Author: legitimatebastard

Doris Michol Sippel is the author of “Forbidden Family: An Adopted Woman’s Struggle for Identity,” 3rd Edition, available from Amazon. She is the owner of Identity Press. Doris Michol Sippel was born legitimately in January of 1956. She became a half-orphan at the age of three months when her mother died. At the finalization of her adoption the following January, a Surrogate Court Judge sent orders to change her name in accordance with the 1936 New York State law that requires the creation of a new birth certificate for each child who is adopted. This law assumes that the child was born illegitimately; therefore, adoption legitimizes the child by providing a new mother who is legally married to the child’s new legal father. Even though Doris had a legitimate father, adoption law provided her with a different legal father, hence legitimizing her unnecessarily. On March 4, 1957, the state issued Doris a substitute “amended” birth certificate in the name of Joan Mary Wheeler, falsely naming her new “parents” as if they conceived, and gave birth to her. By law, as in all adoptions, Doris’s birth certificate was then repossessed, its official certification revoked, and the document was sealed forever. Both of these acts erased her natural-born identity and family. Legally, she and her family ceased to exist. Lawfully, Doris became Joan, but that was not, and is not, the truth of her reality. Since her reunion in 1974, she claims both identities: a legitimate bastard in one family and a half-orphan in the other. Her dual identity is real, but the state recognizes only her legally manufactured identity. For this denial of her civil rights, she is supposed to be a grateful “adopted child” forever. Doris Michol Sippel legally reclaimed her name on June 13, 2016. Her birth certificate is still sealed by New York State.

Another father fights for his rights to his child

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Trauma, Family Systems, Missing Baby, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers

Please visit this Facebook Page to learn more:

https://www.facebook.com/events/290872121107148/

***We are in the 4th quarter at the 2 min warning*** Trent is in his final extension to file his appeal. He has been going at this alone. It has been a struggle to find an attorney to take his case but we have FINALLY found one. We have an attorney set up for him and we need to get this money to him ASAP so he can start working on what needs to be filed. Please…$1, $5, $10, $20…what ever you can donate to help would greatly appreciated.

PLEASE INVITE EVERYONE YOU KNOW…so another father does not lose his child to unethical adoption. He deserves the right to raise his daughter as he has fought so hard for!

Please…We can not let Trent and his daughter go down with out a fight!

Searching for a Relative Lost to Adoption? Search Angels Can Help

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoption Loss, Adoption Reunions are Ongoing, Family Systems, Genealogy, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers, Uncategorized

 

Here is an informative article for people who are searching for a relative lost to adoption:

Looking for Your Family Identity or Lost Relative? Get to Know Search Angels

 

 

My Response to Jayne Jacova Feld’s article on New Jersey’s Fight to Unseal Adoptees’ Birth Records

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers, Original Birth Certificate

This undated article by Jayne Jacova Feld appeared in my email inbox on October 31, 2014: Opening Up – Bringing the fight to unseal adoption records to life.

This is my response:

Typically, this article confuses reunion with civil rights. The civil right to one’s sealed birth certificate is not the same as reunion or contact. A person who wishes no contact has a right to be left alone. A person who wishes to unseal their sealed birth record still must ask a court for permission, or abide by restrictive laws that allow release of uncertified sealed birth certificates under specific restrictions.

Closed adoptions are indeed performed today as many adoptive parents request no contact at any time with the natural parents of their adoptee.

Open adoptions do not mean open records.

Adoptees are not only illegitimates born to not-married parents. We are legitimates born within a marriage, half orphans, full orphans, adopted by step parents, and older children adopted out of foster care. To lump all of us under the umbrella of persons born to “unwed” mothers is to keep the stereotypes alive.

Except for Kansas and Alaska, every single adoptee in America suffers the injustice of their actual birth certificate automatically sealed at the finalization of adoption. Even in Kansas and Alaska, every single adoptee in America is automatically issued a new, amended, birth certificate indicating, falsely, that the new parents gave birth to the child named. Many adoptees’ actual birthdates are changed, as well as birthplace, and most adoptees’ names at birth are changed to reflect new identities picked by adoptive parents.

In the few states that have passed laws “allowing” adoptees “access” to their sealed birth records, these adoptees are not given certified copies of their actual birth certificates. They are given uncertified copies which are stamped on the front with one of the following in big bold letters: “VOID”, “Not For Official Use”, “For Genealogical Use Only”. While many adoptees jump for joy over the fact that they are able to unseal their previously sealed actual birth certificates, their elation over seeing their birth certificates for the first time in their lives should be tempered with the realization that their legal birth certificate (the one that was falsified at the time of finalization of adoption) overrides the uncertified birth certificate that they now have in their hands.

There is a big difference between a mere knowing the truth of your origins (by “winning” the right to an uncertified birth certificate that was previously sealed) and actually reversing the oppressive laws that instituted sealing and falsifying adoptees’ birth certificates around the USA beginning in 1930, state by state.

Many adoptees, like me, advocate for the total restoration of our civil rights. We want our actual birth certificates to be reinstated and certified by our government. And we want our falsified birth certificates to be rescinded. Some of us want adoption certificates to replace them, others want to rescind their adoptions altogether.
As for the Catholics who want control: I was conceived within a marriage, yet your one-sided attack on “unwed” mothers devalues my birth, and that of adoptees who aren’t in your narrow focus of being born bastards.

As for “birth” parents who want to redact their names from birth certificates: your name, whether you want it there or not, was recorded within five days of birth on a government document recording the fact that you gave birth. When you signed relinquishment papers in the courtroom, you lost all rights to the person you gave up for adoption. You did not retain the right to dictate to that person 50 or more years after birth. All persons over the age of 21 are of legal age and are not bound by parental authority.

Lastly, the first advocacy group was not Adoptees Liberty Movement Association, as stated in this article (Opening Up – Bringing the fight to unseal adoption records to life), but rather Orphan Voyage, founded in 1953 by adoptee and social worker Jean Paton.

I was very fortunate to have known Jean Paton. She was a delightful lady with a quiet sense of reserve. She deserves recognition as the one person who started the adoptees’ rights movement in America. Others followed and we now have a very extensive network of activists and organizations. Readers may be interested in reading about her life in a hardcover book written by historian E. Wayne Carp: Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption (January 2014).

 

 

 

 

Promoting Zara Phillips – Beneath My Father’s Sky

On By legitimatebastardIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Promoting an excellent one-woman play by my friend, Zara Phillips:

Beneath My Father’s Sky

 

Play will take place today and November 23 in New York City.

I’ve seen it in San Fransisco in April, twice. I highly recommend it.

 

Incorrect Medical Information Given to My Adoptive Parents in 1956

On By legitimatebastardIn Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers

Lorraine Dusky’s post

“Who serves ‘Adoptees’ Best Interests’?”

spurred me to write this in response:

When my adoptive parents “got me” in 1956, my natural father told them that my mother died less than a month previously from uterine cancer. Because of this, as a teenager, I had twice yearly PAP tests, looking for uterine cancer.

 
I was reunited with my father and siblings and extended family (natural mother’s family) in 1974. No one talked about health issues. They were too busy comparing me to the others as to who I looked like, who I sounded like. Meanwhile, my father handed me my mother’s death certificate. Cause of death: cancer of the kidney.

 
My grieving father had given the wrong cause of death to my adoptive parents (I do not blame him in any way – he had just lost his wife of ten years and the mother of their five children). They (my adoptive parents) in turn, gave me the wrong information. I, in turn, had been tested for the wrong medical problem.

 
In college in the 70s, I developed very frequent bladder and kidney infections. I asked my gynecologist if it was possible that these were indications of cancer. That is why we petitioned the hospital for my mother’s records, and mine, at my birth and during the three months prior to her death. To my relief, no, my bladder and kidney problems were due to stress and not inherited tendency to cancer.

 
My full blood siblings, however, drilled it into me that I “did not have my facts straight”. They told me off, saying that Mom died of cancer of the uterus and that I was lying. Apparently, our grieving father had told them that our mother died of uterine cancer.

 

Apparently he had never given them our mother’s death certificate.
Additionally, the judge who presided over my adoption never bothered to ask my father for my mother’s death certificate. This was in 1956, a time when society believed that babies were “blank slates”. Environment meant more than biology.

 
My father was not required to fill out medical history forms during the months before my adoption became final. Nothing was mentioned about his medical history, nor of his parents, cousins, aunts and uncles. My father was not required to provide any medical history of his deceased wife’s family. My father finally told me in 2003 what his parents died of a few years after he relinquished me. His father had gangrene in his leg. His mother died of colon cancer.

 
Health care is vital. We adoptees need to know the truth.

How do adoptees feel about Shel Silverstein’s book “The Giving Tree”?

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoption Trauma, Death and Dying, Family Systems, Uncategorized

Ahhh… another review about the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.

The author of this article mentions, among other things, the fascination of orphan-hood to children who aren’t orphans.
As adoptees, we don’t know our conception and birth truths. We grow up not knowing.

For me, I hated stories and movies of orphans because I grew up knowing that my mother died and that’s how I became adopted by two people who became my parents. The horrible truth actually happened to me. Other kids could hide in their fantasies, relieved that they aren’t orphans after all. But not me.
I never read The Giving Tree until recently. I do not like this book. I look at it from an adult’s perspective. And from an educated adoptee’s perspective.
I see the anguish on the old man’s (the boy) face as he sits down on the tree’s stump. Is he realizing his or the tree’s life as a wasted life? Is he saying, “ What did I do?”
A tree (mother) who gave everything. An unselfish mother or a mother who lacks confidence to say no?
Would a male tree do the same? Would a little girl growing up do the same?
As adoptees, what does this say about our adoptions?
As adoptees, do we see this book differently?
What do mothers of children lost to adoption think of The Giving Tree?
Afterthought:
In reading the Comments Section, one stood out:

“I rather thought the point of the story was that we sometimes don’t realize how much the people in our lives love us and appreciate them as we should- but the ones who truly love us continue to love us anyway. i thought it was to teach a child appreciation and awareness.”

To which, I replied:

“Yours is the only response that redeems this book to me. Thank you.”

In retrospect, yes, I suppose The Giving Tree does teach a child appreciation and awareness. That is what my daughter said she felt about this book when she was a child. She read it at summer camp.

Adoptee Suicide

On By legitimatebastardIn Uncategorized4 Comments

The author of this blog post, Elle Cuardaigh, states: “I never felt my mother abandoned me. I never felt abandoned. But I have felt keenly alone.

Enough to kill myself.”
It is the alone-ness that eats at me. Adoption did not provide for me a better life. Sure, during my childhood, I had it good. But I was raised as an only child. I was alone. Meanwhile, my adoptive parents and all of my extended adoptive family knew I was not alone. I was really the youngest of five children. I was intentionally kept apart from my full blood siblings. And then they found me. And the bickering between me and my adoptive parents began. And me being attacked by the rest of my adoptive family, save but a few. And then the attacks upon me by the very siblings who found me. I was different, not like them, spoiled, they said. I should shut up, do not write about my adoption-reunion. Too bad. I am. Because I stand up for myself, I am alone.
I promised my cousin a few nights ago that I would not kill myself. With a handful of relatives who love me, I realize I am not alone. They know what adoption did to me.

ellecuardaigh's avatarelle cuardaigh

L+Wren+Scott

When L’wren Scott took her own life, those of us in the adoption community said, “Another.”

http://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/people/2014/03/20/lwren-scott-hated-adopted-life/6642301/

It was so recent that Charlotte Dawson had done the same:

http://kimcoull.com/2014/02/26/adoption-trauma-farewell-charlotte-dawson/

These two celebrity deaths made us take notice of a recent study, although many of us did not need “proof”:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/810625

Adoptees are four times more likely than the non-adopted to attempt suicide. And those who attempt suicide are much more likely to actually die that way.

We are the lucky ones, aren’t we. The fortunate. The chosen. The ones who weren’t aborted, as we are so often reminded. So we’d better be grateful. By the same line of reasoning, we were thrown away. Abandoned. And to even think about “those people” is betrayal to the ones who raised us, our real parents.

So why are we killing ourselves?

L’wren Scott and Charlotte Dawson should have been Successful Adoption poster children…

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Adoption Trauma: Farewell Charlotte Dawson

On By legitimatebastardIn Uncategorized

For many reasons, I’ve been thinking about adoptees and suicide. This dark subject haunts me. I battle depression and suicidal ideation nearly every day. The pain of my life as a bullied adoptee means that I must constantly renew my promise (not to kill myself) to those who love me. Despite the bullying directed at me, there are people who love me. People who would be crushed if I were to complete a suicide attempt.
I made a promise to my cousin a few days ago, that I would not succumb to my thoughts of wanting to die. It’s strange how a call out of the blue can be both sad and uplifting at the same time.
Though I never knew Charlotte Dawson, we had adoption in common. And being mocked, stalked, and bullied on Twitter.

Dr Kim Echammaal Coull's avatarDr Kim Echammaal Coull

images[10]
As a fellow adoptee my heart goes out to Charlotte Dawson in her tragic passing. She has been on my radar for many years now, since I found out she was adopted at birth and now, here in memoriam, I can again feel her a breath away from my soul.
A lot has been said about the reasons for her suicide and without wanting to butt in as a stranger where I am not welcome, I do feel I have a silent and meaningful connection with her as a fellow adoptee. There are often many reasons behind a suicide and Charlotte had complex, compelling, and overlapping traumas in her life that may have lead to her early death. However, I would also like to say, from my position as an adoptee, that Adoption Trauma is (as Von Coates has also posted on her Facebook page) still grievously overlooked and underappreciated in society today. I…

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VT to MN – Day 8, A Rest Day

On By legitimatebastardIn Uncategorized

Tim is right: He misses his two Moms. It is not slang. It is plural. And I miss all four of my parents. …. Every adoptee has two sets of real parents.

howardtimothyl's avatarridinghometofindme

It’s hard to tell the difference between women’s pajamas and sweatpants.  That’s not something that bothers me really, but it can be useful information to have when someone is walking toward you in a strange city, waving you down saying and saying “Hey!” from across the street to get your attention.  Had I known they were sweatpants I would have been able to take a level of possible crazy off the table and been less nervous about what was coming my way.  I had just given up on finding my Maui Jim sunglasses which disappeared sometime after 9pm last night, so I was hoping that was not an indicator of how the rest of the day would go.

There was nothing at all to be nervous about when Mrs Young came toward me from across the street.  She was from on vacation with her husband from Detroit…

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VT to MN Day 9 – Dad

On By legitimatebastardIn Uncategorized

Tim says to post far and wide, so I am!

Help an adoptee journey home:

howardtimothyl's avatarridinghometofindme

A rest day was exactly what I needed. I actually slept in this morning!  By sleeping in I mean I slept past 7 am, which I have not done since I started this trip.  Joan was a wonderful host again this morning and I can not thank her enough for opening her home to me. 

It was 30 degrees colder today than it has been the previous two days.  it never came close to getting above 60.  it’s a funny temperature zone for me when I am riding.  Generally I would be completely bundled up, but my body has started to acclimate and I am taking the cold better than I normally would.  It’s also a funky temperature range because it’s the middle ground for clothing.  If it were just a little colder my actual cold weather gear would be perfect, but when…

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