Adoption questionare

In trying to complete my life long dream of getting this book, "/Adoption Evolution/" complete, I'm looking for input from other people effected by adption. If you would like to help me and be part of this positive movement please email me!

I can't figure out how to copy and paste it on here because it is a form to fill out if you can please email me.

montanaadoption@hotmail.com

Adoption Evolution Mission Statement

Adoption Evolution
Mission Statement





Our intent with Adoption Evolution is to make what we know as open adoption, the normal and expected practice in newborn adoption in the United States. We want to educate adopted parents, birth parents, and adoptee’s on the importance of all parties having knowledge of and even knowing each other. Adoption Evolution wants to lift up the experience of adoption by examining and filtering through the terminology and myth’s surrounding it. We believe law’s need to change in regards to adoption. We support the government amending birth certificates for children of adoption. It is our belief that adoptees' should have a birth certificate that includes all parties’ involved names, birth parents and adopted parents.


There is endless evidence that the secrets of adoption are harmful to both child and parents. Adoption Evolution believes we know a way to open up the cloud of secrecy where all adoption triad members will live happy.


Mostly, Adoption Evolution believes that this is not a difficult or confusing process in fact it feels quite rewarding. The easy answer is to just LOVE. Birth parents need to love the adopted family, they are providing for their blood the way they cannot. Adopted parents need to love the birth family they created this beautiful child that the adopted parents cherish so much. Adoptees’ need to love both sets of parents together they have made the adopted child one.


Adoption Evolution believes that there is no room for selfish, greedy, jealous feelings in successful adoption. Mother’s placing a child need to feel as though they gained a family not “gave up” a child. Adoption is not the end instead it is a new beginning with a brand new life.



Love IS the answer

I'm going to get serious now

I'm writing a book called "Adoption Evolution" Not because I'm a writer. Reading my blog I'm sure as you'll see I'm a terrible speller and the whole grammer thing has always messed me up. I'm writing the book to make a difference, I hope! If you read through my previous post you'll see that I'm both an adoptee who has searched and found both of my birth parents and I am a birth parent to a child who is now 15 years old in a very open adoption and it is truly beautiful!!

I'm hoping this blog thing can keep me focused on my mission and maybe connect me to some people who may have some insite on my cause. I will post the "Adoption Evolution" mission statement a little later today. I'm looking for other people touched by adoption to share with me what they think.

Please share with me!!

StoryCorp here I come!!

Today I will be interviewing in the mobil storybooth StoryCorp.
Actually this was back in Aug. 2005 I just changed my blog to a new name.

http://storycorps.net/

I'm so excited. I want to make sure I hit every point I need to. The following is the notes I've made. Wish me luck and I hope one day this will help someone some where...

* I’m here to tell the world what I think they don’t know about adoption.
* I believe if the world could know what I know about adoption this world could be a
better place.
* The answer to the healthiest way of adoption is to just LOVE.
* Leaving all negative feelings of selfishness, greediness, jealousy actions like
narrow mindedness, self interested, thoughtlessness and being only self-interested
behind you. To do what is best for this child is what works.
* Then the best will happen to all parties involved.
* I know because I have lived it and seen both sides.

1. How has adoption been a part of your life?
• being adopted
• placing charity with a fabulous family
2. What is closed adoption?
• forged birth certificates
• legalized theft of this child’s birthright
• How people think adoption will work?
• They will never know?
• If you don’t talk about it, then it will go away.
• “you were chosen”…. “I wasn’t wanted first”
• Age 18 being some kind of magic age. That’s what most people think but that’s
not how it is.
3. What is open adoption?
• The truth is told from the beginning.
• You don’t have to be sat down and told “you’re a girl”
• Child has an avenue to say “why” or “who do I look or act like”
4. What was my closed adoption like?
• Ashamed of looking different.
• 4th grade babysitting thing (Pinky)
• 6th grade “I’m your by law, on paper”
• Family tree homework, filling out nationalities on annual test or any kind of
paperwork.
• Finding out that I’m Arabic at 16.
• What I felt about adoption
5. Getting pregnant at 16.
• Going to jail and Mountain View girls home.
• Talking about adoption to me.
6. What changed?
• Senior pictures
• List of what anyone would need to be to parent this baby, the only thing I
knew to be my own bone and blood
• Finding this family
• Delivering this baby and meeting these fabulous people.
7. We Are Family. I didn’t give my baby up.
• Christmas when she was 3 months old
• Nothing but love.
• She’s 14 now
8. What was different?
• We all love each other.
• We don’t fight for her love or feel jealous of each other.
• We only want for her not ourselves.
9. The thoughts we need to focus on in order to make adoption work for everyone.
• This is for the child..ONLY.
• This is not to satisfy your need to have a child
• You can not change that this child came from different blood which makes
their ways and personality different than what you may understand.
• It is only beneficial to all parties if everyone knows and loves one another
if they cannot love one another and put their feeling aside then it will not
work.
10. How does the government need to change in order for this to work?
• Closed adoption is a crime.
• Theft of that child’s birthright to know their own heritage and past
• Forged documents so that this child may not be able to know the truth of
their past.
• Creating a child and saying they can never contact you is just as much a
crime as leaving a child in a garbage.
11. What needs to change in our process of thinking?
• If you create a child it is your responsibility to make sure the best thing
happens to that child.
• If you adopt a child you can not try and create a new being you have to know
and understand that this child came from other bone and blood and that is
just as important to this child as you are being the parent that is right
there.
• We adopt children because we want to help some children in this world that’s
biological parents are not able to give them the life you are.

So the taping of this was wonderful and if anyone out there would like to hear my story I would love to send the audio to you. I was high on cloud 9 after doing this because I know now if I die tomorrow I did something that my story really is out there for ever!!

Finding my mother

I dreamt of this my whole life.

I knew more than I knew anything in this world that I would find my blood family oneday. I believed I was prepared for whatever happened, although if I'm really truthful with myself I would have been devisated said my biological parents wouldn't meet me or rejected me. As most adoptive children from closed adoption being rejected or getting feelings of being unwanted stirs left over feeling of abandonment that most adopted children, especially from closed adoptions, experience. Even if I would have had to experience that kind of rejection I know it would have been worth it to know. To know that you weren't missing anything by not knowing these "birth parents" your whole life.
To just KNOW is what I needed.

I felt like I was always searching. The first real move to searching was when I was 16. I had been running away from home and fighting with my parents. I was forced to go to counceling with my parents to work things out. Come to find out my parents have had a letter writen from the attorney that handled the adoption. The letter was writen in 1979 I was 6 years old. I suppose my parents must have started to notice I look different, very different then them and they wanted to know just what nationality I am. So the letter said my maternal grandmother is Danish, my maternal grandfather is Blackfoot indian and French Canadian, my mother is caucasian and her last name sounded french. It also said my father was Arabic.

Woah, this was amazing, Arabic. Being raised in Montana this was Unbeleivable!! I had been told my whole life that I was French Canadian and never really felt like that was all right. Looking in the mirror everday it seemed there must be more going on than "French Canadian". This was my first moment of feeling like there is something that is MINE. I have some heritage different from everyone I know and it is truly MINE!! I've always had friends of minority decent, and I was always embrassed their cultural practices and ways, but they were always theirs not mine. Or maybe they were, I didn't know......but now I did. I'm Arabic and I would now do everything I could to learn about being Arabic. I didn't know anyone who claimed to be Arabic before. What country would that be? I never wanted to believe the things I heard here in Montana about Arab people. They made them sound like savages with lots of money. I knew already at that time that people in Monatana haven't been exposed to much so until I could meet my people myself I refused to believe the hype.

At the point that I first saw this letter I decided to contact the lawyer. I come to find out at this point how my adoption came to be. My adoptive mother's, mother worked in the hospital. For some reason my parents couldn't have children (I'm 31 years old and I still have no idea why) so the Doctor at the hospital, who had been friends with my future adoptive grandmother, had this young girl that was about to have a child, of course not married. Her mother has decided that her daughter will give this unplanned, unexpected and mostly unwanted baby up for adoption. The Doctor knew his friend the nurses daughter had been thinking about adopting. One thing led to another, the new perspective parents hired a lawyer and the day I was born I was theres. My biological mother never even saw me. Being that my parents hired the lawyer that wrote up all the adoption papers it was a conflict of interest to ask him to help me get them open. He told me that I could file for the papers to be open when I turned 18. That it is fairly common to open adoption records to adult adoptees in todays day and age.

That was the end of that for a few years. Never did it slip my mind for even a second that I WOULD find my family one day. One day after spending a couple years dragging my life through the mud, I found the strength to start on this mission again.

I filed the papers with the court. I had gotten into a bit of legal trouble in those couple years. Wouldn't you know that the same judge that I saw in my legal trouble is the judge that see's over this adoption thing. He deny's me access!! What??! I thought this was fairly common and they just opened these things to people after they turned 18. I was devistated....but it was almost the move that really energized my mission. At that point I drowned myself in adoption. I wrote every adoption search related organization in the entire country and beyond. I registered my name in every adoption registry I could find. But with out a name searching for biological parents can be very difficult.

One of the companys I wrote while in the middle of this search was Dave Thomas's Adoption Foundation. I knew that the owner of Wendy's had something to do with the Adoption world but didn't know what. I wrote and explained what I was doing and wondered if their foundatioin had any suggesitons. I received a letter back from Dave Thomas's assistant. I could tell she took the time to write this letter and it ment alot to me (more than I had any idea of at the time). She explained to me that the Dave Thomas Adoption Foundation help with adoptions of physically or mentally disabled children. She did though wish me good luck and recommended two books I might be interested in reading. And so I did.

During this same time I'm appealing my decision by the courts on the fact that they never did give a reason that they denied me access they just said no. It took a year and a half but the courts made the judge give a reason that he denied me access. He said that he searched for my mother and with my "lengthy criminal history" (at age 19?) he felt uncomfortable in giving me any information about her. He also said there was no immediate need for medical history (even though I now have a daughter who is now given up for adoption who could use some history). He searched for my mother and came to all this in 41days. The courts upheld his decission. I found out in the newspaper and received the papers in the mail two weeks later. Being a full time judge I find it hard to beleive that he searched all that hard in 41 days...??

Back to the book the Dave Thomas Adoption Foundation suggested that I read. In some small paragraph in some short chapter there was something about if your from a small town you might think about running an ad in ther personals just saying when you were born and who you are looking for. I always kept that in the back of my mind.

As usually life continued to go on with major ups and downs but one thing never changed I was going to find these people and everyone around me knew this as well. I run in to an old friend that was living in Missoula. I lived in Seattle at the time. We decide that she would run an ad in the local paper in Missoula for me. The ad would say the following: Adoptee seeking birthparents, I was born on July 21, 1973 @ community hospital, the doctor was Dr. Campbell the lawyer was L. Riley and the judge was Judge Green if you have any info please contact me @ XXXX....well at the time I had a 800 pager number, so thats what I listed. The first week went by I received about 4-5 calls, other people that are searching that offered to help but no one with any info. Then the ad fell out of the paper on accendent the second week, so we call up the paper and they get it in the next day. That day I received a call from a woman who worked for that doctor during that time, she couldn't remember my mother but she was still in contact with another nurse that now lives in Arizona but she would call her and see if she knew anything. That night I went to the casino. (I did that alot in those days) I was loosing and just sick about it. $45 left and my pager goes off. Saved by the bell!! I walk to the payphone and hear my message. The older woman on the other end of the phone says "We're calling about your ad....we'll call back".......WHAT!!?? This has GOT to be my family, and she doesn't realize that this is a pager. I spend the next hour calling everyone that I could think of that had 3 way and made them listen to what I already knew to be MY FAMILY!! I then changed the out going message to have my home phone number on it and headed back to the tables. Don't you know it was my turn to roll the di. And I did...for the next 45 minutes and then the next guy rolled for 30 minutes. I left after that with $1500. This day went down in history.

The next morining I woke up at 8:30am to a phone call from my new old family. Their names were Dee and King and they told me my mothers name was Kathy. Kathy....Kathy woah..I don't think I ever visulized her name before.

She's 14 now

She's 14 now ----She's in high school now.

I was in high school when I had her!!

She is healthy and happy

She’s in school activities and sports

She has a lot of friends and is confident

She is proud and she is adopted

She has two mothers

She loves me and I love her!

When I was 14...

I was skipping school and failing classes

I was confused and depressed

I had no activities or interest

I couldn't make friends I had no confidence

I was embarrassed that I was adopted

Ashamed, I thought that my mother didn't want me

My family was different than me-I was different than them

I felt alone---I knew I would find my family and find out why

It's clear to me the benefits to open adoption

The damage closed adoption has on an adoptee is also clear

The first day of the rest of her life.

Most people said, " I could never have taken my child home and STILL give them up for adoption!"

For me it was different.

Having 2 days to say my own good bye was one thing. It's a time that will always lie very dear to my heart. But more than my own personal gain emotionally, I knew I wasn't cut out to be a mother at 17 years old. I had to get up every 3.5 hours feed, rock and protect this tiny baby. I felt the heaviness of the situation in that 48 hours and I knew I was making the right decision. I could barely, actually, I couldn't at all take care of myself and now here's this baby. A baby that would depend on me to survive, I did not have the focus or stregnth to do it right at that time and no matter how bad it hurt this Was the right thing to do.

I had already been in the hospital for 1 whole week. Having a c-section for my first child put me on notice about what child birth was about.

8.6 lbs this child was perfectly healthy.

The new parents had arrived the first day of her birth. Having driven through the night to become parents for the first time. I know they were so excited. Being that I was sick with what they ended up calling a "bacteria in my blood" (whatever that ment, cause it just went away one day) the new parents had to cancel a performance. They were suppose to sing at a friends wedding. They both have beautiful voices. I felt bad but I had already said that I wanted two days alone with her, and they never pressured me to change the original plan.

The day finally came. I hadn't slept that night. Other than being up all the time feeding this hungry child I couldn't sleep thinking about the future. Will this really be as open as I would like to see it? Will this child hate me and feel adoption is such a terrible thing like I did growing up? If I give this child up for adoption and never have another child again.......what would I do and feel? This little baby is the only thing on this whole earth that I know to be my own blood and bone....was it really going to be ok?!

The knock on the door......my heart sank to a depth in my stomache I didn't know exsisted.

They really are wonderful and fabulous people. I loved them already. There was no way I could hurt them by changing my mind, especially since I knew I wasn't going to be the parent I wanted my child to have.

There were pictures and promises, tears and smiles. Nervouse feelings deep in my stomach and a sence of excitement for the future for them. I knew this was the right thing. I was gaining a family, not giving up a child. I decided at that moment that this "giving a child up" is the whole wrong terminology. I would now refeer to this adoption thing as gaining a family and never referr to it as "giving up".

I took our baby outside and put her in her tiny car seat. I buckled her in, kissed her over and over. Repeating over and over, "I love you, baby....Always" hoping that some where in that 9 day old mind she would remember and understand that I really, really do love her.

The door shut and as if my eyelids had been a damn for my tears it instantly broke. The flood of tear started falling and didn't stop for hours. I had been so strong until now. I yelled one last time "I love you" knowing in my heart this would not be like my adoption. I would know this beautiful child, she would know me. I knew deep in my heart she would know and hear me tell here I love her again and again in her life. But was it? If I never had another child in life and this was the desision I made with her, the only human being I know to be my own bone and blood, would I hate myself for life? It didn't matter, I was giving her a life I couldn't otherwise. I had 100% faith that this wonderful new family would always keep me in her life. They drove off.....starting the first day of the rest of her life.