A seven year-old takes on National Adoption Month, Gotcha Day, and generally tells it like it is.
Category: Adoption Loss
Joey Ashbridge and His Video Production on Adoptees’ Searches in Ohio
I’m helping out a fellow adoptee today.
Joey Ashbridge is video taping his search for his natural family, and, he is filming the searches of a few other adoptees.
His project is on Indiegogo: “A film about the change in the Ohio law and about personal journeys to find biological identity“. Please help him fund the project to produce the film, as well as to help his travels on his search and the search for a few other adoptees.
Good luck, Joey, and all my best on your personal quest! Good luck to the other adoptees you are helping along their way to search and reunion. Good luck in raising funds. And good luck in producing an educationally valuable film!
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Searching for a Relative Lost to Adoption? Search Angels Can Help
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
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The Real Philomena: NPR Radio Interview and Commentary
A radio interview with the real woman named Philomena who lost her three year old child to a forced adoption in Ireland. The movie, Philomena, is a fictionalized version of her search for her son.
I am glad that the discussion of intercountry adoption has been slowly turning in favor of examining what adoption means to the natural parents and their lsot children. This is a start. Discussion leads to action.
The movie depicts the result of barbaric behavior from Catholic nuns in intentionally separating a mother from her toddler son – because the mother “sinned” for being pregnant “out of wedlock”. The lesson? Realizing a mother loves her child, with or without marriage.
The further lesson? Bringing out to the open the cruel treatment mothers received in Ireland is not limited to Ireland. It has happened, and still does, all over the world. Babies are stolen and given up in forced adoptions all the time.
This movie, Philomena, quietly invades the viewer’s heart and mind. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? How can we stop it? What are the humane solutions to teen pregnancy? What are the solutions to religious indoctrination that persecuted Philomena way back pver 50 years ago ? How can we educate deeply religious people and institutions as to the damage their social control has had, and still does, on vulnerable mothers and their innocent children?
There has to be a better way. Punishment of mother because she got pregnant before marriage is not the way to go. Removing her child from her caused Philomena a lifetime of pain. Her son, like millions of stolen children, grew up believing his mother didn’t want him.
This should not happen.
Now that you’ve seen the movie, do something. Get busy. We need you to help put a stop to stories like this. Contact American Adoption Congress, Adoption Crossroads, as a start. There are other groups, such as Origins USA. Find a local organization that is set for social and political action.
This is a side note to Mannix Flynn: the questioning has begun. People are starting to ask why this happened. People are asking who should be held accountable for this tragedy.
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Backing Up Mannix Flynn on the Meaning of the Movie “Philomena”
After seeing this movie — Philomena — I now know what the writer of this blog post means. He is dead on: script writing and movie making need to be followed up with social and political action. The writer and star of the movie needs to take this further into real action to put an end to this torture of mother and child, and the millions of women and infants and children torn apart by adoption. When will we stop seeing this as fodder for films, but additionally as an introduction to real social and political change? Get involved! This tragedy did not only happen in Ireland, but all over the world and in domestic America: the Catholic Church stealing babies from girls and women because of the notion of being “fallen women” — punishment for being pregnant outside of marriage. This is barbaric treatment of women and their babies.
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FORCED ADOPTION APOLOGY DETAILS RELEASED for Australia
UNCLASSIFIED
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THE HON MARK DREYFUS QC MP Attorney-General Minister for Emergency Management |
22 February 2013
FORCED ADOPTION APOLOGY DETAILS RELEASED
On 21 March 2013, the Prime Minister, the Hon Julia Gillard MP, will deliver a national apology, on behalf of the Australian Government to people affected by forced adoption or removal policies and practices.
The event will commence at 10:30am with formal proceedings commencing at 11am in the Great Hall of Parliament House, Canberra. The apology will be followed by a lunch from 12:30pm on the Federation Mall lawns of Parliament House.
The national apology is a public event and will be open to all. Seating will be available for approximately 800 people in the Great Hall, with additional standing room. Due to the large number of people expected to attend the apology, seating in the Great Hall will not be pre-allocated. There will also be other vantage points within Parliament House for people to view the apology on broadcast screens.
The motion of apology will be moved in the House of Representatives and the Senate following the event in the Great Hall.
The apology will be offered as a significant step in the healing process for the mothers, fathers, and now-adult children who were forcibly separated, siblings and extended family members.
The Australian Government has provided $120,000 to support organisations to assist people affected by forced adoption practices to attend the national apology in Canberra. Information can be found on the forced adoptions apology page of the Attorney-General’s Department website atwww.ag.gov.au/forcedadoptionsapologyor by calling 02 6141 3030.
People attending the apology are invited to RSVP for catering purposes. Please RSVP by emailingforcedadoptionsapology@ag.gov.auor calling 02 6141 3030.
For those who cannot attend arrangements are being made for the event to be filmed and a live feed made available to broadcasters. Proceedings will also be streamed live from the Parliament House Website at www.aph.gov.au/live
Contact: Attorney-General’s Office 02 6277 7300 or Attorney-General’s Department 02 6141 2500
You are receiving this email because you are on our list to receive notifications and updates of PARC events – This event might not be taking place in an area close to you – or be relevant to your situation – but please feel free to pass it on to anyone you feel it might be of interest to. Please let us know if you do not wish to receive further notifications from PARC and we will take you off the list.
KIND REGARDS FROM THE PARC TEAM
Elaine Bishop
Administrative Officer
Post Adoption Resource Centre
T 02 9504 6788
F 02 9570 2699
Level 5
7-11 The Avenue
HURSTVILLE NSW 2220
Locked Bag 6002
HURSTVILLE NSW 1481
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Joe Soll’s Video on Coersion and Single Mom
The effects of the loss of a baby on women who lost them to adoption
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Joe Soll’s video is in direct response to Dan Rather’s story introducing his upcoming show on May 1st, 2012:
Adoption or Abduction? — Forced Adoptions for Unwed Mothers: http://news.yahoo.com/forced-adoptions-for-unwed-mothers-around-the-globe.html
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Season of Sadness
With the recent passing of my adoptive mother and my natural father now four of my five parents are dead. Only my step mother survives.
Today marks the 55th anniversary of the death of my natural mother.
So I sadly mark their memories:
Genevieve Herr Sippel (natural mother) died March 28, 1956 at age 30.
Edward Wheeler (adoptive father) died February 15, 1982 at age 67.
Leonard Sippel (natural father) died January 11, 2011 at age 86.
Doloris Cannell Wheeler (adoptive mother) died March 12, 2011 at age 95.
The pain of loss is real. All four parents are real. All adoptees have two sets of real parents.
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Rest in Peace, Mom
My adoptive mother, Doloris T. Wheeler, passed away early in the morning of March 12, 2011 after a long battle with leukemia.
I love you, Mom.
…
To My Mother
by H. Phelps Clawson, 1923
Death! Is there some wild terror in your name
That causes mortal men to tremble so?
Your scythe spares neither poverty nor fame,
Nor saint nor sinner, yes, they all must go.
And I, who stood beside my Mother’s bier,
Felt you cold fingers clutching at my heart,
Trying to force a cry, some sign of fear,
To show I’d play for you the common part.
But Death! You are a fool; you could not see
With your dull eyes that it was I who won,
That from above she had sent down to me
A wondrous Mother-message to her son;
A glorious light of peace, eternal rest,
And happiness that she had never known.
I saw her smile, and to my tortured breast
Came the great knowledge—I was not alone
But nearer her dear self than I had been,
And she was more my Mother than before.
Oh! All the mighty vision I have seen
Since she flung wide that sacred golden door,
And showed to me the fullness of her love,
A staff to guide my footsteps through the night,
And though she’s with the brilliant stars above
She’s nearer me to help me towards the right.
Again, a little child close by her side
I seem to walk and look into her face,
For she is still and ever was my guide,
And I with manhood’s wisdom now can trace
Each act of Mother-love, and all she gave
To me to carry onward through the years—
A courage that makes beautiful her grave,
And robs our earthly parting of its fears.
…
…
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Truth in Adoption: How I Petitioned for My Adoption Files
I was reunited with my natural family in 1974. By 1981, I had petitioned Surrogate’s Court for my Final Order of Adoption, even though I already had a copy (see yesterday’s post).
In 1985, I petitioned Surrogate’s Court of Erie County, New York for all of my sealed adoption files. I wanted every piece of paper they had on my adoption: the signed relinquishment papers, petition to adopt, and any other paperwork. I wanted permission to seek my birth certificate, too, but was told that petitioning for the birth record was a separate process.
Being politically correct for the time period, I used the terms “birthparents” and “birth mother” and “birth father”. Today, I would use the terms “natural parents” and “natural mother” and “natural father” because those words accurately describe the relationship. Also, these are legal terms used to designate between the natural parents, foster parents, and adoptive parents of an adoptee, although, as you will see tomorrow, the term used in legal documents to describe my natural father is “father”. That’s because he is my father and was my legal father until after he signed relinquishment papers.
So, I began with the simple petition to the court:
With the help of a law student who gave me specific statements to use and a form to follow, I typed up the following (reproduced here minus specific identifiers and other information not releveant to the general public):
My request for sealed reports and documents from Vital Statistics Office, Catholic Charities of Buffalo, and Millard Fillmore Hospital were denied. With my natural father’s permission, I obtained my medical records and my mother’s medical records from her admittance to the hospital while pregnant with me until her death three months after my birth. Because the records that were released to me from Surrogate’s Court contained most of the information I sought, I did not pursue further petitioning to Catholic Charities. Dialogue between my natural father and I filled in the blanks of where I was from birth until placed in the custody of my pre-adoptive parents, a four month period not covered by documents held by Surrogate’s Court.
Tomorrow I will present the papers I received from Surrogate’s Court.
~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, born Doris M Sippel, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.
FORBIDDEN FAMILY 
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