Adoptees wanting to control the adoptee narrative

"*Sorry Campbell, I won’t be reading or responding to your comments on this issue. I see your name and hit trash button."

It's so common to read about adoptive parents wanting to control the adoptee narrative and sometimes the accusation is justified. Other times, it's so not. In fact, something happens the other times that is far worse. Adoptees wanting to control other adoptees' narrative.

It's an adoptee that said what I've quoted above, an adoptee who said my thoughts aren't worth reading or responding to, that just seeing my name is reason enough to consider my opinion trash.

I wasn't entirely surprised, or rather shouldn't have been. I was told what I had to say in defense of yet another person being very publicly and maliciously maligned by this particular blogger would be removed and that's fine, it's her blog. She is entitled to censor as she sees fit, just as I'm entitled to address the hypocrisy in her doing so.

Over the past while I've watched someone I respect and admire be raked over the coals and have said nothing. It didn't sit well with me and even though I know Mary Anne is more than capable of speaking up for herself, she didn't. The juicy little morsel that set off the missiles of hate directed toward her this time was her comparing Primal Wound THEORY to alien abduction and Big Foot sightings while she was involved in a discussion on counseling approaches. Personally, I understand the comparison. It is the same thing. You would think that people who believe in something that isn't common place would be supportive of others who also truly believe in something that not everyone experiences but no, again the dismissed dismiss the dismissed. They're crazy, but I'm not. What I believe is real, don't compare me to those nutters.

Anyway, time goes on and I stay away from the fray. Others pick up on it all, run over Mary Anne, put it in reverse, back up and run over her again. I stay silent along with the others who are silently cheering her while cringing each time the force runs over her again, making horrible, personal assessments of her, all the while repeatedly putting her full name in print, just to make sure the tread marks leave a permanent scar.

Most recently, a discussion on rights and needs takes place on a blog where one of the authors made claims that adoptees who aren't curious have lower IQs, a claim she never takes responsibility for or backed down from. She isn't taken to task by her adoptee supporters, something that I for one can't comprehend but the venom is instead focused on another woman. A mother whose daughter is adopted who at one time had adoptees proclaiming their love for her, "I love you O Solo Mama". Of course, adoptees' love is ever fleeting. It's all dependent on how tenderly you kiss our adopted asses. The minute you look away and have a thought that is contrary, some of them slap your face, put your name up in lights, and publicly declare war. Nothing is off limits. In the instance I refer to in this post, the blogger goes so far as to say that she herself is more protective of Jessica's daughter than Jessica is. As I said in my trashed comment quoting the blogger, THAT is "some serious fucked-upness". Protective is beating the hell out of someone's mother? Protective is making false derogatory comment after false derogatory comment about a child's mother publicly online? Just because she defended Bastard Nation's position that knowing your origins should be an entitlement guaranteed by law but may not be a universal psychological need?

I've gotten to know Jess and Mary Anne quite well and can assure you they are fine parents. They are intelligent, reasonable women who have contributed greatly to my and others' awareness of the need for adoption reform.

We don't always see issues in exactly the same way but here's a newsflash, that's normal. What's not normal is throwing a tantrum and very publicly attacking good, decent people just because they happen to have balls enough to put their true identities out there.

There's still time to grab some balls of your own and show some support for these fine women who you may not agree with all the time but you know are good caring people who not only support all adoptees' rights but also support and take great care in loving and supporting the adopted persons that are in their personal lives.

Anonymous comments are necessary recommended welcome and your identities protected, as always. I will not however publish anything negative as I will be controlling the narrative on this one.

This one IS all about you

I wrote my last two posts to put my experience out there for people to read.

I'm using this post to defend myself in writing them.

Seems some have taken issue with what I wrote, as if what I'd written was to them, at them, or about them.

It wasn't.

For the record, again, I did not experience postpartum depression. Not a smidgeon.

I would be one of those fortunate females who did feel an instant bond with my son, possibly even prenatally, hell, maybe even pre-conception. Being a mother came very naturally to me and my desire to be a good one has been the driving force in my life since conception but because it was/is this way for me doesn't mean it must be like that for everyone else. To say so would be insulting, to believe it's so would be ignorant.

Upon getting pregnant, the nutritional value in every morsel of food I ate was considered and not one prescribed or over the counter drug was ingested. Prior to pregnancy, parenting choices such as circumcision and corporal punishment were discussed, kinds of schooling were considered, parenting style agreements were reached. I took becoming a parent very seriously, joyfully, excitedly, and oh so willingly.

The bond my son and I have is unbreakable, unmatchable, and enviable to some. The respect, trust and familiarity we enjoy is such a pleasure and worth every ounce of thought, consideration, and energy that's gone into developing our relationship. To this day I still carefully consider how to conduct myself as a mother of a young adult son. Being a good parent is ever evolving, ever selfless, best performed without ego, without preconceived ideas or fantasies, and without bitterness toward our own childhoods. Remembering how one felt as a child is essential to effective parenting but is entirely different than being dictated to by it. And don't even bother to try and convince me it would be the same way had I put no thought and effort into being a mom, that the act of giving birth in itself would have been enough. I have first hand experience with that alternative.

My son is not the only person with whom I have a strong connection and meaningful relationship with. I have life long relationships with friends and I am regularly in touch with and close to my mother, my sister, and many uncles, aunts, and cousins. I enjoyed very close relationships with both my father and my brother, both of whom are now deceased.

I have a very loving and well cared for relationship with my husband, and my son and I are fortunate to have been welcomed with open arms into his family. My husband and I have a blended family which has successfully avoided the common step family pitfalls with our sons. These fine young men are friends as well as step brothers, and the five of us have managed family get togethers such as weddings and birthdays with my husband's and my ex family members, including ex spouses, with class and grace, much of which is a direct result of how I personally have chosen to conduct myself and treat others.

Nope, you won't get away with calling this woman, by name in public, someone "with deep issues" who doesn't feel connections to her family. You will not get away with claiming I have a "very sad little life" and declare falsely and publicly that since I don't "know how to form bonds with people proves the PW case tenfold." You will not get away with turning a post about my experience into a slight against you.

Even in my most narcissistic, paranoid, egotistical moments I would never publicly declare a post was about me, unless of course my name was blatantly used in follow up commentary and words from my post quoted, misconstrued, distorted, and given false, conjured up meaning.

The idea to use "Husha husha, we all fall down" as my last post's title came from the last words in my last sentence in which I said, "Conceiving and giving birth has no real power without all the rest and I really think choosing to believe or rely on it having so much stand alone importance is sometimes where we all fall down.".

The thought of using the title, "Husha husha, we all fall down" to call anyone infantile never crossed my mind, although the adjective "infantile" certainly figured prominently in my mind as I read the crap written in the post and comments I'm referring to here.

My posts weren't written with intent "to mock those who express their view of connection as childish, and that all would be well if we would stop singing rhymes and clinging to babyish ideas". What an incredible, self absorbed stretch.

To close, I would like to provide you all with an edited version of a sentence written by my detractor, edited to remove the words "some immediate bond for her newborn infant" and replaced with "didn't,".

It's an interesting sentence in which contradiction is obvious, the applicability to the writer and her supporters amusing, as well as, coincidentally, perfectly in line with my case against some primal wound sufferers and how they dismiss those of us who didn't experience one.

"But to say that you had it and your experience is the norm and that if another woman didn't, SHE had pathology? That's projecting a bunch of weird onto others."

I couldn't have said it any better myself.


P.S.  Don't fuck with me.