Adoption

If you’ve ever spent time in what is known as “Adoption Land”—various communities that exist to support people with emotions and struggles particular to adoptees, first/birth parents, and adoptive parents—you’ve likely noticed an array of fiercely held perspectives on adoption.

While Adoption Land helps normalize and heal, there can be a danger in looking at adoption dogmatically or in an echo chamber.

Adoptive parents who sing the praises of adoption tend to lead the narrative that’s most familiar in mainstream culture: adoption is a beautiful thing, children are gifts, adoptive parents are selfless, orphans and unwanted children abound, and the best way to help them is through adoption.

This perspective, which elevates adoptive parents to saint-like status, misses the profound nuances of adoption and excludes important perspectives from other key players—adoptees and first/birth families (for simplicity, from here on referenced as birth families)—whose voices are critical to serving the adoption community.

Adult adoptees who speak out often focus on the trauma of adoption. Losing a mother is one of the greatest separations imaginable, and yet adoptee mother-loss is often diminished, ignored, or equated with other kinds of losses. Adoptee pain is not the happy, “positive” story of adoption that mainstream culture usually takes interest in, but it is scientifically proven: from the moment of relinquishment, adoptee brains are wired to protect from further loss. This can manifest as people-pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, aggression, depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, or other self-harm. These are critical, life-saving dynamics to shed light upon, and it’s important that adoptees continue to speak up about the effects of attachment loss.

But while unpacking the emotional turmoil that goes hand-in-hand with adoption, adoptees can get stuck in darkness and hopelessness. It’s easy to lose the “forest for the trees,” straying into the “Trauma Olympics,” or forgetting about the plasticity of the human brain and our enormous capacity for resilience. What’s more, over time adoptees may disengage with, or even block, adoptive parents, together with a large swath of society, after becoming fatigued or retraumatized by constant microaggressions, gaslighting, and flawed information. But engage they must—especially if they feel a calling to support other generations of adoptees and work toward industry reform.

Birth parents’ voices are still desperately needed in Adoption Land. When birth parents remain silent, adoptees miss out on their perspectives, which can serve as a balm for the scars of relinquishment. Also, when birth parents remain quiet, adoptive parents may be prone to carry on as if first bonds don’t matter (out of sight/out of mind), when those first roots are deeply significant to most, if not all, adoptees and must be honored for everyone’s emotional health.

Recognizing the challenges facing individuals who experience DNA surprises, Adoption Network Cleveland (ANC) has launched the DNA Discoveries Peer Support Group, a virtual peer support program focused on the emotional impacts of the journey and  It kicks off with a special panel on February 2 facilitated by ANC’s search specialist Traci Onders that will feature an individual who’s discovered misattributed parentage, a donor-conceived person, and adoptees who have found birth family. Onders spoke with us about the program and the personal journey that led her to working with ANC.

How did you come to Adoption Network Cleveland and how did you become interested in this work?

I started as program coordinator for adult adoptees and birthparents in 2016. I’d begun volunteering at Adoption Network Cleveland (ANC) prior to that because its mission was personally important to me. Adoption Network Cleveland advocated for adoptee access to records in Ohio for more than 25 years, and finally in 2013 Ohio passed legislation that opened up original birth certificates to adult adoptees. It’s hard to imagine this would have happened without the steadfast determination of ANC, and as an adoptee, I wanted to give back to the organization that made it possible for me to request and receive my original birth certificate. ANC is a nonprofit organization and has a reputation for advocacy rooted in understanding, support, and education—a meaningful mission to me.

I was born to a woman who was sent to a home for unwed mothers to hide the shame of pregnancy from the small town in which her family lived. There was no counseling available for the grief of relinquishing a child, and she was told to go on with her life and forget about it. These homes no longer exist; we know now how awful and hurtful this practice, rooted in shame, is.

My birthfather died a year later in a tragic accident. He was also an adoptee, raised as a son by his maternal grandparents. I will never know if he knew who his father was, but thanks to DNA, I do.

I first searched for my birthmother more than 20 years ago after my children were born. Pregnancy and childbirth made me want to know more about the woman who carried me and gave me a deep understanding that she made decisions that had to be extremely difficult and painful in a way that I had not previously appreciated. I had complicated pregnancies and no medical history for myself or my children. As a mother, I felt compelled to know and understand more about both my history and my beginning. At that time, I discovered that the agency that handled my adoption, Ohio Children’s Society, had destroyed its records. I had no information at all to work with, and my search hit a brick wall. It was important to me that I connect with my birthmother in a way that was respectful. I didn’t know if she had told anyone she’d relinquished me, and I was concerned that if I hired a private investigator, the PI might use tactics that I wasn’t comfortable with or make a possible secret known to others, and that this somehow might hurt my birthmother or her family. Until I could request my original birth certificate in 2015, I didn’t have many options. In 2015, adoptees were finally able to access their original birth certificates in Ohio, and when I did this, it named my birthmother. I also discovered that I have a maternal half-sister. My birthmother and I reunited very shortly after that. I was finally able to learn her story and to gain a more complete and ongoing medical history. Knowing these things and my relationship with her have been blessings in my life that for many years I did not imagine would be possible. A few months later I met the extended family, and their warm welcome touched my heart.

In a few weeks, it will be the 30th anniversary of my becoming a U.S. citizen. Even now, I can’t begin to tell you exactly what was required or how long it took. My adoptive parents successfully navigated that process for me when I was just a child, several years after my adoption from South Korea. We celebrated as a family afterward, but I didn’t understand what it all meant at the time. Today, I see more clearly how that piece of paper has shaped my life and what I have been allowed to take for granted. As a citizen, I have been able to vote in elections year after year my entire adult life. I have been able to work, get a U.S. passport, and receive federal financial aid. I have not lived in fear of deportation.

Other transnational adoptees have not been as fortunate. In many cases, the steps required for naturalization were not clearly communicated by the government or adoption agencies to adoptive parents. Today, it is estimated that thousands of adults who were adopted as children lack U.S. citizenship. These adoptees fall into a loophole from the Child Citizenship Act (CCA) that was signed into law in 2001. The CCA granted citizenship to many adoptees who were still minors at the time of enactment but excluded others, including adult adoptees born before 1983. The bipartisan Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2019, which would close much of the loophole, has been sponsored by Congressman Adam Smith of Washington and introduced in Congress, where it awaits committee action and a floor vote in the House. This legislation would grant citizenship to more than 50 deported adoptees and other adoptees without citizenship who are still in the U.S. It would also provide the citizenship that all intercountry adoptees are entitled to as the children of U.S. citizens, end the unequal treatment between adopted and biological children of U.S. citizens, and allow deported adoptees to come home, reunite with their families, and rebuild their lives.

Due to the widespread erasure of adoptee voices, many people’s understanding of adoption comes largely from the perspective of adoption agencies and adoptive parents. This mainstream, mostly positive narrative frames adoption around “families” and “love.” In contrast, for many adoptees, the experience is more complicated and often traumatic. These feelings can be acute and front of mind. In other cases, these traumas linger in the background, shaping how we perceive our place in the world: in our families, friendships, and sense of belonging. They can resurface without warning.

Even though I have been struggling with my own Korean American identity and adoptee experience, I was largely ignorant of the issue of adoptee citizenship. While I have supported other immigration measures in the past, I did not learn of the Adoptee Citizenship Act until earlier this year. Finally, I read and heard more stories of deported adoptees who’ve been forced to confront this other form of separation. As I’ve tried to learn more, I’ve come to better appreciate how U.S. policy falls far short. After all, many of our fellow Americans—both adoptees and other immigrants—cannot fully participate in U.S. life, even though this may be the only country they have known.

I believe issues of families and belonging are always paramount, and our current crises have only magnified this urgency. During this pandemic, we all probably know families who are struggling with forced time apart. Holidays, birthdays, and major life milestones are conducted via Zoom or FaceTime. For adoptees who have been deported, the uncertainty of not knowing when they will next see their loved ones has been the reality since even before COVID-19. Without the Adoptee Citizenship Act, deported adoptees will remain in unfamiliar countries, separated from their families and friends, and uprooted from their homes. For those who lack access to economic relief from their country of origin or from the U.S., where can they turn? When it comes to addressing policy failures that span years, we cannot completely atone for the injustices of the past. All we can do is act. With the bill expiring on December 10, it’s up to all of us to come together and demand our elected representatives in Congress pass the Adoptee Citizenship Act and finally provide internationally adopted Americans with the citizenship we were promised.

A common mistake adoptive parents make when hearing adult adoptees speak about adoption trauma is discounting their experiences because “times have changed” or their adoptee hasn’t voiced similar feelings. Some parents will straight-up ask their adopted children if they feel the same way and then rest easy when their children deny having similar feelings. Differing details of adoption stories can be used as evidence of irrelevance. Adoptee voices that land as “angry” are often quickly written off as “examples of a bad adoption.”

“Not my adoptee,” is a knee-jerk, defensive response that blinds parents to adoption-related dynamics that may be uncomfortable or painful to consider—especially when everything seems to be going swimmingly in early childhood. This posture, though, discounts the real and proven trauma inherent in adoption, missing an opportunity to fully support adopted children and ultimately benefit from closer, more authentic relationships.

That trauma looks good on you.

One reason it’s so easy to miss signs of adoption trauma is because it can present so well.

Adoptees are unintentionally groomed to be people-pleasers. Once we’ve lost our first mothers to adoption, we can work incredibly hard to win the love of our next mothers. We strive to measure up—doing and saying whatever is needed to keep our adoptive mothers close. This is all unconscious and certainly not meant to be fraudulent. To our brains, running the show, it’s simply a matter of survival. Children need parents, after all, and attachment is our greatest human need, taking priority even over such basics as shelter and food, as explained by child developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld.

Don’ t miss the latest in a series of webinars from Right to Know (RTK), a nonprofit organization that advocates for the rights of MPEs (misattributed parentage experiences), including NPEs (not parent expected).

On Sunday, October 18, from 4pm-5:30 EST, the webinar will address mental health issues experienced by MPEs. Moderated by DrPh candidate Sebastiana Gianci, the panel will include Jodi Klugman-Rabb, LMFT, therapist, cohost of the podcast Sex, Lies & The Truth, and creator of the innovative training program Parental Identity Discovery; Cotey Bowman, LPC Associate, creator of the NPE Counseling Collective, and Lynne Weiner Spencer, RN, MA,LP, a therapist specializing in donor conception, adoption, and the experiences of NPEs and MPEs.

Among the topics to be explored are trauma, identity, grief, ambiguous loss, anxiety, and rejection.

In November, the series’ presenter will be Libby Copeland, award-winning author of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are. (Look for our Q & A with the author here.)

And in December, RTK’s webinar features the DNA Geek Leah Larkin, an adoptee and genetic genealogist. If you’d like to attend the upcoming webinar, request the Zoom link at RSVP2RightToKnow.us, and check out RTK’s event page to stay in the loop about upcoming presentations.

If you missed the last webinar, “Understanding the Medical Ramifications in Your DNA Test,” you can watch the recording.

Right to Know, created by Kara Rubinstein Deyerin, Gregory Loy, and Alesia Cohen Weiss, aims to educate the public and professionals about “the complex intersection of genetic information, identity, and family dynamics.” It works, as well, to change laws with respect to related issues, including fertility fraud. Find it on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram @righttoknowus.

In only a year, Blake Gibbins’ YouTube channel “Not Your Orphan” has garnered an enthusiast base of subscribers who tune in for the host’s thoughtful, engaging, and provocative videos about a range of adoption issues from adoptee infantilization to genetic sexual attraction. Gibbins, a queer domestic adoptee and adoptee rights advocate, lives in Colorado and is deep into a self-designed graduate program in child welfare history and contemporary adoptee rights from Vermont’s Goddard College.

“Not Your Orphan,” Gibbins explains, is for “adoptees and allies and all who wish to understand.” And unlike so many conversations about adoption in which adoptee voices are nowhere to be found, “Not Your Orphan” is a place, they say, “where we talk everything adoption from the perspective of those who actually live it.”

Whether focused on how to be a better ally, cognitive dissonance and its place in the discourse on adoption, the gross inequities in the adoption system, or the trauma of family separation, the videos are informative, illuminating, and even—despite the seriousness of the subject matter—amusing. With an easy conversational style and a guileless gaze that connects with the viewer, Gibbins add a surprising intimacy and even the illusion of interactivity to these videos. This disarming presence, combined with deft editing and creative effects, glides viewers through what Gibbins acknowledges are sometimes uncomfortable conversations.

As host, Gibbins is both entertainer and the best kind of teacher, sharing deep knowledge of the history, workings, and abuses of the foster and adoption industry along with welcome dashes of humor and irony and a heap of social justice perspective. These videos, however, are informed not only by historical perspective but, and equally important, also by his lived experience. They’re clear and direct, and variously raw, vulnerable, angry, whimsical, and passionate.

Facebook groups and virtual support groups can be lifesavers, but nothing beats face-to-face time with people who know how you feel and have been where you’ve been. That’s why Erin Cosentino and Cindy McQuay have begun organizing retreats for adoptees, late discovery adoptees, donor conceived people, and NPEs (not parent expected) at which participants can get to know each other and share their experiences in a relaxed setting while learning from experts about the issues that challenge them. It’s not therapy, but it may be equally healing, and undoubtedly more fun.

Since the day that Cosentino, 44, discovered at 42 that her father was not the man who raised her, her mantra has been “Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.” McQuay, 56, has known her entire life she had been adopted. Both married with children and busy schedules, each devotes considerable time to advocating for people with concerns related to genetic identity and helping searchers look for biological family. And each runs a private Facebook group, Cosentino’s NPE Only: After the Discovery, and McQuay’s Adoptees Only: Found/Reunion The Next Chapter.

Among her advocacy efforts, McQuay, who describes herself as a jack of all trades, helps adoptees locate the forms necessary to obtain original birth certificates (OBCs). A strong voice for adoptee rights, she strives to enlighten non-adoptees about the often unrecognized harsh realities of adoption, helping them understand that “not all adoptions are rainbows and unicorns.” Countering the dominant narrative, she’s quick to point out that adoptees “were not chosen, we were just next in line.”

As the new network television season begins this week, adoptees, NPEs (not parent expected or non-parental events), and donor conceived individuals are among the casts of characters on primetime programs. But will the series’ writers and producers bring a level of reality and depth to the depictions or simply exploit their experiences for dramatic purposes without accuracy, nuance, and sensitivity?
On October 2, the first show with a high-concept premise about donor conception premieres on Fox. The plot of “Almost Family” unfolds as it becomes known that renowned fertility doctor Leon Bechley boosted his clinic’s success rate by using his own sperm to help clients conceive—a practice that led to the conception of dozens of children.

While it would appear to be a plot line ripped from recent headlines, the show is based on the Australian Network 10 series “Sisters,” which premiered in October 2017 and may have been inspired by an earlier headline concerning an Indiana fertility doctor who in 2016 was sued for using his own sperm more than 50 times to inseminate patients. The show began streaming as a Netflix Original Series in September 2018.
As in “Sisters,” “Almost Family” focuses on the effect this bombshell has on Bechley’s daughter, Julia, and two women who discover that they were conceived from his sperm. One, Edie Palmer, has been a longtime friend of Julia. The other is a former Olympic athlete, Roxy Doyle.

Both shows purport to be about the redefinition of family and the issues that surface as these sisters face the facts of their conception, navigate the challenges, and encounter an ever-increasing number of siblings.

“Sisters,” with 7 episodes, begins promisingly enough. Dialogue suggests that feelings, experiences, and concerns arising from the characters’ discovery that they not only were donor conceived but conceived with the sperm of a fertility doctor will be on point.

Infants and babies taken from their birthmothers tend to perceive that severance as a danger, a threat to their wellbeing. The physical sensations associated with being removed from their mothers and the consequent feelings of being unsafe are stored in the body and the mind as implicit memories — remnants of trauma that remain and can cause distress throughout life. But because individuals don’t understand these as memories — that is, as narratives they can express — they may not identify their experiences as traumatic or link their distress symptoms to these early preverbal experiences.