filled with tears of joy, leaving the impression that the reunion and new relationship will lead to a “happily ever after” fairytale scenario. However, throughout the reunion process, the emotional undercurrents of grief, rage, shame, guilt, rejection and abandonment often lurk beneath the surface for both the birth family and the adoptee.

Thankfully today, adoptee rights organizations and social media outlets are creating a deeper awareness of the adoption pain the adult adoptee may face throughout the course of his or her life. Still, in light of the recent string of adoption-related suicides, adoptees are in need of far more resources, guidance and emotional supportive measures as they navigate the search and reunion roller coaster ride.

It is my hope that by sharing this poem, others will see another realistic side of adoption reunion and how that experience may really feel for many grown-up adoptees across the world.

Editor’s Notes:  Enjoy another of Daryn Watson’s poems here on Secret Sons & Daughters: Thanksgiving Reunion ’95

Pictured above is author, Daryn Watson and his paternal natural brother.

Thank you for visiting Secret Sons & Daughters. In addition to stories, you can find valuable resourcesdiscover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page. Comments are always welcome. And we’d love to hear your story. Please subscribe and join our growing community.

A Michigan Adoptee Reflects on the Concept of Choice

Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

[dropcap size=dropcap]T[/dropcap]en years ago this month, the phone rang at 7 a.m. That was my first indication that it was bad news—nobody ever calls that early with good news.

“Are you sitting down? You better sit down,” said Jenifer, my sister-in-law. “There’s been an accident. Cristi is dead.”

My predominant reaction to the news was confusion. Cristi was my 36-year-old full biological sister, 14 months younger than me, and a sister I’d only known for 15 years.

I was adopted in 1966 as an infant, in a closed adoption. I met Cristi when I reunited with my birth family in 1988. A year-and-a-half after we had met, we were both surprised to learn that we were full sisters.

Apparently, my birth mother met my birth father secretly six months after my birth, and as a result of that encounter, Cristi was born. Our birth mother went on to marry another man, one her family approved of, and he raised Cristi as his own. She grew up believing he was her father, that is, until I came into the picture.

I should be really sad about losing Cristi, I thought when the news of her passing settled in. I pretended that I was. Don’t get me wrong, on one level I was sad. Christi was young, she had two small children, and this was a tragedy. I had had little history in common with her—no shared memories of growing up together—only our genes. We were not close.

Like many adoptees, I spent my life denying, repressing, and stuffing my feelings, and even medicating them when all else failed. Expressing my feelings, I thought, might destroy me.

I had received society’s message to be grateful because I was special and chosen. I was supposed to feel lucky that my parents had adopted me. Other children, in an attempt to be sympathetic, would remark that their parents were “stuck” with them. Being adopted made me special and chosen? Who wouldn’t be grateful for that?

But in my heart and in my gut, I knew that something terrible had happened to me, even though no one spoke of it. No one ever said: “I am sorry you couldn’t stay with your mother.”

If I had allowed myself to grieve that loss, it would have overwhelmed me. I believed that had I protested or expressed my feelings openly, then my adoptive parents might’ve rejected me and left too. That would have destroyed me.

In time, however, my denial mechanism became a hindrance. From the beginning, the setup was for me to fit what others needed, not for me to discover what fit me.

Therefore, I had developed no internal radar, and very little clarity on who I was or how I truly felt. When I was younger, I accepted jobs that I didn’t care for only because they were offered, and I ended up in too many relationships with men that were not right for me, simply because they had expressed an interest in me.

So there I was with a dead biological sister and great uncertainty about how to grieve.

I went to the funeral home, along with my birth family and pretended to be devastated. I cried. I hugged my family as they grieved my sister’s death. I tried to be one of them just like I had since my reunion.

I sat around a table at the funeral home with my birth mother, my brother, and Cristi’s husband, and helped with the obituary wording.

What the hell am I doing here? Why did they include me? I dont belongI hardly even knew her.

I kept those thoughts inside, ignored my feelings and tried, as always, to fit in. And part of me felt grateful to be included. I felt privileged to finally be in this family that I had been banished from decades earlier.

Three days later, after I had returned home from Cristi’s funeral, my then-husband met me at the door. “You better sit down. Your brother just called. Your father died.”

My adoptive father, whom I had been to Arizona to visit two weeks prior, had dropped dead from a stroke at the age of 79.

The feelings came fast and hard. I felt clear—no ambiguity this time, and it tore right through me. I dropped to the floor and sobbed.

The truth is though; I was not close to my adoptive father, either. He was a good person, well liked, but not a very good father. He was aloof, distant, unengaged, and often, he didn’t seem to care much about me, yet the pain I felt was real and genuine.

Ironically, one of the things I remember most about his funeral was when my adoptive mother told me not to cry.

I was about to board a plane back to Michigan and I was worried about leaving her alone, without my father. My tears would not stop. She patted me on the shoulder and said, “Oh now, don’t cry.”

I thought Jesus Christ, if Im not even allowed to cry now, when my father has died, will there ever be a time when it is okay for me to cry? But, good little adoptee that I was—I denied my feelings and I stopped crying.

That was a pivotal time in my life, and a very complicated one. Many things were changing, most of all me. I had two young daughters, my marriage was falling apart, and I was transitioning from an agency job to begin a private practice as a clinical social worker. It was a time I learned about choices.

A year later, I ended contact with my birth family. I was tired of pretending. I had already spent a lifetime doing that with my adoptive family, and that added stress had become too much to bear. The realization that I could never be privy to the memories that they shared was excruciating.

I had always felt sad after being with them for holidays and birthdays. After one visit in particular, my husband asked, “If you were not biologically related to these people, would you have anything to do with them?”

“Absolutely not,” I replied with certainty.

“Then don’t,” he said.

“That’s really an option?”  I asked.

“Of course it is.”

In my mind, choosing my family relationships was never an option. Being adopted had meant that others decide whom I call family.

I had an epiphany last year when I read someone’s post in an online adoptee support group that I participate in. It said: “I did not ask to be adopted, nor did I want to be adopted. The whole thing did not work out very well for me at all. I do not owe anybody anything.”

Wow.

It was as though my blinders had been removed. I realized that I no longer had to try to navigate my very complicated relationship with my adoptive mother. I have always felt like I owed her something because she had taken me in and raised me.

All of my life, I had desperately struggled to fit with her, despite her callousness and emotional abuse, and I beat the hell out of myself when I did not. I would’ve never chosen to have a casual friendship with a person like my adoptive mother— much less have chosen her as a parent. Given the choice, I would have remained with my birth family—my clan.

I once read a quote by the Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE that said: “Adoption is the only trauma in the world where the victim is expected by the whole of society to be grateful.”

Today, after years of grappling with that trauma, I carefully choose who is part of my family—they are a select and exclusive few. The requirements for membership are simple: you must truly love, appreciate and unconditionally accept me for exactly who I am— and not who you need me to be; authenticity and genuineness are required; and trust is a must.

Thanks for visiting our online community. In addition to stories like this one, you can find valuable resources, discover your rights to your original birth certificate, meet other adoptees, and join the discussion by commenting (below) or on our Facebook page.

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Paige Strickland, Author of “Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity,” Speaks About Self-Publishing Her Book

Friday, April 4th, 2014

Author, Paige Strickland, answers questions from the co-founders of Secret Sons and Daughters on how to self-publish an adoption memoir.

Secret Sons & Daughters: What prompted you to write a memoir about your adoption? 

Paige: When my kids and I visited my mom’s house during the summer of 2002, they grew curious about my complex family history after they viewed some of our old slides. For the first time, my kids wanted to hear all the details of my youth, including the “bad” fashion tastes of the ‘70’s.

I’ve always enjoyed writing, but it wasn’t until that same summer when I enrolled my kids in a daily, three-hour summer course that I found the time to write more seriously. My project began as a document of family trees and stories for my kids, but over time, it grew into much more.

Secret Sons & Daughters: What part of your adoption experience did you choose to focus on most?

Paige: My story reflects how it felt to be raised as an adopted kid in the 1960’s through the 1980’s, a time when adoption was more shameful. I also cover my search experience and what it was like to finally find my biological family members in 1987 and 1988.

Secret Sons & Daughters: What was the easiest part of your writing process?

Paige: I was truly motivated to write, and as an adoptee, I have the firsthand knowledge and expertise to convey how it feels to be adopted.

Secret Sons & Daughters: What was the most difficult part? 

Paige: Dealing with the daily distractions of life. When I started to write this book, my kids were in school. Although they were old enough to entertain themselves, I was also working at a time consuming job. It was hard to find the energy to teach to the best of my ability and give my children the attention they deserved.

Secret Sons & Daughters:  Who encouraged and supported you the most during the writing process?

Paige: My husband, our kids, my sisters and friends all helped in various ways, including serving as first readers. I also hired a professional editor and joined a local writing group called Writing Workshop-Workshop, which is a spin-off of the Cincinnati Tri-State Writers Group. I highly recommend joining a writing group. They provide invaluable feedback.

Secret Sons & Daughters: Through the process of writing your memoir, did you discover something about yourself, or about the relationships you shared through the years with your families?

Paige: As I wrote my memoir, I began to realize just how dominant my adoptive dad really was. He had always been that way, but through the process of writing, I was able to see it much more clearly.

Writing got a lot of “garbage” out of my system. I wrote for me. However, I had to really soul search during the editing process.  For example, writing about my father was tricky, but in the end I wanted my story to be honest, so he had to be in there. There were other things too that I had to decide if I should mention and consider what sort of impression I wanted to leave on my readers. That thinking ties very closely to the typical adoptee mentality of, ‘I don’t want to offend anyone, lest they reject me.’ I hope I struck a happy medium.

Secret Sons & Daughters: What authors inspired you?

Paige: I’ve been most inspired recently by other memoirists. Right before I began writing my book, I had read Angela’s Ashes by the late Frank McCourt. I loved his style of writing about the past in the present tense. I think he was brave to disclose so much about himself and his family. He was also a teacher, so I thought if this guy could do it, so could I!

I enjoy books by Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle in particular. I like how she presented her father-daughter relationship. That meant a lot to me because I also have a similar theme. Jennifer Lauck’s books, Lost and Blackbird were great ones as well. I read a lot of other adoption-themed memoirs as I continued to write. Though I read these books and many others for my professional growth as a writer, they also entertained me.

Secret Sons & Daughters: How long did it take you to complete your memoir? 

Paige: I began the project in the summer of 2002, and I wrote during every school vacation through June 2008. I edited until May of 2012, let my editor have her turn with it, and then I did a few more pass-throughs before going live. I  released my memoir on the Kindle and iPad on September 15, 2013. The printed version was released one week later on September 23.

Secret Sons & Daughters: Why did you choose to self-publish your memoir? 

Paige: For about 18 months, I queried over 100 agents through Querytracker.net. A few agents/agencies requested sample chapters, but beyond that, I had no further luck. I attempted this query during the downturn of our economy, and quite a few of my rejection messages stated that the agents could not afford to take on additional clients at the time. I am not famous, nor do I have special connections, so I figured my chances of being published with a traditional publishing house were pretty slim. When I had exhausted this route, I decided to take the independent one instead.

Secret Sons & Daughters: How do you self-publish a memoir—what are the steps?

Paige: I don’t know if there is more than one way, but I do know the answer to this is based on your goals. If your goal is to write a family history document alone, you can use a “vanity press” or small local publisher and have print copies made for your relatives. It typically costs between $100 and $1,000, depending on how many copies you order.

If you have enough of a story from which you can create a plot, conflict, and interesting characters to read more like literature, then you may be able to query traditional publishers, or try your hand at independent publishing.

If an agent or traditional publisher accepts your work, you sign over many of your decisions for the sake of getting published. The publisher and editors take over from there, often changing a title, selecting a cover image, and other potential changes. You may lose much of your creative control in the process.

I used 99 Designs to create my book cover. Nelly was my talented cover designer. Design costs run between $100-$600.

Next, I secured a Bowker—ISBN numbers for my iPad, Kindle and print editions of the book for $250. I also created accounts at Amazon Kindle, CreateSpace, and Apple.

Secret Sons & Daughters: Where can your memoir be purchased?

Paige: At this current time, it is available through the Apple iBooks store and on Amazon.com. Two local stores in my hometown of Cincinnati carry it as well: The Bookshelf in Madeira and The Booksellers on Fountain Square. I’m in the process of having printed editions available in retail stores like Barnes and Noble. For now, my memoir in print can be ordered online via BarnesandNoble.com, but not for Nooks.

Secret Sons & Daughters:  Paige, thanks so much for taking the time to share what it was like to write and self-publish your memoir.

 

 

The Philomena Effect—An Adoptee Reflects on Truth and Silence

Wednesday, February 26th, 2014

When Philomena first debuted in theaters, I’ll admit I was afraid to see it. It wasn’t because I thought it would be no good (Judi Dench stars in it after all). I was afraid it would be too good. A friend had texted: “Have you seen Philomena? Just saw it. SO good. Made me think of Ann.” By the end of the movie’s first week, two more friends had emailed, “thought of Ann through the movie.”

There was no way I was going to see that film now. My birth mother, Ann, passed away four years ago, and I was hesitant to trigger the very lonely, and very “complicated grief” (therapist’s term) I struggled with in holiday seasons past. Why see a movie about a naive Irish teenager who had made love, got pregnant, was sent away, and then forced to give up her son for adoption and keep quiet? A trajectory that was the same as Ann’s, and a son whose existence was a secret, like I was, albeit not for 50 years.

I had work deadlines, holiday shopping, a packed month of basketball games and holiday events to attend—and a determination to avoid anything that could cast a somber tone on Christmas.

And then, on December 18, after the last deadline was met, and the presents were bought, and our guests were due to arrive, I had a change of heart. We had been quietly working on Secret Sons & Daughters for months. I had to see the film, so I texted Heather: “Philomena —11 am tomorrow?”

And off we went. We sat in a nearly empty theatre, a few rows in front of a group of college girls home for break, and I discovered that there was everything and nothing somber about Philomena.

I laughed when Philomena spoke bluntly about her sexual parts, and felt my heart rest as I listened to her soft way of saying hard things in scene after scene. Ann had both those qualities. Then there was the irony—the scene where Philomena asks Martin if he could use a fake name for her in his article, “or maybe Anne, Anne Boleyn” she mused.

What surprised me most though, was that I was as captivated by Martin Sixsmith’s storyline as I was by Philomena’s. To me, he was sort of like Nick Carraway to The Great Gatsby’s Jay Gatsby—a peripheral narrator whose life changes as he witnesses a story and becomes part of the action unfolding. Sixsmith’s interactions and observations are what cause us to think about the role we play in viewing our pasts, and the role of faith, as we watch Martin’s faith and beliefs about human nature (or at least “human interest” stories) be tested during his pursuit of Philomena’s story.

Perhaps that’s how Philomena might change others too, not in a Martin Sixsmith journalist sort of way, but maybe in the way we decide what to keep secret.

In the days after I’d seen the film, there was one scene that lingered. It’s the part when Philomena grapples with which is the greater sin—what she did, or keeping the secret for 50 years—and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why until I was talking about the movie with an editor I often work with, who is also a friend and adoptive father.

Preparing to launch Secret Sons & Daughters has a strange coming out of the closet feel to it for me, I shared with him. I’m thrilled one minute, and then truly dread that someone will actually read through it the next. The site’s mission goes against a natural impulse.

I’m from a generation that was supposed to keep quiet about adoption, be thankful, be loyal—why dredge up the past? Don’t dredge up the past—that’s the kind thing to do. And yet there’s a part of me that believes that the kindest thing you can do for another person is to listen and try to see him or her, the true him or her, and honor those stories—even stand up for those stories, as Philomena’s daughter Jane, and Martin Sixsmith and Judi Dench, and Steve Coogan have done with this film.

In our own small way, that’s what we hope to do with each Secret Son & Daughter story shared. If you have a story to tell, we’d love to hear it. And your thoughts on Philomena too—what parts of the movie struck you?

Image Credit: JUDI DENCH and STEVE COOGAN star in PHILOMENA, Photo by Alex Bailey © 2013 The Weinstein Company.

An Irish mum and U.S. original birth certificates

Friday, January 31st, 2014

In the months since Philomena debuted and went on to receive four Oscar nominations, Philomena (both the real person and the movie version) has brought international attention to Ireland’s adoption history and helped drum up support for legal changes that would allow Irish adoptees to access records that could help them trace their origins.  

What I hadn’t realized until last year, and many of our friends who had been adopted hadn’t either, is that there are 39 U.S. States with years, if not decades, worth of sealed records—even now in 2014. This means millions of American adoptees have restricted access to their origins, ancestry, and in some cases—to medical history that could help an adoptee and his or her children with genetic-related illnesses, as Darlene Coyne’s story on this site shows.

Shining a light on that fact—and putting a human face on those numbers—was what inspired us to create Secret Sons & Daughters and begin collecting stories. With that said, it’s important to clarify that advocating for a right to one’s original birth certificate is often confused with advocating reunions. To us they are separate issues.

Having unrestricted access to your original birth certificate means having the right to the truth about your origins, your ancestry, your medical history—the nonfiction version of your life’s first chapter if you will. It’s a right every non-adopted adult enjoys, as well as adult adoptees in almost a dozen U.S. states. What you do with that truth, whether or not you initiate a relationship, and at what level of contact (if available), is something very personal, something to be worked out within families, and something beyond the realm of legislation.

It’s also something incredibly complicated, as we know from our own experiences. In order to get information beyond what an original birth certificate offers, you have to make contact. For some adoptees, connecting with biological families is meaningful well beyond an exchange of information, for others it’s not, and for others still, any sort of contact is not worth the potential complications. As you’ll see, we honor all perspectives on this site.        

To find out where your birth state stands on records access, visit our Discover Your Rights page.