Another thing the general public as well as pro-adoption folks don’t consider is that neither relinquishing Parents nor Adopters have a say wih regard to falsifying and sealing the Adoptee'[s birth recoird — It’s the law, even in stepparent adoptions.  And it’s not only the immediate “Triad” of Adoptee-Parent-Adopter who are adversely affected by the Adoptee’s falsified records.  It’s also the Triad’s future children and their children who inherit the burden as well.

 

I found my son two decades ago, after an 18-year search hindered by falsified sealed “adoption-birth” records.  Two decades later,  now that they are of legal age and can make their own decisions, I found his two daughters, my granddaughters, who were also lost to adoption (stepparent adoptions with falsified, sealed records).  One of them who I had helped raise in her first year, could not possibly have remembered me nor know that I loved her.  I had no say in her parents’ decisions and only my son’s Adopter was permitted to be part of her life as “her grandmother,” just as only his Adopter was allowed to be his “Mother.”  This granddaughter was evidently conditioned from an early age to be angry and distrustful of not only her father (my son) but also his “birth” family, and so she rejected my attenpt to know and befriend her.

 

My other granddaughter, however, who has the same father (my son), different mother, and who I had never seen, has told me she was searching for her father before I found her and that she is interested to know about the family and “what she missed”…an expression of a natural need to know.  Is it that my two granddaughters have different genes and personalities?  Or that they have different resiliences to adoption’s lies, half-truths and false assumptions?  Or that they were raised in different environments with different histories?  I’ve had only a first contact with her at this writing, so cannot yet answer these questions, but anticipate we’ll both have lots of questons…and answers that adoption would otherwise withhold, distort, or fabricate.  

 

Books such as Joan Wheeler’s “Forbidden Family” are written to help break the cycle of adoption’s mistakes not only for themselves but also for future generations.

 

Lori Carangelo, Founder ( http://LoriCarangelo.com)

Americans For Open Records ( http://AmFOR.net )