ADOPTER EXPLAINS "WHY I'M ANTI-ADOPTION"

ADOPTER EXPLAINS "WHY I'M ANTI-ADOPTION"
From an Interview with Sheila Grove, 12/29/02
by Lori Carangelo
By coincidence, Sheila phoned me wanting to know if there is a local support group of adopters for frank discussion about problems encountered while raising adopted children. I suggested we start a forum online via this webpage.

"At first," explained Sheila, "I hesitated to express my views about adoption except among adoption-affected friends in private. Sharing my thoughts online is a big step. I was concerned that other adoptive parents 'might hate me' before knowing me and undesrtanding where I'm coming from. But I'm finding out that I'm not alone in my feelings and views. I spoke to a friend today who has two nieces both adopted. One girl is a severe diabetic which the parents were never told at the time of the adoption. The girl has had two liver transplants because this information was withheld at the time of adoption. I feel so frustrated and know I am not alone. And I know it was the same for adult adoptees and their parents who have gradually 'come out of the closet' over the years, to 'open up' their adoptions and the secrets kept under seal so long. I see more and more adoptive parents supporting 'open records.' I think it's time that adoptive parents to began an honest dialogue about adoption itself."

In "Desert Hot Springs Woman Stabbed," (The Desert Sun, Palm Springs, 8/7/93, page A-3), staff writer Stephanie McKinnon wrote:

"Twenty-four year old ..... was in critical condition from multiple stab wounds believed inflicted by an assailant as a result of a drug deal gone bad."
But McKinnon didn't get the whole story. The twenty-four year old in the newsclip was Sheila's adopted daughter. The photo at the top of this page was taken 4 years prior to the stabbing incident, when we were on the local news lobbying support for an open adoption records bill in California.

Sheila remembered "We told television viewers why my husband and I support her efforts to find her mother and I said to local primetime TV viewers.

'If I had adopted a dog, I would have known more than I am allowed to know about my own adopted daughter!'"

I asked Sheila if she now sees the problems with adoption are not only about secrecy.

"Yes, but I also see that the problems are not magically cured by opening a sealed record decades after an adoption, nor by our children finally meeting the mother they've never known--though they still need to do so. At the time of the stabbing, I knew that her stab wound was self-inflicted--one of many suicide attempts of the past 3 years during which she had not found her mother and which included slashing her own throat and wrists."

From her hospital bed in ICU, she told AmFOR that she still wanted to find her mother. In just 24 hours, by "pulling some strings," AmFOR located this adoptee's mother who immediately flew from San Francisco to be at her daughter's bedside and they began what was hoped to be a healing process. But despite what appeared to be an "Oprah happy reunion," drugs and the hurdles imposed by post-adoption relationships didn't bring them the healing that even adoption-oriented psychologists have come to expect--and not for Sheila.

"In fact," Sheila said, "I was entirely left out of my daughter's life from then on. I was no longer 'mother,' or 'mom.' I have to admit this change didn't begin with their reunion. There was always the feeling that something wasn't quite right as we became more estranged. Certainly we did everything within reason to show her our love and nurturing. We never withheld any information about her adoption or pre-adoption past from her, but neither was anything significant told to us. We told her she was adopted as soon as she was old enough to understand what 'adopted' meant. But it was obvious that she had had other parents. We're small Italians and she has a large frame and Scandinavian features. She seemed to just be resigned to the fact that she was with us."

I asked Sheila why she decided to speak out now.

"My perspectives on adoption have been evolving over the years since we adopted her. We were misled by the adoption industry that adoption is a 'quick fix' for a child's and parents' problems. And that all a child needs is love to 'adjust' to loss of a biological reality and to 'adjust' to strangers becoming her 'new parents' despite that she was so physically and emotionally different from us. And that somehow her reunion with her mother would put a bandaid on all the hurt she felt for more than two decades believing she wasn't wanted.

Our adopted daughter was also misled by the adoption industry to believe she could raise her own two children with no family medical nor social history to relate to, just as I had to.

Today, I would like to see a local support group for adopters to help them cope with and understand troubled adoptees.

Today, you could say that I am 'anti-adoption' because, had I to do it over again, I would have opted for legal guardianship, or remained a foster parent, rather than burden our daughter and us with the inequities that the adoption system imposed on all of us. I wish we could call the "adopted parents" "custodial parents" which I think is more correct. Do you agree? We have custody of the child and only that.'"

Copyright by Lori Carangelo 2002.

http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html