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                                      I EXIST

3/27/2015

 
                                                By Lisa Freed

                                           Guest Blogger

 
If you were to look at me, you would see an ordinary 60 something year old, suburban wife, mother and grandmother. I have a secret only a couple of people know.  A secret I share with my husband that we rarely speak about.  My secret is that at 17 years old I met "the one and only," and at 18 I found myself pregnant. 

It was the end of the hippie generation, though I was raised with 1950's morals: free love pulling on one end, and wait until you are married pulling on the other. We were young, dumb and in love.  Girls were no longer being sent away.  Unwed mothers were just beginning to be out in the open, but teen pregnancy was still frowned on.

All I can say is that I lived in denial.  I told the boyfriend, but no one else.  It couldn't be happening!  We were careful!  I was the "smart one."  The one who skipped a grade.  The one who was so well behaved.  

I didn’t show much.  Of course, it helped that tent dresses and peasant shirts were the style. I dragged the boyfriend into my denial, not wanting to talk about it.  Abortion was just becoming legal in some states; not mine.  Though because of my state of denial, it would not have mattered even if abortion was available.  Having several adopted family members, I thought adoption was the answer.  I spent most of those 9 months in my own kind of "hiding" only able to come out of denial when it was necessary, and then right back into “hiding” with my fears and worries.  I now understand I was traumatized. 

Finally it would be over!  I remember I was being wheeled into the delivery room when a nurse started to scold me.  The tears started to flow.  Fortunately, a kind nurse took my hand and said, "A family is going to get a wonderful child they have been waiting a long time for."  So grateful was I for her kind words, it still brings me to tears. The only kind words I heard.

About six years ago just by chance when reading an article online, I saw a small headline: “Birth Certificates May Be Opened to Adoptees.”  What happened to the law where birth certificates would remain permanently sealed?  

The stress of seeing that article brought me right back to the most traumatic time in my life.  I became obsessed with reading whatever I could on the subject.  I was so angry with the way people were treating those of us who oppose the unsealing of confidential adoption records.  Furious at the mob mentality, how they gang up on women with hate speech insisting that rape victims should be over the rape; calling rape victims liars; bullying and condemning women because of the adoption; denying that women were ever promised privacy; denying that I, that  women who want privacy, even exist.  I exist.  We exist. 

Now I respond to that hate talk, even though my blood pressure goes up, my stress level rises, and my head hurts.  People need to know the other side of the story.  I exist.  We exist.

Eventually after finishing college, I married that boyfriend.  We are just retiring, a time when you think you can finally relax.  We worked hard, took care of our children and now have grandchildren (oh, how wonderful!).  We just want to enjoy what we have worked for and the years we have left to us.  Only here we are in our sixties, forced to cope with an issue that happened when we were teens.  The blood pressure is up; stress is up. 

I want the legislature and others know that we believed you.  We believed that confidential adoption records would be kept sealed.  Your option of opting out of the disclosure does not help me.  It brings me back to a traumatic time.  You will force me to have the opt out notarized, now getting another person involved.  And you will force me to provide medical information to keep the privacy you promised me in the first place.  No law requires me to give out my medical information, even to my own children.  But I will be required to submit this information to a stranger every 5 years until I die.  Really?  By the time I’m 80 you can’t figure out that I have decent genes? 

When I'm in a nursing home and can no longer fill out the medical information, you will open the confidential records.  After years of working to keep my privacy, I will be left obsessing over if I am going to get an unwanted contact or if my family will be contacted. Then when I die, you will unseal the confidential adoption record forcing the whole ordeal onto my children and family to cope with, because my family cannot opt out.  And it is not only the adoptee that will gain access to my personal information, but members of the adoptee’s family also. 

You are terrorizing me, but you refuse to see that.  You are terrorizing other women too, but you refuse to see that also.  Your refusal to see the truth may make you feel better, but it makes things much worse for many, many families. 

                                                 I exist.  We exist.

Fantasy Abuse 

3/20/2015

 
  By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
Decent people with a sense of compassion and morals have absolutely no comprehension of the agony this country is forcing upon women who were impregnated against their will and rescued by the confidential adoption process.  Every “civilian” knows a woman who is currently enduring this hidden, dark suffering, though she will never reveal herself.

Phil and I are both humbled and heartbroken by the communications we receive from women in hiding.  They are literally your co-worker, your good friend, your mom, your grandmother—all walking unseen in the shadows of their dark wounds, terrified.

Women forced to hide in these shadows are tormented constantly by fantasy abuse from the media, the creative community, politicians, the religious, and society in general.  Those who hunt us, who demand access into the privacy of our very bodies, are fantasized as heroes, even as they wreak havoc on our lives and strip us of our human rights.

Those of us who have endured the lifelong trauma of forced reproduction live with crippling torment.  For us, this is no charming fantasy.  To be hunted down, to be obligated by law to reveal personal and medical information, to be forced to disclose intimate details of a sexual calamity is no fantasy.  It is real.  It is brutal.  It is abuse beyond imagination to “civilians.”

Think of this the next time you hear a cute little story about an adoptee searching for a complete stranger.  Think of how that complete stranger has been reduced to a fantasy.  Think of how that stranger has been obligated by a fantasy.  Think of fantasy as abuse.  Then be grateful it is not you being hunted.


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    About the Author

    In the provocative spirit of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Gloria Anzaldua, and Mary Daly, Kathleen Hoy Foley expands and deepens the voice of female experience.

    Raw. Uncompromising. Compassionate. Deliberately antagonistic. Kathleen writes to awaken the courage within the reader.


    TO THE SURVIVOR
    If you are a person who was victimized as a child or as an adult, I am so very sorry you ever had to suffer at the hands of a predator. 

    I am sorry you were abused, sorry no one protected you, sorry you have felt so alone, sorry you have been so afraid then and in the now. I am so sorry for the loss of your innocence. 

    You were and are entitled to you life. And you had a right to inherit your own body. And no matter what you did or what you think you failed to do you are not to blame. Sexual abuse is never a victim's choice. Sexual abuse is something that was done to your body not something you wanted. 

    This is an excerpt from: 

    http://web.archive.org/web/20130101063123/http://true-perspective.org 

    Kathleen and I encourage you to visit this site for perspective on your ordeal. Live happy and whole. Claim you power! 

    You are your own authority.

    Question Everything.  Including social, religious & political authorities

    Learn to listen and respond to your intuition.  It is never wrong.

    Learn to be impolite.  It must be part of your defense system.

    Nothing is unspeakable.

    Stare truth in the eye and speak it.

    You name abuse.  Listen to your body.  It will tell you.  It is never wrong. 

    Stare abuse in the eye and speak it.

    Stare abusers in the eye and name them.

    Use your voice.  Use your words. 

    BE LOUD.  Violence against girls, boys, women and men hides in the silent shadows.

    Know that you are powerful.

    KNOW THAT YOUR VOICE IS POWERFUL.   USE IT.



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