Category: ADOPTION PRIVACY

My Cousin Also Drank the Kool-Aid

8/29/2013

By Lisa Marie
Guest Blogger

I had to write you after reading your blog. I too had a family member who drank the Kool-Aid and believed the fairy tale promoted by those supporting adoption reforms.

My cousin, an adoptee, lived an ideal life just like Little Bill. Her parents wanted her more than anything. Just like Little Bill she was coddled, not just by her loving parents, but by aunts, uncles and cousins who were 10-15 years older than her. She was the baby in our family that everyone loved.  She always had her original birth certificate. It was a private adoption; the biological source sent the original copy to the lawyer who gave it to her parents. My cousin was never interested. No need, she had her family. She married and had children.  It is a family story how much her oldest looks like and acts like his grandma despite no common DNA.

Several years after my cousin's parents died, she became aware of the adoption reform movement and fell for the fairy tale they promote. Her mother's sisters (who were very close) kept telling her, we are her family. Most cousins told her the same thing. Her elderly aunts warned her about the can of worms she was opening.  My cousin didn't want to hear it. She believed the fairy tale. Exactly as you said, she was looking to fill the vast emptiness she was told she was supposed to feel.

My cousin was very excited to find out that her biological source had married and had children. My cousin now had siblings! After spending most of her inheritance traveling back and forth to another state, buying a trailer to be near her biological source for the purposes of convenient visits, while helping the biological stranger out financially, my cousin discovered that there was no warm and fuzzy connection. Though it took her a while to realize it.

Sadly, my cousin would not listen to reason from her family who opposed her choices. She did everything she could to try and fit in with the biological strangers. It cost my cousin in the end. The elderly aunts were deeply hurt and their once-close relationship suffered.

One aunt helped raise my cousin for her first 5 years while her mom worked. They were extremely close. My aunt felt that it was her job to look out for her niece when her parents died and she knew she failed.  My cousin had a new family now. Those were the people she decided to listen to. She ignored her real family—the ones who truly loved and cared about her.

Eventually, my cousin lost the house her parents worked so hard for and most of the money they saved so she could have a good life after they died. Ultimately my cousin came back to her real family. It seemed she realized that talking about the stranger grandpa didn't have any meaning, not like reminiscing about her beloved grandpa who used to rock her on his knee and taught her how to drive.

Hearing about the stranger grandma wasn't the same as remembering her beloved grandma making Easter cookies from the recipe she brought over from Italy.

My cousin learned that no matter how blonde haired and blue eyed she is or how much Irish blood runs in her veins, she will always be Italian with all the mannerisms, sayings, and customs of her beloved Italian family. She learned what family really means. As far as relationships go, genes are unimportant. People have many blood relations they don't know, don't need to know, or want to know, or will never know.

Families are the people who love you, who have been there for you your entire life, for both the good and the bad. At best, biological strangers are just acquaintances. It was an expensive lesson for my cousin, drinking that Kool-Aid and wanting the fairy tale.

Many people are drinking the Kool-Aid and believe the fairy tale that is being promoted by those in adoption reform, especially those in the legislature. Only 11% of adoptees obtained a birth certificate in Oregon, 2.5% in Illinois, and less than 800 in RI obtained their birth certificates.

We seldom see those numbers, though the public always hears about "the happy reunions" in the media.  You would think that the legislature would do a little research before voting on a bill to change adoption.  Instead they drink the Kool-Aid being served by those with the loudest voices, those who think they are entitled—the same voices, the same people that go around the country to promote adoption reform.

I recently wrote to a journalist asking why he only told one side of the "adoption story" which included an Adam Pertman (a militant adoptee) interview, of course.  I gave your website out and a couple of other places where he can get the other side of the story along with the National Council for Adoption, which supports mutual consent.

I told him that it is articles like his that promote the fairy tale. He did not respond.

Meanwhile people like my cousin and your uncle are destroying their families based on the lies they are told—the lies they believe. It's a sad story.

Social Worker Nancy and the Old Lady

4/10/2013

Originally Written, 16 July 2009 but still relevant.

by Kathleen Hoy Foley

I want to cry for the old lady, slide down to the floor, hold my head in my hands and just sob. After that I want to set Social Worker Nancy's hair on fire and watch her dance trying to save the lush curls burning atop her empty, thirty-something head. I want to burn the youth out of her. Destroy her arrogant naïveté--that ignorance that blinds the young to their own stupidity.
Social Worker Nancy and I go back ten years. Back to when she was savoring the heady rush of her twenties in a job that lorded power over secrets. And secret keepers. Catholic Charities hoards hundreds, probably thousands of secrets in their files. And burnt tears. They're supposed to be sealed, those files. Kept confidential. The girls hidden there were supposed to be protected. Those girls are now women, some of us old and so many terrified. Of Social Worker Nancy. And the secrets she knows. The secrets she tells.
So there she was, young Social Worker Nancy cutting her teeth on dismal caseloads when a bawling adoptee showed up demanding a look-see at a stranger's personal file. As Social Worker Nancy tells it, her heart broke for the forlorn waif unable to control her weeping, crumbling right before her. She wanted to make her feel better, make this person un-adopted, I guess. That's when Social Worker Nancy crafted perfumed roses from the misery lingering like stains on the yellowed forms buried in that particular manila folder and tossed my secret along with my identity into the wide open wind.
Social Worker Nancy sits across the conference table from Phil and me. I am here at Catholic Charities' superbly appointed main office because I want to stop hating her. Confronting her is the only way I could think of to halt this loathing that spins into visions of evil revenge. Though I can think of a million ways I'd rather be spending this early spring afternoon. Gouging my eyes out of their sockets, for one.
"Why?" I ask. "Why did you give away my confidential information? To a stranger? Why did you tell that adoptee what my mother said about me, for Godsakes? It's bad enough that my mother condemned me, you had to make it public? And why did you give her the note I wrote to that nun social worker a million years ago? It was none of your business. Or the adoptee's. None of it was yours to give away."
There's fear in Social Worker Nancy's eyes. And there should be. Because I'm half crazy and right now I'm loving the idea of striking a match and tossing it her way. Her fear comforts me. But she ruins it with a look of confusion. The doe-eyed gaze of the virtuous ignorant who will kill you just as dead as an assassin with a sited aim, only, gosh, they didn't mean to.
"Because," she answers with such innocent sincerity it sounds half true, "I just try to do my job. I just want to make everybody happy. That's why. That's why."
Ah yes, it's all becoming clear why Social Worker Nancy divulges long-guarded secrets. Makes up little romantic love stories about adoption. It's a feel good thing. There could never be filthy mattresses, never rapes in Social Worker Nancy's stories. In her spiels to adoptees, every birth is desired. It's just that...just that the girl was mixed up, sad. Surely, now that the girl who signed the adoption papers is an old crone, she will see the error of her young and selfish ways. And since Social Worker Nancy is the designated good fairy, all she has to do is wave her happy stick and all the bad stuff goes away.
I refrain from rolling my eyes, but somebody help me, because I'm about to croon a few verses of Koombahyah.
"I just want to bring everybody together," she continues with a straight face. "The triad...the adoptee...the adoptive parents and...and..."
I glare at her. Don't say it, Social Worker Nancy. Don't you dare say it.
Everybody sitting at this table, including her two superiors, have been asked and have agreed not to use inappropriate familial terms for the captives trapped in this orbit of tragedy. Becoming a mother is sacred, a gift. Becoming a breed mare for a rapist is an emotionally crippling horror. I refuse to let anyone, even these noble religious people sitting on comfortable chairs in this fine, sterile office, maternalize the violence that mutilated me.
So, keep it ugly, Social Worker Nancy. Call it what it is: the adoptee, the adoptive parents and the bitch. Or the slut. The whore, even. But woman, do not confuse the blessing of being a mother with the violence of being forced to breed. Yet...
"...and the, the...," Social Worker Nancy stutters, "...ah...the moms..."

The moms. I lean back in my chair and arch an eyebrow. How precious. I've never heard that expression used for girls forced to endure the despair of an unwanted pregnancy. The moms. Makes everything sound so cozy. Like tea is about to be served. Like after a hard day of criminal behaviors, the rapist and his stalker can crawl right up into the comfort and safety of my lap. Yes dear ones, mama is here.
The enormity of my bitterness surprises even me. Yes, it's a good thing that I don't really have matches stuffed in my purse. No matter, soon enough I'll wish I had a blow torch.
Social Worker Nancy keeps smiling and talking. About her obligations. Her committed pursuit of family and medical histories from "the moms." About establishing successful reunions.
Evidently, from the condescending nonsense she's babbling, Social Worker Nancy has never been raped. Oh but wait. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe Social Worker Nancy was raped in a good way. The Catholic way. Where rape isn't rape, but a spiritual opportunity. An occasion for a closer walk with God.
Divine rapes work especially well for Catholic girls. And holy women like Social Worker Nancy. As devout women are not to be concerned about the goings on down there anyway, given the fact that whatever happens inside female parts is Jesus' business.
Much to his credit, Jesus has quite a coalition of followers willing to force girls and women weakened by sin into mothering whatever the rapists implant inside their bodies. Good Catholics are required to believe that even a ripped vagina can generate a mini Jesus. Genitalia for Jesus. I'm thinking His trophy case must be quite a sight with all that blood and all.

I am so sick of listening to Social Worker Nancy spin gold out of anguish that I snarl,
"Reunion? Why can't you understand that there is no re because there was no union in the first place?"
Now I am the one being condescending, speaking in the measured cadence of an exasperated teacher who really wants to haul off and whack the kid.
"It was the rapist growing inside of me. The rapist took over every cell in my body. There was no escape from him. Rape is not making love."
Social Worker Nancy stops smiling and stares at me, mystified. I see now that she is descended from heaven and does not know what to do with someone risen from hell.
Maybe that's why she tells us about the old lady. To convince Phil and I that her efforts to hunt down fallen women are reasonable and honorable. That coercing them into giving up their secrets to strangers is not intimidation at all. It is simply a matter of persuading the moms that it is the moral thing to do. That even they, these aging and elderly, once-youthful whores who carried the punishment of their lustful ways in their bellies, can be redeemed. They just have to betray themselves. Come clean.
Yes, there she is, Social Worker Nancy, tapping her clipboard, pointing to the genuine, authorized interrogation forms stamped with the reverential logo of Catholic Charities. Jesus nailed to the cross does not wield as much power as Social Worker Nancy in the flesh standing on your doorstep.
So, that's where she showed up. On the old whore's doorstep. Announced or unannounced, Social Worker Nancy does not say. But she had the documents, evidence of the old lady's transgression, the long, long-held secret clutched right there in her official fist.
"Somewhere in her seventies," Social Worker Nancy says now.
I shake my head, picturing the old lady huddled on her couch next to Social Worker Nancy.
"She was crying," Social Worker Nancy says.
I blank stare at Social Worker Nancy. But all I see is that old lady trying to hold onto her dignity. And not knowing how. Up to that moment the old lady had to believe that she was going to get away with it, die with her secret secured down there in the darkness of her own private anguish. Given a few more years, maybe cancer or a heart attack would have taken her out. Before the adoptee went on the hunt. Before Social Worker Nancy rang that doorbell. But diseases have this tendency to take their damn sweet time in killing you.
What Social Worker Nancy won't admit is that she was there to strip search the old whore. To spread her wrinkly legs and probe into her shriveled vagina. That she was there to sniff out the secret the old lady had kept hidden between her thighs all these years.
"We cried together," Social Worker Nancy confesses.
I guess in social work circles crying with the client is code for empathy. Isn't it splendid that Social Worker Nancy felt the old lady's pain; understood what it was going to be like for her from now on. What more could a whore want than Social Worker Nancy's understanding of how it is to worry obsessively about the loyalty of your children, your grandchildren after they find out about you? Find out about the adoptee?
Social Worker Nancy's compassion is grace in action, isn't it? Obviously, she knows all about how Thanksgivings and birthday celebrations, in fact all family gatherings, are now forever changed for the old lady. Because mortifying, innocent comments always arise and, now that the old lady's sin is common knowledge, faking dignity, pretending she was not stung, is just part of her job description. It does not matter how, as a girl her legs came to be spread, there's nothing but disgrace in it for her.
Don't Social Worker Nancy's tears confirm her profound comprehension that no amount of reassurances from loved ones will ever mend the old lady's disabling wounds? Of shame. Of rage. Certainly Social Worker Nancy knows how the old whore feels about herself. About how it is for a girl so young to be permanently branded a whore. By the righteous. By the un-raped. Social Worker Nancy knows all this.
Doesn't she?
Well, I'm sorry to say, no. I'm afraid she does not.
And I should be livid. But suddenly I am only sleepy. Even though I desperately want to blow torch away the spiritual narcotics Social Worker Nancy is skunk-drunk on, all I can think about is pancakes. With butter. And real maple syrup. And sliding to the floor with my head in my hands.
It's time to go. I have nothing else to say. My face-off with Jesus, the Catholics, and the woman who betrayed me in the name of godliness is over.
I look at Social Worker Nancy and wish I saw malice in her eyes. But all I see is a confused kindness. And this makes me cry. Sob, in fact. I pull her into a hug. And it is sincere. But I don't know why. I pull back, look into those doe eyes, and hug her tighter. And sob harder.
And I don't know why I'm crying.
But I think it is because I am the old lady. I am the old whore.

The Obscenity of Hunting Elder Women

2/18/2013

Traumatized by Crisis Pregnancies
Adoption = Crisis Pregnancy

By Kathleen Hoy Foley

Hunting down an aging woman on the basis of a concealed, catastrophic pregnancy; demanding intimate access to her body; perverting her with motherly and grandmotherly fantasies; and abusing her with the whip of permanent maternal obligation is obscene, parallels pornography, and sits in the realm of the sadistic. Pornography dehumanizes a woman, reduces her to sexual body parts for the use and pleasure of others. She becomes a commodity, a service to be exploited by those demanding gratification from fantasy. A woman hunted on the grounds of her biology is a targeted object subordinated to appease the emotional satisfaction of an obsessed audience, and is as degraded and exposed as a woman stripped, thrown on her back, and spread-eagled while the camera focuses on the penetration of her genitalia. Only there can be no presumption of consent regarding a hunted woman and no legal or social recourse available to her in a climate of dehumanization by public agreement.

Shaming an elder woman with birthing fantasies violates her humanity, exploits her sexual organs, and imposes on her willing consent, eager compliance, enthusiasm, and gratefulness for an unwanted conception while dismissing the reality of long-term reproductive trauma to her body and spirit. It is perversion to degrade a woman as an object and provider of prurient sex. It is perversion to degrade an elder woman as an object and servant expected to oblige maternal fantasies.

Hunting down old women is barbaric. That hunt always begins at the site of the sexual trauma she endured—her vagina. Tailing the statement, “I’m adopted,” is the inevitable question, the challenge, “Are you going to find your real mother?” As in pornography, the hunted woman—the question mark—is dehumanized. Reduced to an object. Portrayed as a source of passion. Summoned to provide a climax. When in reality the hunted woman suffered the grossest sexual exploitation possible: impregnation against her will. Intensifying that catastrophic injury, the hunted woman is depicted as a lost thing to be found, forced into the self-abuse of blame and the self-abuse of obedience as her participation in a sadistic “reunion” of her body and its manifest trauma is imposed on her by society. She is reduced to an imaginary and biological commodity while consigned to a shadowed existence in a hostile, mother-forever-at-all-cost cultural environment from which she cannot escape.

The persistent myth of a young girl gripped in the throes of a desperately wanted pregnancy but helpless in the face of hardship that forcibly ripped love from her arms and thrust it into the cold world of the adoption process is comparable to the mythological woman consumed with lust, passion, and gratification when being tortured by rape portrayed up there on the pornographer’s screen. It is time to recognize that the notion of the loving, lost mother is a myth that lives only in fantasy. Unwanted pregnancies are a reality, not deliberate. Abortion is deliberate. Placement in the confidential adoption system is deliberate. It signifies trauma. It represents rescue. Emancipation. The details of a catastrophic sexual and biological ordeal are private. Rescue from a reproductive nightmare are individually specific and intensely personal.

But for the hunted woman—whether she is hunted by the State, an agency, detectives, or an individual—the assumption of entitlement predominates. Those who hunt her assume entitlement to her person, her physical location, to her private, familial, and medical history, to all extensions of her life. This presumed entitlement is an obscene dismissal of human rights, a grotesque violation of an elder woman’s intimate boundaries, and grants emotional and bodily privileges to the hunters—predators that inflict fresh wounds on the old woman by the perpetuation of the sexual trauma she endured.

There will come a time when the obscenity of this practice of routing out aging and elder women from the dark, sexual, birthing injuries of their pasts and punishing them until they submit their bodies and spirits to appease individual and societal demands will become obvious. As it did for animals, the truths of cruelty eventually filter into social consciousness and people of decency and compassion take action. But today those who would hunt down a woman once victimized by an unwanted pregnancy are supported by social and religious indoctrination and revelry that insist on a woman’s maternal obedience and obligation to a biological catastrophe that once befell her.

Who speaks for a hunted woman except those that hunt her? Who, except her pursuers, decides the fate of a hunted woman, the fate of her family, the fate of her status in her home and community? The assumption of sexual trauma, the assumption of juvenile sexual assault must prevail in all discussions of a confidential adoption. Whether that discussion is with the person placed in the adoption system, in the larger social arena, in political forums, or tossed about by gossip mongers, it must begin and end with sexual trauma and the knowledge that the hunt for a woman in hiding is obscene, pornographic, and sadistic and inflicts further sexual abuse upon that old woman.

Famous Adoptee Hires Private Eye

1/24/2013

By Kathleen Hoy Foley

Rumor has it that a fancy country singer is on the hunt for the old lady, the one who scrawled her name across the dotted line of an important document—that would be adoption papers for those of you who can’t read between the lines—some forty plus, plus years ago. Back when the old lady was a broken doll of a girl frantic to find a way to keep breathing, never imagining her future involved being chased down by a twanging guitar and rhinestone boots.

I feel for Fancy Country Singer, I really do. It is so hard when life isn’t perfect. Really. It is. A gorgeous voice, a legendary career, a cool husband, talented and beautiful kids, mansions, hot cars, pimped-out tour buses, and loads of cash are all over-rated. I guess Fancy Country Singer’s life won’t be truly perfect until she digs up the old lady, wraps her in homespun, pushes her into a rocking chair, jumps on her lap, and demands a Vagina Fairytale, country style.

I could be wrong about this, but I’m betting that Fancy Country Singer will include a decent incentive in exchange for the old lady’s submission to Fancy Country Singer’s Vagina Fairytale that she’s been concocting since she could spell the word A.D.O.P.T.I.O.N and now wants to put to music and sing at her sold out concerts. Personally, I hope the old lady holds out for a substantial upgrade to the life that Fancy Country Singer with her gorgeous voice, legendary career, cool husband, talented and beautiful kids, mansions, hot cars, and pimped-out tour buses is poised to destroy. The old lady will need loads of cash to rebuild once Fancy Country Singer bursts onto the scene with her rhinestone meat cleaver.

Therapy is expensive, after all. So is a cushy retirement. I’m thinking Florida. Sun is good. Or Arizona if the old lady develops stress related asthma and favors golf. Or even Hawaii where she could live out her girlhood fantasies of body surfing with dim-witted, looker dudes once she ditches the walker and sentimental ties to her former times. I’m pulling for Hawaii. And, of course, cash. Lots of it.

Naturally, I am partial to the old lady, being a hunted-down-old-lady myself, which has left me with a very bad humor. Very bad. Not that the old lady being stalked by Fancy Country Singer shares my nasty attitude. She might not object to a stranger hiring oily detectives to burrow into her past and tail her to the grocery store where she buys disposable senior unmentionables. Maybe the old lady views panting dogs tracking her as motivation to keep her biceps buffed for the wheelchair races she competes in. Chances are that the old lady’s life is miserable and pathetic anyway and the intrusion of a Fancy Country Singer stalker could bring thrills that bingo and card games just can’t provide. Plus all the rhinestones the old lady ever dreamed about. Excuse me while I imagine the possibilities: rhinestone-studded granny pants; a rhinestone bib to complement a rhinestone cane. Rhinestone bowling shoes if the old lady can balance long enough to push a rhinestone ball down a long alley to knock over a few pins adorned with, what else? Rhinestones. Endless promise of dazzle…

Take it from me, what a hunted-down old lady wants more than public exposure of the catastrophic pregnancy she secretly endured a lifetime ago and a Fancy Country Singer parked on her doorstep whining about the unfairness of life is rhinestones. True, rhinestones are not in the same category as diamonds—which the old lady should insist upon—but being pursued by a stalker adoptee and a merciless private eye makes an old woman weak, willing to settle, given to fake smiles and big lies, like: I love you Fancy Country Singer, which Fancy Country Singer will believe. Because Fancy Country Singer is pretty dumb. And pretty desperate. And does not understand that the old lady too is desperate, but not dumb, and will spin anything, anything, including a Vagina Fairytale, just to get Fancy Country Singer with her gorgeous voice, legendary career, cool husband, talented and beautiful kids, mansions, hot cars, and pimped-out tour buses to GO AWAY.

But that’s not going to happen for the old lady, is it? Stalkers and private eyes just don’t go away. Neither do rat dogs once they catch the scent. And believers in Vagina Fairytales, even if they are fancy and famous, are impervious to reason and impossible to shake.

Still, I’m pulling for the old lady. But I hope she likes rhinestones.

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.

My Cousin Also Drank the Kool-Aid

Social Worker Nancy and the Old Lady

The Obscenity of Hunting Elder Women

Famous Adoptee Hires Private Eye

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