I will get to comments in a bit :)

Wooo its been a busy week, there are definitely some comments I want to address, but haven’t had the time in the past few days. I will get to you, I haven’t forgotten. I will email you too improper just give me a bit )

Reply to Christine from – post 861

Recently in the thead - It is so wrong to adopt someone else’s child because you can’t have one of your own.…. A comment was left by Christine ( read the comment here ) and there is so much I”d like to reply to, i’m giving it, its own post.

I have read views similar to yours so many times.

I won’t ever be able to experience the feelings you have felt, so I won’t pretend to understand entirely where you’re coming from.
I would like to gain a better understanding though, but in my curiosity I truly hope I don’t offend you or come across the wrong way.

Hi. Nice to meet you.
( Psst… Adoptees, do opening paragraphics make you truly look like <<<<. They do me! lmfao. They really do. Whenever they start out like this, and usually with the best of intentions, I know we're about to encounter some huge differences in opinion.

There are some infertile women I know that have adopted and end up praising the path that was laid before them, because it brought them to the child they now have. Is that different than the women who “settle” for adoption?

Well i’m sure in some cases, YES, it is. And others, NO its not. Nothing is concrete, especially in adoption.

As a woman, I understand the overwhelming desire to nurture a child, a child to call my own. (I know that not all women feel this, but I’m assuming the majority does)

Me too!

And then there are children placed up for adoption. In my mind, these two things add up to a match. But if it’s wrong, then what alternatives would be better?

If only the world was so easy. Woman w/ natural urge to mother, meets child with no parents who want to care for it put the two together and POOF! a healthy family The adoption industry would LOVE for you to think its that easy. 1 + 1 = 2 right?

What I am thinking about are the underlying issues that prevent these things from happening during that process.(Such as the post you came into.)
Its not appearing to be as easy as 1 + 1 = 2. Things like grieving ( infertility, loss of child, loss of mother ), children not being blank slates, mothers and fathers wanting to parent and having their children stolen, poverty, laws, addiction, child trafficking, and more are all getting in the way of the above equation.

There are some situations I believe that would be as simple as 1+1=2 but the handful of them, get lost in the industry among the others that don’t even need to be there.

I can’t even imagine how hurtful it was to have grown up feeling like a replacement child for one they could never have, but could it be the fault of the parent and not the system?

Well, I WAS the replacement child, and I had replacement parents. This is my reality. My truth. Do you prefer they lie to me about it? Should the system have let me be adopted with this mindset? No, should they have encouraged it? No, marketed to it? No. But this is a business, and that is where the money is. This is an industry, its not about helping children. Should my adoptive parents have had more common sense to know this would hurt me? Yes, I believe they should have.

My parents should not have had me, and said/did awful things to me. I still, and will always, have issues because of my childhood. So my thought is that maybe it’s not that you were adopted, but who your parents were. It was your adopted parent’s job to love you, protect you, comfort you, provide for you, and more than anything make you feel secure in this world.

My resistance to the industry of adoption isn’t because i had shitty adoptive parents. All parents have their up and down moments and i don’t think a set of perfect parents exists. It doesn’t mean A) its not wrong to adopt someone else’s child because you can’t have one of your own, or B) Adoption is still good I just had shitty parents C ) I have no reason to resist the adoption industry. D) all of the above
( can and will add anymore along the way should she see fit to do so )

No parent is perfect, and I’m sure they did the best to their abilities. Trust me when I say that’s not easy for me to admit, because it’s hard for me to believe about my parents. But when I really try to understand them and what they did, I see that they tried within their capabilities.

If a rapist tried within his capabilities to resist raping a woman, but couldn’t do it, would the rape then become okay? Or should prevention methods, education, deeper understanding and therapy thereafter be given? Would it all be the fault of the rapist or possibly circumstances that led him to it? If a system was aware of prevention methods to the rapist being a rapist, and didn’t work towards preventing that would they then be at fault too? or what if they encouraged those methods which developed the rapist behaviors to create a greater demand producing a more profitable industry?

Anyways, again, I am only hoping to better understand your views on adoption. I am a sympathetic person but wasn’t even aware that adoption was an issue to be protested. You have definitely enlightened me already

You have no idea.

If you can’t love me the way I want to be loved, then we shouldn’t have a relationship

Take the title of this post in for a second…. It was said to me recently by my amother. I ran a bill up on an account of hers, which I shouldn’t have done, and it triggered this spiral of emotions in each of us. It seems to happen every 5 years or so and we don’t speak for about a year afterward. The last was when i announced the pregnancy of my 2nd daughter I was scolded by her, told i didn’t deserve another child, and should either have an abortion, or give it up for adoption to a couple who deserved her, a couple that had a college education and could afford another child, a couple that wasn’t going to need state assistance to pay for the delivery. Well, my daughter is beautiful and I didn’t listen to my mother in fact I didn’t speak to her for about a year after that.

She doesn’t remember saying that to me. She denys it ever happened. She is already denying saying the words in the title of this post that were quickly followed by a FUCK YOU from my mouth and me walking out her door. But i want to look into the title a little closer because I think it is at the core of many adoptive relationships, and was the crutch of how I came into my adoptive family and the crutch of why my amother and I have never “clicked” on the level she wanted us to “click.”

I think a lot of adoptive parents adopt so that they can love and be loved by a child they can call their own. Its no secret that I have trust and abandonment issues. My adoptee specialist psychologist that I was seeing a couple of years ago, believed I never developed the stage in development that taught me how to trust. Actually, I agree. I’m not sure that I have ever trusted anyone. I’m not sure that I know how to trust. I’m wondering if my depth of love for others would be greater if i trusted them idk.

Anyhow, this is the core of my adoptive status. I do not trust and continually have this beautiful protection around me that saves me from being let down again, by humanity. Yet, its not what my amother was looking for. She was wanting a healthy , loving child. What happens when those children, adopted into families have abandonment, trust, and separation issues. What happens when we don’t trust any longer and aren’t ready to do so? What happens when the adoptive parents don’t get what they were looking for? What happens when they get something nobody told them they would?

I know what happened to me, I was sent to shrink after shrink, labeled, diagnosed, I was the outcast, the excuse, the problem, the faulty product, the let down, the broken one…. well i “wasn’t” I still am. 29 years old and she still hasn’t figured out that I love in different ways. And if i never loved the way she wanted ( which in reality, i probably won’t ever do ) why isn’t that good enough? Why am I … me… in this body, in this lifetime, in this reality not good enough?

What could have been done to better prepare her for raising a child with separation and abandonment issues?

What more could have been done to prevent these issues from existing at all?

Those are two questions that I think could change the future for adopted people and those raising them, or parents thinking of surrendering their children to adoption.

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thanks

Gersh

Protected: Testing your love and resistance to abandonment

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