Response to NCFA’s “Mutual Consent: Balancing the Birthparent’s Right to Privacy with the Adopted Person’s Desire to Know” – Re-Post

On December 16, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma2 Comments

This is another Re-Post from my former blog. This article was originally posted on Sunday 2-22-09 in response to the article by Marc Zappala of the NCFA – National Council For Adoption, https://www.adoptioncouncil.org/resources/documents/NCFAAdoptionAdvocateVolumeNo10.pdf

This is so important to beat-down the opposition, considering adoptive parents who are not in the know fall back on the rape-issue as an important tool/weapon/excuse/reason to keep their adoptees (and the rest of us adoptees who are not products of rape) from accessing their/our true birth certificates.

Happy Reading!

HalfOprhan56 – December 16, 2009

…. …. ….

Sunday 2-22-09

My Response to the NCFA’s recent publication:

“Mutual Consent:
Balancing the Birthparent’s Right to Privacy
with the Adopted Persons’ Desire to Know”
by Marc Zappala
National Council For Adoption

Click to access NCFAAdoptionAdvocateVolumeNo10.pdf

Dear NCFA: One Size Does Not Fit All

Your organization does not speak for me, an adoptee reunited for 35 years. Nor do you speak for my adoptive parents, and you certainly do not speak for my natural parents. Your basic premise of protecting “the birthmother in hiding” has absolutely no applicable usefulness to my adoption whatsoever.

In your recent publication named above, you have not included the full spectrum of adoptees’ and natural parents’ experiences. Instead, you choose to focus on one small group of distraught birthmothers whom you claim need protection from being identified. Natural parents and adoptees come from many different family circumstances, so it is unwise to base all of your conclusions on just one aspect of adoption. By focusing on fear and intimidation, you are perpetuating the shame and guilt of pregnancy without marriage resulting in an illegitimately born infant. Flaunting terrified mothers-in-hiding whose infants were conceived of rape or incest shows your lack of concern for these mothers.

I find it interesting that you use a vulnerable group of childless mothers to achieve your goals. These women were so traumatized that they can’t face the horror of what was done to them, and what they had to sacrifice. Instead of seeking appropriate psychotherapy for coping with rape, incest, and unimaginable grief, their understandable rage is misdirected. They are under your direction. This small segment of birthmothers is held in high esteem by the NCFA (and religious Christian fanatics who claim to have superior morality). You use them as weapons against their own offspring! Worse yet, you use them as the galvanizing force to prevent all 6 or 7 million adoptees from achieving access to our true birth certificates. This is a grave injustice.

By being receptive to learning about the true-life situations of millions of adoptees and their natural families, your organization can foster healing and understanding. Not all adoptees are products of rape, incest, or not-married teenage mothers. Every adoptee has a natural father, too, but you don’t talk about fatherhood. Are you purposefully hiding the identities of fathers who impregnated unmarried mothers and ran away? You don’t take into account children who are adopted by stepparents, nor do you address the issues of older children adopted out of foster care. You certainly haven’t given any consideration to half or full orphans. Nor do you address relative adoption, in which, for example, grandparents adopt their daughter’s or son’s child. Each one of these situations has a variety of social openness.

No matter how open an adoption is, the adoptee’s birth certificate is always sealed and a falsified birth certificate is issued in its place. There is not one sentence or even one phrase in your recent publication that addresses the ethical, moral and legal complications of lying, committing fraud, and willfully withholding information to that adoptee who supposedly is loved by the adoptive parents. The only aspect of adoption you seem to caress with any passion is the perceived moral indignation of an exposed mother in hiding!

I’m just one adoptee, but you can learn a great deal from me, and others, if you open your minds and hearts. I’m a half-orphan, not an illegitimate. My mother died, so there is no fearful birthmother to “protect”. There are no secrets and there is no shame in my conception and birth. I’ve pointed this fact out in at least two private letters to the NCFA. You have chosen to ignore them with no response.

If you, the NCFA, can wave huge red flags with the token few birthmothers who refuse to get the proper counseling to cope with their specific needs, and then claim that they will dominate and take control over all adoptees’ civil and ethical rights, then I am going to raise holly hell about being a half-orphan! Orphans are a minority group within the larger adoptee population. No hiding birthmother for me! My natural mother is dead so she does not need your protection!

My natural father does not need you protection, either. He was never verbally promised confidentiality or privacy, nor was a written contract of such presented to him to sign. Instead, my 31-year-old father was verbally told to stay away from my adoptive parents. (My adopting parents, however, were not told to stay away from him! They needed protection from the possibility that he would interfere into their lives, yet, my natural father he did not get the assurance that they would not interfere in his life. They did, but for that story you will have to wait for the publication of my memoir.) The verbal promise my father made to the court to stay away from my adoptive parents and from me, was backed up by written court papers, signed by my natural father and my adopting parents. The Court Judge told my natural father that he could seek me out again, and establish a relationship with me, after my 18th birthday.

Yes, you read that right! Relinquishing mothers have been told that they will NEVER see their adopted-out children again!

Since my mother cannot speak for herself, I’ll speak for her. How does my mother feel looking through the Spirit World at her now adult children, knowing that her youngest was legally cast out of the family? How does she feel that no one, not even the Catholic Church, helped her husband keep the family together after her death? How does she, MY MOTHER, feel that HER RIGHT to be named as the mother of birth was taken from her? How does she feel about some other woman named on a record of false birth as the woman who gave birth to her child? I would guess that my mother is very sad, hurt, and confused. Common sense tells us that a person can be physically born only once, and yet, some other woman is now named on my only legal birth certificate as my mother by birth! That is a disgrace and a dishonor to the mother who actually carried me intimately inside her and then gave birth to me!

NCFA, you don’t seem to be concerned about the natural mothers (and fathers) who lose their rights to be named on a certified birth certificate for the child they gave birth to. Snarky people quip, “She gave up her parental rights!” No, my mother did not give up her rights at all. She died…of cancer… when I was three months old. My birth certificate was registered in the local Vital Statistics Office within five days after my birth. Yet, that certificate was stolen from me, and from my deceased mother, and from my distraught father, when New York State sealed my true birth certificate and issued a fake one!

My four full-blood siblings, who are also half-orphans, can get their birth certificates — but I cannot get mine. (No – this is not an invitation for them to jump on the bandwagon. I do not want them in my life. As has been previously stated, they are presently an unwelcome interference in my life and are certainly not wanted within the adoption reform community. Read my book to find out why.) The only difference between us is that I lost my legal right to be a part of that family. I lost the right to my birth certificate because adoption legally wiped out my identity and family.

Luckily for me, my natural father had my birth certificate, my baptismal certificate, and my hospital birth certificate. He gave these papers to my adoptive parents, who gave these papers to me after my siblings found me and exposed the secret my adoptive parents never wanted me to know. So I know what is behind the seal in the Vital Statistics Office in Buffalo City Hall, but I am still legally banned from ever asking for it and receiving it at the window.

For me, access to my birth certificate, and reunion with my natural family, is much more than finding the names of the people who created me. To see documented proof that I was born grounds me and connects me to the family I lost. And yes, identity formation of an adoptee certainly does include knowledge of the natural family from which the adoptee originated. To be denied this may seem trivial to some people, but when you don’t have the right to your birthrights, when you don’t have the needed validation of your physical self, there is a deep, psychic aching, a longing for connection.

This is widely published adoption psychology. But it appears the NCFA has not read anything written by Annette Baran, Reuben Pannor, Arthur Sorosky, Ken Watson, Miriam Reitz, Nancy Newton Verrier, David Brodzinsky, Ron Nydam, Betty Jean Lifton, Sandy Musser, Mirah Riben, Lorraine Dusky and Joyce Maguire Pavao. It also appears that you have little knowledge of H. David Kirk’s books, nor have you read The Handbook of Adoption: Implications for Researchers, Practitioners, and Families, by Rafael A Javier, Amanda L Baden, Frank A Biafora and Alina Camacho-Gingerich. Shall I dare mention Adam Pertman’s book? The way you, NCFA, slammed his organization and the careful research that went into The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute’s publication, For the Records: Restoring a Legal Right for Adult Adoptees, tells me you won’t even look at Mr. Pertman’s book, Adoption Nation.

Anything that criticizes your sanctimonious view of adoption should automatically be discredited by your organization and the pack of hateful natural mothers you carry with you. However, the short list of valuable authors listed above (there are many more)ought to be read by all people who are separated by, and connected by, adoption. The NCFA’s lack of knowledge in the life-cycle of adoptees, natural parents and adoptive parents and extended family on both sides, is frightening.

Adoptees have the psychological task of integrating their two identities. They have to come to terms with whatever transpired that was severe enough that they lost their first family. All adoptees have two sets of real parents, whether or not you want to admit that fact, it is fact! When you pit natural parents against their adopted-out daughters and sons, or arm adoptive parents with scare tactics, or treat adoptees as perpetual children, you are creating hostility between people who are intimately joined together by the adoptee in the middle! The emotional burden of sorting out the whys, the hows, the what ifs, the physical differences and awkwardness of being raised by a family that does not resemble the adoptee, grief and mourning the lost family, and so much more, all falls on the shoulders of the adoptee. Natural mothers suffer in ways most people can’t imagine, and yet, your organization promotes hate, fear, disgust.

Here’s a little background about me. I’m an adoptee from New York State who was found in 1974 by siblings I never knew. You, NCFA, can interpret that as a violation of my right to privacy, or, you can see that my four full-blood siblings wanted their baby sister so they found me. Yes, of course there are privacy issues of my adoptive parents who were never consulted. Also, my siblings did not consult with our father before they contacted me. Remember, this was 1974. No one really knew how to proceed.

I joined the Adoption Reform Movement within that first year of reunion.

In the very early 1980s, when the New York State Adoption Registry was just a bill, our local adoptees’ support group began a letter campaign against it. By 1983, I became the leader of the local support group. Many members wanted more emotional support, while others wanted to continue to fight against the Mutual Consent Registry. I wrote to then-Senator Anthony Masiello frequently, and he wrote back. Through this personal approach, I was able to get one man to understand deeper issues of adoption. Then I got married, had children, so my activism tapered off. When the Registry Bill became law, I wrote to the Editor of our local newspaper voicing my objections. A scanned copy of that published editorial is printed above.

In addition to what’s stated in that editorial, in my letters to Senator Masiello, I wrote that the Registry would not be of any use to me. My mother was deceased and could not give her consent to the release of any information, non-identifying or identifying. Even though I had had a reunion and knew all there was to know for 9 years before the bill became law, I did have an 11 year old half brother who lived with my natural father and his mother, my step mother. Because of this, I would have to wait until he reached age 21 before I could apply to the Registry. But I knew my blood-kin. There was nothing to hide! The Mutual Consent Registry simply was not at all helpful to me in any way.

I also pointed out to Senator Masiello that the required written parental permission would have to be obtained from both of my adoptive parents, and my natural father, and all three would have to pay their fees and file to the Registry. I was outraged that, at age 28, I had to ask my parents’ permission to gain information on myself, and my adoption, from the New York State Reunion Registry. Even if I had obtained written parental permission from three parents, the fact that my natural mother was dead and could not provide her written consent, her death would prevent me from being granted any information, even after paying the adoptees’ higher fees than the parents’ fees.

When I had my second child, I could not keep up the fight against this ridiculous law. A few years went by. I learned that a political action group in another city was successful in taking parental permission out of the Registry law. Finally! Validation that in every aspect of life, when a person reaches the age of majority, that person is free from parental control and does not need written parental permission to do anything!

I never filed with the New York State Reunion Registry. Instead, I petitioned Surrogate’s Court to unseal my adoption records. It was a long, drawn out procedure, but successful. The Judge gave me photocopies of most of my sealed adoption papers because I had proven that I had known my natural father and my siblings for over twelve years. But I still did not gain access to my sealed birth certificate.

The Surrogate Court Judge who presided over my adoption in 1957 knew that my mother died and that her death notice was public record, yet he proceeded with my adoption as if it were completely closed. On the day of finalization, the judge ordered my birth certificate in the Vital Statistics Office in Buffalo City Hall to be sealed from me and anyone else. He then ordered a new birth certificate to be made in my adoptive name with my adoptive parents named as parents by birth. Then, he sealed my adoption papers in Erie County Hall in downtown Buffalo, New York.

My four older siblings can get certified copies of their birth certificates; I cannot get mine. The only difference is that I am adopted and they are not. This is pure discrimination — not based upon circumstances of an illegitimate birth, not based upon implied “privacy and confidentiality protection” for my deceased natural mother to keep me from learning her identity, not based upon implied “privacy and confidentiality protection” for my natural father to keep me from learning his identity — but based solely upon my status as an adoptee.

I do not have the same equal rights to a certified copy of my true birth certificate issued within five days after my birth as my siblings do to theirs, or as anyone else has to their birth certificate. Instead, I have a New York State certified copy of a record of false birth. This record of false birth (officially titled Certificate of Birth, and Certificate of Live Birth) fraudulently states that I was born to parents who actually adopted me.

To correct this legalized fraud, I demand immediate access to, and a certified copy of, my true Certificate of Birth (both the short form and the long form), and the immediate revocation of my phony birth certificate. In its place, I demand a truthful adoption certificate, with complete facts of adoption, including the naming of my parents by adoption, certified as true by New York State.

For all the conspiracy theorists who warn that giving adoptees a certified copy of their true birth certificate would give adoptees freedom to commit fraud because they then would have two forms of ID in two different names, I need to remind you that I had been given my original birth certificate by my adoptive mother just a few days after being newly reunited with my siblings. I was 18 years old at the time. I am 53 years old now. I have never presented my certified original birth certificate to do anything illegal. I know my name was changed legally, and I know right from wrong.

To the larger issue, I say: change the law. Make it mandatory on a Federal level that adoptees need both the true Certificate of Birth and the Certificate of Adoption to prove identity and citizenship. This is how it is done in more progressive countries, such as The Netherlands. Dutch adoptive parents fully accept the truth. Dutch adoptees have full knowledge of their birth and adoption, and they have both: their certificate of birth and their certificate of adoption. That is an equitable, honest, and moral method of recording adoptees’ births and adoptions. Change the law and social attitudes will change.

Women were jailed and beaten to gain the right to vote in 1920. Blacks rioted in the 1950s and 1960s to gain civil rights equality with Whites. The Adoption Reform began in 1953, but we have yet to see full equality for American adoptees to gain back their civil rights to their own birth certificates and an accurate adoption certificate.

Yet, adoptees had rights to an unsealed and unaltered birth certificate before 1930. What happened in 1930? Three men decided they would protect adoptees from the stigma of illegitimacy by creating a new birth certificate for adoptees. This is documented history. For more information on this, see page 53 of historian E. Wayne Carp’s book, Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption. See also Elizabeth J. Samuels’ book, The Idea of Adoption: An Inquiry into the History of Adult Adoptee Access to Birth Records. See also Janine M. Baer’s book, Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and its Consequences.

Yours Truly,

Joan Mary Wheeler,
born as
Doris Michol Sippel

Some Thoughts on Adoptive Family Kinship

On December 12, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

In the lifespan of an adoptee, it is necessary to look at the whole picture. The adoptee grows up within an adoptive family. That includes the adoptive parents’ sisters and brothers who are the adoptee’s aunts and uncles. There are cousins who are older and cousins who are younger. There are children of the older cousins, who are second cousins to the adoptee. These children grow up together and form emotional attachments. Such is family life. (See the book: Adoption and the Family System, 1992, by Miriam Reitz and Kenneth W. Watson.)

Those attachments are not broken when an adoptee is reunited with their biological kin. If there is genuine caring and understanding, those adoptive kinship feelings do not change. The adoptee does not swap feelings for the adoptive over to the reunited family of birth. Rather, the adoptee somehow integrates the “new” people into her life. And integrates the new “self”, which is also her biological self and family of origin. There are more relatives to reunite with than the parents of birth and siblings. Aunts, uncles, cousins — the usual extended family.

When one looks at the lifespan of an adoptee, it is necessary to look at the family developments and development of self though the life span. Young adulthood, marriage, children, aging and dying parents, middle age complications of divorce, changing or ending jobs, and aging of oneself. There is also the ebb and flow of relationships. Reunion does not happen with one event. It is a process that continues throughout the adoptee’s life. Relationships may end with some relatives, but there are continuing relationships, and surprising new ones as well.

I have found biological kin that I have had long-time relationships with that no one else knows about within other reunited relationships. I have social circles that are separate from my natural father, my adoptive mother, my step siblings, my three sisters whom I do not want involved in my life. I enjoy close emotional ties to blood kin distant cousins for over 20 years.

In my extended adoptive family, there are relatives who have not been aware of the drama that has been going on. These relatives have not caused pain and have not been involved in spreading rumors.

From my childhood cousinship relationships, I have learned:

Step families can and do flourish with love and open communication and laughter.

New Step families bring in new children to play with. There was no distinction. We added the new cousins right in with the old ones. Because we were kids.

Families who broke off and went their own directions for decades and who have touched base again, are renewing childhood emotional bonds. Some of us have not seen each other since childhood and are brought together in middle age due to parents dying. We are re-discovering what we meant to each other as children. We are forming continued relationships as middle aged adults.

So, adoption kinship does not end when there is a reunion between an adoptee and her natural family. I have said this since 1974 when I was 18 years and newly reunited, and I continue to say it: every adoptee has two sets of real parents. Deal with it. Adoptees must deal with it or live in denial. How other relatives deal with it is their own choice. An adoptee who searches for natural parents must conduct a search with responsibility and caring. Biological kin who search for and find an adoptee must do the same.

I was found by siblings I knew nothing about. Adding my reunited biological kin back into my life, and adding new biological kin in the decades that followed the initial stages of reunion, in no way destroys adoptive family kinship. The adoptee is in the middle and struggles with dual identity. It is a life process.

Adoption Gone Bad – Not Reunion

On December 11, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad

I do wish people would understand this about my adoption: it is not my reunion that “went bad” because there is much more to reunion than just a few relationships. My sisters are unto themselves, yet I had a reunion with multple people and still do. Reunion and adoption is about telling the truth to the adoptee. For the complete story, as it unfolded, read my book!

The real issue in my adoption is this: my natural father relinquished me under duress. He did not know he gave me to an adoptive family that made up their own rules about contact, what would be allowed to the older generations and other certain select relatives, and not to the father who relinquished his daughter to them, nor to his daughter, the adoptee, herself. My father’s rights were violated by adoptive relatives who deemed themselves to have control over my adoption and my life.

Meanwhile, my father was not aware that meddling relatives from his deceased wife’s family would spread filty lies about him killing his wife and that he “could not stand the sight of me” that’s why he “got rid of me”. THAT was the content of hate mail sent to me for decades from anonymous letters whom I suspect are members of my extended adoptive family who listened to these lies and beleived them.

My natural father was told by the court to stay away from me during the 18 years of my childhood. He did. He did not want me to be confused. But the inference of meddling extended family cause plenty of rumors and hate. I was hunted down like an animal (by adopted realtives) because I dared to accept my father back into my life in 1974. And I dared to write articles in the paper defending adoptees’ right to know the truth. Hunted down, tracked down, by adoptive relatives who did not like the fact that I was in reunion with a father that they hated, but I was not ever supposed to know him or like him or love him. Nor was I supposed to know any of my blood relatives, but certain members of my adoptive family deemed themselves worthy of socializing with my blood kin, while keeping me away from my own blood kin.

Why? Because the myth of adoption says that the adoptee must never be told the truth, or must never know the parents who gave them life.

That is what happened in my life: My adoptive relatives broke the adoption contract signed between my natural father and my adoptive parents. My father relinquished me to their care, firmly believing that I would be protected from a confusing life. It is not his fault that other relatives prevented him form knowing what was really going on for 18 years to his daughter that they were keeping a close eye on. Keep the father away from his daughter. Keep the adoptee away from her father and her siblings, but we will watch the adoptee and take notes on her as she grows into an adult.

Family secrets. Violation of a confidential and private adoption court proceeding between two sets of parents over the relinquishment and adoption of an unsuspecting adoptee.

Reunion gone bad? Adoption not right from the start. Whose privacy violated? Mime. And my father’s privacy.

My reunion is still going on folks…I still have relationships with other relatives. The adoptee is in the middle and suffers because of the prejudice against adoptees in the larger society.

It is Not Reunion I Resent — It is Being LIED to and Harassed

On December 10, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Genealogy, Obituaries, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

I was checking my trackers when someone’s search words caught my eye: “adoption reunion resentment”.

Let me make this clear: I will not be the Poster Girl for Bad Reunions. You will have to read my book to know the whole story.

I was lied to be my adoptive parents for the first 18 years of my life. They did not EVER want me to know my own siblings. Siblings that they knew I had! Siblings who lived just a 20 minute drive away! When those siblings called me on the phone and shocked the living hell out of me when I was 18 years old, I was not mad at them. I was in deep, profound, emotional shock! My adoptive parents lied to me and prevented me from having meaningful relationships with my own siblings and my blood cousins, but it was alright for other members of my adoptive family to socialize with my own blood kin!

I was happy to meet my siblings, my niece and nephew, my father, and I was grieving the loss of my dead mother for the first time in my life. Do not for one second label me as against reunions!!!!

My reunion turned sour because I was getting abuse from my adoptive mother who never wanted me to know the truth. I was getting abuse from adoptive relatives who believed I was disloyal to my adoptive parents for accepting a phone call from my own siblings! I was seen as the villain by my many of my adoptive relatives.

A few of my adoptive aunts took me kindly aside to explain what they knew. The point is: if THEY knew, I should have known all along. Not only that, but my natural father was completely unaware that the adoption contract was broken. He put his trust into the couple he chose to adopt me, but he was not told that there would be socializing going on with his deceased wife’s family. If my adoptive father’s family and my deceased mother’s family allowed themselves to socialize, but left my father out of it, then his rights were violated. He was also unaware that rumors were spread about him, rumors that affected how I was treated by my extended adopted family.

In my beginning stages of my reunion, and for decades after, I could not be everything to everyone. I was expected to learn my family history, learn names, dates, go here, go there, finish high school, go to college, and be OKAY. No one was concerned for my emotional or mental health. I was alone, until I went to a support group for adoptees. The group met once a month. Then, I went to an Adoption Forum of Philadelphia Day – long adoption conference. I met authors, natural mothers, and adoptees who felt just like I did. I found friends. Back home, I was criticized for being in a reunion, and ridiculed by natural family and adoptive family for writing Letters to the Editor about adoptees rights. This was in the 1970s.

I have been ridiculed for being an adoption activist, for standing up for what I believe in.

I am not against adoption reunions!!! I am against the lies, the deception of entire family groups, I am against being discriminated against for being an adoptee writing about my life.

My reunion went sour for many, many reasons. Too many for a blog to explain.

Message to adoptive parents: do not ever lie to your adoptees. THAT abuse destroys the parent-child relationship. To prevent an adoptee to live as a “only” child, knowing that there are siblings nearby, is child abuse. Divorced parents would face charges if they did that.

Reunions with blood kin can only work if all people work at it. My father worked at it, but could not handle me going public. He did not understand the politics of me being adopted. He felt guilty for giving me away and I have told him repeatedly that I never blamed him. I have a lovely step mother. My adoptive parents and my natural parents visited with each other. It was hardest on my adoptive mother since she did not want me to ever know my father. And my siblings and I had wonderful times together. I had a hard times adjusting. I was one person. They were many. I was overwhelmed. I was alone in my suffering.

Reunions between families separated by adoption are positive, natural events, that, if handled with respect and dignity and honesty, can and do, work.

Reunions happen with and without open birth and adoption records.

DO NOT pin negativity upon me and blame “bad” reunions on me! Many relationships ebb and flow and some end. It is part of life. Not all families get along even without adoption separation and reunion. It is now nearly 36 years after my initial reunion. There are many relatives that have sustained relationships with me, and many who have not. The younger generations now are asking questions. Adoption, just like marriage, grows and changes as we all grow and age and die.

My adoptive mother is dying. She has faced some difficult issues. She has accepted that the falsified birth certificate must end, and in its place, an adoption certificate must tell the truth.

My natural father read my book as I wrote it, twice, in these last few years. He gave his own input as to what happened. He also answered questions about the relinquishment, and, no, he was never promised confidentiality. He was told by the judge: “you must not interfere with your daughter’s life. She now is the adopted daughter in this new family. When she turns 18, you may find her again.”

Ahh, but single mothers who give up their babies, or rather, who are coerced into giving up their babies, are, and have been, told that they will never see their baby again.

There is so much that is wrong about adoption itself. We need to focus on fixing those issues, which will then fix the reasons why relationships break down. There is much in adoption psychology of the entire family systems that cannot be explained in a blog. Read some adoption psychology books. They apply to family systems, and not just finger-pointing at the adoptee.

Society always must have scapegoats. That’s why illegitimates are called bastards. Cuss words. I resent it. Especially since I am a half orphan who should have been given respect, dignity, and honesty right from the very beginning of my adoption. Too many rumors. Too many untruths. Too much confusion for the adoptee.

The Meaning of Two Christmas Concerts Today

On December 6, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions

One of the blessings of attending the Unitarian Church of Buffalo is that we have great music. Today, in addition to our wonderful professional choir, we had The Chamber Orchestra of The Buffalo Philharmonic Musicians performing Puccini’s “Magnificat”, Mozart’s “Te Deum”, and Handel’s “Sound an Alarm” from “Judas Maccabaeus”.

The following are notes written by our music director, Barbara Wagner:

“Sound an Alarm”

“The political context is the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Handel, in 1746 hastily composed the Occasional Oratorio for the encouragement of the English. After the success of the British forces at the Battle of Culloden, he started a work in honor of the victorious Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. The first performance of “Judas Maccabaeus” took place on April1, 1747, at Covent Garden. It was to become one of Handel’s most popular oratorios…”

I listened intently. My first reaction was to be insulted, for the British slaughtered Clan MacDonald at the Battle of Culloden. That’s my clan. Of course I didn’t know it most of my life because I did not find out I was a wee bit Scottish on my mother’s side until I met my blood-kin in March of 1974 when I was 18 years old. One of my great grandmothers was a McQuiston, which is part of the larger MacDonald Clan. When I went to Liverpool, United Kingdom, in 1976 to meet a sister there (spoiler alert for my book), I quickly learned some of my heritage from folk music. Particularly, “The Massacre of Glencoe”, sung by Roy Williamson of The Corries, a Scottish duo. For the past 30+years I’ve immersed myself in that haunting recollection of an earlier British-Scottish battle on December 31^st 1691 in which the Brits murdered the Clan MacDonald.

Now, today at church, I tried to hear the beauty in Handel’s music portraying the British version of one of the Battles that killed my ancestors. Yes, it was a beautiful piece of music, but I couldn’t shake being startled. As I contemplated, another observation came to me. The man singing this “Sound an Alarm” had the last name of “MacDonald”. I scratched my head on that bit of irony.

Then, slowly, I thought about my adoptive father who died in 1982. He was half English, his father was English. Fortunately for me, his English heritage was never stressed during my childhood. No, my father’s Polish mother was more important, probably because his father died young and the English heritage of the Wheeler family died with him. So, thankfully, the famous Battles of Culloden and Glencoe between the British and the Scottish were not part of my childhood stories while I was growing up.

Since our society is so big on forcing adoptees to choose: “No, I’M your REAL mother!”, here I sit today thinking: so, which side of this battle am I on? The British or the Scottish? If a Clan MacDonald killed a Brit, and my Wheeler family is of British ancestry, would that be an insult to my adoptive family? The battles were British victories in killing my Scottish ancestors. Obviously some of the Clan MacDonald survived else I would not be here. So, whose side should I be on? Should I be loyal to my adoptive family’s ancestors for being the victors over my Scottish blood-kin? Should I rise up with pride at the Scottish singing of “The Massacre of Glencoe” so I may honor my murdered ancestors?

Ahh, the blessings of being adopted.

The other Christmas concert was even more bitter-sweet. My friend, Nan Hoffman, and her long-time friends, Joe, Kathy, Tom and Mary, sang one of their Christmas-season concerts this afternoon. When my children were in middle school, I took them, and their grandmother, my adoptive mother, to see this folk music concert. We may have missed a few concerts here and there, but these last few years, I brought Mom. Last year she was in a wheel chair. This year, Mom is in a nursing home.

Nan and her friends bring their talents to Christmas favorites, but for me, their shows give me the chance to remember the two Christmases I spent with one of my sisters in Liverpool, England.

There, my sister and I went to see The Liverpool Spinners in their Christmas concerts. They sang songs I had not heard in Buffalo, so when Nan and her friends began their Christmas concerts long ago, I have been recalling the special times I had in Liverpool. Songs such as, “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” and, “Jamaican Christmas Carol,” and “Mary Had a Baby Boy” and “The Holly and The Ivy” and “In the Bleak Midwinter”. Tears filled my eyes as I hear Nan’s sweet voice, and the harmonies of the others, but my mind also hears the voices of Cliff, Mick, Hughie, and Tony of The Liverpool Spinners.

I am also reminded of another Liverpudlian folk duo, Jacqui and Bridie. I did not meet them in Liverpool, however. No, they came to Buffalo with their musical talents and wonderful wit for over twenty years. Bridie died many years ago. After that, Jacqui traveled and sang with Lynn. And always, Jacqui sang “Mist Over the Mersey” for me. That song was written by another Liverpudlian folk singer, Jack Owen, who I met in Liverpool.

So, Nan and friends not only fill my soul with their lively voices, but they bring back to me my joyful memories.

These last few years, Nan and friends have stopped singing John McCutchin’s, “Christmas in the Trenches”, about World War I: “My name is Francis Toliver, from Liverpool I dwell…”

The biggest flow of tears came for me this afternoon as the group sang Peter Mayer’s “Holy Now”. That song is so touching, so wonderful, contrasting a child’s memories of going to church with the grown child’s realization that “everything is Holy Now.”

It is a sad reminder that this will be my mother’s last Christmas. I’ll remember it for her.

“Everything is Holy Now” is also a sad reminder that 53 years ago, my pregnant mother did not know why she was so sick during her pregnancy with me. She went into the hospital two days after Christmas and never came home again. Neither did her baby.

Rebuttle from Yesterday’s ABC Article

On November 24, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

This post, too, will be quick. No time for editing. This is written in response to this article:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/adoptees-cite-discrimination-landmark-study-push-open-birth/story?id=9138141

I agreed to be interviewed, but I DID NOT say I would have preferred to be in foster care!!! The foster care and guardianship topics came up in my interview when the reporter asked me, “You’re not anti adoption, are you?”

I said, “Yes, of course, I am!”

The reporter said, “Well, what would you like to see done differently?”

I said, “Preserving the natural family is the first step. If a child cannot be raised by her parents, then kinship care,, and after that option, then guardianship.” I DID NOT SAY THAT I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED TO BE RAISED IN FOSTER CARE!

That kind of twisting my words has resulted in, again, more misunderstanding abaout adoption.

Of course I enjoyed my childhood. I was raised by doting, loving parents who gave me everything a child could want: a secure home, tucks in bed at night, good meals, snuggles and cuddles as a young chid, a good education, family get-togethers with extended family at other homes and at parks, and emotional closeness. I loved my parents while I grew up and they loved me.

But that love was destroyed when I got that phone call from a sister I never knew. It was at that moment at age 18, and a high school senior, that I realized a rush of information and acceptance. The two most trusted people in the world to a child are her parents. And mine lied to me. Not only did they lie, but they willfully prevented me from knowing my siblings during the time when it is most crucial for a child to have siblings: childhood.

The reporter made me out to be some kind of uncaring nutcase. I resent that characterization.

Foster care would not have been my preferred choice to the childhood that I did have. However, finding out at age 18 that I actually had full blood siblings, devastated me.

Here is what I wrote in the onnline comments to that article. I acnnot stay to read comments waitiing for psoting, or to answer email. I need to go back to hospital for my dying adoptive mother. Mixed feelings? Yes. How would you feel if your parents lied to you and prevented you from growing up with your siblings?

My reprints from online comments:

Part 1

The responses to this story reflect the ignorance of adoption that still exist. It is appalling what people perceive adoption to be.

I will be posting a series of posts (due to space limitations) to correct mistakes in the bad reporting and mischaracterization of my adoption and reunion. First, it is not the reunion that went bad, it was my entire adoption that was wrong. Reunion, itself, is not a bad thing, and in miss-representing what I said to the reporter gives the wrong impression. Reunions are a good thing, if handled appropriately. Adoptions can be a good experience, if handled appropriately.

I was an 18 year old high school senior, raised a socially isolated only child by parents who chose to keep secrets from me. They knew I had siblings within 5 miles of our home, and they chose to prevent me from access to them. Meanwhile, members of my adoptive father’s family and members of my deceased natural mother’s family socialized with each other, passing around rumors about my natural father and secret stories of me growing up. I was unaware of this and so was my father. This was social engineering and certainly not the proper way to handle a “relative adoption”. I was treated as an outcast by most of my adoptive family after my reunion – good enough to be in the family while my adoption is secret, but toss me out after I reunite with my father and finally grieve the death of my mother. I did not create resentment – adoption myths and taboos did.

Part 2

When my older full blood siblings found me, it was a shock. Of course it would be: to learn that the most trusted people to a child lied, on purpose, and treated me as a possession. My siblings and I and our father had as good a reunion as could be, considering I was at everyone’s mercy for they told me their versions of the truth and assumed that I should get on with life quickly.

That does not happen. The shock of being found, the shock of lies, and the growing turmoil of both families putting me down because I chose to become an adoption reform activist, resulted in life-long psychological trauma. Do not twist my words around to make it seem that I had a “Bad Reunion.” THAT is mischaracterization of what I told this reporter.

It is the total accumulation of misinformed relatives, societal myths, and definite discrimination against adoptees in general that made my life difficult. How can one person defend herself against an adoptive family network of rumors and disgust, a split natural family (one side believing that my father was responsible for my mother’s death from cancer, and my father not knowing the full extent of the involvement of other people in the adoption of his child. There was total lack of concern for him as my relinquishing father, total lack of concern for the five children at the death of our mother.

Part 3

The only thing that mattered was that I, the adoptee, had a so-called better life to be away from wretchedness of the father and siblings left behind. I paid for the “sin” of accepting my father back into my life by having hate mail sent to me and hate phone calls from anonymous adoptive relatives who took it out on me that I even dared to have a reunion with a man they hated. THAT is what was wrong in my adoption and reunion—distortion of beliefs surrounding adoption. I DID NOT say to this reporter that I wished I was raised in foster care or was under guardianship. THAT is a twist of what I actually said.

If my adoptive parents were truthful to me while I was growing up, if the judge had realized that there were four other children involved and made it a part of this adoption to have ongoing sibling and father visitation, and if there were no hateful rumors spread for 53 years, then there would have been a cooperation in visitation for the sibling group, I would have known that my mother died and where she was buried. Better yet, my family should never have been separated by adoption in the first place. Family preservation should have prevailed, but no, adoption was seen as the only solution.

Part 4

I said that, adoption as a social practice should be replaced by family preservation. IF a child cannot be raised by her family, then guardianship should replace adoption because adoption creates a new identity for the child and destroys the natural family connections. Adoption itself causes distortions in peoples’ attitudes.

This reporter misrepresented what I told her. And she chose to ignore the very real birth certificates I sent her. All adoptees’ birth certificates are seized by the government and a new, falsified, birth certificate is issued claiming the parents of adoption actually gave birth. The reporter was shocked when I told her this, “They don’t still do that, do they?” she asked me. “Yes, they do!” I responded. I sent her copies of all of my fraudulent birth and baptismal certificates, and true birth certificates. But she chose to ignore my message.

This is why I have written a book — because reporters are too casual with information given to them. I have told my story to numerous reporters since 1975, and it is always the same. They report a twisted version of what I actually said.

Part 5

This adoptee has faced a variety of discriminations: 1^st in my relinquishment that could have been prevented, then my adoption that was full of lies from the very beginning, and the lies told behind me as I was growing in a social circle similar to The Truman Show. Do not place the burden on a “bad reunion” upon me. Remember this: an 18 year old faced with psychological shock of this magnitude does not emotionally heal well, nor do the adoptive parents who lied for 18 years and defended their right to lie by screaming and yelling and blaming the adoptee, nor do the siblings of that adoptee, and, the relinquishing father who was talked into giving up his newborn at the funeral of his dead wife.

Adoption itself is wrong. Morally, ethically, humanly, wrong. Adoption is a no-win situation.

This reporter was more interested in getting a decent photo to put my face in her story to prove the bad side of reunions, without printing the evidence I gave her to expose the worst discrimination of all: sealed and falsified birth certificates that all adoptees suffer. Creating new and fraudulent birth certificates for each adoptee, and forcing us to beg for our truthful birth certificates, is the biggest discrimination in adoption today.

Joan Mary Wheeler, born as, Doris Michol Sippel

November 23, 2009

From this Morning’s Email – NCFA

This post will be written on the fly. I’ve been in the hospital with my dying mother till 2:30 AM, came home, slept for a few hours, and just got a call to go back for her transport.

So many of my adoptee/mothers of adoption loss friends wrote about yesterday’s ABC article, thank you! I’ll get back with you all later today.

But this had to be posted. Now I know why I’ve been seeing mysterious IP addresses from Alexandria, Virginia, that’s because the National Council For Adoption had been reading my website!!! Welcome, NCFA! Maybe you guys can learn something by reading what adoption has done to me. While you are at it, stop by the Links Section to view some more adoptee/motehrs of adoption loss blogs. There are some great blogs by donor-conceived women and men, too. Oh,, yes, Adopted Jane, I will add your blog, too! I am so sorry to have left you out. I may have left others out of my lists,, too, as the frantic effort to keep blogs and websites up has been difficult. (My former blogs were shut down by people who want me to be quiet).

So, enjoy this lovely little nugget of wisdom from the NCFA. I joined thier email list about a year ago. Glad they continue to send me their enlightening emails, such as this:

Celebrate National Adoption Month Part 4Tuesday, November 24, 2009 10:15 AM

From:

“National Council For Adoption” <ncfa@adoptioncouncil.org>

Donate today to help keep adoption strong!

You can contact NCFA by mail, phone, fax, and e-mail:National Council For Adoption

225 N. Washington Street Alexandria, VA 22314

703-299-6633 (Phone)

703-299-6004 (fax)

http://www.adoptioncouncil.org

ncfa@adoptioncouncil.org
To unsubscribe/change profile: click here.
To subscribe: click here.

Oh Darn! The photo of the little girl on a slide did not come through, must be copyrighted. So this is what was writen for that photo’s caption:

“To those who help build families through adoption, we say … “Thank You.” Because every child deserves a loving, permanent family.” “Donate today to help keep adoption strong!”

Where were the donations of emergency financial help to feep my family together when our mother died and our father was told by a Catholic priest, “The baby needs two parents,” and a kind Christian woman came up to my father at his dead wife’s funeral and said, “I know a husband and wife will who take your baby”?

Yes, donate today to keep the attorneys and adoption agencies filled with money that could otherwise be used to keep struggling families — which include a single motehr and her pregnancy — together.

Family values indeed.

Adoption BEwareness Month – True and False Birth Certificates

On November 9, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

Trying to learn FTP file transfer to build this flash gallery… in the meantime, these photos came with the slide-show setup. My own birth records will be added soon.

[flash_easy_gallery 1 /]

The woman I was named after died a few days ago. This is for Aunt Doris.

Adoption not only took me away from the family I was born into, but adoption took away the name I was given at birth. I had that full name for one year and one week, until the Judge ordered my name to be changed. It took the State a few months to issue my new (false) birth certificate in my adoptive name.

Adoption also took away the name I was given in the Catholic Sacrament of Baptism. According to Catholic dogma, a person must use their baptismal name to take vows: to become a nun or a priest, get married, and receive other holy sacraments. I was deprived of my baptismal name because the Church issued a false baptismal certificate in my adoptive name three years after the real baptismal ceremony. Catholic Baptism is not simply a symbolic gesture. Catholics believe that the child receiving the sacrament of Baptism is blessed by God. If that is true, then the Catholic Church should not have falsified a new Baptismal Certificate in my adoptive name. That document gives the impression that I was baptized in that name, which I was not.

An adopted child is not born twice, nor is that child baptized twice. Yet I have several birth certificates and two baptismal certificates.

New York State sealed my birth records upon the finalization of my adoption. To this very day, nearly 54 years after my birth, I am barred from legally obtaining my true birth certificate. My case fell through the cracks. I have my sealed records (as evidenced in the cropped slides above and full scanned images in my forthcoming book). But I cannot obtain certified copies at the local Office of Vital Statistics because the law won’t allow it — even if I present what I have! That is totally illogical. Changing my identity without my consent, and without giving me my own attorney to act in my behalf at the time I could not speak for myself as an infant, is a crime that goes unpunished for millions of adoptees worldwide.

Just who do you people think you are anyway? What gives you the right to snatch infants from their families, change their names and prevent them from ever knowing the truth? Adoption is a disgusting, life-sucking institution that mimics real families. No one can truly love in a lie. Once the adoptive parents lie, their friends and extended family lie, building lie upon lie, fabrication upon stretched truth, day after day, decade after decade. Lie becomes believed truth. While relatives do their dance around the wicked adoptee, the unsuspecting adoptee is condemned, mocked, ridiculed, and scorned.

Couples get divorced for infidelity, with or without photographic proof. Parental infidelity in adoption, however, is rewarded by false and fraudulent birth certificates proving that the child is “theirs”, and all the rest of the glorified accolades of how wonderful these adoptive parents are to take in an unwanted child. How wonderful indeed, to be that unwanted child, to sense others’ pity and scorn. I, the adoptee, must live with the consequences of all those lies for the duration of my lifetime. This has had a devestating trickle-down effect on my children’s quality of life. That’s another topic for discussion…

Thank GOD I gave up being a Catholic for Lent somewhere around age 14! And I never looked back longingly for a religion built on lies, deceit, damaging secrets, hypocracy and fraudulent religious documents. The Pope has not bothered to answer my second letter to the Vatican. My first letter was answered with a form letter. Evidently someone in The Vatican took my second letter seriously because there was no form letter this time. No response was sent because there is no official Church acknowledgement of this crime of issuing my falsified baptismal certificate signed by a Catholic priest.

Some Commandment says “Thou shall not bear false witness”.

Another Commandment says, “Thou shall not steal”. We’ve not really delved into that one much, but I heard the author A J Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically) say that that commandment actually means “thou shalt not steal other people’s children”. I wish I could find a link to that quote. I heard him say that recently on C-Span’s Book TV. So, children, here’s your Bible task for this week: Go find that quote. Better yet, study The Golden Rule: Do not do to others what you would not want done to you.

No, adoption is not a wonderful thing, event or condition. Adoption is a cover-up, a con-job, and a mockery of the sanctity of life.

Go ahead, you defenders of the status quo, keep shoving your shock and dismay at me. What about orphans who have no parents? What about the kids LANGUISHING in orphanages? and bla bla bla.

Even full orphans were conceived and born of one mother and one father. Those are the birds and the bees — the facts of life. Guardianship of true full orphans provides loving homes for children who desperately need homes. Guardianship does not destroy the identity of that child, nor does guardianship destroy family relationships. Guardianship gives a true perspective. Caring guardians can model parental roles while accepting that they did not give birth to that child. Guardians can give respect to the missing parents by acknowledging their names, their race, ethnicity, national origin, family religion, and, most important of all, guardians can respect the child for who she is. Adoption, by its very nature, is secretive, manipulative, and disrespectful to the true parents and the adoptee.

Working toward total honesty in adoption means to first acknowledge the act of adoption by issuing a certified Certificate of Adoption for every adoption of the past as a Vital Statistic of Adoption to be registered in the Office of Vital Statistics of where the adoption took place.

Secondly, from this day forward, make adoption itself illegal. Family Preservation, Kinship Care and Guardianship are the only acceptable alternatives to closed and sealed adoption.

Keep the Birth Certificate Discussion Going

On October 28, 2009 By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

It is important to keep the dialogue going concerning adoptees’ birth certificates and our natural parents’ rights to the birth certificate of the daughter or son they lost to adoption. This post is a reminder to read and leave a comment on the Page titled “True Birth Certificates”.