Kool Aid

Recently Alyssa and I were talking about one of her friends.  This woman is so pro adoption that it has hurt their friendship.  This woman is also a natural mother.  This woman talks to any of their friends that is pregnant about adoption and how it is such a loving choice.  That in itself isn't bad, but if you don't give the full story of adoption it is.  When you don't believe that studies about how adoption hurts the adoptee then that is wrong.  When you don't even believe adult adoptees who are your friends  how adoption has hurt them then that is wrong.

Sadly I do understand Alyssa's  friend.  Years ago I was where she is now.  I drank the kool aid by the gallons, shoot I think I had an IV hooked up.  I sat on boards and talked to adoptive parents.  I went to private counseling by the adoption agency and group therapy for natural moms given by the adoption agency.  I hate to admit that now but it is true.  I believed so deeply the brainwashing that I believed my daughter was better off without me.  I believed that any two parents that passed the home study were better than me.  It never occurred to me that separating a newborn baby from the mother that they know by smell, taste, and sound, would harm that baby. That it would leave a deep wound a scar that is hard to heal.   As I read those words I find it ridiculous.  Who was watching out for me and my child?  There was no one.

 The adoptive parents just wanted to raise a clean slate baby that they could pass as their own.  As my daughters mom said in many letters it had to be God's intervention that brought this sweet spirit to them (she never acknowledged me as our daughter's mother) because she looks so much like them.  Let's see, no you wanted a Caucasian baby, you could pass most Caucasian babies off as your own.  You were not adopting a biracial child or a child internationally .  The social worker was my worker and the parents social worker.  Sounds a bit odd to me now.  You can not support both the adoptive parents and an expectant mother at the same time.  The goals of the two are very different.  The goal for any expectant mother should be to give her the tools to parent.  It should not be to look at couples profile and see the hurt of infertility and see how I could make their dreams come true.  It should not be comparing what they could provide compared to me.   Being  a poor single mother is temporary.  Adoption and separating a mother and child is permanent. 

My own parents both were and still are very pro adoption.  They do believe that the best thing for a child is to have both parents married.  Yes of course that is the best but once you are pregnant you deal with the situation at hand.  Even placing a child does not change the fact that the child's parents were not married at birth.  My mom up until 12 years ago still said my oldest niece should have been placed, that it would have been best for her and her parents.  I never spoke out against that.  I can not imagine my niece not being in my family and not being such a close friend.  Yes my sister had to grow up fast and be a single mom to 3 kids when she was in her very early 20's but that was after she divorced my nieces dad.  My sister also graduated high school a year early with straight A's.  She worked many jobs to put food on the table.  She went years without child support.  She was the sole provider of her children until she remarried when her now 17 year old was 5.  My sister now owns her own company.  She did all this after becoming pregnant at 16 years old.  

About 6 years ago in church someone from the adoption agency came in and played a movie about adoption and how parents (to be grandparents) should show their expectant children that adoption is the loving choice.  I broke right there in the middle of church.  No one knew my natural mom status.  I left as the movie ended before the lights went on and headed to the bathroom.  I hysterically cried for several minutes alone.  I knew I missed my daughter but I didn't understand why this triggered me so badly.I did the right thing, the best thing for my daughter, the loving thing so why would seeing a movie about pro adoption trigger me so badly.  

Honestly deep down I think I have always known that adoption is not best for everyone.  It should only be done when there is no way someone can parent.  Adoption should only be done when for whatever reason the child desperately needs parents.  It should not be done because women are convinced they are not enough and to think of the poor people that can't have kids.  Think of how much they want a baby.  Those are not the right reasons for adoption at all.  Ethics and adoption should go together but all too often they do not.  I love how every adoptive parents gives an excuse why their child's mother couldn't raise them. There always seems to be an excuse from adoptive parents.  If they were really honest they would just say we desperately wanted to be parents and when our bodies couldn't make it happen we went after being parents by any means possible.