This is like blaming a rape victim for not being a virgin. It was not HER choice. It was not MY choice either to not be there. No, I was not there during those years, but do you know I would have DIED to have been given the opportunity to? These years were stolen from me, each year, day, and moment. Frankly, if a child has been adopted because that child was first taken via a coerced surrender, then don’t blame the mother for wanting her child back. The adoptive parents can blame and sue the agency responsible for false advertising and fraud.

As for caring for a child, I raised three more children, and there were no “babies demands.” It was a blessing and joy to care for my child every day. When my babies needed anything, I was right there. The joy they gave to me more than made up for anything they needed from me. Children are a blessing. My children owe me nothing, not gratitude, not “loyalty.” Children do not owe their parents anything, because they gave great joy to those parents already in their every smile, their every hug, their every accomplishment.

“then when it grows up you want it because you don’t have to do anything for it..”

No, I want (and have), a relationship with him because I am his mother, and twenty years of separation did not change this. Our love, our family relationship, survived all the years of separation. Have you been able to reunite with your natural mother again? No two reunions are the same, and for some the relationship takes decades to heal from the damage of adoption trauma. But if you have not yet reunited, then there is a chance that you will find the bond there as well.

“you don’t deserve a relationship with it now,”

My son is an “it”? I don’t think so. And, he asked me to adopt him back.

I suggest, Sandra, that you read up on coerced surrender, forced adoption, and read the stories of all the mothers who were forced to surrender children they loved and wanted. It is a myth that the only children who are being brokered for adoption purposes are “unwanted.” My son was both wanted and loved. There was no valid reason for him to have been abducted at birth and provided by the hospital to a social worker who then illegally forced me sign the papers. The ONLY reason for it was a consumer demand for healthy newborns, and an adoption industry that arose to meet this demand. There is a difference between abandonment (“placing”) and forced surrender, just like there is a difference between consensual sex and rape. One is a choice, the other a violation.

HUGE hugs to “adoption critic” and her son! I live vicariously through you, and am rooting for your 1000%!

Tamara

Tamara

That incident I describe above occurred when he was 21. We had been in constant contact up until then, from the time we reunited (a day before his 20th birthday), but after that evening of the 4 hours of abuse, I did not see him for 4 months. He told me he emotionally cut himself off from everyone during that time. After 4 months, we resumed contact.

But he was never allowed to spend much time visiting us though, even on school breaks. They never approved of him visiting us (we lived in towns 5 hours apart). That September, when he was 22, after staying with us a week (the longest stay ever — most times he was only allowed 1 or 2 days), he decided to make it two weeks — and they told him when he arrived back that they wished he had never come to that family.

Another incident happened on Thanksgiving Sunday in October. While visiting us that weekend, he came down with a 103-degree fever (influenza) and wasn’t well enough to make the return drive back to them that evening. They marched down to their local RCMP and tried to get me arrested for kidnapping. Now, these are very intelligent people — it wasn’t due to ignorance that they did this. The man was a high-school vice-principal and math teacher until he retired, and she was a department head at a local technical college. Both have Masters degrees. But kidnapping? I guess it was that ownership thing again.

On a visit that Christmas, 2002, he made the decision not to return to their house. They told him that he has been kidnapped and brainwashed. I guess, he is not living up to what adoption promised them — a child “as if born to” them. And, of course in their eyes, it is still all my fault for “interfering” in his life (a.k.a. reunion, which they also told me was just a fantasy of mine). They still do not recognize my existence, or that I am in any way related to him. Nor do they believe they have ever done anything wrong. My son says that they need to admit responsibility for everything they have done to hurt he and I and apologize for it before he has anything to do with them again. I am not holding my breath.

How do I give an example of the mindf*ck that all this who owns the kid thing is. First off, I thought that slavery was outlawed by the 13th amendment… the adoptress is right, no one owns anyone. However… belonging to someone is a different concept. Belonging to a line, or a heritage, or a village, or a tribe. It can’t be replaced, and it can’t be faked. It can’t, for lack of a better word, be “adopted” just because you wish it was so, or because you don’t wish it so, but you know of no other options. (that secrecy thing is a real bitch, believe it.)

Anyhow, as an adult adoptee, I find it not only highly insulting to be that piece of flesh that completed someone’s family, but incredibly insensitive to the lovely human being(s) who made that possible for those who had “more” in the way of money or status or circumstance. Your family was built on someones pain. If you can’t own that, you are doing a diservice to their child (whom you claim as yours) How dare you minimize that fact. That’s right, I said FACT. Even a natural mom who dropped of thier child at an ophanage experienced pain. How dare you judge the circumstances of the woman who, in my adopted mothers words “gave me the greatest gift of my life” and in the next breath, called that “gift giver” a 14 year old little slut. I know that is an extreme visual, and will probably cause many who should look at their behavior and thinking, excuse themselves from the conversation, but any shade of that rather obvious and callous example is insidious and painful to the object of everyones desire.

RESPECT. Where is it? Where is the respect, even if you disagree, or your own very powerful insecurities get the better of you… where is the respect for the person who suffers still so you could have a faux experience at their expense? I am your child 48 years later, should you continue to lie to yourselves, and to him/her. You are disrespecting their MOTHER. Wake up. My mom died before I found her, but she has my Love, and my respect for her pain.

Tamara

How old is your son? His adopters sound like a nightmare. The reality of adoption is that every adopted person has two sets of parents, it is illogical to deny that. I hope your son can escape that kind of control.