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Preface
We are living in an era of heightened awareness of individual rights, and yet there is a hidden minority of several hundred thousand Canadians who have no access to their original birth certificates and family medical records. Adult adoptees are living in a personal historical void. Those of us who were adopted have faced the challenges of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, all the while carrying that extra piece of baggage labelled ADOPTED.
For some of us it was never a burden. For others, it was an awkward weight, which slowed us down and made our steps unsure. The quandary in which we find ourselves stems not from a wish to choose between parents but from a wish to know our background, our heritage. Our minority status as adult adoptees is not based on any psychological or physical condition but simply on the fact that at some time in our infancy or childhood we were given to others to be raised "as if born" to them.
We are those whom P.D. James, in her novel Innocent Blood, has described as "displaced persons whose umbilical cord was a court order." Adoption is, without a doubt, a sensitive topic, for many lives and family relationships are bound up in the system that decreed that a child could be passed from one family to another in legal secrecy.
This book is a plea for understanding and for action. It was conceived in joy and confusion and fueled by a certain amount of anger. My joy at the successful conclusion to my four years of intensive searching (seven years overall), was profound. I wanted to write about it, to give hope and perhaps some direction to other searching adoptees.
Perhaps this book will also counter some of the loneliness and guilt that go hand in hand with an adoption search.The confusion I experienced was a natural outcome of the readjustment of my social being. A new and accepting family has come into my life and a whole new set of relationships is there waiting to be sorted out: a happy situation, but confusing.
And the anger? I was never angry with my birth parents, for they were victims of the society of the early 1940s; nor was my anger focused on my adoptive parents, for they, too, were caught up in the philosophy of secrecy that was inherent in the whole adoption procedure of the times.
My anger was, and is, directed against the state and a society that fostered this conspiracy of silence and secrecy, which envelops not only the adoptee, but both sets of parents. We, the adoptees, have also be culpable. We have lacked the courage to ask questions, and we have been unwilling to face the complexity of guilt that made us accomplices to the conspiracy. It is only by speaking out that we can make society aware of our very particular circumstances.
As I progressed with my research, I began to see the book as a celebration, touching the three sides of the adoption triangle. It is a celebration of the strength of our birth parents who, because of the mores of a society, made the decision (or perhaps had it made for them) to cut all ties with their own flesh and blood. It is a celebration of the courage of people who take an infant or young child into their lives, and who love that child as their own. And we adoptees, the third side of the triangle, also have cause to celebrate - for we can come to a deeper understanding of the importance and love of families by accepting the challenge to delve into our past, or even by deciding to accept the status quo.
I hope this book will help anyone involved in the adoption triangle personally or professionally, and all those who are interested in this modern drama, this human search that leads to REUNION.
How it All Began
Excerpt from Chapter 1
The term, "as if born", is used legally and the
concept of the child belonging to the adoptive family is strong. Perhaps in the
eyes of the law it is that simple; perhaps also in the hearts of the adoptive
family, because they want it to be true. It may also be true for the adopted
child, some of the time, perhaps for a lifetime; but it is not true for all of
us. As Kahlil Gibran wrote in 'The Prophet':
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."
I AM part of the family that gave me my psychological upbringing, my nurturing; I AM part of them by love, by shared experiences. However, as became eminently clear when I met my birth family, I also share a great deal with my biological family. The heredity-versus-environment debate takes on a very personal meaning
for an adoptee.
Search for identity is all part of growing up. The adoptee does not wish to throw off, but to discover. Family expectations are not less for an adopted child, though they are sometimes less realistic. In many cases the expectations of the adoptee parents are higher, more ambitious and more emphatically stated than those of natural parents.
The Real World
Excerpt from Chapter 2
I had never felt strongly enough about wanting to know about my background to risk precipitating a crisis {within my adoptive family}.I had no desire to hurt or alienate my parents. Bureaucracy, however was another matter.
The rights of the individual under the Freedom of Information Act had been widely published and I had innocently thought that this applied to all personal information held by governments and institutions. But there, behind me in the hospital, my records were sitting silently amidst thousands of others. Other people's records could be had for the asking, but mine might as well have been thrown out or erased, for my name had disappeared into the shadowy world of sealed records.
Sealed records are the glue that holds the adoption myth together. It is ironic that in this day and age of computers, when so much personal information is available so quickly and easily to so many people, that adoption records are sealed. We leave a paper trail behind us as we progress through life - credit ratings, government records, medical records, driver's licences, school records, medical records, mortgage papers and finally - our wills - all of which are available to any number of interested parties. Mail order houses and charitable institutions have our addresses and a free to pass them on, and on, and on. But for adoptees the records are locked away, inaccessible.
When I made the first innocent inquiries I had given no thought at all to the importance of asking questions in the right way. I later learned how very important it is to go to the appropriate people - and 90% of the time NEVER say you are an adoptee searching - family history, school reunion, anything, anything but admitting you are part of the shadowy world of adoption!
The Need to Search
Excerpt from Chapter 3
There has been an assumption that adoptees and birth parents would never need to know each other, that adoptees would never need to ask why they were surrendered, and that birth
parents would not be concerned about their child's subsequent development. (Silverman et al. 'Reunions between Adoptees and Birth Parents)
Every searching adoptee must, at some point, face the frustration of sealed records - the foundation of the adoption game.
The rules of the game are quite simple and I learned them early on. 'Be happy with the status quo. Do not rock the boat. Any information must be given by the adoptive parents.'
Nobody gave me a handbook and certainly nobody told me that the corollary to these rules was that if my adoptive parents did not wish to reveal any details of my background, then I must be satisfied, accept the situation as it was and play the game with good grace - I just knew!
Games are an important part of our society. We play games with our children to teach them good sportsmanship, the grace of winning and the importance of being a good looser. As adults many of us follow professional sport or take part in team sports.
There is a book by James Carse called ' Finite and Infinite Games' ... this little book was not filled with ingenious games but dealt with the philosophy of play in the framework of life itself. One concept struck me as particularly poignant when related to the life of an adoptee:
"A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. It may appear that the approvable of the spectators, or the referees, is also required in the determination of the winner... Suppose the players all agree, but the spectators and the referees do not. Unless the players can be persuaded that their agreement was mistaken, they will not resume the play - indeed they cannot resume play.
This seemed to put the adoption game into perspective, to shift it away from the perspective of a simply "us against them", an adversarial situation and to give its implications a far broader perspective.
The game, as I was defining it, was a finite game. I wanted to win. If the rules were not going to be rewritten by the referees, then I was going to write my own rules and join others in demanding that the rules be rewritten according to our definition of what the game should reflect.
We were demanding rules that would turn their infinite game into a finite one, a game with a beginning and an end, as contrasted to the lawmakers' concept of an endless game. To be involved in the adoption game is to be bound into a world within a world. It is a contest which has its own teams, rules, cheering section, winners, losers and referees.Life is the field on which it is played.
The finite end of the adoption game is knowledge. The infinite game simply means that adoptees go through their whole
lives without the right to know.
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