See, this is what seems to always happen.
Strong blanket statements are made and then I feel an obligation to contribute, compelled to say how I feel about being adopted. I don't get why that is so surprising to anti-adoption activists since it's what they themselves are doing.
I do not feel abandoned and that's because of having been adopted. Had my biological mother left me on a doorstep with no attempt to ensure my safety or my having a family, then I'd feel abandoned.
Not every adoptee feels or should feel that way, we're all different with unique experiences, but that's how I feel and how I feel matters just as much as anyone else. I also feel very much a part of my family, more so than some friends who are biologically related to each other.
To those of us who were provided with a family through adoption and aren't angry about our own situation, it's impossible to be completely against it even though we're not stupid enough to think reform isn't needed. Is that so hard to understand?
I wish every child conceived could be kept and raised by the people who created it but that's completely unrealistic. We all need to work toward helping parents plan their parenthood, make the best, most informed decisions when unplanned, unexpected, and unwanted pregnancy occurs. And, it does occur. We do each other no favor pretending every human is born to be a parent.
Sensational or sugar-coated blanket statements are no help to anyone as they so easily dismissed.
Saturday
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Well said.
ReplyDeleteWell said indeed! It happens from the mother's side as well, as soon as anyone says that their feelings or experience differ in any way from the majority anti-adoption view, it is taken as a criticism, not as a statement of individual feelings and opinion, and must be stamped out.
DeleteI don't know how to get past this. I have seen adoptees like you who are in any way ok with their experience torn apart by mothers and other adoptees for feeling differently about your experience than they do. It does not matter that you support open records, searching, and adoption reform, you are still treated as a traitor to the cause for not having politically correct feelings and open to all sorts of criticism and ridicule, this by the same people who hold their own views sacrosanct, above reproach and never open to even mild disagreement. That is because it it their TRUTH. Your truth and mine matters a whole lot less.
I had a horrible adoption experience plus many years of rejection, but am reluctant to say that I do not feel the loss was forever or that neither I nor my son are permanently damaged, even though years of suffering were there for both of us and did leave a mark. I genuinely feel, as the hymn says, "he once was lost, but now is found. " For me to say that is taken as a criticism of others, no matter how different their situation. I no longer get depressed around my son's birthday, just passed, which to many people is taken to mean I love him less than they love their children, or am disloyal to the cause.
As long as only one narrative is acceptable from either adoptees or mothers, the same old silencing and denial of reality is still going on, just coming from the opposite direction. Why can't we all tell our own stories and not have them taken as criticism of anyone else's story or feelings?
Unless your experience conforms to The One Trew Trewth, as written in the Book of Trewthiness, you had better shut the #*%$ up about it, or the Enlightened Ones will be down on you like the proverbial ton of bricks.
ReplyDeleteBut it's all for the Greater Good, don't you see? So not to worry, there's nothing personal about it, not even when it's personal.
You just have to accept the fact that even the minutest divergence from groupspeak is enough to mark you out as being part of the so-called dominant discourse.
Personal experience is NOT allowed. Even though it's the only kind of experience there is.
There is a dominant discourse, actually.
DeleteYes, there is, but that is not what anyone who has commented here is about. The "dominant discourse" says that adoption is always noble, wonderful, problem-free, that it is a win-win situation, That adoptive parents are saviors, that there are hardly any abuses, that coercion to surrender is justified because adoptees always get a better life, that two married heterosexual parents are better than one unmarried natural mom, that heredity does not matter at all, and sealed records are necessary to protect mothers who surrendered. It actively recruits vulnerable mothers to surrender, and promotes the adoption industry as a good thing. It overlooks abuses and crimes in adoption because adoption is almost all good, the small amount of bad stuff can be swept under the rug. It is the cliche "rainbows and unicorns" view of all adoption. It over-generalizes and ignores evidence to the contrary. So does the anti-adoption, "all adoption is evil and all suffer gravely" point of view.
DeleteNobody here is about that or promoting that view, even those whose personal adoption stories are mostly happy, nor those who accept that other people's personal experience may differ from theirs. I don't know how many times it has to be said for people to hear, nobody's personal experience is universal, and nobody's own story, told as such, cancels out or invalidates anyone else's.
'Dominant discourse' is itself loaded language, carrying implications of oppression and mind control.
DeleteOutside academia it is called mainstream opinion.
Like you, Campbell, the A-word doesn't fit very well for me. It never even occured to me to feel abandoned. Unfortunately, much writing about us adoptees talks about "universal" feelings. I've searched inside myself, and I've found something very different...
ReplyDeleteIf I were to embrace Adoptee Groupthink, I would lose a chunk of myself.
ditto, Maryanne, I feel much like you do. While I feel my story has value and could help others, I'm hesitant to share it for the very reasons you cited. I take comfort in the fact that the people in my life who love and care for me know the truth about the adoption-related issues I've had to deal with.
ReplyDeleteAnd Campbell and Megan, I truly appreciate your voices and am not surprised that neither of you feels "abandoned." And you certainly don't appear to be "wounded" or "damaged."
I have just read on another blog that there are some people who call themselves "anti-adoption" but apparently they aren't really. Apparently they only call themselves that because they mean they do not support the overall institution in its current form.
ReplyDeleteSo why don't they say that? Why use such a misleading label? If people talk in riddles they can't expect to be understood, and if they aren't understood they are not going to win support. They are also going to damage the true reform base by association.
You're kind to use the term "riddles" anon. I have other words to describe that way of talking.
DeleteMaybe because it takes too long to say?
DeleteIDK, what other term would you recommend?
If you were to ask me, my suggestion would be 'pro adoption reform', because 'for' always gets a better reception than 'against', especially when it comes to public advocacy.
DeleteThe kind of people described in anon's comment are either disingenuous and can't be trusted, or they don't know up from down and can't be taken seriously.
"We do each other no favor pretending every human is born to be a parent."
ReplyDeleteYou sound like a great, strong, wonderful person. Good luck and God bless :)
ReplyDeletebarbara : )
ReplyDelete